And just when we thought that the “1″ fever was losing steam, “Cloud” becomes one of the most hyped terms today. Of course, the Cloud we’re talking about here isn’t the “visible mass of water droplets or frozen ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere above the surface of the Earth or another planetary body.” We’re talking Cloud computing.

You could say that Cloud reached a climax when iCloud was finally revealed at Apple’s recent Worldwide Developers Conference 2011. Then, all of a sudden, books, music, files and photos are all on Cloud. Fortunately, Malaysia isn’t far behind when it comes to technology. After all, we have the tallest building in the Clouds and we can even have roti canai above the Clouds.

So, what is Cloud?

Steve Jobs says don’t even need to know what Cloud is, because you never interact with it – your apps do.

End users shouldn’t worry, however, because the moment you upload a picture on Facebook, navigate KL using Google Maps or play Angry Bird on Google Chrome, you are in fact, in a transition to Cloud. To you, it is a matter of experience which makes sharing faster. It also makes life easier and fun! So don’t crack your head trying to understand Cloud, it exists in the background. Think of it this way, you don’t need to know how a car works in order to drive a car, and remember Web 2.0? Who gives a hoot about it now?

It’s wise for businesses to make the change, however. You can be a mover and shaker by helping your customers make the transition to Cloud. Ask yourself these questions – Is your website hosted on Cloud? Does your product require an additional hardware to run? Think again and check out Cloud Computing, as well as this article.

About The Author

Pin is the founder of 1.com.my. He hosts email and websites for his customers on Cloud. He has written two books on Online Business and Linux, and he also founded a Web Developer Group that has over 100 friends. To learn more, please visit his website at http://www.1.com.my/, or join his Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pin.my.

Why not? Businesses, banks, legal firms and government agencies have been known to conduct background check on people using CTOS, CCRIS and other means.

After all, foreknowledge on people, companies and markets we are dealing with will be much useful to ensure higher success for us.

Sun Tzu even says, “Thus, what enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge” (故明君賢將，所以動而勝人，成功出于眾者，先知也)

So, why can’t employers check on job candidates before hiring them? One justification is that, hiring the wrong employee is not only costly to the company, but also detrimental to the employee who comes into the wrong job.

But are you aware of the dangers of doing such online background check?  Feel free to comment on my presentation done in December 2009 below or on SlideShare.net.

You may think I have become lazy to write articles.  You may think I have taken easy way out by microblogging using Facebook isntead.  But I suspect I’m not the only one.  I venture to say that microblogging using Facebook and Twitter has won over the heart of some conventional bloggers like me.

Now I suppose conventional blogging is not for everyone.  Not too many can write, want to write, care to write, or have the time to write.  Some of us took up blogging a few years ago due to reasons such as peer pressure, or it was the “in” thing to do at that time.

But as time goes on, we start to find out who can blog, and who better not waste time blogging.  You may call the blogs of former as high quality blogs, or the latter low quality blogs.  But I prefer to think that blogging is simply not the cup of tea for these latter group of people. 

Some of them blog because they have a need to express themselves.  But it can take too much time sitting in front of computer to write, and or too much stress to think what to write.  But now with microblogging, it serves their need to express perfectly.  They can just shout anytime they have something to express!

I’m talking about the bloggers who have “expressive” need to express themselves.  I’m not talking about other reasons for blogging such as to contribute to body of knowledge, to attract web site traffic, to promote a company, product or service, or to make blogging money.

Moreover, by microblogging we have ready pool of friends on social media who can read our status updates.  We don’t need to worry about attracting search engine traffic to our conventional blogs.  Well, not too many people know or care about search engines and online marketing.

But don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying blogs have no use any more.  I’m saying microblogging has taken away some conventional bloggers like me who blog primarily to express and to shout.

And you are welcome to express and shout your comments below

Yes, I have been joining some of these groups. Also learning about this new way of making money – building recommender community groups on Facebook.

Correct me if I’m wrong. But it works like this:

1. Decide on your passion, such as table-tennis or reading books.
2. Create a Facebook group around your passion, such as “Malaysia Table-Tennis Network”. Decide on what you can offer your group members.
3. Invite your friends on and off Facebook to join your group. Aim for the number.
4. Keep posting useful messages to group members to build your credibility, and make sure they get something beneficial out of joining your group!
5. Once you have reached a critical mass, such as 1000 members in your group, start leveraging the number to make money!

For example, you can contact sport organizations and companies to sponsor events, contests and prizes for your table-tennis sport group. You can help these sponsors sell their products. In return, you may get a cut of the profit.

Another example I’ve witnessed a book love group are doing. They leverage on their high number of members to negotiate with MPH to gain discount for their members.

I don’t know exactly yet how to translate number of members into profits, since I’m not there yet. But since you are leading your many group members now, you have the influence over the group members and “recommendation power” to talk to businesses interested in your group as their target customers.

And once you have achieved success with one niche group, start another group (better be related, I supposed), and leverage on the first group to promote the second!

Just announce to the first group that you have created a second group, then many of them will join you since they already trust you!

Does this business model work? I don’t know. But according to one Internet guru, building recommender community groups is one of the most profitable ventures on the Internet.

And what do you think?

Yes, the Internet is getting more and more “social”, with real people using the Internet to interact and influence one another.  Much thanks to the advent of blogs, and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter (strictly speaking, blogs are not social media).  Even the older generation have jumped on the bandwagon and claimed an account on Facebook.  In fact, if you are not “in” social media nowadays, you are “out”!

Therefore, the social media now presents a natural channel for marketing your products and services on such increasingly social online networks.  After all, many people have always been looking for others’ opinions when deciding to buy (or not buy) something, used to be offline, but now online also.

In the local hosting industry, it seems hosting providers are picking up on marketing through social media.  I know one company has set up their profile on various social media such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Plurk!

This company is capitalizing well on social media.  They offer money for bloggers who write about them.  They give out prizes for lucky draw winners who follow them on Twitter, tweet about them, and ask others to retweet about them.  They also own a company page on Facebook and promise to offer discounts for domain names based on the number of Facebook members who become their fans.  Yeah, many social media jargons here, I know

I also had set up a Facebook group and a Twitter account for BizPartner, and tried to create some buzz in social media.  I have yet to achieve what I want, but I’m trying, and learning.

And we can expect that more and more hosting providers will soon start to use social media for innovative marketing, branding and customer relationship building.

Well, it’s not possible to “delete” those pages from Google (unless you get a court injunction ordering Google to do so). But he can add in more positive content about the person, and try to boost these web pages up the ranking using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.

But if an individual, a business or an organization’s reputation is already bad due to their behavior, no matter how much positive content is generated, even more negative content can still get its way into the search pages. This is especially so when everyone can publish nowadays on the Internet by means of blogging.

With the advent of Internet, and social media more recently, reputation management has become very important for individuals, businesses and organizations in their branding, marketing and PR efforts.

Perhaps the best policy is do like what Google says, “Don’t be evil”. Be good and people will talk about us well on the Internet.

But in case there is any negative content, one can contact the web site owner, or participate in its forum or blog, and try to set things right, perhaps by posting feedback or comments on the web sites. Be professional and don’t hide behind anonymous email address which I believe some commentators did on this blog when I talked about them. Be respectful. Don’t point fingers and don’t lose temper.

Today we no longer can ignore what people say about us on the Internet. The long term solution is to be good and not evil. As for my customer, all the best to him for what he intends to do.

You can either enter the email addresses of your friends manually. Or you can just enter your username and password of your web-based email service, such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail. Then the site will login on behalf of you, extract your friends’ details out of your address book, and send them an invitation email.

While asking for your login details, there is always a disclaimer claiming that “We do not store your login information”. But, do you believe?

As a web programmer myself, I know how easy it is to store people’s password without them knowing. If your login details fall into the wrong hands, the unscrupulous party can just log into your account, read your emails, send emails for you, or simply change your password and block you from accessing your mailbox any more.

I don’t know about you. But I have friends whose web-based mailbox had been hacked and they could not access their mailbox any more. Worse, a hacker even used my friend’s mailbox to send emails out on her behalf!

Of course I do trust sites such as LinkedIn. But if a site called XYZ that you do not know well ask you for login details, will you give them? Better safe than sorry.

From the point of view of site owner, is it good to ask for login details from members? However we claim that we don’t store their login details, they may still not trust us, because we are nobody!

This shows that trust is paramount in doing business, including online businesses. But when we are nobody, it takes time to build trust.

I wish there can be a good mechanism where members can safely invite people on their address book without the site owner getting to know the login details at all.

This is like how credit card details are processed – the customer enters the card number but the merchant never get to see it because it is sent directly to the bank.

Do you have any good solution?

I joined Friendster rather late in 2004 after being invited by others. Then I joined a couple of others including Facebook. But I tended to brush off these sites as those through which we can get to know friends, boys and girls.  Young people with a lot of free time may enjoy it.  But not so much for those who are busy with work and business.

But my perception started to change after I read about and subsequently joined LinkedIn. It is not for dating boys and girls but for serious professionals and businesspeople to meet one another online. It is one of the best effective networking tools available on the Internet. I find it quite useful to:

• Get to know others in business and profession, even from other industries.
• Meet real people, not those fake profiles on many other social networking web sites.
• Learn about others’ background before meeting up in person.
• Expand your social and professional networks.
• Get to know whom to contact when I want to start a new venture, find out about one company, or enquire for one product or service.
• Get referrals and recommendations from others on you.
• Keep in touch and follow up with those you have met offline.
• Build credibility and reputation online.

Please pay a visit my LinkedIn page at http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickysoo. Million thanks also to those who recommended me on LinkedIn!

I definitely recommend LinkedIn to any serious professional and businesspeople.  Are you not on LinkedIn too?  Why not?