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Reported by TheEdge Malaysia that, Malaysian government is going to revise/fine tuning of its E Commerce Act to have a more protection for the online consumers when they do a online purchase.

The Electronic Commerce Act will be fine-tuned by inserting more information to protect consumers who conduct business transactions through the Internet, Domestic Trade, Cooperative and Consumerism Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob said today.

He said the insertions would be brought to parliament for tabling in March next year.

“This has to be done because currently, in terms of action, penalty, etc, they are under the Consumers Protection Act,” he told reporters after opening the Cooperative College of Malaysia’s (MKM) Open Day and a discourse on business through the Internet at the college here.

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A woman in Australia is suing her government for receiving a SMS warning of bush fire.  This is because the emergency text message of bush fire is not complete with sufficient of information like the exact location of the fire took place.

“The text message doesn’t really tell you anything, because the area they are talking about is really huge,” she said. “I spent all night trying to find out information about it and it was next to impossible. The 1800 phone numbers they give you are just recorded messages of the same information on the website and I just found it totally frustrating.

“I understand in an emergency everyone is stretched to the limit but this new system was supposed to keep you in the loop.”

RFS assistant commissioner Rob Rogers said as the fire situation was changing quickly, it was difficult to give precise locations.

He also said the text messages were limited to 160 characters, so using specific addresses or even GPS co-ordinates would mean less information in the messages. “Specific addresses could change minute by minute, making GPS or map co-ordinates inaccurate. Also, GPS co-ordinates may not be clear to many people.”

In September the federal government awarded $15 million to Telstra to build a national emergency warning system to send text and voice messages to the mobile phones and landlines of residents threatened by bushfires.

The system was officially used for the first time on Thursday in Michelago, Tooma and Gerogery.

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Internet access is a very important communication tools today. You will actually use it on a daily routine, be it at home or office via the computer, notebook, netbook or phones.

Came across this interesting report from Digitimes, reported that base on iSuppli research -  by year 2016, there will be roughly 62.3 million global car owners will have internet access in the car.

With smartphones having become more affordable and ubiquitous, consumers are demanding Internet connectivity in cars,” said Egil Juliussen, principal analyst and fellow for iSuppli’s automotive research service. “Car makers are serving this demand by adding various forms of Internet connectivity to cars.

The US is expected to be the leading region for car Internet access in 2009 and during the next six years, with users rising to 28.3 million in 2016, up from 520,000 in 2009.

Do you think the research will become reality soon? or it is just not viable to have a internet access in the car?

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Gartner reported that even during a financial crisis recently, the usage of SMS has not been decreased but oppositely increased by 15.5% to reach about 1.9 trillion SMS this year compare to year 2008.

In 2010, SMS volumes are forecast to surpass 2.1 Trillion, a 12.7 percent increase from 2009.

Gartner analysts said that messaging traffic and revenues continue to be driven by new subscribers in developing markets.

“Strong organic growth continues in Asia’s developing markets, with marginal subscribers turning to low-cost messaging as an entry-level service,” said Madhusudan Gupta, senior research analyst at Gartner. “In the mature markets of the Asia/Pacific region, SMS has seen sustained healthy growth as a result of steady price declines and increasingly generous SMS and data bundles.”