Category Archives: MyOrbit Blogs

MyOrbit Blogs

Rodney Wilson on Risk Management in Islamic Finance

This video (sorry, for the poor quality) is taken from an event organized by the Institute of Islamic Banking and Insurance (IIBI) London held at British Bankers’ Association on 16 March 2007. Please turn up your volume, and the video and sound gets clearer by end of 2nd minute.

About the Speaker: Prof. Rodney Wilson is the Director of Post Graduate Studies at Durham University’s School of Government and International Affairs. He manages the Durham Islamic Finance Programme and he is also on the academic committee of the Institute. He worked with the Islamic Development Bank, and is currently serving as a consultant to the Islamic Financial Services Board. His most recent book is: Islamic Economics: a Short History,Brill Academic Publishing, 2006. He has contributed to numerous professional publications on Islamic finance topics including sukuk, asset management, retail banking and most recently takaful. Professor Wilson acts as facilitator for courses on Islamic finance in London, Kuwait, Bahrain, Dubai, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.

He is a pioneer in this field.

Jobs & Careers, Market News, MyOrbit Blogs, New Media, Online Marketing

Notes from Internet World 2007

The Internet World 2007 event took place in London from May 1 to 3, and was was like any other industry event – lots of brochures, gift pens and mugs, and workshops and seminars – with giants like Yahoo, MSN, Google, and also many start-ups. And like everywhere, it took a while to figure out which stalls to stop by. The event’s website: http://www.internetworld.co.uk

While a variety of topics were covered, two categories really dominated:

1. Internet Marketing – I think half the stalls were about it – showing ways to reach audience through post, emails, mobile text messages and specially designed websites – and also how to collect user information in a legitimate way. A couple of vendors said they could do a marketing blast for MyOrbit.tv – pushing it to 5 million people worldwide. Obviously we are not in that business, and I put a reverse question to them: “How can I best reach 500 people and engage them on a topic they follow?” They had no good solution for it, and in fact most firms in the event talked at 10,000 and above – “we can paint London with your message” kind of pitch – which may have a suitable role while releasing a mass market product – but in general the role of such ‘whole world marketing’ is reducing especially where we want to engage with the other person. That took us to the other main section of the event.

2. Web 2.0 section where one could learn about how to engage with the ‘You’. Various things were explained – Blogs, Forums, Better Layouts, etc. There were multiple seminars – most of which talked about how to make a website more interesting, how to enagage the audience and have them sign-up for different information feeds etc – these are real challenges of any business operating on the Internet, so the event made some contribution.

And, it was good meeting the managers of of Lulu.com and LinkedIn (one of their directors flew in from Palo Alto) – both of them have a strong value prop for an individual professional. There was a good interest in MyOrbit.tv from different companies, and a couple of them also played our videos on their giants screens to show other people what’s possible with new media.

FAQ, MyOrbit Blogs, New Media, Online Marketing

How to Join our Blog Network?

MyOrbit.tv “Blog Network” is a network of blogs on various business topics by professionals worldwide, who are also members of this channel. Each member benefits by increased visibility of their viewpoints, and our audience benefit by getting a range of inputs from diverse professionals right here on MyOrbit.tv

The following diagram describes the concept. We expect to have 100+ business/profession focused blogs in our network by the end of 2007.  Many of them will be integrated into our site, so you will be able to navigate seamlessly from topic to topic – even though each topic is run by a different professional. We are at the start of it, and we think it will be very useful to our viewers.

Do you want to be part of our Blog Network? We are looking to add new members, which fills the entire matrix below, and you could focus on any area/areas that you follow closely. 

So if you are looking run a blog with global exposure, this could be your opportunity. Let us know which topic(s) you follow closely, and whether you already have a blog or whether you want to co-author/participate in existing blogs or Groups .

If you have your own blog, you can continue to run that. Otherwise, you can contribute on one of our existing blogs and a relevant ’Industry Group’ on MyOrbit.tv – and that includes this blog as well, which is about applying new media to business – trends, challenges, and success stories. We would rather have this blog as a worn out pavement than an untouchable shrine like some of the CEO Blogs on the web.

Whether you run your own thing or use our platform, you should publish 2 posts per week (text/ audio/ video) to be included – because such a level of activity is required to run a live source of information/insights with a regular audience. If this sounds exciting to you, then we will be happy to show you a couple of interesting options along with an attractive reward.  To express your interest, email Shankar at: connect[at]myorbit.tv  with ‘MyOrbit.tv Blog Network’ as the subject.

MyOrbit Blogs

Internet and Spam: the story continues…

Symantec has released its periodic report on the State of Spam for April 2007.

Some of the interesting points in the report are:

  • The percentage of spam as image spam has been volatile over time, but remains high at 37 percent.
  • Phishers are once again begining to use tricks, such as obfuscation in scripts, to conceal phishing attacks.
  • Spam is beginning to appear in force in European languages.
  • There has been a notable increase lately in spam advertising replica (“knockoff”) watches.
  • The US alone is responsible for almost 60 percent of all Internet mail and almost 50 percent of all Internet spam.

And I wonder who is responible for the mail that comes from Nigeria, and of late Malaysia, saying ‘you have won $10 million in inheritance and if you don’t claim it in 15 days it will go for charity’. The bad part is that some people see charity as so low down the order of how money can be used.

Just a couple of weeks back, I also got a serious sounding mail from Barclays.com.uk (fake URL) on how I need to speak with the signed person ASAP to resolve an issue. Thankfully, the delete button is in our control.