LinuxWorld Conference & Expo to be held in San Francisco on Aug 2008

Established in 1999, the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo is the premier event for the Linux and open source community, bringing together industry leaders shaping the future of new enterprise technology in the largest single gathering of business and technical leaders deploying Linux and open source solutions. It is organised and managed by IDG World Expo and held in various cities around the world.

The next LinuxWorld Conference & Expo is coming soon:
Date: 4-8 August 2008
Venue: Moscone Center North, 800 Howard Street, San Francisco, California, US.

This upcoming LinuxWorld conference and tradeshow event in San Francisco features more than 100 educational sessions covering 7 tracks that go deep into Linux and open source industry trends, including:

• Desktop Linux
  
• Virtualization
• System troubleshooting
• Quick & dirty development
• Legal & licensing issues
• Security
• Mobile Linux platforms
• Building Mobile Linux applications
• Embedded Linux
  
• Applications & middleware

The BSD Certification Group (BSDCG) is also offering the BSDA certification exam to attendees during the event days.

Pre-registered admission to exhibition hall is free. Admission to some of the conferences is chargeable, except the following which are free as well:

• Moblin.org Community Day - Monday, August 4
• PostgreSQL Community Day - Tuesday, August 5
• OpenSUSE Community Day - Wednesday, August 6
• Ubucon - Thursday, August 7

Registration before 11 July 2008 will get Early Bird discount.

Click here fore detailed information and online registration to LinuxWorld Conference & Expo (August 2008) in San Francisco.

My Family Showcase 2008 - Whiz Kidz

The upcoming My Family Showcase expo in now on its 3rd year and will be held in Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC) on 4-7 July 2008. Admission is free.

This family event is divided into 3 zones:

1. Kidz zone

Education related exhibition, including kindergarten, education tools, e-learning, sports academy, swimming school, ballet academy and also music academy.

This zone is subdived into the following:

• Learning Section
• Creative Section
• Fun Section
• Intelligence Section
• Knowledge Section

2. Parents zone

This zone will showcase the FMCG products (eg. milk powder, napkins, confinement, etc), health products, nutrition, food supplement, slimming center, massage chairs, etc.

This zone is subdived into the following:

• Mommy & Baby Zone
• Food & Nutrition Zone

3. Family leisure zone

This zone will showcase the promotion of family leisure and holidays by Tourism Malaysia, as well as hobby and leisure products.

There will also be an Organic Garden activity area to educate the children on the growth of each stages of the vegetables.

Some of the highlights of this 4-days family event are:

• Free dental checkup for kids
• Free breast cancer checkup by National Cancer Society
• Sharing Session of World Vision Spokesperson, Phoebe Yap (菲比, MyFM DJ)
• Children fire escape workshop
• Children financial workshop
• Talks and seminars
• Interactive games and contests
• ... and many more

Click here for more information about this event.

Auspicious dates for wedding, marriage, moving home, etc.

Many people will look for auspicious dates for the important days in their lifetime, such as the wedding day, moving to new house, commencing new business, joining new company, etc. I have even heard that some will choose to register their new car on the auspicious date too.

I chose the auspicious date for my wedding, and also for moving to my current house with the Tong Shu (通书、通胜), which is originated from the Yellow Calendar (黄历) founded by Huang Di (黄帝) of ancient China around 2697-2598 BC.

The Tong Shu is a thick Chinese almanac book, which is very popular among the Chinese families since the Qing dynasty, but not so well known to younger generations nowadays. Some of its content also appear in those "traditional" Chinese calendar, which you have to tear one piece per day to show the current date information.

Luckily, in today's information age, there are online facilities available for us to search in the Tong Shu just with a mouse click. I used the facility in the Y28 Predictions website (http://www.y28predictions.com/program/template/year/tonesing.php) for my searching. This is a Chinese website. To help those not well verse with Chinese, below are the auspicious dates for wedding and marriage which fall on Friday, Saturday or Sunday, for the next 6 months. Those dates are generally auspicious for everyone, except for people and any parents born in the year represented in the Exception column.



The 14 September is considered the most auspicious day (mid-autumn festival) among them. The moon is the biggest and brightest seen from earth by that day. To date, I have already received 5 wedding invitations fall on that day. In fact, my own wedding was also held during the mid-autumn festival several years ago. (However, this does not imply that the mid-autumn festival for every year will be an auspicious date for wedding. It need to be determined on a year-by-year basis.)

If you want me to help checking for any particular date, you can leave a comment and I'll try to search and translate for you in English.

Bear in mind that although the Tong Shu is a compilation of Chinese astrology and calendaring studies gathering wisdom of thousands of years, we should use it wisely and rationally, but not be too superstitious on it.

For the list of auspicious dates for moving to new house in 2nd half of year 2008, read my other post here.

If you are looking for the auspicious dates for wedding/marriage in 2009, click here.

Are your wedding photos worth the spending?

Most of us paid at least a few thousands ringgit to the bridal shop for the photo album and a few framed enlarged photos to be put in our bedroom. Usually this is also the key area whereby the pre-negotiated price of the bridal service package gone up in the later stage. Some of my friends even have the price double up due to additional photos to include in the album after the commonly used "once in a lifetime" pursuasion dose was induced during the photo selection session.

I find that for most people (including me), those photos taken indoor at the bridal shop's studio as well as outdoor at some common wedding scenic places and compiled into a big nice album, will eventually be sitting quietly in the cupboard or store room since a few months after the wedding event. Now the question: is the few thousands spending on those photos really worthwhile?

In my humble opinion, real life photos of the actual event days (which are also "once in a lifetime") are always more valuable and memorable than the acting photos taken to produce the wedding album. It is wise to use the same budget or allocate more budget to emphasize more on the photo shoting during the actual event days, such as the engagement day, signing ceremony of marriage certificates (yes it is plural, because you need to sign at least 2 copies. I signed 4 copies - 2 original certs and 2 international transcripts), and the actual wedding day.

It is always a good idea to hire an experienced professional wedding photographer and/or videographer to take photo/video during those important days. The photographer should know well the procedures, always standby in good position to take the most natural shots of memorable moments. Those moments are really "once in a lifetime", and if you missed to capture it into picture or video at the moment, any retake won't be meaningful to you. The photographer should produce albums similar to the one done by the bridal shop as well, and give you all the films or JPEG images (for digital photos) together with the albums as the deliverables.

In fact, I find that studio bridal photography is not really "once in a lifetime". Some people who doesn't satisfy with the work at one bridal shop will just go and retake the photography at another shop. Even after the wedding, you can also always go to the bridal shop with your spouse and take the bridal photography if you want.

Therefore, you should put more emphasis, and budget more, for the photo shooting during the actual event days which are "once in a lifetime" and really happening (not acting), rather than the studio bridal photography. Then you'll feel the spending is worthwhile.

"Getting Behind The Figures" investment workshop by MSWG

The Minority Shareholder Watchdog Group (MSWG) will be organising a Workshop on "Getting Behind The Figures". This workshop will enable the retail investors to acquire a thorough knowledge and skills in analysing and interpreting the Annual Reports and Financial Statements of listed companies.

The details of this workshop are as follow:

Date:	30 June 2008 (Monday)
Venue:	Conference Room BURSA MALAYSIA BERHAD Ground Floor, Exchange Square Bukit Kewangan, Kuala Lumpur
Fee:	RM120 (Normal) RM84 (30% Discount for MSWG Subscribers)

If you are interested to attend this workshop, please call to 603–20709090, contact persons are Ms Sharina, Ms Rohana or Ms Faiezah.

Yahoo! to display Google ads in their search results

Yahoo! has just signed a non-exclusive pact with Google, which will enable them to run Google text-based ads alongside search results on some of Yahoo's Web properties in the North America region.

This strategy is similar to that of IAC/InterActiveCorp's (IACI) Ask.com search site, which sells its own ads and displays ads from Google. It was said that the two companies has in fact run a limited test in April, in which Google placed ads alongside to about 3% of Yahoo! search result pages in the US region.

This deal is expected to boost their revenue by as much as $800 million a year and generates an estimated $250-450 million in incremental operating cash flow for them.

Google is seen to get the dual benefit of gaining a major publisher in Yahoo! and keeping them out of the hands of Microsoft, which previously offered to acquire Yahoo! for some $44.6 billion. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has previously stated that they would not be interested in pursuing Yahoo! if Yahoo! decided to partner with Google.

RHB Travel Money Credit Card to rebate 5% on petrol?

You might have seen the recent RHB advertisement about their 5% cash rebates for purchases of any petrol brand at all petrol stations nationwide with their RHB Travel Money Credit Card as below.



Wow! 5% can save us some real money, especially when the petrol price is going up and up nowadays. But wait a minute, there are terms and conditions behind the scene.

You have to aware that:

• This 5% cash rebate is valid only during the "promotion period" from 10 June 2008 to 31 August 2008.
• After that, the cash rebate will reduce to 2% until 31 December 2008.
• The "promotion period" end by 31 December 2008. Any more rebate thereafter? It is not mentioned.
• The Rebate shall be subjected to a limit of RM60 per month for each Principal Card. Both Principal and Supplementary Cardmember’s rebate will be accumulated to a maximum limit of RM60 per Principal credit card account per month.

Now, it looks less attractive, but better than none.

To read the detailed terms and conditions, click here.

Other credit cards that also give rebate on petrol expenses are:

• CIMB Petronas MasterCard. Click here for details.
• Petronas Maybankard VISA. Click here for details.
• Shell Citibank credit card. Click here for details.
• Standard Chartered Motorist Club Visa Credit Card (BHPetrol). Click here fore details.
• UOB ONE Card (BHPetrol). Click here for details.
  

So far, I find the CIMB Petronas MasterCard which is free for life and provides 2% rebate at Petronas station (rebate value up to RM50 per card per month) is still a better choice.

ACCA Careers 2008

If you are in the finance and/or accounting profession, this information might be of your interest.

The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) in Malaysia is organising the ACCA Careers 2008 job mart event in Kuala Lumpur, which provides the opportunity for ACCA members, affiliates and students to explore global and local employment all under one roof. Admission is free.

Here are the details:
Date: Saturday, 28 June 2008
Time: 11.00am - 17.30pm
Venue: Crowne Plaza Mutiara, Jalan Sultan Ismail, Kuala Lumpur

Apart from being a one-stop centre for employers to showcase job openings in their organisations, ACCA Careers 2008 will also serve as a one-stop centre for Members' Professional Development. Members will be able to obtain the latest updates on CPD requirements, PER and forum on the path to the top.

Click here for more information about ACCA Careers 2008.

GPartEd the open source harddisk partition editor

The storage capacity of today's harddisk is normally huge, and we usually subdivided it into one or more storage partitions.

GPartEd (Gnome Partition Editor) is an industrial-strength open source application for manipulating the harddisk partitions, which includes creating, destroying, resizing, moving, checking and copying them and the filesystems on them.

When and why we need to use GPartEd?

• When we plan to install another operating system in the computer for dual-booting, and need to allocate free partition space for the new operating system.
• When one of the partition space is almost fully utilized, while other still have plenty of space, and we need to reorganize the disk usage by repartitioning.
• When we want to copy data residing on harddisks and mirroring one partition with another (disk imaging).
• When we want to remove a Linux partition in a dual-boot computer, and make that partition available to Windows. Note that the Windows Disk Management Tool doesn't recognise Linux partition, so you need to use 3rd party tools like GPartEd for this purpose.
  

Please be aware that if any problem occurs to the harddisk partition tables, data might be lost and difficult to recover (and sometimes non-recoverable). Honestly, if you don't understand what I'm talking about in this post, and you are unsure what a "partition" is actually mean, then this tools is not for you to play around with.

It is prudent and advisable to always make a backup of your harddisk with Clonezilla that I've introduced earlier before you make any changes to the partitions.

GPartEd is available in LiveCD format (boot from CDROM) and also LiveUSB format (boot from USB thumb drive). It can also be run from network on PXE server. You do not need to install anything into your harddisk in order to use it.

Click here to look for documentations of GPartEd.

OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 is out

While the new OpenOffice.org 3.0 with new features and lots of improvement is still in beta testing, the stable version of OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 is now released.

OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 includes a security fix, minor enhancements, and bug fixes to all its core components. The 2.4 version branch of OpenOffice.org fixed a number of security vulnerabilities and all OpenOffice.org users using version 2.3 or below should upgrade to 2.4.1 to fix up the addressed security issues.

Click here for the detailed Release Notes of OpenOffice.org 2.4.1.

Click here to go to the download page of OpenOffice.org 2.4.1.

Clonezilla the open source harddisk partition cloning solution

Partition cloning has been a handy tools for many computer techies and users ever since the emergence of a famous software named as Ghost in 1996. Ghost is still around nowadays under the umbrella of Symantec. On the other hand, Acronis has produced their competing True Image products and has gained much popularity too.

Partition cloning software is useful for many purposes, such as:

• Backup and restore of the whole harddisk or partitions in the harddisk.
• Provisioning of standard set of software by cloning the harddisk or partition image from existing computer to another.
• Transferring data from one harddisk to another, eg. upgrade new harddisk to computer.
• Deploy testing, benchmarking or R&D computers, whereby the harddisk will be wiped out and restored to original state after the project.
• and many more...

Both Symantec Ghost and Acronis True Image are great tools, only that you need to purchase license for each of the computer that you're going to use them. There are other free and/or open source alternative solutions available, and I find Clonezilla developed by the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) in Taiwan is among the best.

There are 2 varieties of Clonezilla available, Clonezilla Live and Clonezilla Server Edition. Clonezilla Live is suitable for single machine backup and restore, while Clonezilla Server Edition is for massive deployment in corporate environment, whereby it can clone many computers simultaneously.

Multicast (a technology whereby a single image can be sent simultaneously to many machines without putting greater stress on the network than sending an image to a single machine) is supported in Clonezilla Server Edition. You can also remotely use it to save or restore a bunch of computers if PXE and Wake-on-LAN are supported.

Clonezilla is developed on Linux and based on a couple of open source projects such as DRBL, Partition Image, ntfsclone, and udpcast. You can boot from its live CD and use it directly.

The 5 balls of life that should be balanced

I would like to share with you the following training notes, which originated from the 172nd Commencement Address of Georgia Institute of Technology in 1996, by the former President and CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises, Brian G. Dyson.

Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some 5 balls in the air. You name them - work, family, health, friends and spirit and you're keeping all of these in the air.

You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other 4 balls -- family, health, friends and spirit -- are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same.

You must understand that and strive for balance in your life. How?

• Don't undermine your worth by comparing yourself with others. It is because we are different that each of us is special.

• Don't set your goals by what other people deem important. Only you know what is best for you.

• Don't take for granted the things closest to your heart. Cling to them as they were your life, for without them, life is meaningless.

• Don't let your life slip through your fingers by living in the past or for the future. By living your life one day at a time you live ALL the days of your life.

• Don't give up when you still have something to give. Nothing is really over until the moment you stop trying.

• Don't be afraid to admit that you are less than perfect. It is this fragile thread that binds us to each together.

• Don't be afraid to encounter risks. It is by taking chances that we learn how to be brave.

• Don't shut love out of your life by saying it's impossible to find. The quickest way to receive love is to give; the fastest way to lose love is to hold it too tightly, and the best way to keep love is to give it wings.

• Don't run though life so fast that you forget not only where you've been, but also where you are going.

• Don't forget, a person's greatest emotional need is to feel appreciated.

• Don't be afraid to learn. Knowledge is weightless, a treasure you can always carry easily.

• Don't use time or words carelessly. Neither can be retrieved.

Life is not a race, but a journey to be savoured each step of the way. Yesterday is History, Tomorrow is a Mystery and Today is a gift: that's why we call it - The Present.

New Apple iPhone 3G - faster speed, cheaper price

For your information, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has just announced the 3G version of iPhone in their Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2008, San Francisco.

Two of the promising new key features brought by this phone are 3G technology and Maps with GPS. Downloading speed of iPhone 3G (using HSDPA) is 2-3 times faster than iPhone over 2.5G EDGE. With this 3G feature, you can also talk and browse at the same time.

For business users, it provides built-in support to Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, delivering push email, calendar, and contacts. For students and engineers, it also comes with a full-featured scientific calculator.

The iPhone 3G also has longer battery life than its predecessor. It promises a solid 5 hours of 3G talk time, 10 hours of 2G talk time, 5 hours of 3G Internet time, 6 hours of Wi-Fi Internet time, 7 hours of video playback, 24 hours of audio playback and 12.5 days standby time.

Jobs announced that this new iPhone 3G will launch in 22 countries on July 11, and will roll out to a total of 70 by the end of 2008. Despite being more feature rich, the iPhone 3G is surprisingly cheaper than its predecessor. In US, the 16GB version is priced at $299 and the 8GB version costs only $199.

It is hoped that we could probably see it in the coming CommunicAsia 2008 in Singapore.

Click here for more information about iPhone 3G.

The return of Russia with their "Vision 2020"

Russia President Dmitry Medvedev has been ambitious in the recent 12th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, which is the premier international business event in the country.

In his speech, Medvedev addressed that Russia which is now in the 10th year of its economic boom, fuelled by soaring prices for its oil and gas exports, was in an ideal position to help solve the world financial crisis since it did not share the problems of other leading economies. Being resource rich in oil and gas (Russia has the world's largest natural gas reserves, the 2nd largest coal reserves and the 8th largest oil reserves) as well as food supplies (Russia is a leading global wheat producer), they are ready to position themselves to be global player in supporting the global community which currently having severe problem with these 2 commodities.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has taken up the heavy burden to settle the external debts left over by the former Union. It has gone through its hard time over the 90's, while the majority of the Asian countries were booming before the 1998 economic crisis. It was after 1998 that Russian economic reformation started to show result and brought recovery.

Over the past 10 years, Russia has benefited a lot from the rising oil prices, increased foreign investment, higher domestic consumption and greater political stability, which have bolstered its economic growth and enable it to prepay all the Soviet-era sovereign debts. Its foreign reserves also multifolded from $12 billion in 1999 to some $470 billion at the end of 2007 (the 3rd largest reserves in the world).

The Russian new energy wealth is funding billions of dollar in the infrastructure of St. Petersburg to eract an office tower taller than any in Europe today, a new international airport busier than any in Scandinavia today, and a cruise ship port with more berths than any cruise port of call in the world by 2020.

Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said they will become the world's 6th largest economy by the end of 2008, and aimed to be on the top 5 listing by 2020.

Their scientists also plan to launch a manned expedition to planet Mars by 2020. At the same time, they also planed to build a permanent base on the moon by 2015, and begin the industrial-scale mining of a rare fuel on the moon by 2020.

Russia is back on the international stage and wants to restore its sphere of influence. Will this be good or bad to the world? Will the Cold War re-emerge? What will be the role and influence of China, which is much stronger now than the previous Cold War time? Will the leadership role of the troubled America be challenged or replaced? Time will tell...

CommunicAsia Exhibition and Summit 2008 in Singapore

For years, CommunicAsia has been the largest international ICT and telecommunications tradeshow event held yearly in the Asia Pacific region. This year, it will be held in Singapore on the coming 17-20 Jun 2008 at Singapore Expo.

With the theme "Convergence, New Technologies & Opportunities", this event is expected to attract the participation of more than 60,000 ICT industry players from all over the world.

Among the leading edge technology to feature in this international event are:

• 3.5G / Long Term Evolution / 4G
• Fixed Mobile Convergence
• Next Generation Network
• Enterprise Applications / Solutions for Financial Services
• Enterprise Applications / Solutions for Government
• Enterprise Applications / Solutions for Hospitality / Retail
• Satellite
• Security
  

Admission for visitors is free, and although the online registration period is already over, you can register on the actual event days (17-20 Jun 2008, 10.30am to 6.00pm) with your business card at Singapore Expo.

Click here to download the brochure of CommunicAsia 2008.

Who Moved My Cheese? - days after petrol price hike

I remember 10 years ago, Dr. Spencer Johnson wrote an interesting best selling book about change management which has earned a great global attention and sold millions of copies.

This renown parable is "Who Moved My Cheese?", a story of 4 characters (2 mices and 2 humans) living in a Maze who face unexpected change when they discover their Cheese has disappeared.

In fact, this book has spawned many variations of related topics written by the same author as well as other authors.

In the parable, Sniff and Scurry are a pair of mices, and Hem and Haw are 2 little people. The 4 of them live in the Maze and look for cheese, and each of them have different mindset, especially between Hem and Haw. If you haven't read the story yet, I strongly encourage you to read the book and find out what happened to them.

For those who have finished reading the story, it is wise to remember those “Handwriting on the Wall” , which is the essence of the parable after all:


Change Happens
They Keep Moving The Cheese.

Anticipate Change
Get Ready For The Cheese To Move.

Monitor Change
Smell The Cheese Often So You Know When It Is Getting Old.

Adapt To Change Quickly
The Quicker You Let Go Of Old Cheese, The Sooner You Can Enjoy New Cheese.

Change
Move With The Cheese.

Enjoy Change!
Savor The Adventure And Enjoy The Taste Of New Cheese!

Be Ready To Change Quickly And Enjoy It Again & Again
They Keep Moving The Cheese.

Therefore, we should never counted on the "cheese supply" to be constant. We all know that the worldwide petroleum supplies is limited but the usage is incrementing. We also aware that within the next couple of years, Malaysia will soon become a petroleum importer from the current exporter status. And now we have already feel the hike in petrol price and realise that the good old day of cheap petrol price might not come back again.

If you are still crying, protesting, annoying at the petrol price hike like Hem, you should also realise that doing so doesn't help much. Move on, try your very best to optimize your earning power, especially in the area to make your money work hard for you by growing itself through wise investment. Life has never been easy nowadays, remember the threat of formation of M-Shape Society has been accelerating, and it is only "when you move beyond your fear, you feel free".

Gambatte! to you and me. Gambatte! to all of us.

Result of ZDNet Asia IT Salary Benchmark Survey 2008

ZDNet Asia had conducted an online survey between late-2007 and early-2008 to gain insights into Asia's IT workforce and salary trends. The survey drew 21,635 respondents from sectors such as government, healthcare, IT, services, telecommunications, legal and finance, and across seven Asian economies: Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.

Based on the survey findings, the average annual IT salary in Malaysia was RM72,144 (US$22,379), with those in IT management commanding a high of RM113,489 (US$35,204). Project managers on average drew an annual pay of RM73,912 (US$22,928), while systems developers earned RM56,393 (US$17,493).

Tech professionals in the legal and finance sector had the most attractive annual salary (US$25,188) followed by those in IT, Web and telecom (US$22,939). The annual salary for IT workers in the media, marketing and sales (US$17,444), as well as the government, education and health sector (US$20,037), were significantly below the industry average.

Compared with the rest of the region, Malaysia's average annual IT salary lagged behind that of Hong Kong (US$57,303), Singapore (US$44,858) and Thailand (US$24,108). The country, however, is significantly higher when compared to India (US$13,864), the Philippines (US$12,425) and Indonesia (US$7,709).

In Singapore, IT professionals with PhDs pulled in the highest average annual salary of S$96,805 (US$70,958), followed by respondents with a Master's degree who earned an average yearly pay of S$79,635 (US$58,373). The survey also confirmed common beliefs that bigger companies have the capacity to offer better paychecks, compared to smaller organizations.

The overall average annual salary for Hong Kong was HK$445,817 (US$57,109). Those working in legal and finance had the highest average annual salary at HK$492,917 (US$63,143), while ICT employees in the government, education and health sector have the lowest average annual salary of HK$395,619 (US$50,679).

Click here to go to ZDNet's article that will lead you to the detailed country-specific salary analysis (with statistical graphs) as well as download of the analysis reports (in PDF files).

You might probably also interested to read on:

• Result of Robert Walters Global Salary Survey 2008
• Malaysia Salary Guide 2008/09 from Kelly Services
• JobsDB Compensation and Benefit Survey Report 2009

New electricity tariff from 1 July 2008

As part of the restructuring exercise of fuel subsidy scheme in Malaysia, Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) has announced the new electricity tariff rate.

TNB has also setup a Bill Calculator webpage on their website for you to calculate the new electricity bill amount and the difference to the old tariff rate (the additional amount you need to fork out).

For domestic electricity, here are the differences:

Consumption (KWh)	Old Bill (RM)	New Bill (RM)	Difference
200	43.60	43.60	0.00
250	58.05	60.85	2.80
300	72.50	78.10	5.60
350	86.95	95.35	8.40
400	101.40	112.60	11.20
450	115.85	135.00	19.15
500	130.30	150.00	19.70
550	144.75	169.50	24.75
600	159.20	189.00	29.80
650	173.65	209.00	35.35
700	188.10	229.00	40.90
750	202.55	249.50	46.95
800	217.00	270.00	53.00

Therefore, if your average monthly electricity consumption is above 300 KWh, it is wise for you to plug in a Power Saver to an electric socket in your house, which can effectively help you to save on electricity bill as well as stabilize the voltage in your house.

Click here to download the TNB's booklet on new tariff for all categories - domestic, commercial, industrial, agricultural, mining, etc.

DKSH 2-days only warehouse sale is back again!

The DKSH Warehouse Sale is back again!

Date: 7-8 June 2008
Time: 10am - 5pm
Location: DKSH Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Jalan Universiti, Petaling Jaya, Selangor.

Look out for great savings on the following items:

• Casio cameras & musical keyboards
• Morgan electrical appliances
• Rubbermaid household products
• Timex watches
• Citizen clocks
• Ellgy personal and healthcare products
  
• Rosken skin care products
  
• Colgate-Palmolive household and toiletry products
  
• ... and many more!
  

Yahoo! releases Address Book API following Google & Microsoft

When Google pushed out their Contacts API in March 2008, it was called "the most in-demand API on the web that hadn't yet existed". Those APIs are important because they allow socially aware applications to offer users the ability to import information from their address books without having to worry about giving up their password to a third-party site. The application seeking the information also no longer needs to employ any screen scraping to gather information.

Soon after that, Microsoft also released the beta version of their Windows Live Contacts API in March 2008. In addition to a full contact management interface for a Windows Live user's address book, the Windows Live Contacts API provides a view to a subset of the Contact data for the purposes of sending Invitations.

Now, Yahoo! has also joint the bandwagon to launch their Address Book API in June 2008. Similar to Google and Microsoft, Yahoo! opted to employ their own authentication technology in the API, namely BBAuth. They intend to supports OAuth in the future, though, which will make it easier for developers to use the API.

The Yahoo! Address Book API is a JSON/XML interface for accessing and updating the Yahoo! Address Book using a web service. It can be used to look up addresses for auto-completion of emails, to add addresses for future shipping information, to obtain unique identifiers for network invites, or to sync with another address book.

Click here to go to the webpage of the Yahoo! Address Book API.

Restructuring of fuel subsidy scheme in Malaysia

Malaysia Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has announced the restructred fuel subsidy schemes today.

Here are the cabinet's decisions on the subsidy of petrol and diesel:

• Effective 5 June 2008, RON97 petrol price rises by 78 sen from RM1.92 to RM2.70 per litre. RON92 petrol price also rises by 78 sen from RM1.88 to RM2.62 per litre.
• At the same time, diesel price also rises by RM1.00 from RM1.58 to RM2.58 per litre.
• For personal vehicles up to 2000 c.c. and also trucks and jeeps up to 2500 c.c., an annual cash rebate of RM625 will be given.
• For motorcycles up to 250 c.c., the annual cash rebate will be RM150.
• The cash rebate will be given from 1 July 2008 onwards in the form of Money Order collectible in Pos Office to road tax renewed within 1 April 2008 and 31 March 2009.
• For personal vehicles above 2000 c.c., there will be a reduction of RM200 in road tax.
• For motorcycles above 250 c.c., the reduction in road tax is RM50.

Other than the above, decisions have also been made which affect the following areas:

• Diesel subsidy for logistic transport, vessels and fishermen.
• Gas price to electricity producers and for industrial usage.
• New electricity tariff effective 1 July 2008: no change for household with monthly bill less than RM43.60, else there will be a 18% residential tariff increase. 26% tariff increase for commercial and industrial regions.
• Windfall tax for Independent Power Producer (IPP) and Palm Oil Producer (POP).
• Effective 1 July 2008m threshold for 5% service tax to restauran outside hotels risen from RM0.5 million to RM3 million.

Click here for the official government announcement.

invisibleSHIELD the scratch-proof protection film for gadgets

If you have any handphones, digital cameras, gaming devices (such as PSP), iPods, laptops, media players, PDAs, watches, ... and all gadgets with a display screen, you will most probably get a casing, skin, cover or plastic to protect the screen from scratches or cracks.

invisibleSHIELD is a patented, military grade, durable, transparent protection film that can really protect such gadgets, unlike most of the ordinary "plastic film" that we applied on the screen of the gadgets which in fact is very weak and can't do much protection at all.

This urethane plastic film has its origins in the U.S. military, where it was used to protect the leading edges of helicopter blades from wear and tear while traveling hundreds of miles per hour. It comes with unique properties that allow it to provide self-healing qualities and unparalleled abrasion resistance.

invisibleSHIELD makes available a variety of pre-cut protection film specifically tailored for thousands of electronic gadgets currently selling in the market, which can fit tightly and perfectly on them.

It comes with a lifetime warranty and 30 days money-back guarantee. So, if it ever does wear or scratch, you can get its replacement for free, for the lifetime of the protected gadget.

You can see it in action with the video below:

Handphone fair @ The Walk on the park, Menara PGRM

There will be a 4-days handphone fair of about 50 booths (the 1st in Malaysia) where all major brands like Nokia, Sony Ericsson, I-Mobile, Motorola, LG, Samsung and many more will be having discount up to 70%. More than RM50k worth of freebies will be given away too, including food & beverages vouchers, handphone accessories, Bluetooth, memory cards, etc. There will also be a handphone auction.

Date : 5-8 June 08
Time : 10am to 10pm
Venue: The Walk on the Park, Menara PGRM, Jalan Cheras, Kuala Lumpur.

For more detail, refer to the flyer/pamphlet below (click to enlarge).

Malaysia to lift cement ceiling price

Right about 1 month after Malaysia liberalize the steel market, the government is going to lift the ceiling price on cement effective Thursday 5 June 2008 to ensure development projects in the country are not delayed due to the tight cement supply. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said in a statement that this move was necessary as global cement prices had risen above the government-controlled price.

This move to lift the ceiling price has been long awaited by Lafarge (3794), CIMA (2844), YTL Cement (8737) and Tasek (4448). Artificially low prices had discouraged these producers from supplying more of the material, and had hampered the development of national and domestic projects.

Under the new structure, cement importers will on the other hand:

• pay a flat rate of 10% import duty for ordinary Portland cement (previously 50%)
• pay a flat rate of 10% import duty for ordinary hydraulic cement (previously 25%)
• exempted from having to obtain import licences (applicable to East Malaysia only)

Cement prices have increased 30% to 40% in past 3-4 years. The lowering of import tax on cement will overall be good in long term for the local construction and property industry and help to sustain cement supply in the country.

Static electric shocks when getting out of car

Many people experience shocks when they get out of their car. That is caused by static electric discharged from the person's body or clothes to the metallic car body.

When sitting in the car, electrostatic charges are generated on the car seat and the person's body due to contact and movement between the clothes and the seat. The charges is accumulated if the person is wearing a good insulating shoe. It is observed that fabric and true leather seats normally generate more static charges than PU leather seats. If you wear synthetic fibre clothing, you also have more chance to accumulate higher level of static.

Having the air-conditioner blowing directly at you will also accumulate more static, as the air blown out from the air-conditioner is full of charged particles. If your car is full of dust and dirt, static will also be generated as a result of such particles "rubbing" with the air flow as you drive.

An ionizer can help to neutralize some of the static charges in the car. If you still experience the shocks when getting out of the car, you can hold the car key and let the key contact with the metallic car body first before you touch the door. This will discharge the static through the keys instead of your fingers, and you could hardly feel it, therefore avoiding the shocks.

Fact about maintenance-free battery of car

Nowadays, most car battery is a lead-acid storage electrochemical device that can converts chemical energy into electrical energy. A standard 12-volt, lead-acid battery is made up of 6 cells connected in series. Each electrolyte filled cell produces approximately 2 volts. The charge of this 12-volt battery is actually at 12.6 volts, and can vary slightly depending on the concentration of the electrolyte in its acidic solution.

The "maintenance-free" battery, similar in design to its conventional counterparts that need to refill with distilled water from time to time to maintain the fluid level, is actually just a heavier-duty version of the same arrangement. Many of the components in the maintenance-free battery have thicker construction. Different, more durable materials are typically used. For example, the plate grids often contain calcium, cadmium or strontium, to reduce gassing (which causes water loss) and self-discharge. This design is called a lead-calcium battery. The heavier-duty parts ensure that fluid loss is kept to a minimum and that components have a much longer life, making it a closed system.

The advantages of maintenance-free battery are: less preventative maintenance, theoretically longer life, faster recharging, greater overcharge resistance, reduced terminal corrosion and longer shelf life. However, they are more prone to deep discharge (dead battery) failures due to increased shedding of active plate material.

Grounding cables for car

Everything involving the electrical systems in your car requires a free flow of electrons from -ve to +ve terminal of the battery (note that the conventional current flow from +ve to -ve used in most circuit diagram is opposite to the actual electron flow).

Good electrical performance requires a grounding system that is capable to carry a lot of current with minimal resistance. Your car's engine control unit (ECU), spark plugs, lights, in-car entertainment (ICE) components, air conditioner, fans, power windows, cigarette lighter, etc. are all working on a complicated electrical network that includes fuses, relays, and electrical cabling, and they all share a common ground. Almost everything that is powered electrically in your car is grounded to the frame or the metallic body of the car. The negative battery terminal is also grounded to the frame, which causes the frame to serve as a gigantic piece of wire in the circuit.

Usually, the stock grounding system of the car consists of just a few non-braided cables that connect the chassis, engine and firewall to the -ve terminal of the battery. The cables are of normal quality only. In addition, as these connections oxidize or come loose over time, the amount of conductive material decreases, and the electrical devices have to work much harder to overcome the increased resistance.

By installing additional grounding cables connecting the various grounding point or point closest to the various components of the electrical system, and link it directly back to the -ve terminal of the battery, the result is: an alternative path is provided for better flow of the electrical current, via the lower resistance paths. The grounded electrical components are expected to work more effectively with better performance.

The current flow will always take the path of least resistance. Therefore, adding grounding cables to your car can only make the different if the additional cables are of higher quality and lower resistance than the stock grounding system.

Characteristic of grounding cable is determined by American Wire Gauge (AWG) specification. The larger the AWG number, the smaller diameter of the wire. For example, 4-AWG cables are better than 8-AWG cables, because they have thicker diameter, lower resistance and higher current carrying capacity.

Grounding cables are good companion to voltage stabilizer, and usually they are installed together to obtain the best performance.

Added flag counter starting from 1 June 2008 noon

I notice this flag counter in the blog of Taryn Yap today, and decided to add one for my blog too. So you can see it also resides in the right panel of this blog from now onwards.

This flag counter is a free service provided by Boardhost.com Inc. and is very easy to deploy. It is so easy that you don't even need to create any account to have one in your website.

The counter is counting on unique visitors, and makes use of IP address as well as browser cookie to avoid repeated counting from the same visitor. Every time a visitor from a new country visits your page, a new flag will be added to your counter. Detailed information from the Factbook of CIA about each of the country can be shown after you click on the flag counter to show more detail.

Click here to get your own flag counter from flagcounter.com.

Hush Puppies warehouse sale is coming again

Just come back from Hush Puppies warehouse sale. As usual to the previous warehouse sale, most of the apparel items are selling for at least 50% discount to market price.

This warehouse sale is held by Shoe Connection Sdn Bhd in Kinrara Industrial Park, Bandar Kinrara, Puchong. They have this sale event occasionally. This time, it started from 30 May to 8 June 2008, 10am-7pm.

Items on sale are apparels for men, women, children and todders, which include Hush Puppies shirts, casualwears, pants, underwears, socks, etc. As usual, shoe items are not included.

For more detail, you can make a call to 603-80758899.

Share your real-live home defects story in Your Worst Nightmare contest

Everyone dreams of owning a home. However, sometimes that dream can turn into a real "nightmare". Have you ever experienced buying a home that turned out to be a lemon? If you have, share out your story and stand a chance to win a prize in "Your Worst Nightmare" Competition organized by the New Straits Times (NST) and Architect Centre, in conjunction with the launch and promotion of Architect Centre.

Architect Centre is the architectural service centre of the Malaysian Institute of Architects (a.k.a. Pertubuhan Akitek Malaysia, PAM) set up in joint venture with an Australian service provider Archicentre Ltd. The center provides property inspection and building advisory services to the Malaysian public.

The competition is launched at the free Public Seminar entitled “How to Buy a Property & Save Money” organised by Architect Centre. It is a chance for readers to relate their real-life experience of home defects and lessons learnt, and thus help others to avoid the same mistakes.

The last closing date is 16 June 2008.

Click here for more information about "Your Worst Nightmare" competition.

Click here to download the Contest Form for "Your Worst Nightmare" competition.

Handling difficult people at work

In the business world, it is pretty normal for us to have unavoidable chance to work with some sort of "difficult people", who is working from the negative side of their personality and affecting other people in the team.

Usually, people don't intend to be "difficult" consciously or intentionally. Such actions are often preceded by a semi-paranoid feeling, and the person is often unaware of themselves and how they have affected others. They also don't realize how harmful their actions are to the teamwork and also to their own career success.

Among the common symptom of difficult people is "arrogant", especially prevalent in technical and/or professional people. Psychologically speaking, arrogance is a kind of defense against vulnerability and insecurity, often learned in childhood when parents constantly criticize a child for not being good enough. The person is so afraid of being seen as unworthy or incompetent, that they immediately throw up a defensive shield against any possible attack. This defense protects them for a while, but everyone else sees that it is false. In the end, they lose credibility and respect, which unfortunately is exactly the thing they fear the most.

"Dominance" is another well recognized trait that seems prevalent in people in management positions or positions of corporate power. No matter what other people says or does, this person will force their ideas on everyone else. There can be no open discussion or involvement. Things must be done this person’s way or else. However, they will also always trying to remind people that they are "opened".

This symptom has a negative aspect of "dictatorship". It is worst when the person’s primary role is acting as Warrior or King. If they happen to also have Power mode combined with Dominance, people will feel as if someone punched them in the stomach when the person lets loose with their verbal abuse.

The positive side of Dominance is "leadership". When this person is relaxed and working from the positive side of their personality, they can be quite effective and charming. As with Arrogance, stress or insecurity may bring on the attack. It may seem to come without warning or you may be able to see the stress building up.

In the end, the person probably loses their ability to control events, which is exactly the thing that they fear most.

When you see someone go into attack mode or excess defensiveness, do recognize that it is useless to argue with them, and understand that the person is feeling very insecure at that time. Don’t continue to push them because they will only get worse. Keep your own sense of self-confidence and don't allow yourself to be verbally abused. If they are always overly defensive or always attacking others, you may need to find another person to work with, who does not have the same problem.

If the problem couldn't be solved, and the difficult person is your boss, you might want to reconsider whether it's time to find a job elsewhere. If the difficult person is your subordinate and they don't seem to improve within a reasonable time, you should get them out of your team to chop off the damage.

Facebook to go for open source?

Since last year, there are news about Facebook, the famous social networking website founded by Mark Zuckerberg is going for open source. The latest update is that they are currently working on an open source initiative that is meant to help application developers to better understand their Facebook developer platform and to be more easily build applications, whether it's by running their own test servers, building tools, or optimizing their applications.

This is seen to be a respond to the Google OpenSocial platform, which is currently widely implemented in many social networking websites, including Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.

This initiative is expected to boost the interoperability between Facebook and other social networking websites. Application developers will then be able to easily port their Facebook applications over to other social networking websites, which in turn can help Facebook Platform, which comprises of FMBL (markup language), FQL (query language), FJS (Javascript library) and the Facebook API, to become a standard.

Another potential benefit of going open source is that, outside developers could work on the codes, make contribution and help to improve the Facebook Platform itself.

ePetrol system - possible solution for fuel subsidy?

ePetrol Holdings Sdn Bhd is proposing to the government of Malaysia to make use of their ePetrol system as solution to implement fuel subsidy scheme for citizen with MyKad. This company is established in 2003. Their founding directors include RHB Group founder Tan Sri Rashid Hussain and Dialog Group Bhd chairman and group managing director Ngau Boon Keat. They've showcased the ePetrol system during the World Congress on Information Technology 2008 (WCIT 2008).

User of the system will need to register and activate his MyKad at a registration kiosk to be eligible for the fuel subsidy. The user can link the MyKad to his bank account so payment can be debited from the account each time a fuel purchase is made. Otherwise, payment can be made via credit card or cash. The user is then identified with his MyKad at the petrol pump terminal, and his subsidy amount will be deducted during the fuel pumping transaction.

Will this solution be rolled out by the government? Let's wait and see...

Result of Robert Walters Global Salary Survey 2008

The Robert Walters Global Salary Survey 2008 shows a substantial salary hike in various employment sectors across the globe, including IT, banking, finance, commerce, engineering, sales and marketing. The survey's salary figures in the report are based on placements made by Robert Walters themselves through 2007. Robert Walters is one of the world leading global specialist in recruitment and recruitment outsourcing businesses.

Employees from the IT sector of Asian region generally enjoy a higher percentage of salary increment than their counterparts in American and Europe. According to the report majority of them enjoyed an increment of above 10% from last year, and some even got a 40% increment.

Competition to hire good IT employees in Malaysia intensified and organizations were seen focus on best practices in staff attraction and retention. Direct strategies including higher salary increments, joining bonuses and counter-offers, other initiatives included better managed and more dynamic career progression, flexible benefits, effective employee relation programs, etc. were employed. The challenges facing the IT industry in Malaysia include competition from overseas seeking Malaysians to work in countries such as Singapore, China and Dubai.

The total compensation for 2008 of an IT Director in Malaysia can be up to RM300k. Other well paid IT positions include IT Programme Manager (RM200k), ERP Project Manager (RM180k), Service Delivery Manager (RM150k), Infrastructure Manager (RM150k), Solution Architect (RM140k), ...

In Singapore, CIO and CTO get a salary of S$350k per annum. Other well paid positions include IT Director (S$220-350k), Programme Manager (S$220-350k), Service Delivery Director (S$220-320k), Project Director (S$200-300k), ...

In Hong Kong, many senior positions are paid in million of HKD per annum, including CIO/CTO (HK$1.65-2.7m), IT Director (HK$1.3-2.0m), Project Director (HK$1.25-1.7m), Programme Manager (HK$0.95-1.7m), ...

This comprehensive report of Robert Walters Global Salary Survey 2008 covers the following regions:

• Australia
• Belgium
• France
• Hong Kong
• Ireland
• Japan
• Luxembourg
• Malaysia
• New Zealand
• Singapore
• South Africa
• Spain
• The Netherlands
• United Kingdom
• United States

Click here to go to the download page of the Robert Walters Global Salary Survey 2008 report.

You might probably also interested to read on:

• Result of ZDNet Asia IT Salary Benchmark Survey 2008
• Malaysia Salary Guide 2008/09 from Kelly Services
• JobsDB Compensation and Benefit Survey Report 2009

BookFest@Malaysia 2008

The BookFest@Malaysia (海外华文书市) 2008 event is now entered into its third year. With the theme of “Reading Empowers” (阅读新势力), it will showcase more than a million books by both Overseas and Local publishers, featuring leading publishers from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Singapore and Malaysia.

Held for a duration of 9 days, this BookFest will be presented from 24 May until 1 June 2008, 10am - 10pm, at Halls 1-5 of the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre, KLCC, stretching across the first week of the school holidays. The main organiser, Popular Book Co. (M) S/B is expecting over 450,000 visitors throughout this exhibition.

Among the interesting activities throughout the event will be:

• 2008 Feng Shui Sharing Session by Joey Yap
• Music Performance by Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra
  
• Pass Your Job Interview Within 30 Minutes
• "Design Fast Forward" Book Sharing Session by Eric Leong
• Blind Fold Reading
• Sudoku Fun Time
• Cooking Demonstration
• Magic Show and Interactive Game
• Cataract & Refractive Surgery - All you want to know and should know - By Dr.Yeoh Phee Liang
• Stock Investment Talks

Web of Trust (WOT) the people-driven website reputation scorecard system

Web of Trust (WOT) is an innovative community driven website reputation scorecard system whose members exchange security info of websites: Can they be trusted? Are they safe to use? Do they deliver what they promise? Do they contain age-inappropriate item?



After installing a freely downloadable plugin into your web browser, you can easily see the reliability of companies and websites indicated by WOT colour rating icons. WOT will also dropdown a warning screen to you upon visiting a possibly dangerous site. In this way, WOT helps to keep yourself safe from spyware, adware, spam, viruses, browser exploits, unreliable online shops, phishing, and other Internet scams.



The 4 available WOT ratings are:

• Trustworthiness: Do you trust this website? Is it safe to use? Does it deliver what it promises?
• Vendor reliability: Is the site safe for buying and selling, or for business transactions in general?
• Privacy: Can you trust the site owner, safely supply your e-mail address, and download files?
• Child safety: Does the site contain age-inappropriate material (content that is sexually oriented, hateful, or violent in nature) or encourage activities that are dangerous or illegal?

To date, WOT has rated over 18 million websites, and marked more than 857 thousand websites among them as dangerous.



You don't need to register to use WOT. If you registered an account and join the WOT community, you can also participate to contribute your ratings and comments on websites you have visited. Beside collecting the website reputation data from the WOT community, the WOT system also gets the data from hundreds of trusted sources such as listings of phishing sites. The reputation info is efficiently recalculated every 30 minutes, updated and make available for all WOT users.

WOT also shows its rating icon beside the links listed in webpage of famous web services, such as Google, Yahoo!, Live Search, AOL Search, Ask.com, Digg, Gmail, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, dmoz, etc.



WOT is available as plugin (in some 10 languages) for:

• Mozilla Firefox 1.5 or later (Windows 98 / ME / NT 4.0 / 2000 / XP / Vista, Mac OS X, or Linux)
• Internet Explorer 6.0 or later (Windows 2000 / XP / Vista )
  

It is lightweight, works seamlessly, ads free, and doesn't slow down or disturb your web browsing experience at all.

Click here to download WOT for Mozilla Firefox
Click here to download WOT for Internet Explorer

Jobsdb.com Apply n Win contest

Jobsdb.com, an online job recruitment service provider for job seekers and employers, is currently running an Apply 'n' Win contest from 5 May to 29 June 2008 for the Malaysian job seekers aged above 21 years old.

In order to get a chance to win for the weekly prizes and qualify for winning the Grand prize, one just need to perform any of the following activities in their website:

• Sign up as a new member with completed resume.
• Update existing resume.
• Apply for jobs online.

Grand Prize for the most active jobseeker will be one laptop computer worth RM2,500.

Click here for more information about this contest.

Hack In The Box (HITB) Security Conference 2008

The next Hack In The Box Security Conference 2008 (HITBSecConf2008) will be held on the coming 27-30 October 2008 in the 5-star Westin Hotel of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The main aim of this conference is to enable the dissemination, discussion and sharing of deep knowledge network security information. Presented by respected members of both the mainstream network security arena as well as the underground or black hat community, the HITB events routinely highlight new and ground-breaking attack and defense methods that have not been seen or discussed in public before.

The first 2 days will be hands-on technical training sessions on:

• Structured Network Threat Analysis and Forensics
• Bluetooth, RFID & Wireless Hacking
• Web Application Security – Advanced Attacks and Defense
• The Exploit Laboratory

Another 2 days will be event sessions on:

• Triple track security conference featuring new HITB Labs
  
• Capture The Flag (CTF) team hacking and defending competition
• Lock Picking Village (LPV) showcase on physical security bypass methods
• Wireless Village showcase on wireless hacking gadgets
• Open Hack to uncover new and previously unknown software vulnerabilities in operating systems and software (USD5000 prize money awaiting the first hacker to compromise a Macbook Air...)
  

Registration to the event already open on 6 May 2008. Special offer is given to students to attend the 2-Day Triple Track security conference. Click here to go to the registration page.

Compulsory rear seatbelt usage from June 2008 onwards

Ever since Germany made compulsory the usage of rear seatbelt from 1984 onwards, more and more countries ruling the same, and Malaysia will have this enforced from 1 June 2008 onwards. A 3 months "grace period" will be given whereby passengers found breaking this rule will be warned, and from 1 September 2008 onwards, they will be summoned.

The function of seatbelt is to reduce injuries by stopping the wearer from hitting hard interior elements of the vehicle or other passengers during collision or emergency break. Passengers with seatbelt buckled up will have better chance to survive from accident, and researches have concluded that car drivers and/or front-seat passengers are 5 times more likely to die in a crash if their back-seat passengers are unrestrained.

However, by the moment this ruling in Malaysia only applies to cars manufactured from 1 January 1995 onwards. It is temporary waived for a 3 years period to those vehicles manufactured before 1 January 1995, after which the ruling will apply for them too. This is because most vehibles registered after 1 January 1995 are equipped with rear seatbelts, and those without are urged to fit in as soon as possible. Perodua Kancil and Kenari cars manufactured between 1998 until mid-2004 will also be exempted from the ruling until 2011 (3 years later).

This ruling is expected to impact on the total amount of passengers that can be carried in the car. A 5-seater can then carry up to 5 persons including the driver, all fasten with seatbelts respectively, and a 7-seater can carry 7 persons. So far, the Road Safety Department does not indicate whether seatbelt usage will also be compulsory for 3rd row seats or not.

Anyhow, the original Toyota Avanza already equipped with 7 seatbelts for all 3 rows of passengers, and has no problem for its passengers to comply with this ruling.

The tragic 8.0 Richter earthquake in SiChuan, China

It was just 10 days after Myanmar (Burma) struck by the deadly storm brought by tropical cyclone Nargis, where more than 5,000 square kilometer of area affected, causing hundred of thousand families lost their home, shelter or even lives. On 12 May 2008, a terrific earthquake measuring 8.0 Richter scale (earlier reported as 7.8) hit the south west of China, bringing severe damage to more than 10,000 square kilometer, completely destroyed most of the townships in Wenchuan County (汶川县), turning them into dead towns of ashes and bodies. That powerful quake was felt as far away as Beijing, 1500 kilometers to the north, as well as in Bangkok, Thailand 3300 kilometers to the south. Many are burried, and the survivors are refuging from their home...








To date, it is reported that all across SiChuan, 32,477 people has died, and 220,109 injured. Many are still buried in the collapsed buildings. The towns are filled with smell of dead bodies.

Imagine that just overnight, your house tumbled into ashes. Or even though it is not yet collapsed, it is no longer safe and you dare not stay in it for another second. Imagine that just overnight, you lost everything, your home, your property, your beloved, and even your life. It is really a horrible tragedy, and this is not a movie, but a real disaster in SiChuan.

They are shocked, they are in great sorrow. They need to get medicated, they need shelter and food, and they need help to rebuild their home. What can you offer for them?

Click here to go to Tzu Chi Foundation (慈济基金会) homepage for info and donation.

Click here to go to World Vision (世界宣明会) homepage for info and donation.

Hidden card holder clip in Perodua Myvi

Since inception in 2005, Perodua Myvi has been one of the best selling car in Malaysia, and there is one in my household too. If you drive Perodua Myvi, probably you are aware of a small drawer to the lower right of the car ignition key hole, as shown below:



Do you notice something in the drawer? Yes, there is a hidden clip on top of the drawer, and many Myvi drivers probably don't aware of its existance or usage. It is "hidden" because you won't see the clip if the drawer is not viewed upward at this angle.

This is actually a card holder clip that you can "hide" your Touch 'n Go card, petrol station loyalty card, autogate access card, etc. on it, just like this:



Pretty cool isn't it?

HP to buy over EDS for about US$13B

Recent rumours about Hewlett-Packard (HP) intention to buy over Electronic Data Systems (EDS) has been confirmed, after they released the official statement this week about their multi-billion dollar M&A plan.

By acquiring this world leader in outsourced IT services, the merged entity will form a giant IT services provider big enough to directly rival with IBM Global Services.

If this deal come to reality, it will also indirectly impact on the recent multi-billion outsourcing plan from SITI operations to EDS announced just about a month ago.

Is HP making a right move this time, and won't repeat the same mistake of recent acquisition of Compaq, which was one of the root cause for Carly Fiorina to be forced to step down, and nearly lead to the breakup of the company? Nevertheless, this move certainly brings uncertainty to all the parties involves, especially to their employees and the IT job market.

Meanwhile, the new IBM building in Cyberjaya, which is opposite the EDS building, is close to completion by now.

Ornasteel

Ornasteel (彦钢控股, 5094) posted its 1st quarter result for financial year 2008 today. It has shown a strong recovery from the relatively poor results of last 2 quarters in 2007. Its revenue increased by 14.7% from preceding quarter, and profit before tax increased by 65.7%. Its net profit also increased by 60.36% as a result of net profit margin improved to 7% from 5% in preceding quarter. Its NTA grown to RM1.90 per share, which is 15.85% above its closing price of RM1.64 today.

Ornasteel has been renowned in excellent cash flow management. When it was first listed on Bursa Malaysia at 30 December 2004, it had net borrowings of about RM130 million. It managed to turn into net cash position within a short period of time, and its net cash has accumulated to RM75.4 million as reported in today's quarterly report, grown by 40.15% from previous quarter (RM53.8 million). In fact, it is now among the financially healthiest steel companies in Malaysia, backed up by a blue chip controlling shareholder of Taiwan largest steel maker, which is also one of the top 5 most profitable steel player in the world.

During the 2nd quarter of the year, which result will be posted 3 months later, Ornasteel has adopted to offer their products to customers on a monthly pricing basis instead of the usual quarterly pricing basis. Beside that, the Malaysia steel market was also liberized starting from 12 May 2008. Ornasteel also proposed to change the company name to CSC Steel Holdings Berhad which shows the prominent relationship with its mother company, China Steel Corporation (中钢公司). It is showing sign of moving towards stronger fundamental and better result.

Disclaimer: This article is intended for sharing of point of view only. It is not an advice or recommendation to buy or sell any of the mentioned stock counters. You should do your own homework before trading in Bursa Malaysia.

7-Zip the free and open source file archiver

I noticed that a lot of people have WinZip and/or WinRAR installed in their computer, and most of them remain unregistered. Both of them are famous file archiver utility applications, and they are shareware, meaning you can try them out for free for a limited period of time. After that, if you are satisfied and want to continue to use them, you have the obligation to pay for the software.

What if you are not willing to pay for your file archiver utilities? Then you should uninstall them from your computer. However, you also have the option of using open source file archiver utility, which you don't need to pay for it and you can freely use it, copy it, redistribute it, even bundle it with your own application. 7-Zip is the one you are looking for.

7-Zip is licensed under GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). It is a file archiver with high compression ratio and comes with its own 7z compression format which can compress files even better than ZIP and RAR format. It is available in both GUI version and command line version, and its source code is available in Source Forge repository.

Here are the features of 7-Zip:

• Works in Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista.
• Has ported version for Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, DOS, etc.
• Localizations for 69 languages.
• High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression.
• Supported archive formats:
  - Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR.
  - Unpacking only: RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, MSI, WIM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS.
• For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip.
• Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats.
• Self-extracting capability for 7z format.
• Integration with Windows Shell.
• Powerful File Manager.
• Powerful command line version.
• Plugin for FAR Manager.
  

To download 7-Zip, click here.

Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office

The ISO standard OpenDocument format (ODF) is a free and open file format for electronic office documents, such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. It is a De facto standard used by OpenOffice.org.

Sun Microsystems has developed this ODF Plugin to enable MS Office to read and write ODF documents. It works seamlessly with MS Office 2007 (SP1 or higher), MS Office 2003, MS Office XP and MS Office 2000.

This ODF Plugin is provided by Sun Microsystems for free, and it integrates with the "Load" and "Save As" dialog and the "Save (Ctrl+S)" shortcut of MS Office Word. It simplifies the import and export of ODF documents with a new toolbar in MS Office Excel and PowerPoint.

With this plugin, you can now switch from native MS document format to world recognised ISO/IEC 26300 OpenDocument Format developed by the OASIS industry consortium, and most importantly, you can use and exchange without hassle the document files with OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, NeoOffice, KOffice, IBM Lotus Symphony and many more office application suites.

Click here to go to the download page for Sun ODF Plugin for MS Office.

Beijing to host OpenOffice.org Conference 2008

Redflag2000 of China has won the majority votes and awarded to host for the OpenOffice.org Annual International Conference 2008 (OOoCon 2008) in Beijing by 10-17 October this year. This international open source conference will be held in the 5-star Beijing Asia Hotel.

This is an annual premier event for anyone interested in or working with OpenOffice.org. It is where representatives of all the community projects meet to celebrate and learn from the achievements of the past twelve months, and discuss how to meet the challenges of the next twelve.

During the conference, top open source technical staff and backbones throughout the world will gather together and share outcomes in open source technology among others, advocate progress in effective application of open source technology, improve world software technology level and try to break technology monopoly through forums, lectures and other interactive manners.

Click here for more information and latest updates about the Beijing OOoCon 2008.