HP and Intel Biggest Warehouse Sale (3 days only)

If you are planning to buy some IT products, here is a good news for you: there will be a 3 days HP and Intel Biggest Warehouse Sale in Klang Valley.

Venue: 3 Two Square (生意坊), Section 14, Petaling Jaya. (Near Sin Chew Daily office)
Date: 20-22 March 2009
Time: 10am - 8pm
Products: HP branded workstations, desktop PCs, laptops, PC accessories, printer supplies, merchandise, etc.

Note that the 1st day (20 March 2009) is exclusively for HP employees, Citibank or Maybank cardholders, media and students only.

Click here for more information about this event in HP website (including location map).

Guiding principles for Web 2.0 application development

In their article published in the recent Baseline Magazine, Frank Faeth and Joe Busateri who are both working for MasterCard have shared the 4 guiding principles established in MasterCard for application development that involves web services.

These guiding principles make different from the traditional way of application development, in order to take advantage of Web 2.0 technologies for speed, simplicity and reduced cost of software development.

Here are the 4 guiding principles:

1. Application developers have to be more than just good coders

Beside technical skills, developers have to be more business oriented now. They need to move forward from the back office to be more customer-facing than before. "Programmers" should transform into "business technologists" to cope with this trend.

They are expected to drive the organization forward by anticipating future business needs, and leverage technology to create practical solutions that will serve those needs.

They have to be awared that the half-life of today's business software is relatively short, so they must build applications that are stable and usable for a short period, and well prepared to be repurposed, rebuilt and enhanced. As such, rapid development is crucial, and components of the applications should be very modular, flexible, reusable and scalable.


2. Managers must realign their organizations to foster web services

Traditional attitudes and methodologies of software development no longer apply in Web 2.0. Web services require vigilance, constant management attention and repeated reinforcement.

Successful web services implementation requires all members of an organization to share technology and best practices across silos. This may require changes in corporate governance, less reliance on top-down directives and greater emphasis on mid-level management cooperations.


3. Companies should adopt Google's mentality: Fast is better than perfect

In their article, Frank Faeth and Joe Busateri argued that since the half-life of business software isn't very long, it's better to push a product into the marketplace quickly, rather than wait until it is thoroughly tested.

Both developers and business owners must agree on which compromises they are willing to accept in the application's functionality, features and stability, as weighed against achieving greater simplicity and speed to market.

The organization must be open to "failing fast and failing cheap" concept of perpetual development.

For example, Google's Gmail is released for public use while still in beta stage, and the beta has been ongoing for years, with continuous development, improvement and enhancement to the product.


4. Be sure to acknowledge that adopting web services requires time and effort

Adopting web services represents a radical change from the way corporations have traditionally developed software systems. As such, the change management and challenges involved should not be underestimated.

Latest BLR rate of banks in Malaysia as of Mar-2009

Within a short period of time since the last revision in early February 2009, BNM has cut the OPR again by another 50 basis points to 2.00% and SRR to 1.0%, effective 1 March 2009.

Here are their latest BLR rate as of today (6 March 2009):

• Majority of the banks: 5.55%
• Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (M) Berhad: 5.25%
• J.P. Morgan Chase Bank Berhad: 5.25%
• The Royal Bank of Scotland Berhad: 5.25%
• Affin Bank: 5.50%
• Citibank Berhad: 5.60%

It seems that Citibank is having the highest BLR rate, which is at 0.05% above the majority.

The interest rate is really cheap now. Let's say you have a house loan with rate of BLR-2% and the BLR of your bank is 5.55%, this mean your house loan interest serving will be 3.55% only.

With the interest of 3.55%, assuming you are borrowing RM100k, here are some simple calculations (until the next BLR revision which will affect the interest rate):

• 10 years term, monthly repayment = RM991.20, total interest = RM18,994.31
• 20 years term, monthly repayment = RM582.53, total interest = RM39,807.75
• 30 years term, monthly repayment = RM451.84, total interest = RM62,662.54
  

Notice that with this low interest rate, the monthly repayment amount is likely to be lower than renting a house/apartment, especially in urban areas where the rental is higher.

This mean that if you are currently renting a house/apartment, you should consider buying one for yourself; and if you are a property investor, now is a good time to buy more properties to rent out, as the collected rental can probably cover your monthly repayment, and might even let you earn some surplus pocket money.

You can always click here for the latest BLR info of the banks.