CIMB Petronas Mastercard offers 5% rebate every 1st day of the month

CIMB Petronas Mastercard is a credit card that is free for life (no annual fee) and provides 2% rebate on spendings at Petronas service stations, 0.5% rebate on other retail transactions. Beside that, card holder can enjoy special discounts and privileges when using it to make payment in more than 500 outlets nationwide.

Now, on top of that, this credit card will also provide 5% rebate on spendings at Petronas service stations made in the 1st day of every month, until October 2009.

However, this rebate is capped to a maximum spending of RM200 or rebate of RM10 on every 1st day of the month, and subjected to a maximum spending of RM2,500 at Petronas service stations or rebate of RM50 per card per month.

This doesn't look as attractive as their previous campaign which provided 3% rebate (everyday) for spending in Petronas service stations, which has already ended on 17 November 2008. Yet, it is better than none.

Forrester Research: Sponsored conversations make sense

According to an independent report published by Forrester Research on 2 March 2009,Sponsored Conversations is an evolving practical trend of marketing technique to stay and mature, especially when appropriately protected for disclosure and authenticity.

Sponsored conversations take place when marketers provide monetary or non-monetary form of award (or compensation) to bloggers who write and share their experience to the general public about their products, services, websites, etc.

If it is managed properly, this marketing approach is seen to be cost-effective, scalable, far-reaching and persuasive.

"The growth of sponsored conversation could lead to a whole new industry within the interactive marketing space and will have some dramatic effects on the blogosphere." -- Forrester Research

Click the banner at the footer of this webpage to download the full report of Forrester Research for free.

Mind Mapping with XMind

Originated as the brainchild of Tony Buzan (a famous psychology author and educational consultant), Mind Mapping has been used by many people as a great and interesting method to visualize and organize their thinkings, ideas, decisions, planning, problem solving, etc.

Mind Mapping can also be used for group of people during discussions, brain storming, note taking, etc.



XMind is an easy to learn and easy to use general purpose mind mapping application. Its diagram objects can be easily switched for mind maps, fishbone diagrams, tree diagrams, org-charts, logic charts, and even spreadsheets.

Being developed in Java, it is cross-platform and can be run in Windows, Linux and Mac OS. For Ubuntu and Debian Linux users, XMind is also well packaged as DEB distribution file for easy installation. There is also a portable version which doesn't require installation to use.

XMind has user interface in different languages, including English, Chinese (simplified & traditional), Japanese, German, etc.

Starting from its Version 3, XMind which was once proprietary and selling at US$299 has gone open source since 14 November 2008. This is really a good news for mind mapping fans. This mind mapping application now comes in 2 flavours - the free XMind and subscription based XMind Pro.

Click here to read about how XMind can be used by different people, such as meeting organizers, project managers, teachers, department members, students, team managers, architects, designers, etc.

In order to download XMind or XMind Pro from their website, you are required to create a free user ID in their website. With this user ID, you can collaborate with other XMind users in the community, share your maps with others, etc. There is a huge collection of sample maps available in their website.