My ACM card wallet with money clip

Do you realize that nowadays we have to carry so many cards with us -- ATM cards, credit cards, member cards, petrol cards, discount cards, Touch 'n Go card, medical card, ... you name it.

I have been wondering is there a stylish and nice looking card wallet for me to keep my cards in my pocket, without cramping them into my money wallet, and I've found the patented ACM card wallet with money clip from the internet.

This Auto Card Manager (ACM) card wallet has a special compartment that can store up to 6 cards in a well organized manner. There is another model which can store up to 12 cards, but could be too bulky to carry in pant's pocket.

The cards can easily be slotted into the wallet. There is spacing between each of the cards, a feature said to be able to prevent card demagnetization, scratching and premature magnetic strip failure.

This is how it looks like with all the cards slotted in completely. Once slotted in, the cards are held firmly in the wallet and will not slide out by themselves. The cards are easily retrievable by pushing the button corresponding to their slot.

There is a money clip at the back of the ACM card wallet, which can be used to clip bank notes, receipts, name cards, etc.

And the money clip is easily detachable.

This ACM card wallet comes with 18 interchangeable button icons pads and a leather pouch. Its casing is made of metal meterial, which is pretty durable. Despite that, it only weighs about 90g with 6 cards installed.

Global Broadband Quality Study 2009 by Saïd Business School (of Oxford University) & University of Oviedo

Sponsored by Cisco and conducted by a team of MBA students from the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford and also the University of Oviedo’s Department of Applied Economics, the 2nd annual global study on the quality of broadband connections has just been released on 30 September 2009.

The 1st groundbreaking Broadband Quality Study was published in September 2008 to highlight each country’s ability to benefit from next-generation web applications and services.

It was found that broadband quality is linked to a nation’s advancement as a knowledge economy and countries with broadband on their national agenda had the highest broadband quality. This year’s report covers an additional 24 countries to 66 and includes new analysis on broadband quality in more than 240 cities.

The study was based on approximately 24 million records sourced from actual broadband speed tests from Speedtest.net (Ookla) for the target 66 countries during May 2008 and May to July 2009.

The research team concluded that broadband experience is mainly affected by broadband speeds in both directions, latency, network over-subscription, and packet loss. These parameters were grouped into 3 major categories: download and upload throughput, and latency.

The Broadband Quality Score (BQS) for each country was determined using a formula that weighted each category according to the quality requirements of a set of popular applications now and in the future as follow:

It is found that:

Overall average broadband quality increased across the globe, with global average download throughput increased by 49% to 4.75 Mbps, while global average upload throughput increased by 69% to 1.3 Mbps. The global average latency has decreased by 21% to 170 ms.

South Korea tops the 2009 Broadband Leadership table. Driven by continuous efforts by the government to strengthen the country’s position as one of the world’s ICT leaders, and combined with higher broadband penetration, South Korea rises above Japan (in the 2nd place now) in the global Broadband Leadership rankings.

The  Global Top 10 Broadband Leaders are:

• 1. South Korea
• 2. Japan
• 3. Hong Kong
• 4. Sweden
• 5. Switzerland
• 6. Netherlands
• 7. Singapore
• 8. Luxembourg
• 9. Denmark
• 10. Norway

Malaysia ranked 48 and China ranked 49 in this broadband leadership matrix. The United States ranked 15.

Click here to download the report of Global Broadband Quality Study 2009 sponsored by Cisco.

Facts and figures from EPF 2008 Annual Report

The EPF (a.k.a. KWSP) 2008 Annual Report reviews quite a lot of facts and figures. Here are some which might be of your interest.

As at 31 December 2008...

EPF’s total membership stood at 12.07 million members, of which 5.71 million of them are active members (members who continue to contribute). The population of Malaysia in 2008 (as recorded by Department of Statistics) was 27.73 million. From here, we can estimate that the workforce of Malaysia in 2008 was formed by about 20.6% of its population.

The amount of registered employer in 2008 was 441,820, of which 48,510 of them were new employers. Meanwhile 35,009 employers had cancelled their registration. From here, we can guess that about 10.98% of the employing companies are newcomers to the business world in Malaysia. However, there are also 35,009 employing companies closing their business in 2008.

The EPF dividend rate from 1952 to 2008 is charted as below.

This indicates that from year 2000 onwards until today, the EPF dividend rate has dipped below the average of 6%. The glory time of 1974-1999 when EPF dividend rate stayed above 6% had already gone for 10 years. When will it come back again?

Out of the 5.71 million active EPF members, 3.19 million of them are male, while 2.52 million of them are female. Their savings with EPF is shown as below.

From here, we can roughly guess that, male employees are generally having higher salary than female.

Most of the employees are in the 10,001-15,000 savings band (8.29% of male employees and 9.58% of female employees).

Less than 1% of the employees have RM500k and above savings in EPF. Only 5,575 males and 887 females (total to 6,462) have over RM1 million savings in EPF.

The average savings of the 53,022 active members at the age of 54 is RM132,539.78 (male: RM150,280.40; female: RM96,856.03).

Click here to download and read the complete EPF 2008 Annual Report to find out more.