What would the coming 4% GST probably affect you the most?

The plan of Malaysian government to impose a 4% Goods & Services Tax (GST) tentatively by 2011 has been a hot topic nowadays.

This mean that majority of the items you buy in Malaysia, other than the very few designated exempted "essential" items such as rice, sugar, cooking oil, flour, etc., will make you pay an additional 4% of the purchase price to the government by then.

You might not feel the pain if the item price is low, for example, the GST of a RM100 item will be imposed at RM4 only.

However, if the item price is high, the impact will be significant.

Most people will buy at least 2 costly items in their lifetime, namely house and car. These are the items that probably affect you the most by GST!

• If you buy a car for RM50,000, the GST will be RM2,000.
• If you buy a house for RM300,000, the GST will be RM12,000.
• And if your house go for renovation that cost RM50,000, there is also GST of RM2,000 to be paid.

So, if you plan to change your old car or buy a new car, better get it done before 2011.

If you plan to buy house for yourself or for investment, also better get it done before 2011.

If you plan to get married (which involve quite a lot of costly services and goods), also better get it done before 2011.

The cheapest laptop selling at $99

"Africa" is its name.

It is the brainchild of Philip Appiah from PAAJAF, a humanitarian services NGO based in Accra, Ghana, West-Africa.

PAAJAF  foundation provides food and shelter, clothing, basic health care, community building skills, job training  and education for children, women and orphans.

Philip’s vision was to improve the lives of the poor through better access to information for better education, freedom, making a living,  etc.

Philip approached Cherrypal of the Tristate Hong Kong Group Limited, a globally operating group of lifestyle enhancing companies, focused on green technologies, health products and personal development.

Cherrypal has been known to produce cheap netbook as a way to bridge the “digital divide”, with the belief that everyone should have access to technology and the benefits of the Internet, not just those who can afford to spend at least few hundreds on a new computer.

This initiative has led to the making of Africa, priced at $99 and targetted for the global low income group.

Africa is the laptop produced by Cherrypal, with:

• 7" colour display
• 400Mhz processor
• 256MB RAM
• 2GB flash memory storage
• Integrated Wi-Fi b/g wireless networking
• Integrated 10/100M Ethernet wired networking
• RJ-45 dial-up port
• One USB 2.0 port and two USB 1.1 ports
• SD/MMC card slot that supports SD card , U-Disk and USB-HDD Card
• Microphone and built-in speaker 

It weighs around 1.2kg and includes a 7.4V 1800MAH Lithium battery that provides a runtime of around four hours.

It runs either Linux or Windows CE and is designed just for Internet surfing.

"We believe access to the Internet is an essential need nowadays and requires an extra effort from the global community to melt different cultures and backgrounds into one peaceful community." -- GreenOpenFair blog of Cherrypal.

Click here for more information and online purchase of the Cherrypal 7" Africa mini-laptop selling at $99.00.

Hiding your Internet web surfing trace with UltraSurf

UltraSurf is a very small program (less than 500kb) that will automatically change your Internet Explorer's setting to make use of anonymous proxy server in the United States. It is free. It also has add-on for Firefox browser.

It can be used to hide/obfuscate your computer's location, and be a workaround to overcome possible web censorship and blockage.

Any website you connected with your web browser is able to trace your computer's IP address, and use it to find out your location. What UltraSurf do is to connect your computer to their server, and then connect to the destination website with the IP address of their server instead of yours.

This will make any websites you surf on or browse into, to trace that you are coming from United States instead of your actual location.

You can see how the IP address is traced by visiting to http://whatismyipaddress.com/. See what's the different before and after you run UltraSurf.

UltraSurf also has options to allow you to remove your trace in your computer (what webpages you have visited) by deleting the cookie and history information automatically the moment you exit the program.

Click here to find out more about UltraSurf and to download it.