Accor Hotels Asia offers more than 30% savings deal for MasterCard holders

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Syndacast. All opinions are 100% mine.

The world's leading hotel operator, Accor Hotels, is currently offering an exclusive deal for MasterCard credit card or debit card holders from now until 31 January 2010.

As much as 188 hotels in Asia are participated in this MasterCard Cardholder - Exclusive Deal promotion, including the famous brands of:

When you book a 3 consecutive night stay at any of the participating hotels with your MasterCard, you only need to pay for 2 nights during check out - equilvalent to a discount of 33.34% on the Best Unrestricted Rate or Premium Rate!

Note that in order to enjoy this offer, booking has to be made at least 1 day prior to your date of arrival.

Good news to Accor Advantage Plus members - you are also eligible for an additional 10% discount on top of this!

On top of that, by booking and paying with MasterCard during this campaign period, you stand a chance to win a 3 night stay in a private villa at the 5-star Pullman Sanya Yalong Bay Resort!

The 3 nights private Villa prize at Pullman Sanya Yalong Bay for 10 winners is valued at approximately US$1000 each, which includes:

• 1 bedroom
• 1 King bed
  
• Separate living room
• Private garden
• Private swimming pool
• Jacuzzi
• Outdoor massage area
  

Click here for more information about this MasterCard Cardholder - Exclusive Deal, and the list of 188 participating hotels.

Office Reader the free open source application for Symbian & UIQ3 to open ODF files

Most of us already know that Microsoft Office documents can be opened in our smartphone by using applications such as Documents To Go or Quickoffice.

But how about the documents in Open Document Format (ODF) which is the De facto standard of OpenOffice.org, IBM Lotus Symphony, Go-oo, KOffice, AbiWord, etc?

Well, Office Reader is the ODF documents reader for Symbian and UIQ3 smartphones which is able to read OpenDocument text (.odt), spreadsheet (.ods) and presentation (.odp) as well as support for OpenOffice.org Hybrid PDF file.

Being a GPL version 3 open source application, Office Reader is free for use. It is sponsored by NLnet Foundation and Odendahl SEPT-Solutions. Odendahl SEPT-Solutions is the company that produced Mobile Office.

Office Reader is capable to open ODF documents directly from email attachments, MMS, Bluetooth, filebrowser as well as webbrowser.

The main limitation is: it can only read the documents, but not write to them.

Click here for more information and download of Office Reader.

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.