The Edge Malaysia Top Property Developers Awards 2009

The Edge Malaysia Top Property Developers Award ranks the best property players in the country, from the consumer’s perspective for both their quantitative and qualitative attributes.

The quantitative elements were the companies’ shareholders’ funds, revenue, pre-tax profit, gearing, and cash and cash equivalents for the fiscal year ended 2008.

The qualitative attributes include the quality of the product, innovation and creativity, value creation for buyers, image and expertise.

And the Top 30 ranking is:

• Sime Darby Property Bhd
• SP Setia Bhd
• Sunway City Bhd
• IGB Corp Bhd
• Island & Peninsular Sdn Bhd
• IOI Properties Bhd
• Bandar Raya Developments Bhd
• Eastern & Oriental Bhd
• Sunrise Bhd
• Bandar Utama City Corp Sdn Bhd
• Gamuda Bhd - Prop Div
• IJM Land Bhd
• YTL Land & Devt Bhd
• Paramount Corp Bhd
• Selangor Dredging Bhd
• Mah Sing Group Bhd
• Naza TTDI Sdn Bhd
• Selangor Properties Bhd
• Dijaya Corporation Bhd
• UEM Land Holdings Bhd
• PJ Devt Holdings Bhd
• WCT Land Sdn Bhd
• Metro Kajang Holdings Bhd
• Penitude Bhd
• Naim Holdings Bhd
• Malton Bhd
• United Malayan Land Bhd
• Hunza Properties Bhd
• Segajuta (S) Sdn Bhd
• Bolton Bhd

Is your house's developer among one of the Top 30 above?

For more information, please refer to the City & Country pullout of The Edge Weekly dated 12-Oct-2009.

The last lecture of late Dr. Randy Pausch about childhood dreams

I just learned about this last lecture of late Dr. Randy Pausch by chance, read through his amazing presentation slides and video on Youtube, and would like to share with you about his great talk delivered on 18 September 2007 in a lecture hall of Carnegie Mellon University.

Randy Pausch was a computer science professor and alumnus of Carnegie Mellon University. He got pancreatic cancer which took away his life at the age of 47 on 25 July 2008, 10 months after he delivered this last lecture.

The talk has been uploaded into the Internet and viewed by millions of people. A best-selling book titled "The Last Lecture" based on the lecture has also been published and translated in thirty over languages.

To date, his Last Lecture titled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" is still giving great impacts to people around the world.
 
His talk was about his childhood dreams, how he overcome the barriers to realise his dreams (or at least getting close to it). He also talked about enabling the dreams of others, and some lessons learned.



He mentioned several times that "the brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people. Brick walls let us show our dedication."
 
Some of his important advice:

• Be good at something: it makes you valuable
• Work hard … “what’s your secret?”
• Find the best in everybody; no matter how you have to wait for them to show it
• Be prepared: “luck” is where preparation meets opportunity
  

He ended the talk by saying,"It’s not about how to achieve your dreams. It’s about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you."
 
Click here to download the presentation slide of The Last Lecture by Dr. Randy Pausch.

Click here to download the transcript of The Last Lecture by Dr. Randy Pausch.

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.

Free Garmin South East Asia (SEA) Travel Guide Version 2.00

The freely downloadable Garmin South East Asia (SEA) Travel Guide Version 2.00 (百变东南亚) supports both Taiwan and Sing/Mal version of Garmin GPS navigators.

This travel guide covers 5 famous tourism attraction places, namely Angkor (吴哥), Bali (巴厘岛), Hong Kong (香港), Macau (澳门) and Singapore (新加坡).

You can download the Garmin South East Asia (SEA) Travel Guide Version 2.00 here, the filename is SoutheastAsia.zip with size of 34,215kb.

There are 5 files inside the compressed SoutheastAsia.zip:

• AngkorTravel.gpi
• BaliTravel.gpi
• HongKongTravel.gpi
• MacauTravel.gpi
• SingaporeTravel.gpi

You just need to connect your GPS navigator to your computer with USB cable, and unzip those 5 files into Garmin/POI folder of the GPS storage.

To access the travel guide, tap on Where to? > Travel Guide.
The travel guide will recommend you the places to visit, eat, stay and shop. Information such as address, phone number, brief description, opening time, and photo(s) are available for the point of interests (POI).

You can tap the photo on the upper left to enlarge it to full screen. Tap on More button to show more information about this POI in the travel guide.

There are many more travel guides freely available for download in Garmin Taiwan's website.

New property website by The Edge

The Edge has just launched a new property website at http://www.theedgeproperty.com/ with the tagline of "Everything property".

The website features news reports related to the property industry, as well as a wide array of differing topics for the property owner and investor taking advantage of the Internet’s global appeal. It looks pretty informative.

However, the registered username and password in The Edge Malaysia website cannot be used here. You have to register for a new account in this The Edge Property website in order to be able to post comments and enjoy some other priviledged features.

Singapore workers median gross monthly income increased more than 20% over past 5 years

According to information provided in the Report on Labour Force in Singapore 2008 published by Singapore's Ministry of Manpower, the median gross monthly income of Singapore employees (especially the full time employed workers) has increased by more than 20% over the past 5 years.

The median income by June 2008 stood at S$2,450.

"Income typically rises with educational attainment, reflecting the premium that employers place on education and skills. In June 2008, full-time employed residents with degrees commanded a median income of $5,060, 4.2 times the $1,190 for those with primary or lower qualifications."

I wonder if the Ministry of Human Resource in Malaysia conducts similar survey, and how will the figure be like?

CIMB offers Touch n Go Zing Card with multiple auto-reload options

Now CIMB Bank also offers the Touch 'n Go Zing Card after Maybank, Hong Leong Bank, EON Bank, Affin Bank, MBf Card and AEON Credit Service.

The CIMB Touch 'n Go Zing Card has the same fees and charges like those offerred by other banks:

• Issuance of new card: RM10
• Replacement card: RM10
• Refund processing fees: RM5

On the other hand, it provides special multiple auto-reload options:

• Reload RM100 with RM1.50 fee
• Reload RM200 with RM2.00 fee
• Reload RM300 with RM3.00 fee

Apparently, the reload fees are slightly cheaper than the Zing Card offered by other banks, especially when opting for RM300 reload, the fee is only RM1 per RM100 usage.

Click here for more information about the CIMB Touch 'n Go Zing Card with multiple auto-reload options.

LRT extension to Subang Jaya & Puchong going to materialize (finally & finger crossed)

The Light Rail Transit (LRT) extension to Subang Jaya and Puchong area has been talked about for many years.

It seems that it will finally come to reality following the recent announcement from Syarikat Prasarana Negara Bhd about this proposed RM7 billion project expected to be completed by the end of 2012 (with finger crossed).

The proposed location of new LRT stations has been drafted out and open for public comment/suggestion. Design of some of the proposed stations is also made available for public review.

They actually setup a website about this proposal. You can get more information about the LRT extension plan, as well as provide online feedback with it. Hurry up, pay a visit to http://www.lrtextension.com for more detail.

The proposed LRT line extension is as shown in the map below.

Proposed new LRT stations to be extended from Putra line (from Kelana Jaya):

• STN 01 - Subang Depot near D’Aman Crimson Condos
• STN 02 - Dana 1 Commercial Centre
• STN 03 - Kelana Jaya Centre Point
• STN 04 - Subang Parade (interchange to Subang Jaya KTM)
• STN 05 - Summit USJ
• STN 06 - SS 18
• STN 07 - USJ 7
• STN 08 - Taipan
• STN 09 - USJ Digital Mall
• STN 10 - USJ 21
• STN 11 - Alam Megah 1
• STN 12 - Alam Megah 2
• STN 13 - Putra Heights Commercial Centre

Proposed new LRT stations to be extended from Star line (from Bukit Jalil):

• STN 01 - Awan Besar
• STN 02 - PPR Kg. Muhibbah
• STN 03 - Bukit Kinrara
• STN 04 - Giant Kinrara
• STN 05 - Kinrara Industrial Park
• STN 06 - IOI Mall
• STN 07 - Tesco
• STN 08 - Rakan Muda
• STN 09 - Tractor Malaysia
• STN 10 - Puchong Perdana
• STN 11 - Puchong Prima
• STN 12 - Kampung Tengah
• STN 13 - Putra Heights Commercial Centre

If you have better suggestion to the location of the proposed LRT stations above, quickly send your feedback to them before its too late.

Garmin releases MalSingMaps Malaysia/Singapore/Brunei NT 2009.30 for free update

Garmin has made available MalSingMaps (MSM) Malaysia/Singapore/Brunei NT 2009.30 for free update now.

You can click here to download the installation file of MalSingMaps Malaysia/Singapore/Brunei NT 2009.30 from Garmin server. The file size is 163,883kb.



The installation program will update gmapprom1.img, gmapprom1.unl and SGMYMAL.JCV in your Garmin GPS navigator.

During the installation process, you'll be asked for the unlock key. The key is stored in the existing gmapprom1.unl file in your Garmin GPS navigator, which you can open with Notepad or any text editor. Just copy and paste the key to the installer when asked.

The size of SGMYMAL.JCV has increased to 199,430kb from the previous 155,439kb (for MalSingMaps NT 2009.5).

This version of map supports all the features in Sing/Mal version of Nuvi 255w, including Speed Limit indicator, Junction View, Lane Assist, highway coming exit junctions info, etc.

Version highlights:

1. Synchronize to Malsingmaps v3.05.
2. Add more Speed limit information
3. Increase junction view display to 667 locations in Singapore and 704 locations in Malaysia

 

Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER) will cease publication in December 2009

I remember when I was still a secondary school student, the Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER, 远东经济评论) or better known as the REVIEW magazine was one of my favourite reading material in the school's library.

By that time, the Internet was still not introduced to Malaysia yet, and REVIEW became one of my main source to know about latest development and happening in the world especially in the Asian region.

It is sad to know that REVIEW will be gone into history soon, following the decision of the publisher, Dow Jones & Co. which owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., to terminate its lifespan by end of 2009.

Click here to read the official announcement to cease the publication of FEER in December 2009.

How to know the Garmin Nuvi 255w battery charging has completed

If you are charging the battery of Garmin Nuvi 255w using a USB cable connected to your computer, there is a way to know the charging has completed, although not so straightforward.

You need to firstly unmount the USB storage(s) in your Garmin Nuvi 255w detected by your computer.

If you are using Windows, right click on the Safely Remove USB Device icon in the taskbar and select "Safely Remove Hardware". Then click the Stop button follow by OK button. Your Garmin GPS will reboot by itself and go into normal operating mode which you can use it and navigate as usual.

Now, slide the Power key on top of the GPS to the left to switch it off. If the battery is still charging, it will show the message "Charging Battery. Slide the Power key to turn on." before the screen turn off. If the battery is fully charged, it will show "Charging Battery completely. Slide the Power key to turn on." instead.

In fact, the GPS is not off when it is still connected to the USB, only the screen is turned off. You can always slide the Power key again to turn on the screen, and slide again to check for the charging status.

From the message, you'll be able to know if the battery charging has completed or not.

Garmin ecoRoute currently not available for Asian version of Nuvi 255w

Garmin ecoRoute is a new feature for their GPS navigators which is made freely available to compatible units via the WebUpdater service.

This feature allows users to find more fuel efficient routes when navigating and even track their fuel usage. With ecoRoute, you may be able to save petrol and money by adopting smarter driving habits and finding more fuel-efficient routes.

After ecoRoute is successfully installed, a new Route Preference called "Less Fuel" will be added to the GPS unit. There will also be Fuel Report which tracks fuel usage over time, and Mileage Report which monitors mileage and fuel usage on a per-trip basis.




ecoRoute is available for US version of nuvi 255w. However, an email from Garmin Support confirmed that it is currently not available for Asian version of nuvi 255w, which includes the Sing/Mal version, Taiwan version, India version, etc.

For Asian version of Garmin GPS, currently only Nuvi 765 and Nuvi 1460 are ecoRoute supported.

Let's hope that it will eventually be made available to our Nuvi 255w in the near future.

Do not keep your money in your bank savings account

Do you know how much interest you will get if you keep your money in your bank savings account today?

Here are some of the interest information obtained from the banks' website as of September 2009:

• Public Bank Savelink - 0% for balance <= RM10,000
• Maybank Kawanku - 0% for balance <= RM10,000
• CIMB Regular Savings - 0.05% for balance <= RM25,000
• Hong Leong Savings - 0.10% for balance <= RM10,000
• RHB Passbook - 0% for balance <= RM10,000
• EON Bank Savings - 0.10% for balance <= RM5,000
• Alliance Bank Savings - 0.10% for balance <= RM5,000
• HSBC Premier or PowerVantage - 0% for balance <= RM10,000
• OCBC Premier - 0% for balance <= RM10,000
  

This indicates that you will get 0% interest or very close to that by keeping your money in your bank savings account.

Most banks also have Basic Savings Account which provides a better 0.25% interest for balance <= RM50,000. However, most of them also charge RM8 to the basic savings account annually.

If you still insist to keep your money in a savings account, perhaps you should keep in this Basic Savings Account.

So, it is wiser to keep a minimal amount of money in your savings account, just good enough for day-to-day regular spending. You should have your credit card, short term (<= 3 months) fixed deposit or volatile investment ready for emergency spending.

Then what to do with your money if not keeping in the savings account? Here are some of the better places to park your money:

• Clearing debts
• Flexible Homeloan account
• Investment
• Business
  
• Fixed deposit
• Insurance
• Precious metals/stones
• Valuable collectibles
• etc.

MalFreeMaps moving forward with improved free map

The mapper community supported Malaysia & ASEAN Free Maps Project (MalFreeMaps) releases a new version of free map covering Malaysia/Singapore/Brunei for Garmin GPS every Monday morning without failure.

Today (14 Sept 2009) they've gone to another milestone by releasing an improved version of map with a new versioning scheme, also with new coverage to Indonesia.

The new version is called MFM-Garmin 090914 with the following additional features from the previous version:

• Link to NavNet map in Kalimantan
• Coverage of Southern Thailand (coming soon)
• Optional Chinese POI
• Improved SG Postal Code & Address map with instant search result
• New POI icons
  
• New POI categories with custom icons (coming soon)
• New MFM map generator with option to generate either Full or Lite version
• Topo contours are added into Full-version map
• New multi-language installer
• No more error when uploading map through Mapsource

Click here for more information and download of the free MFM-Garmin 090914 map.

Upgraded Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop RAM to 2.5GB

I have successfully upgraded the RAM of my Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop purchased 3 years ago from the original 512MB to 2.5GB now, and have been using this new configuration for more than 2 months without any problem.

Before this, I heard about the Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop can only support up to 2GB RAM, but now I've confirmed that it can support up to 2.5GB.

The original 512MB RAM residing in Memory Slot 1 of the laptop is of DDR-2 PC2-4200 SO-DIMM running at 533Mhz bus speed. I purchased another Kingston brand 2GB RAM of DDR-2 PC2-5300 CL-5 SO-DIMM which can run at 667Mhz bus speed and slotted it into the empty Memory Slot 2.



As shown in the photo below, the RAM on the left hand side is the original 512MB, and on the right hand side is the new 2GB.



When the laptop first detected the new memory, it displayed a message stating "The amount of system memory has changed." when boot up and seems to be hang at this message. I was a bit worry then, but later found out from Internet that I just need to be patient and wait for a while. The laptop then accepted the new amount of memory and no more similar message appear during boot up therafter.

It seems that both the memory can work together well without any problem, and can even work in Dual Channel Mode. They passed all the stringent memory test in Dell's Diagnostic Utility, and have worked happily for more than 2 months now.

Although the working bus speed has to synchornized to 533Mhz even the PC2-5300 RAM is able to work on the faster 667Mhz, but the performance affected is very much neglegible.

In the BIOS, it correctly detected 512MB + 2048MB = 2560MB RAM has been installed, but it says only 2559MB is available for use. Therefore, the maximum RAM supported by Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop is 2.5GB only, and it will be a waste to install any larger amount than that.



Windows XP detects a total of 2,619,768kB (or 2558.367MB) of RAM.



Notice that I have completely switched off the Virtual Memory by setting the paging file to 0. I have been using the laptop without any Virtual Memory in Windows XP for 2 months, and it just works fine. In fact, it runs much faster than before, and there is less harddisk activity now.

Using Garmin Nuvi 255w GPS as a digital photo frame

The Garmin Nuvi 255w GPS navigator does not have much multimedia function, but it does have a decent Picture Viewer, enabling us to use it as a digital photo frame. Its 4.3" screen is good enough for this purpose.

If your digital camera can store photos into SD card, what you need to do is just to take out the SD card from your camera, and slot it into the Nuvi 255w. Then, switch on the unit and tap on Tools > Picture Viewer.

The screen will then show 9 thumbnails of the pictures found. You can navigate from one screen to another by tapping on the up/down arrow keys.

Tap on the picture to show it fully on the screen. Tap it again and you are able to show it in Full Screen mode, as well as enlarge or reduce its display size.

When displaying a picture, tap on the Info button to see the info of the filename, camera make and camera model. You are also given an option to use this picture as your Garmin nagivator's startup screen when power on.

In the thumbnail display screen, you can also tap on Slide Show to auto show the pictures one by one.

Latest Garmin GPS pricelist of vendors in Malaysia, Singapore & Brunei

If you are planning to buy a Garmin GPS navigator, either the Nuvi, Fitness or Zumo, there is a place for you to check the price offered by various vendors in Malaysia, Singapore & Brunei.

Click here to access to the shared Google spreadsheet about Garmin latest pricelist.

Let's express our great thanks to Noah, the creator and maintainer of this pricelist info.

Global Competitiveness Report 2009-2010 by World Economic Forum

The World Economic Forum has just released their 30th edition of The Global Competitiveness Report (2009-2010) ranking and featuring 133 economies in the world. This report stand out as one of the world's most comprehensive and respected assessment of countries' competitiveness.

The Top 10 ranking for 2009-2010 are:

• 1. Switzerland
• 2. USA
• 3. Singapore
• 4. Sweden
• 5. Denmark
• 6. Finland
• 7. Germany
• 8. Japan
• 9. Canada
• 10. Netherlands

While Singapore has improved its position from the previous 5th to 3rd, Malaysia has falled from 21st to 24th now. Taiwan shows a good progress from 17th to 12ve. Brunei also moved on from 39th to 32nd. Korea dropped from 13th to 19th.

Click here to read the article in The Star highlighting about Malaysia's ranking in the Global Competitiveness Report 2009-2010.

Click here to get more information about the Global Competitiveness Report 2009-2010. You can also download the full report there.

Top 40 open source products for business and IT pros (Bossie 2009 winners)

Since 2007, each year InfoWorld's Bossie (Best of Open Source Software awards) will recognize a total of 40 best open source software from various categories for business and IT pros of the year.

The 2009 Bossie winners are...


Best of open source developer tools:

• BrowserShots service
  
• Drools BRMS
• Eclipse Web Services Tools
• Hadoop and Hive for distributed data processing
• jQuery JavaScript library
• Mono .Net platform
• NetBeans IDE for Java and dynamic languages
• OpenStreetMap mapping project
• PhoneGap framework for mobile application development
• WebKit browser rendering engine

Best of open source enterprise software:

• Compiere ERP systems
• Openbravo ERP systems
• Dimdim web conference software
• Drupal for content management
• Intalio for process management
• Jaspersoft for reporting and BI
• Pentaho for reporting and BI
• Magento for e-commerce
• Piwik for web analytics
• SugarCRM for sales and customer management
• WordPress blog publishing platform

Best of open source networking software:

• Cacti
• Nagios
• IPCop firewall
• Kamailio SIP proxy server
• KeePass password manager
• Openfiler SAN/NAS appliance
• OpenNMS enterprise monitoring system
• PacketFence network access control
• Puppet configuration management framework
• Untangle network security gateway

Best of open source platforms and middleware:

• Jitterbit data migration and integration
• Talend data migration and integration
• Mule service bus
• WSO2 modular SOA platform
• Nginx web server
• OpenVZ server virtualization platforms
• Xen server virtualization platforms
• VirtualBox desktop virtualization tool
• Turnkey Linux factory of software appliances

Beside the 40 Bossie winners, Infoworld also named the Top 10 Open Source Hall of Famers from the greatest open source software of all time. They are:

• Linux kernel
• GNU utilities and compilers
• Ubuntu
• The 3 BSDs (FreeBSD, OpenBSD & NetBSD)
• Samba
• MySQL
• BIND
• Sendmail
• OpenSSH and OpenSSL
• Apache

Beside that, Infoworld recognises there are a lot of great open source apps for Windows too, and they've picked the 10 best:

• FileZilla
• VirtualBox
• OpenOffice.org
• Firefox
• Paint.Net
• Media Player Classic
• TrueCrypt
• PDFCreator
• 7-Zip
• ClamWin

Click here for more details about the Infoworld Bossie 2009 awards.

A visit to Packet Hub, HQ of WIMAX provider Packet One

Being one of the contributors in a committee of a local business association, I am honoured to be invited by Michael Lai (赖敬达), CEO of Packet One, to visit their HQ building Packet Hub today.

I was really amazed by the presentations by Michael and his senior staff, which show that this young company has very clear and ambitous mission, vision, direction and goals.

Since the debut of their P1 W1MAX service in August 2008, which was just one year ago, the company has grown exponentially in terms of service coverage area, user base (now already reaches 100,000) as well as staff force (more than 600 now). Packet One is no doubt the pioneer and still the only WIMAX service provider in Malaysia, despite 4 WIMAX licenses have been awarded by MCMC several years ago.

Located at Jalan Templer next to the Federal Highway, the Packet Hub building implements some of the Google-like working environment which can especially attract the Gen-Y workers.

Near the entrance is a Paddock which showcase their products and services. Their customer service area is just next to the P1 Paddock.

They have modern looking meeting rooms named by countries with their presence, equipped with high tech meeting equipments and high quality chairs. They also have a nice well equipped gymnasium, a rest room with several massage chairs and a comfly gamers room. On the roof top of the building is an air garden with nice landscaping and a BBQ area. There is also a WIMAX base station on top of the building (in the photo).

Apparently Michael is a fan of What Would Google Do (WWGD)?, a book written by Jeff Jarvis. He shared with us about his business philosophy, his view of technology future particularly in the IP field, his ambition and market positioning of Packet One, and more. He talked about Business 2.0, a new term that I just know about today.

It seems that Green Packet has made a right choice to get Michael joining them to start up the P1 business. Michael has sound track record while he was with Celcom and later as CEO of TMNet before joining Packet One. Undeniably, he has always been very good in branding strategy all the way from his previous companies till now in P1.

Keeping employees engaged in tough times

In September 2009 edition of the Baseline Magazine, an article by Corinne Bernstein reviews the key attributes of how the best-of-the-best companies keep their employees engaged, especially when in tough times, which are:

• A compelling, positive vision with clear goals: essential for increasing morale, motivation and productivity.
• Communication—the right stuff at the right time: encourage employees to express opinions, and managers relay the organization’s perspective in a timely manner.
• Select the right people for the right job: hire the most qualified candidates for jobs, and promote qualified, well-trained people into management positions.
• Remember that we’re on the same team: value team work within and across departments.
• Cool stuff—continuous improvement and innovation: encourage and recognize employees to improve quality by creating new products, processes or services.
• Recognize and reward excellent performance: appropriately reward the highest achievers.
• Accountability counts: clearly define what is expected from employees, providing feedback on their performance and holding team members accountable to performance standards.
• Every employee learns and grows: provide good training programs that are relevant to both the workers’ and the organization’s success.
• Problems are no problem: identifies and handles problems early on.
• It’s all about the customer: place a high value on exceeding customer expectations.
  

If you are interested to read the full article, you can click here to download the softcopy version of Baselin Magazine September 2009 Edition. It is in Page 12.

UBS Price and Earnings Report 2009

The renowned global financial services firm UBS has just released their "Price and Earnings 2009 - A comparison of purchasing power around the globe" report, covering their studies on living cost (including prices for 122 type of goods & services), as well as wages, working hours & taxes for 14 professions in 73 cities worldwide. Since 1971, UBS conducts this survey covering more than 30,000 individual data points at the interval of every 3 years.

The result reviews that:

• Oslo, Zurich, Copenhagen, Geneva, Tokyo and New York are the world's most expensive cities based on a standardized basket of 122 goods and services, while Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Delhi and Mumbai cost the least.
• When rent prices are factored into the equation, New York, Oslo, Geneva and Tokyo emerge as especially pricey places to live.
• Employees in Zurich and Geneva have the highest net wages in the world. By contrast, the average employee in Delhi, Manila, Jakarta and Mumbai earns less than 6.66% or 1/15 of Swiss hourly wages after taxes.
• An average wage-earner in Zurich and New York can buy an Apple iPod nano with 8GB storage after 9 hours (or 1 working day) of work. At the other end of the spectrum, workers in Mumbai, need to work 20 working days – roughly the equivalent of one month's salary – to purchase the same.
• People work an average of 1,902 hours per year in the surveyed cities but they work much longer in Asian and Middle Eastern cities, averaging 2,119 and 2,063 hours per year respectively.
• People in Cairo and Seoul work the longest – roughly 600 hours more per year than their peers in Western Europe. People in Lyon and Paris, by contrast, spend the least amount of time at work.
• Japan and Switzerland has the highest food price.
• Nowhere in the world is clothing cheaper than in Kuala Lumpur and Manila.
• Hotels most expensive in Tokyo and Paris.
• The costliest places for city break are Tokyo, London and Doha while the cheapest are Mexico City, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta.
• Crisis-driven currency fluctuations cause shifts in the rankings from last survey (year 2006).

Beside the Apple iPod nano, price of McDonald's Big Mac, 1kg bread and 1kg rice are also benchmarked for the purchasing power in the cities (refer to Page 11 of the report).

Wages and working hours are benchmarked among the following professions:

• Car mechanic
• Building labourer
• Skilled industrial worker
• Factory worker
• Engineer
• Department head
• Product manager
• Primary school teacher
• Bus driver
• Cook
• Personal assistant
• Sales assistant
• Call center agent
• Bank credit officer

Click here to download the full UBS Price and Earnings Report 2009.

You might also be interested to read about:

Mercer Worldwide Cost of Living Survey 2009

Using GMapTool to combine multiple maps into one mapset file for Garmin GPS

We mentioned earlier that Garmin GPS navigator supports several mapset files. That should be enough for normal users.

Saving different map into different mapset file also makes it easy to replace the map to newer version in the future, as well as convenient to remove a single map from the GPS storage.

However, if you have a lot of map that you want to load into your GPS, or you want to store all the maps into SD card which supports only a single gmapsupp.img in it, you might need to combine (join) the maps into one mapset file by using specific software tool. GMapTool is one of the powerful tool which allow you to join and/or split maps in mapset file.

You can visit this webpage to download GMapTool. It supports multiple platform:

• Windows - GUI and command line
• Linux - command line
• Mac OS X - command line
  
  
  

By using the GUI interface of GMapTool, it is pretty simple to combine the mapsets.

Firstly, store all the mapset files you wish to combine in different filename in your PC. It is recommended to store them in the same folder/directory.

Under the Files section of GMapTool, select the maps you want to combine by clicking on Add Files (to select one file at one time) or Add Directories (to select all *.img files in the directory). Note that you can always remove any file in the listing by selecting it and press the Delete button of your keyboard.

When you are done with the mapset selection, continue to the Join section.

Specify the Output File, and key-in the Mapset name of your file to be created. This mapset name will be displayed under each of the map name when you list your maps in Map Info function of your Garmin GPS.

Click the Join all button, and the combined mapset will be created. You can then copy the new mapset file to your Garmin's internal storage or SD card.

Note that if any of the maps in your mapset file is locked by vendor, you still need the 25 bytes unlock key stored in a *.unl file in the same folder and with the same name as the mapset file where the locked map is stored in. To unlock 2 maps inside the mapset file, put both the keys inside the *.unl file one after another, without space (the file size will be 50 bytes then).

To get rid of the hassle, you might want to use another tool called Garmin Unlocker to permanently unlock the maps before combining them with GMapTool.

You might probably be interested to also read about:

• Using GMapTool with cGPSmapper to convert finalized gmapsupp.img back to MapSource maps
• Fixed GMapTool problem regarding "Multiple products in img, creating TDB aborted"

Inside of the Garmin Nuvi 255w GPS exposed

No, I have not opened up my Garmin Nuvi 255w GPS to see what is inside, but others did.

You can click here to go and see some interesting photos of the internal electronic parts of the Nuvi 255w device after the cover is opened up.

And here is a professional technical write-up on the internal of Garmin Nuvi 205, which is a smaller and more compact unit with 320x240 display in the Garmin 2x5 family.

Click here to see the interesting photos of the internal of Garmin Nuvi 205 (with label description).

From these information, we can guess that our Garmin Nuvi 255w GPS is having:

• STMicro Cartesio (STA2062) processor
  
• Rx Networks GPStream SAGPS chipset
• STMicro STA5620 single-chip RF front end
• 32MB DDR SDRAM
• 2GB Sandisk iNAND internal flash memory
• Rechargeable 3.7-v/1250 mAh Li-Ion battery
• Sharp-manufactured LCD touchscreen

Garmin Hotfix technology powered by Rx Networks GPStream SAGPS chipset

Newer Garmin Nuvi GPS including the 205, 205w, 255, 255w, 265T, 265WT, 275T, 500, 550, 750, 760, 770, 780, 755t, 765t, 775t, 785t, 850, 880, 5000, etc. have a new selling point of Hotfix technology.

Garmin Hotfix enable the GPS to be super fast within seconds in locating the satellites during startup. In fact, my Garmin Nuvi 255w can even work as if staying connected to satellites for a few minutes, when it started up indoor in the middle of my house.

This is made possible by using predictive calculations of satellite positions, which enables the behaviour of GPS satellites to be modelled based on broadcast ephemeris readings for accurate prediction of satellite positions up to a few days ahead. A single broadcast ephemeris reading allows the accurate prediction of satellite orbits which are developed and refined every time new broadcast ephemeris is obtained.

Some people are guessing that the Hotfix feature is based on SiRF InstantFix inside the newer version of SiRFstarIII chipset. However, we've just found out that Nuvi 255w is using STMicro Cartesio application processor instead, so it is not SiRF InstantFix which plays the magic.

In fact, the Garmin Hotfix technology is powered by Rx Networks GPStream SAGPS chipset. The GPStream Self Assisted GPS (SAGPS) is a derivative of GPStream Predicted GPS (PGPS) technology. GPStream PGPS is a 3rd generation Assisted GPS (AGPS) solution addressing the limitations of 1st and 2nd generation products, which is made available to some handphone devices with AGPS feature.

Click here to read more about Rx Networks GPStream SAGPS technology.

For those who are interested to know where I got the information about Garmin Nuvi 255w is using STMicro Cartesio application processor and Rx Networks GPStream SAGPS technology, it is mentioned in Page 10 of September 2008 edition (Volume 11 Issue 9) of Telecom Trends newsletter.

Cartesio chipset used in Garmin Nuvi 255w GPS

I've been wondering what kind of GPS chipset is inside my Garmin Nuvi 255w GPS. Some say it is the famous SiRFstarIII, some say it is the Taiwanese MTK chipset, but I find out that it is actually the STMicro Cartesio.

In fact, all the current Garmin Nuvi 2x5 series of GPS are using this Cartesio automotive-grade infotainment application processor with embeded GPS receiver. It features the System-on-Chip (SoC) technology which combines the host CPU and a high-performance 32-channel GPS correlator, and also a large set of peripherals and interfaces.

Here are some of the technical information about the STMicro Cartesio (code name STA2062):

• High performance ARM926 333-MHz CPU
• High performance 32-channel GPS correlator
• Bus/DDR frequency is 166 MHz
  
• 32 KB embedded ROM for boot
• 2 banks of 64 KB embedded SRAM
• 0.5 KB embedded SRAM for back-up
• 4 GB total linear address space
  
• Operating temperature range from -40 to 85 °C

Click here for more information on the STMicro Cartesio.

My GPS usage experience shows that this STMicro Cartesio is performing pretty good.

Switch the Garmin Nuvi GPS to Simulator Mode and vice-versa

The Garmin Nuvi GPS will automatically prompt you an option to switch to Simulator Mode when it is not able to contact with the satellites. Simulator Mode allows you to use the functions of the GPS, such as planning for a route to destination, even when you are indoor and cannot get satellites signal. Simulator Mode is very useful when you want to demo the GPS functions to others.

You can manually set the GPS into Simulator Mode, even when the GPS is able to get ssatellites signal, by going to Tools > Settings > System > GPS Mode and select "GPS Off". The GPS signal strength indicator on the top-left corner of the screen will have a red cross when you are in Simulator Mode.



From the Simulator Mode, you can switch your GPS back to "Normal" mode and start acquiring satellites signal by going to the same setting place.

View the complete route to destination in Garmin Nuvi GPS

After you have set your destination in Garmin Nuvi GPS and before you tap on the "Go" button, you can actually view the complete route that your GPS has calculated by tapping on the "Route Info" area.

You might need some passion to wait for the calculation to complete, and it might take some seconds before the "Route Info" area slide out and appear on the screen.

A map will appear after you tap on the "Route Info" area. The route to your destination will be shown as a magenta line in the map.

You can tap on the [+] button to enlarge the map, drag the map will your finger to scroll the display area.

If you are already in the Map Screen showing your route to destination, you can also reach the above map showing the complete route by first tapping on the green bar which display the current road name on top of the screen, then tap on the "Show Map" button below the next screen.

If you don't like this calculated route, try to adjust your Avoidances setting in Tools > Settings > Navigation > Avoidances. Then try again.

If you still don't like the calculated route, you can also inform the GPS to make a detour.

How to change the current route in Garmin Nuvi GPS

Garmin Nuvi GPS has a "detour" function, which allows you to change to a different route from the current, to go to the same destination you are heading to.

When you are in the map screen, tap on the Menu button will bring you back to the main screen. If you are on the way to a destination, you will be able to see the "Detour" button below "Where to?". Just tap on it to make a detour.

BookFest @ Malaysia 2009 in KLCC now

With the theme of "Reading is Inspiring" (阅读创思维), today (22 August 2009) is the first day of the 4th BookFest @ Malaysia (第四届海外华文书市) organized by Popular Book Co, co-organized by Sin Chew Media Corp and MCA Life Long Learning Secretariat.

It is deemed as one of the largest Chinese and English book exposition held in Southeast Asia, featuring publishers from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Singapore and Malaysia.

This year, it is held in Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre as follow:
Date: 22-31 August 2009
Time: 10am - 10pm
Venue: Hall 1-5, KL Convention Centre
Exhibition area: 100,000 square feet
No. of booths: 500+
Entrance fee: RM2 for general public. Free admission for students 18 years and below and senior citizen who are 60 years and above.

I have just came back from this event. Despite the current fear of influenza A(H1N1), the crowd is still there.

The Chinese book area starts from Hall 5 and the English book area starts from Hall 1. The stage event is in the middle (near to Hall 3). There are also lots of booths displaying and selling stationeries, music CDs, video DVDs, multimedia titles, computer accesories, paper shredders, laminators, digital dictionaries, GPS, digital camera, camcorder, etc.

Speakers to be on stage including Nicholas Teo (张栋梁), Amber Chia (谢丽萍), Angel Wong Chui Ling (王翠玲), Patsie Cheong (张莉婵) and many more.

Accessing system debug info of Garmin Nuvi 255w

I've just discovered another hidden feature in my Garmin Nuvi 255w GPS, which is the system debug info screen. Here is the trick to get there.

In the map screen, touch the left capsule beside the Menu button to open the Trip Computer screen. You'll be able to see a speedometer on the screen. Press and hold your finger at the center of the speedometer for at least 6 seconds, and you'll be able to see the system debug info screen.



All the information shown in the few pages of the system debug info screen are very technical. Interestingly, you'll be able to find out that the Garmin Nuvi GPS navigator can automatically defrag its storage from time to time.



You can just press the Quit button to quit the system debug info screen.

Hard reset Garmin Nuvi 255w GPS to factory default

In the Quick Start Manual of Garmin Nuvi 255w GPS, it stated that you can reset the unit by pressing the RESET button at its bottom. However, the RESET button is not found in my Nuvi 255w.

Additional information in the Owner's Manual stated that if RESET button is not found, slide the POWER key and hold it for more than 8 seconds will do the same, but I found out doing so will go to the touch screen calibration utility instead.

Another section in the Owner's Manual under the title "Clearing User Data" stated that holding your finger on the lower-right corner of the screen while turning on the unit and keeping the finger pressed until a message appear, that will allow you to delete all user-entered information.

I tried it and a message window pops up asking about "Do you really want to erase all user data?". There are 2 buttons to select, Yes or No. If you want to try this, make sure you've backup the data in your unit before answering to Yes.

So is the Clearing User Data be the same function as performing a hard reset to the unit? I don't have the confirmed answer yet.

Customize the speech of Garmin or TomTom GPS (both TTS and non-TTS)

Boring about hearing "recalculating" from your Garmin GPS and wanted to listen to something else, such as "oops, you don't follow my way"?

TurboCCC has come out with some interesting software tools for Garmin GPS users to easily customize the speech of their unit by hacking/modifying into the *.VPM voice files inside the /Garmin/Voice folder.

The tool to be used on Text-to-speech (TTS) voice file is called TTSVoiceEditor, and it can do the following:

• Change speech phrases like "recalculating" to something more enjoyable
• Control voice volume (level)
• Change voice rate (speed)
• Change the voice screen name
• Import/Export speech phrases from/to text files

Click here for more information and download of TTSVoiceEditor.

And to deal with non-TTS file, another tool called NonTTSVoiceEditor is used. It can:

• Split a Garmin VPM file into a serie of WAV files
• Split a TomTom CHK file into a serie of OGG files (Vorbis audio files)
• Preview and play WAV voice samples and phrases
• Merge them back into a VPM file

Click here for more information and download of NonTTSVoiceEditor.

Beside that, there is also a tool for you to replace some sound effects in Garmin GPS, such as during the picture click, the camera in sight dong-dong, the speed alert, etc. This tool will hack into the /Garmin/GUPDATE.GCD file in the GPS. It is called GUpdateMod.

Click here for more information and download of GUpdateMod.

TurboCCC has also produced some other tools such as the Extra_POI_Editor, TTS_Speech_Doctor, TomTom TTS, etc.

Microsoft prohibited from selling MS Word due to patent infringement!

A CNET news today reported about Judge Leonard Davis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas has issued a permanent injunction that "prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML.

In March 2007, the Toronto based plantiff, i4i sued Microsoft alleging that Microsoft voilated its 1998 patent (No. 5,787,449) for a document system that eliminated the need for manually embedded formatting codes.

In May 2009, a federal jury in Tyler, Texas, ruled that the custom XML tagging features of MS Word 2003 and MS Word 2007 infringed on i4i's patent and ordered Microsoft to pay $200 million in the case.

In Tuesday's ruling, Microsoft was also ordered to pay an additional $40 million for willful infringement, as well as $37 million in prejudgment interest. The order requires Microsoft to comply with the injunction within 60 days and forbids Microsoft from testing, demonstrating, or marketing Word products containing the contested XML feature.

I'm sure this will not be the end of the story. Let's see how Microsoft react on this.

Source: CNET News - Judge orders Microsoft to stop selling Word by Steven Musil.

How to set destination using Panoramio photo in Garmin GPS

Do you know that you can interestingly set your destination in Garmin GPS by selecting a photo of the location you want to go? The feature is called Garmin Photo Navigation.



You need to download the Panoramio photos from the Photo Navigation section in the Garmin Connect website at http://connect.garmin.com/photos.

I'll show you how to do that, step-by-step.

Ensure that your Garmin GPS device is connected to your computer with a USB cable, and that you have already installed Garmin Communicator Plugin Software in your computer.

Get your browser to go to the Garmin Connect Photo Navigation website.

You need to sign in your Garmin customer account if you haven't done so.

Look for Panoramio photos in your desired location by searching with the "Find photos" search. For example, key-in "Penang" to find photos around Penang.

You can zoom-in the Google Map to your convenient size. There might be more than one page of photos which you can switch between the pages with the "Photos" pagination bar on top of the Google Map.

Select the photos by click on them one by one. Click on the [+] button of the enlarged (selected) photos to put them in your selection list.

When you have done, click the "Send to Device" button to download the Panoramio photos to your GPS device.

Remember to also contribute some photos taken by you to Panoramio.com website.

The photos will be stored in the /Garmin/JPEG folder of your Garmin GPS device.

Now, switch your attention to your Garmin GPS device and go to "Where to? > Favorites > Panoramio Photos".

Select a photo and click the "Map" or "Go!" button. Have fun!

How to capture screenshots of Garmin Nuvi GPS

One of my reader asked about how I captured the screenshots of my Garmin Nuvi GPS. In fact, it is a built-in feature.

To enable screenshot capturing, go to Tools > Settings > Display > Screen Shot and change the setting from the default "Disabled" to "Enabled". You will then see a camera icon appear on the top right corner of the screen. Tap on it anytime and the screenshot of the current screen will be captured in a *.BMP graphics file stored in the /Garmin/scrn folder of your GPS navigator.

Just connect your GPS to your computer using a USB cable, and your GPS internal memory will be mounted as a remote drive for you to access its content. You can then copy over the screenshot files stored in the /Garmin/scrn folder.

Attended the AGM of ICAP and listened to Tan Teng Boo's talk

I attended the 5th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of iCapital.biz Bhd (ICAP, 5108) today 8-8-2009. This closed-end fund is very considerate to its shareholders to conduct the AGM on Saturday, so that working people don't have to take leave to attend it.

The AGM was held in Mandarin Oriental Hotel at the heart of Kuala Lumpur (KLCC). Hundreds of shareholders (and proxies) have attended the meeting, filling up all the seats. The major attraction is a special talk by Mr. Tan Teng Boo, the fund manager of ICAP, right after the AGM.

Mr. Tan has shared about the latest portfolio of ICAP and his rationale to choose those counters. He is bullish on Parkson's China and Vietnam business, Astro's joint-venture in India, etc. He is even bullish in F&N after their contract with Coca-Cola expired. He shared about his view on the reason of recent worldwide economy crisis, what is the real cause (the Lehman Panic), how will be the recovery process in his opinion, and where are we now. All the points are well supported by facts and figures, which shows that he has done numerous studies on his talking points.

Mr. Tan also enlighten us about the value investing way of stock buy/sell strategy. In the Q&A session, he answered some of the questions from his investors on why ICAP not applying the "cut lost" or "cut gain" strategy normally used by chartists, and how ICAP not trading based on price movement or market timing but based on fundamental studies. He also shared his viewpoint on the Malaysia market, US market, China market, India market, SEA markets, etc. It was really a fruitful discussion between ICAP's investors and the fund manager.

Inside the eco-friendly reuseable door-gift bag are:

• 2 most recent issue of iCapital.biz printed version newsletters (30-7-09 & 6-8-09).
• A nice feminine-shaped pen.
• 30% discount + free gift subscription form to iCapital.biz newsletter.

This 5th AGM of ICAP started at around 10am and ended by around 1.30pm. Mr Tan has taken about 2 hours for his informative talk, and a lot of investors have participated in the Q&A session.

I'm looking forward to attend the next AGM next year.

Click here to read another article about ICAP 5th AGM by another blogger.

Website to download free firmware and map updates for Garmin GPS navigator

Garmin provides free firmware update and maps update (if applicable) for their series of GPS navigator products.

Before you can perform the updates, here are the prerequisites:

• You need a suitable USB cable to connect your Garmin GPS to your computer.
• You need to have internet access.
• You need to create a user account and register your product in the Garmin customer support website.
• You need to download and install the Garmin Communicator Plugin Software to allow Garmin customer support website to be able to communicate with your Garmin GPS via your web browser.

After you login the Garmin customer support website and registered your GPS product, just go to the myDashboard tab and you'll find the section to update your firmware (software) as well as your maps that eligible for update with Garmin.

If your Garmin GPS is a localized Sing/Mal or India product, you can also download the update file from their Singapore customer support website which does not need to create any user account nor install the Garmin Communicator Plugin Software.

• Click here to go to Garmin localized products software update webpage.
• Click here to go to Garmin localized products free map update webpage.

Step by step instruction will be provided on how to perform the update.

Alternatively, you can also perform software update by using the Garmin WebUpdater application. This application will help you perform the update easily in a step-by-step manner.

As normally advised, always backup all the important content in the flash memory of your GPS before you perform any update to the software or to the maps. A copy-and-paste from the GPS flash memory to a folder in your computer will do.

Adding multiple maps in Garmin Nuvi 255w GPS

Theoretically, the Garmin Nuvi GPS navigator can be loaded with hundreds of map. The limit is on the maximum file size (about 2GB per file) and available storage memory.

The maps are stored in specific mapset files with *.img extension in the flash memory of the GPS unit. Each mapset file contains one or many maps in it. Beside that, the Garmin GPS navigator can also recognise and load up one additional mapset file from SD card residing in the "Garmin" folder and named as "gmapsupp.img".

Here are the mapset files supported by Garmin Nuvi 255w GPS navigator:

• gmapbmap.img - the default base map
• gmapprom.img - the primary mapset
• gmapprom1.img - the secondary mapset
• gmapoem.img - the OEM mapset that cannot be unselect by user (if it exist)
• gmapsupp.img - the supplemental mapset which you can have one in the GPS flash memory and another one in the attached SD card.

Therefore, the Garmin Nuvi 255w GPS supports up to 6 mapset files, including 1 in SD card. Normally new maps installed by the user will be stored in gmapsupp.img.

You will lost all the maps in the previous mapset file if it is overwritten by a new file with same filename. If you want to keep the existing maps, ensure that you store the mapset file with an unused filename (from the 5 filenames above). Alternatively, you can make use of special tools to merge new maps into existing mapset file.

You can view the name of your base map in Tools > Settings > System > About > Basemap.

You can view the name of maps in the other mapset files in Tools > Settings > Map > Map Info. There, you can tell the GPS to load the map by checking on its name, or not to use the map by unchecking it.

In case there are 2 or more non-overlaping maps available for the same location, the map with the highest priority number (defined in the map itself) will be used by the GPS.

Note that certain map which are locked by vendor need a 25 bytes unlock key stored in a *.unl file in the same folder and with the same name as the mapset file where the locked map is stored in.

You might probably also interested to read:

• Using GMapTool to combine multiple maps into one mapset file for Garmin GPS
• Using GMapTool with cGPSmapper to convert finalized gmapsupp.img back to MapSource maps