Live traffic condition updates in Twitter by Malaysian Highway Authority (Lembaga Lebuhraya Malaysia, LLM)

In this festive season, a lot of us are taking a long break and travelling back to hometown or going on vacation. It is anticipated that the traffic volume on PLUS highway will increase tremendously.

Do you know that you can check the live highways traffic condition updates in Twitter by Malaysian Highway Authority (Lembaga Lebuhraya Malaysia, LLM)? The landing page is http://twitter.com/#!/LLMinfotrafik.

Its gonna be very handy and convenient for you if you can access Twitter with your smartphone, like this:

Also, Twitter loads much faster than the LLM Traffic website (http://www.llmtrafik.gov.my/), another place for you to check the highway traffic conditions.

You can also make a call to 1800887752 (7am - 10pm) for live traffic update.

May your journey be safe and smooth. Enjoy your holiday!

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Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple

The day has come, and Steve Jobs had officially tendered his resignation to the BOD of Apple as CEO and recommended his right-hand man Tim Cook as his successor.

Well, he is still with Apple, as the Chairman of the Board, and very likely to continue his contribution as the mastermind of innovative Apple products that make significant impact to the world.

Steve Jobs has a legendary life. He was a dropped out student of Oregon's Reed College just after 1 semester. He made his girlfriend pregnant when he was 23. He is a natural food lover who embraced Buddhism and New Age philosophy, and had once been in a spiritual trek to India. He met Wozniak during his summer job in HP. He and Wozniak then built Apple 1 in the garage, and made a fortune with the next version of this computer, namely Apple II. He made another hit with Macintosh, the 1st computer with mouse and GUI OS. That made him a multimillionaire by age of 25. He brought in John Sculley from Pepsi to Apple, who then made him ousted from his own company in 1986. He then founded NeXT and bought Pixar from George Lucas. Pixar then got famous with Toy Story and continued to produce great animation movies one by one. NeXT was bought over by Apple and Jobs was back to revive Apple with iPod, followed by iTunes, iMac, Macbook, iPhone, iPad, etc. He was hit by cancer and after treatments, still survive until today.

In Apple, Jobs is well-known to be a boss that is extremely harsh, and yet people in the world love this perfectionist for pushing his engineers to produce great products one after another.

Apple never invent computers, digital music players or smartphones, but Jobs successfully reinvented them to be trendy gadgets. "It's more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy", said Jobs in a retreat in 1982.

Download the new Android Market version 3.1.3 for smartphones

If you have a smartphone running on Android 2.2 (Froyo) or Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), I recommend you to upgrade your Android Market to the latest version 3.1.3. This is the new release, more recent than the previous Android Market 3.0.26 / 3.0.27.

You can download the APK file of this new Android Market 3.1.3 from any of the links listed here:

• Location 1
• Location 2
• Location 3

You don't need root access to upgrade your Android Market to this new version. Same as the other APK installation, you'll need to enable "Unknown sources" installation in the phone's Settings > Applications.

This is how the new Android Market 3.1.3 looks like.

Its starting page is the Featured list. It has separate navigation listing for Top  Paid, Top Free, Top Grossing, Top New Paid, Top New Free and Trending. You can filter the listing by Categories and the result will be listed accordingly.

The Android Market 3.1.3 introduced Google's +1 feature, so you can +1 the apps you like.

Press the Menu button of your Android phone, and select My Apps to view the listing of the apps installed in your phone.

Another remarkable new feature in Android Market 3.1.3 is the PIN setting security for making purchases. You might be aware that previous versions of Android Market will let you make purchase of new apps with your Google Checkout account just by tapping on the Purchase button. If you let other people use or play with your phone, you have to be alerted that they can open the Market app and start purchasing paid apps using your account. Now, if you have set a PIN and locked down the purchase function with your PIN, that danger won't simply happen anymore.

Note: If you have an Android tablet running on Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), this Android Market 3.1.3 upgrade might not be applicable to your device.

The new Sunway (5211) after the merger

The new Sunway is expected to be listed in KLSE on Tuesday 23 August 2011 with the new stock code of 5211 under the Properties sector of the main board.

The will mark the completion of the merging exercise of SunCity (6289, Properties sector) and old Sunway (4308, Construction sector), resulting in a total of 1,292,505,004 Sunway ordinary shares and 258,501,000 Sunway warrants (exercise price RM2.80, expires on 17 August 2016) issued and listed.

According to its Prospectus dated 18 August 2011, the key financial data of the new Sunway for FYE Dec 2010 is as follow:

Revenue: RM3.134 billion
Gross profit: RM1.058 billion (margin: 33.8%)
Operating profit: RM592.142 million
PBT: RM717.267 million (margin: 22.9%)
PAT: RM997.483 million (margin: 31.8%)
Cash on hand: RM856.193 million
Debts: RM2.332 billion
Total equity: RM2.982 billion
Total liability: RM4.403 billion

EPS: 53.3 sen
Fully diluted EPS: 44.4 sen
NTA: RM2.01

Current ratio: 1.5
Gross gearing ratio: 0.9
Net gearing ratio: 0.6

Note that the PAT is higher than PBT for FYE 2010 due to reversal of deferred tax liability pursuant to the sale of certain properties to Sunway REIT.

And according to the unaudited FYE 2011 Q1 result announced in KLSE on 16 August 2011, the 1st quarter result is as below:

Revenue: RM833.711 million (26.6% of last year annual revenue)
PBT: RM79.219 million (11% of last year annual PBT)
PAT: RM88.921 million (8.9% of last year annual PAT)
Cash on hand: RM961.822 million (up by RM105.63 million or 12.34%)
Debts: RM2.328 billion (reduced by 4 million)
Total equity: RM3.079 billion (up by RM97 million or 3.25%)
Total liability: RM4.15 billion (reduced by RM253 million or 5.75%)

EPS: 5.28 sen (9.9% of last year EPS)
Fully diluted EPS: 4.4 sen (9.9% of last year diluted EPS)
NTA: 2.07 (up by 6 sen or 2.99%)

Unbilled sales: RM1.7 billion
Total order book: RM2.4 billion

Note that Sunway has just recently been awarded the Package B of Kelana Jaya line LRT extension project worth RM569 million, which will push their total order book to RM3 billion and above.

Disclaimer: This article is intended for sharing of point of view only. It is not an advice or recommendation to buy or sell any of the mentioned stock counters. You should do your own homework before trading in Bursa Malaysia.

Google to buy over Motorola Mobility for $12.5b

It seems that the patent lawsuits among Google and its competitors have extended into some eye popping M&A activities.

Despite losing up in the contest for Nortel (which carries 6000+ wireless technology patents) to the joint alliance formed by Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, RIM and Sony, Google managed to increase its bargaining chips by snapping up 1000+ patents from IBM in late July 2011. And now, out of a sudden surprise, Google announced its move to acquire Motorola Mobility which carries 17000+  issued patents worldwide and 7500+ pending patents under application process.

Beside gaining a large amount of patents through this $12.5b exercise, by acquiring Motorola Mobility, Google will also move into Android phone hardware manufacturing business and compete with its partners in the Android alliance including Samsung, HTC, LG, etc. Anyhow, Larry Page calmed his fellow Android partners that this acquisition will not change Google commitment to run Android as an open platform, and that Motorola will be run as a separate business.

What impact has this move on the Android community and the entire smartphone market? Time will tell. Hopefully, it will bring more good than bad.

Click here to read the announcement made by Larry Page about the Motorola Mobility acquisition.

Using inSSIDer and WiFi Analyzer to scan wireless networks around you

Do you want to know what are the active WiFi networks around you, together with the detail of their signal strength, maximum bandwidth, and connection security setting? Do you want to search for WiFi networks with open security?

If you encounter connection and/or bandwidth problem with your own WiFi, do you want to know which is the best available wireless channel to have least disruption from other wireless networks around you?

inSSIDer is a free open source tools for PC running on Windows or Linux to scan for all nearby wireless networks and to troubleshoot competing access points. It is best used in a laptop with WiFi capability. It provides detail of the wireless network around you as shown below.

With it, you can look for unoccupied WiFi channel to set for your own WiFi network, in order not to compete with the others. If you compete the same channel with other access points, you will possibly encounter poor wireless speeds and even frequent WiFi network disconnection.

If you have an Android device (eg. smartphone or tablet), there is a similar tool for the mobile device called WiFi Analyzer. WiFi Analyzer even has a Channel Rating feature to suggest for least competed channel to get the optimum WiFi stability and speed.

If you install the open source WiFi Connecter Library together with WiFi Analyzer, you add in the ability for WiFi Analyzer to connect to the WiFi network that you tap on its listing. This will make WiFi Analyzer to be a nice GUI tool for you to pick for the WiFi network you want to connect.

Disabling WiFi function of Unifi D-Link DIR-615 router

By default, the WiFi wireless function of the D-Link DIR-615 router that comes with TM Unifi High Speed Broadband is turned on.

If you are not going to use WiFi wireless for your network connection, you can turn it off to eliminate the WiFi radiation around you that is emitted by your D-Link DIR-615 router. This will also eliminate any possibility of intruder gain access to your network via WiFi connection. In addition, this will also free up some CPU cycles and memory resources in the D-Link DIR-615 router to serve its other functions.

Here are the steps to diable the WiFi function of the D-Link DIR-615 router that comes with TM Unifi HSBB:

• Login the router with "admin" or "operator".
• Go to Setup tab and click on the "Manual Internet Connection Setup" button.
• Go to Wireless Setup and click on the "Multiple Wireless Network Name Setup" button.
• Uncheck and also clear out all the fields in Wireless Network Name, then click the "Save Settings" button.

• You are not done yet. Click the Reboot button to restart the router.
• By now, the WiFi should be turned off. You can see the WiFi indicator light on the D-Link DIR-615 front panel is turned off.

If the WiFi indicator light is still on, your WiFi is not off yet. Check if you have missed out any of the steps above.