Diversifying Ruined

How do you determine whether its the HP or notebook battery industry that have better technology? Look at their charging/usage time ratio.

Nice, I called to terminate my Starhub MaxOnline few days ago. The CSO said they will call me back few days later to confirm. I thought they were trying to formulate an offer I could not resist (Which obviously is hard. When I have decided something with regards to IT, most likely I have done a reasonable amount of due diligence and you think those majority ignorant sales person able to persuade me?)

And so few days went pass - not a single day without youtube buffering of course - I received a call today. Without second guess, it was from their terminating department trying to persuade me to stay. What was their tool? This is the best thing. They gave me an offer that is EXACTLY the same as the one advertised on their PUBLIC domain i.e. an offer that is available is every peter, john and larry on the street. So much so for being a hub club member for years.

No prize for guessing correct the action I took.

My Starhub notebook has been doing straight line depreciation for the past 2 years until recently it has switched to the double declining method to my horror. I genuinely believe it is due to wear and tear of the hardware inside because.... see the description of the blogger at the top of the page. And all the slowness is really not help by my ISP SLOWHUB!

IN Singapore, more than 600 million pages of bills and envelopes are sent out to households, costing billing companies more than $50 million annually.

As expected, these usually end up in the waste bin or thrown into a pile of already-viewed bills. Studies show that only 5 per cent of Singaporeans have switched to checking their bills electronically. The rest receive their bills the conventional way by post.

However, with the public growing more tech-savvy and environmentally conscious, this trend may change soon.

For years, organisations have been grappling with the cost of sending paper bills to their customers, especially for those who bill on a regular basis such as telcos, utility companies and banks.

While each paper bill's cost ranges from 70 cents to $2.65, the total runs into millions spent each year after factoring in the cost of paper, printing, postage, equipment and labour.

Because of this, some companies have introduced online portals, allowing users to assess bills electronically. Unfortunately, the rate of adoption by the Singapore public has been low, which is surprising considering more than 80 per cent use the Internet for day-to-day transactions.

Why is this so? Firstly, each company has its own online portal, which customers must log in to retrieve their bill information. As most households receive at least five to 10 bills a month, it takes considerable time and patience to log into different portals, and remember separate login IDs and passwords, especially when the billing cycles are different.

Another factor is human nature. It is always difficult to convince people to change from what they are comfortable with, especially when the existing system remains in place. Furthermore, companies do not actively encourage their customers to opt out of receiving paper bills.

What many do not realise is the potential of deploying such a system. Even if just a fifth of Internet users were to view their bills electronically, this would translate to saving 134 million pages and 16,000 trees annually. As paper bills are widely used not only in B2C business segments but also in B2B markets, online portals have the potential of reaching out and catering to the needs of these segments.

Seeing the commercial potential and societal benefits of electronic bills, one start-up company is developing a solution to solve these problems. Supported by NUS Enterprise, GreenBills Pte Ltd has built a common platform, which aggregates bills from different companies.

Called GreenPost, this platform allows users to view their bills through a single online portal. It aggregates bills from M1, SingTel, StarHub and Singapore Power. GreenBills is also developing a 'paper opt out' mechanism, so users can choose the environmentally friendly option of saving paper once they are comfortable with viewing bills online. Other benefits of the portal include email alerts for new bills or overdue payments, downloadable PDF-version bills and unlimited archival of bills.

More.

Ash tray anyone?

Been quite some time since I last posted about technology stuff ever since I left this field (of studying). Anyway, my source of this technology news came from the unexpected The Business Times lol.

Creative has launched Singapore's first wireless speakers system using bluetooth. Called Creative Inspire S2, it allows notebook, phone etc to play music via a bluetooth connection to the system. How cool is that? Dump the cables!

WHILE most children his age sketch on paper with crayons, nine-year old Lim Ding Wen from Singapore, has a very different canvas - his iPhone.

Woke up at 9am with Bella, we kicked off our Sunday by sending my dad to his workplace at Pasir Ris before driving to Sitex @ Expo. Thinking that there would be car park lots before Sitex opened at 11am, we found ourselves needed to drive to Simei MRT's nearby carpark before taking a train down to Expo (argh).

Left: Bella with her super big Sushi breakfast
Right: Not allowed any breakfast by Bella, I could only watch her munching off her breakfast wahhaa j/k

Bought this MSI Wind U100 for Sister ($739)

The 19" Samsung 943BWX for Sister @ $209


Casio Exilim EX-S10 for Bella @ $399 (Bella even got a name for it! haha)

Bella fell asleep on my bed halfway doing through her work. Waking her up at 8pm, we went off to fetch my dad for dinner. Dad suggested eating seafood at Changi Village.

Left: Ubin First Stop Restaurant
Right: "Ah-Zhar"

"Gim bar lor" in deep fried soya sauce (Nice!)


Left: Samba Kang Kong (Not good)
Right: Spring Onion Black Pepper Pork (Nice!)

Bamboo Clam (Not good)


Black Pepper... pronounced as "crape" (If you want to listen to the pronounication, ask Bella to say it :P)

Refer to the URL above for the pricelists of various vendors at IT Show. Note, it will be updated continuously even down to the last dying hours at Sitex. :)

This is way too cool! While some countries have law prohibiting the unconsented filming of an individual on property for the purpose of public display, I am not sure if Singapore do have this type of law as well. Any lawyers here?

As told by my friend (forgot who.. shit..i have short-term memory), he spotted a google vehicle on the street of Singapore with a 360 degrees camera mounted on top. Well, if you have spotted one, perhaps one of the things you can do are...

1) Say hi to the camera
2) Cover your face if you do not want your face to be on public domain (while Google mentioned that they have did a face blurring for those affected, some web sites have shown that it has not been implemented with precision.)
3) Snap back at the camera
4) Take a photo with the google crew if you can or even with the google vehicle itself!
5) Come back here and tell me :)

Anyone interested in sharing a 1 month premium Megaupload account? Might be downloading the whole series of Drive of Life from there.

For those who been to JobStreet will heard or saw the name Lina very frequently at their web site. Now, who the hell is Lina exactly? This question pops out while I was searching for their list of jobs. Then I asked my good friend Google.

As efficiently as before, it only took Google less than 5 sec to give me the answer.

Who is LiNa?
LiNa is your personal career agent at JobStreet.com who assists jobseekers like you in finding jobs.

And if you really like a job that LiNa sends you, just apply online with ease. Over 3.5 million jobseekers have already signed up for this free service!

They even got a picture for Lina! Nice!

Downloaded the much anticipated Firefox 3 yesterday night while watching the last 30min of the game between France and Italy. Yes, I woke up at 4am instead of 2.45am cause none of my readers (Yes you!) give me the much needed call. (=D)

Not too sure when they will be closing the tracking of the download counts as they started the campaign at 10am in their local time. Anyway, you can still have a go at it by clicking on the cute Firefox logo on the right of my blog.

Previously mentioned on my blog here that Mozilla will be trying to set a new Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24hours. Well, a blink of eyes here we are. 17th June 08. However, I got the information from their forum that they will only release the software at 10am, their local time. This is equivalent to 1am Singapore local time (GMT+8).

This is kind of disappointing as I was looking forward to download it when the time strike pass midnight on their time zone which is our afternoon time. Nevertheless, I shall download it when I woke up to catch the match between France and Italy tonight at 2.45am. Hopefully I am able to wake up on time. This is your chance to disturb me in the middle of the night. I welcome any calls between 2.30am to 2.45am. Do note that I have some change to my mobile number. Remember to add two "9" in front before dialing my mobile number. =D

Cheers.