Sales without "sales" items

Consumers want to save money. So, the retailers organize sales. However, there are some problems with sales. If the sales are real, the retailers profit become lesser. If the sales are faked, e.g. by putting up an increased retail price before the discount, then consumers lose trust in the company, and even the whole concept of sales. Another problems is that in general, like the sayings that pay peanuts get monkeys, usually items on offer are not the normal items. It might not be intentional. For example, at clearance sales, as the name suggest, these items were the ones that weren't chosen by earlier customers, which could imply that these were likely not the best ones among the batch of products.

Recently, technology helps to make possible and easy the way to offer cheaper products to selective or a controlled number of customers. The idea of giving/selling discount coupons online. Savings.com is such an example. In this way, as the discount is not for all walk-in customers, you don't expect the products and their displayed retail prices to be difference than during normal days. By controlling the number of coupons given out, the retailers can have good control of their discount budget.

Of course, lets hope no retailers are so free and bad to categorized their products between buyers with and without discount coupons.

Singapore Cyclist Almost Creamed on Clementi Road

Is the number plate GBA 1059X?I stumbled on this via Google Alert, and find it is worth to be spread. So I blogged here, twitted, and forwarded to facebook. Then, someone saw it on facebook and alerted the Traffic Police, and accordingly, they will take action. So, may be more cyclists can mount video cam on their bike or helmet and post such "reality show" up. Not necessarily bad encounters, but also include happy encounters, which I believe are more common.

Wifi missing or disappeared from Omnia II

This seems to be a common problem that many have encountered since some months ago. Lucky and unlucky for me to have experienced it last night. Nowadays we don't call support to listen to a non-technical person reading out standard scripts that don't help. As usual, I went googling for a while, but still need to browse through discussions on this problem but with issues not related to my case, such as due to SKTools. Finally, found someone with the same problem and solved it

Be in command

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

I have not paid any television licensing fees. I do so legally in Singapore by not having a television at home. It isn't because the money, which is not much, but my time and selection of contents. I find it difficult to be in command when there is a television set at home.

In a broadcast setting, I can't decide when to watch, what show to watch, watch again fully or partially, pause for a moment, etc. How about you? Do you want to be in command of when, how and what show to watch? Personally, I like the concept of on demand so that I can be

Work and play. Upsized.

Months have passed since I changed my phone from Nokia N80ie to Samsung Omnia II i8000. Another rather big step just as I had previously moved from Nokia 3250 to N80ie.

My verdict after just using for only a few days still stands today, which is that hardware wise, it is a good phone but Windows Mobile 6.1 OS does not match up to it. Now that Apple iPhone 3GS and Google Nexus One just come out more recently, I feel Omnia II is

Hope you find some advertisements of interest to you

Finally, after so many years using Google Adsense, I experimented and found that really a single click can earn money. Now, I need to figure out how to increase the chance of visitor clicking on the ads.

Bidding for charity

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

Bidazzled seems quite successful from what I see at their site just now. A number of bidders were actively fighting for a 50bids pack at $50 during the last few seconds. In the final minutes of the bidding, the bid price went from about $27 to close at $32.50!

I like its idea that bids are limited. They sell bids. Why do people buy the bids? Other than to bid and buy things at cheaper than retail price, I think it is also for the fun of it, as the phrase on the website says: "entertainment auctions".

What's more attractive to me is that, accordingly, they started off to fund a lung cancer charity (see below). Currently, there is also a promotion until January 15th. I'd like to join once they allow non-US addresses on the sign up page. More information:

Bike Week UK

What a coincidence, Bike Week UK starts tomorrow, and I just stumbled on to this information after I have placed my 2nd order (first order failed due to security measures of PayPal) for a folding bike to ride around during my 3 week (left 2) stay in Manchester.

I wish can I can participate somehow.

Think, what can you sell online?

For US$1, you can buy something homemade...
For US$1, you can buy some homemade jewelry...
For US$1, you can buy homemade jewelry cleaner...
For US$1, you can buy ... Homemade jewelry cleaner solution!

No, it is not a liquid solution because it can be downloaded. You can buy the "rights" to download the solution :)

Post Sponsored by Archmaille Designs.

Another "bay"

Acobay is a brand new and unique social network site. Another idea of networking. Just share your stuffs. List something you know in its categories. I have shared this blog there.

This is what the sharing site says about itself ... :

At Acobay, people share their "stuff" and get connected with each other by the cars they drive, places they visited, movies they love, games they play, and so on. Then they can interact with people of same interest (by a real meaning!) and get personalized recommendation.

Acobay concept is original, and innovative.

Post Sponsored by acobay.

What is screen + connectivity?

I don't want a TV at home. My desktop computer serves not only as its obvious role as my computer, it also serves as my TV, radio, CD/DVD player, and a kind of digital photo "frame". It is easy to configure the screen saver to randomly display photos in your hard disk. However, the booting up of computer system is much slower than most of these devices, and to use a computer for any one or two of the purposes above is overkill. I have my computer on almost 24/7 but this is not environment friendly. Especially unsuitable for the purpose of being a Digital Photo Frame, as I believe ... the display unit is still one of the high power-consuming devices.

I have noticed digital photo frames used in shops to display their products. I believe the benefit of a digital photo frame is quite obvious. I think CEIVA's products are not just digital photo frames, but with its PicturePlan®, it can do more than what normally we think photo frames do.

It can be your photo frame, but need not be showing only your photos because you can allow friends to send you their photos by email directly into your photo frame. This is a multiple input model.

Similarly, you can give your very good friends personal photo frame and send your newly taken photos into these photo frames. This is a multiple output model.

Combining the two we will have multiple input and output model.

Sell your teaching skills online

Many things can be sold online now and I just come across BrightStorm (see ads above) that allows teachers to sell their lessons!

A sudden [small] fortune

This blog has very low traffic, and thus I don't expect much from Google AdSense. Actually, I don't understand the funny spikes of earnings. After many months, actually some years, my earnings is still only $2+. Just recently, with two spikes on
4 and 9 Dec, my earnings shoot up by $0.82 and now it is above $3 :)

GPS + camera + phone + bicycle

... Read the print:

Our bikes for Australia, Singapore and Japan, have not yet arrived but are coming soon!

I want to have it! Actually, I almost have all the parts, my old bike, a solar charger, but N80ie doesn't have GPS :( Anyway, my next phone will have GPS in a few weeks time, hopefully :)

Live casting

Our PM Lee's demostration of live casting during his speech inspired MrBrown to test Qik out, and in turn inspired many, including me to try it out. Only a few poorly captured videos while cycling at my Qik, but hopefully more will come.

I think if Qik can disallow edited videos, then its contents will truly be reality shows.

Help others to help everyone

I think there is a saying, "feed the cow if you want milk". This is what I felt when I look into this service, Zookoda. It is an email marketing application designed specifically for bloggers. Zookoda enables you to send a daily, weekly or monthly summary of your latest blog posts directly into your visitors' inbox.

Now, the important part is: ... it’s all FREE! Is this a free lunch? Isn't there no such thing as a free lunch?

Consider the above phrase, would you charge your cow for the food you provide to it? Thus, I guess that's why it is free. This can be considered as a type of investment. Just as those countries that subsidized heavily for all their citizens to get educated. Here, it is more like a company that is building up an industry, the industry that it is in.

The parent company is into online advertisement, particularly advertising in blogs. With this free tool, it is helping bloggers to improve their blogs readerships, and this translates into an increase in the value of the advertising time and space of the blogs. This should grow their revenue through growing the industry.

More importantly, as bloggers, we can benefit a lot from Zookoda that enables us to:

• Manage email newsletter subscribers
• Enhance your blog with custom newsletter subscription forms
• Design eye-catching newletters to match your blog design
• Schedule recurring broadcasts for each day, week or month
• View real-time open, bounce, click and unsubscribe reports
• Access mobile users by emailing blog content in text format

"Recycling" unwanted items in Dungeon Runners

Before I begin talking about this video game, let me admit that I am super behind time in regards to video games. I can still enjoy those historic ones such as Space Invaders and Galaxies.

One of the most successful game types is MMORPG, massively multiplayer action role-playing games. I believe DOOM is among the very first ones, and the only one that I have my hands on, but ... only for a few minutes. I must also say that I was at a non-graphical terminal of a Mini computer. Nevertheless, I guess I am just not the type to enjoy such games, sorry.

Dungeon Runners is the post-apocalyptic survival MMORPG about one man and his pony. For fans and gamers who like the warm, fuzzy feeling that comes with purchasing a box, Dungeon Runners retail box will be hitting store shelves very soon. Players can access the new Bling Gnome sidekicks¹, that help you collect loot and, ahem, ‘process’ your gold. This magical Bling Gnome eats unwanted items and turns them into gold. Hmmm, this is one of the many things that such games can fulfil players' fantasies that are otherwise impossible in the real world.

Feel free to tell others, including me, how you find the game.

"Dungeon Runners plays better than most pay-to-play MMOs, and therefore deserves attention." — GameDaily

¹ Available only with the boxed version of Dungeon Runners.

Did someone accidentally set their price too high?

My Google Adsense income just passed another small little milestone, now at ... US$2.02. I think I have forgotten to blog about it when it passed the 1 dollar mark.However, it wasn't due to my traffic, but some very highly paying advertisements, and I don't quite understand how did it happen. I mean, did some advertiser accidentally set their pricing wrongly?

How do computers socialize?

Just a couple of days ago, I attended a talk about fMRI and the speaker mentioned the difference between brain and computer. Both have different levels, from quantum mechanics to computer networks in the computer technology, and from biochemistry to sociology, which is about how people relate to each other. However, the main difference is that in computer, each level is affecting mainly its neighboring levels. Whereas in the brain, a cup of coffee triggers some biochemical responses that will affect how a person responds to others subsequently. Also, on listening to a sad piece of news may trigger some biochemical responses.

The era of computer is quite short, yet to reach a century. Yet, there were vast technological improvements in all levels from quantum mechanics and material engineering to architecture, software and computer networks. Unlike the brain, we don't need to know all levels of the computer ... in order to work with it. Currently, even though computer networks have been in lime light since the birth of Internet about two decades ago, this is still a very hot and potential area. Thus, for people interested in walking down an IT career path, this is a very important subject to study.

Cisco certification offers the environment to equip one with knowledge and skills from entry level IP Connectivity, to associate level such as Security, professional level such as Service Provider, expert ones such as Storage Networking, and specialist certifications like Unified Communications.

My basic degree is in computer science. However, I realized a little late that you don't have to be a computer scientist to ride on the then uprising IT industry. Yet, holding on to one certification is not enough. The continuously changing IT industry requires one to be always learning. At this moment, and in the many years to come, I believe knowledge on how computers socialize -- computer network technologies, is very valuable.

Being different has a price

Someone called kishore who is interested in collecting new cracked mobile softwares for nokia mobiles invited me to visit his blog on s60v3 applications. Happily I paid a visit there but sadly I read about an online TV application that supports on all NOKIA N-SERIES mobiles with resolution 240x320. And supports on N95, N93 and N82.

What!!! N80 is not supported? If it was due to older model, I am fine with that. However, it was about ... resolution, and not that N80 has a lower resolution. Instead, N80 has a higher but too uniquely kind of resolution: 352x416. First I encounter this was the application pfingo, and now this!

I don't think it is difficult to make such applications work on a higher resolution, but I know it is not about technical difficulty. It is more about commercial profitability.