Forget apps, old-school mobiles ring in a comeback

May 27, 2014

Forget apps, video calls and smiley faces, handsets like the Nokia 3310 or the Motorola StarTec 130 allows just basic text messaging and phone calls.

They fit in a pocket, have batteries that last all week and are almost indestructible: old-school Nokias, Ericssons and Motorolas are making a comeback as consumers tired of fragile and overly-wired smartphones go retro.

Forget apps, video calls and smiley faces, handsets like the Nokia 3310 or the Motorola StarTec 130 allows just basic text messaging and phone calls.

But demand for them is growing and some of these second-hand models are fetching prices as high as 1,000 euros a piece.

“Some people don’t blink at the prices, we have models at more than 1,000 euros. The high prices are due to the difficulty in finding those models, which were limited editions in their time,” said Djassem Haddad, who started the site vintagemobile.fr in 2009.

Haddad had been eyeing a niche market, but since last year, sales have taken off, he said.

Over the past two to three years, he has sold some 10,000 handsets, “with a real acceleration from the beginning of 2013″.

“The ageing population is looking for simpler phones, while other consumers want a second cheap phone,” he said.

Among the top-sellers on the website is the Nokia 8210, with a tiny monochrome screen and plastic buttons, at 59.99 euros.

Ironically, the trend is just starting as the telecommunications industry consigns such handsets to the recycling bins, hailing smartphones as the way ahead.

Finnish giant Nokia, which was undisputedly the biggest mobile phone company before the advent of Apple’s iPhone or Samsung’s Galaxy, offloaded its handset division to Microsoft this year after failing to catch the smartphone wave.

But it was probably also the supposedly irreversible switch towards smartphone that has given the old school phone an unexpected boost.

‘Back to basics’


For Damien Douani, an expert on new technologies at FaDa agency, it is simply trendy now to be using the retro phone.

There is “a great sensation of finding an object that we knew during another era – a little like paying for vintage sneakers that we couldn’t afford when we were teenagers,” Douani told AFP.

There is also “a logic of counter-culture in reaction to the over-connectedness of today’s society, with disconnection being the current trend.”

“That includes the need to return to what is essential and a basic telephone that is used only for making phone calls and sending SMSes,” he added.

It is also about “being different. Today, everyone has a smartphone that looks just like another, while ten years ago, brands were much more creative”.

It is a mostly high-end clientele that is shopping at French online shop Lekki, which sells “a range of vintage, revamped mobile phones”.

“Too many online social networks and an excess of email and applications, have made us slaves to technology in our everyday life. But Lekki provides a solution, allowing a return to basic features and entertainments,” it said on its website.

A Motorola StarTac 130 — a model launched in 1998 — and repainted bright orange was recently offered for 180 euros, while an Ericsson A2628 with gold coloured keys for 80 euros.

“We have two types of profiles: the 25 to 35 year-olds attracted by the retro and offbeat side of a telephone that is a little different, and those who are nostalgic for the phone that they used when they were younger,” said Maxime Chanson, who founded Lekki in 2010.

“Some use it to complement their smartphone, but others are going for the vintage, tired of the technology race between the phone makers.”
- AFP Relaxnews 

Renting headaches inspired property website

Renting headaches inspired property website

The property rental website 99.co was founded by (from left) Mr Conor Mclaughlin, Mr Ruiwen Chua, Mr Anuj Bheda and (far right) Mr Darius Cheung. Mr David Yap (second from right) is part of the website’s team.

 

Digital Life, The Straits Times

Monday, May 26, 2014

 

Serial entrepreneur Darius Cheung, 33, gets all of his start-up ideas from personal hurdles that he has had to overcome.

His latest start-up, 99.co, is a rental site which carries listings from landlords looking for tenants, and covers both private and HDB properties. After many painstaking searches for a place to rent over the years, he said he yearned for a site which would simplify the search through online classifieds.

Mr Cheung was 13 when he came to Singapore on a scholarship from Hong Kong. He has lived in rented homes for the past 20 years. "Searching for a place to rent is not a great experience and searching online is inefficient," he said.

Some online sites carry duplicate listings and bogus ones, he said, because landlords and agents post listings on multiple websites in order to gauge how the market reacts.

"People try to game the market and it's very frustrating for tenants," he said.

When Mr Cheung set up 99.co with three partners, they sank in about $300,000 of their own money.

They chose the name because nine in Chinese symbolises longevity.

"By helping customers find their best home, 99.co wishes everyone longevity," he said. They have also registered the name in Chinese.

Their company's aim is to improve the search process.

They decided that it was worth the effort to manually verify and refresh listings to ensure that each is legitimate and unique.

They send a photographer to each address to take pictures of the place to give potential
tenants an accurate idea of what they are about to rent. It is labour intensive and it takes time, but it is worth it, said Mr Cheung.

After about half a year of work, the site now boasts 2,000 unique listings.

This is like how Airbnb runs its online rental service, he said. Both renters and property owners must register profiles on the site and their reputations online matter a lot.

Users with dodgy profiles are far less likely to connect with other users. The system encourages good behaviour and discourages fraud.

"Yes, we take a lot of inspiration from Airbnb. We're like a long-term Airbnb, I guess," he said.

"They do a lot of education work, teaching people how to be a good host, and how to take photos for their listings," he said of the added level of detail Airbnb puts into its working process with property owners.

This is Mr Cheung's third start-up. His first was launched not long after he graduated from the National University of Singapore (NUS) with an electrical engineering degree.

He joined the NUS Overseas College programme, which took him to Silicon Valley, where he interned with an interactive marketing team for half a year. Then in 2005, he started TenCube, a mobile security firm, with two other engineers.

The idea for that, he said, came from losing his own phone and realising he needed to secure the data in the device remotely.

"It was a specific idea that we were convinced had value. We were probably in the right place at the right time, because more people were starting to carry (expensive) smartphones, as well," he said.

In 2010, TenCube was sold to the anti-virus giant McAfee, which renamed it WaveSecure.

The whole team went to McAfee as well. Mr Cheung worked there for 18 months, before the start-up bug bit again, and he left to start BillPin.

This service allows people to split bills among friends and keep track of payments more easily.

"It started because it was a need I had when I was in my mid-20s, when a lot of activities I did, such as having group meals, needed an easy way for me to split the expenses," he said.

Unlike TenCube, BillPin did not get sold to a bigger company and the team decided to move on.

The service had acquired 100,000 active users by then, but the team decided there was a ceiling to its potential.

Such a service works for a specific age group and bill splitting tapers off once people hit their 30s, explained Mr Cheung.

"People either grow out of a group activity lifestyle, or they aren't splitting bills as frequently," he said.

BillPin did not evolve into a payments company.

They had hoped it would after it attracted a sizeable base of users willing to transact on the platform, but they realised it would never become PayPal. "PayPal does payments better and on a much larger scale as well," he said.

With three other BillPin founders - Mr Ruiwen Chua, 31, Mr Anuj Bheda, 24, and Mr Conor Mclaughlin, 25 - he moved on to 99.co. "We gave Billpin a serious shot and it was a clear decision to move on," he said.

They got cracking on 99.co at the start of the year and just announced a $700,000 injection from venture capital firms East Ventures, 500 Startups and Golden Gate Ventures.

They plan to grow 99.co into a property listing site with Airbnb-style emphasis on user reputations to give it an edge over the competition. Providing an interface which connects renters and property owners directly will be that edge, they think.

Unlike with TenCube, Mr Cheung is not setting up 99.co to be acquired so soon. "I hope I can build something meaningful in order for the company to be a good place to work at. It underscores my attachment to this city," he said.

As for his next start-up idea, he said ideas percolate all the time when he thinks about hurdles he faces.

He pointed to writings from the famed computer programmer Paul Graham: "People understand problems that they face themselves, and that's the pattern I follow when I think about new start-ups to create."
 

Online courses increasing in popularity

Online courses increasing in popularity

A student from Shanghai Jiaotong University watches a video lecture from an online education platform called "Nanyang Academy" via his iPad in April. The university currently offers lectures for 42 courses on its website - more than 1,000 hours of instruction.

 

China Daily/Asia News Network

Monday, May 26, 2014

 

CHINA - When Zhang Yang went on maternity leave last April, she also signed up for an online learning course. While looking after her 1-year-old takes up most of her time now, Zhang is happy to continue her online classes in art history with Peking University.

"I've found the course quite fascinating as I also took the subject in college," she said. "Plus, class discussions can be quite interesting because sometimes you discuss the topics with people from different parts of the world."

Massive Open Online Courses - which involve widespread participation and open access through the Internet - were initiated in the West. However, users in China now form one of the largest student groups.

On April 29, 2014, the Ministry of Education set up its xuetangX.com online education centre under Tsinghua University. This online course platform is based on edX, which was jointly established by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2012.

Tsinghua University started to work with and provide courses to edX in May 2013, and launched its first series of online courses in October. So far, the university has provided 25 online courses, first through its own website and now through xuetangX.com. The platform has more than 120, 000 registered users.

"At first we started edX as a completely free online courses platform as we aim to promote free and good quality education for all to promote education equality," said Kathy Pugh, vice-president of edX.

The platform now has 2.2 million learners worldwide. About 60,000 of them are from China.
Pugh said edX started to offer courses that require tuition fees in September 2013. Now, about 2 to 7 per cent of its clients pay for courses through edX.

"We believe that there is a market for people who study for a verified certificate and are willing to pay for it, ranging from $25 to $250," Pugh said. "Students who take the for-fee option clearly have better expectations and want to get more hands-on experience."

Liu Wenbo, general manager of MOOC-CN Information Technology Ltd, the company that produces xuetangX.com, believes many more people are willing to pay for MOOC courses and certification.

"The percentage from the edX statistics is low because it costs people nothing to register a course on edX. Personally, I think if you ask those who keep an eye on particular courses, I believe more than half of them would be willing to pay for a certificate. The tuition doesn't cost much after all," Liu said.

The company started to run xuetangX.com in cooperation with Tsinghua University in October 2013. Liu said that the company had not considered profit at that time.

"But now we are considering this, because we've done certain market research and there is a market for universities in China," he said.

Liu said one way of making such profits is to rent certain courses to universities in China that are willing to open particular courses but are not fully prepared to offer them in traditional classrooms.

"There is a large demand for this coming from second-tier universities," he said.

The MOOC platform started getting popular in China less than three years ago but Liu believes MOOC certificates will particularly benefit those who learn "emerging" subjects such as Internet finance.

"Such subjects are emerging and it takes a long time for traditional classrooms to grant a certificate like this," Liu said.

"So we can do it in cyberspace."

How miserable are Malaysians?

May 22, 2014

Malaysia is in the top 10 least miserable countries in the world and how accurate is this study?

 

By Caitlyn Ng

If a study done by Economic Intelligence Unit is anything to go by; Malaysians are apparently not very miserable. But how is this study done? Arthur Okun, a distinguished American economist, ‘misery’, as it were, could actually be measured with direct links to inflation and unemployment. He developed the original misery index for the United States only, taking the sum of the inflation and unemployment rates to create it. This, he felt, could adequately tell us how miserable the people in a country were.

Fast forward to the late 2000s and you see Steve Hanke, a Johns Hopkins University economist, expand upon the original index in order to include other countries outside USA. For the updated version, he took the data for each country exclusively from the Economist Intelligence Unit and thus, it became the economic indicator which assumed that both a higher rate of unemployment and a worsening of inflation will create economic and social costs for any country.

Taking a look at the global index, it’s easy to see that for most people, their quality of life is important. Constituents prefer lower inflation rates, lower unemployment rates, lower lending rates, and higher GDP per capita. That sounds like a perfect country but in reality is near impossible to satisfy all qualities. Which is why on “The Best” list, you will still see the major contributing factors as to what makes the citizens a little upset (not as much misery as those on “The Worst” list of course!) along with the current rates.

Note: The misery index score is the sum of the unemployment rate, the lending rate, and the inflation rate (consumer prices; end-of-period) minus the percent change in real GDP per capita. Only countries where all four data series were available from the Economist Intelligence Unit were included in this index.

The most miserable countries

Ranking (The Worst)	Country	Misery Index	Major Contributing Factor	Current Figures
1	Venezuela	79.4	Consumer Prices	56. 2%
2	Iran	61.6	Consumer Prices	39.3%
3	Serbia	44.8	Unemployment	20.8%
4	Argentina	43.1	Consumer Prices	44.0%
5	Jamaica	42.3	Interest Rate	10.6%
6	Egypt	38.1	Unemployment	11.9%
7	Spain	37.6	Unemployment	25.2%
8	South Africa	37.4	Unemployment	25.0%
9	Brazil	37.3	Interest Rate	29.7%
10	Greece	36.4	Unemployment	24.2%

 
The least miserable countries

Ranking (The Best)	Country	Misery Index	Major Contributing Factor	Current Figures
1	Japan	5.41	Unemployment	3.6%
2	Taiwan	6.13	Unemployment	4.03%
3	Singapore	6.38	Interest Rate	3.2%
4	Republic of Korea	6.77	Interest Rate	4.4%
5	Thailand	6.83	Interest Rate	5.7%
6	Qatar	7.39	Interest Rate	0.9%
7	Malaysia	7.88	Interest Rate	4.0%
8	China	7.90	Real GDP Growth	7.8%
9	Panama	8.24	Interest Rate	2.2%
10	Norway	8.75	Unemployment	3.5%

So how accurate is this study?

How happy are you in Malaysia (since we’re in the top ten for happy)?

Caitlyn Ng is an Investigative Journalist of SaveMoney.my, an online consumer advice portal which aims to help Malaysians save money through smart (and most of the time painless) savings in their daily banking, technology, and lifestyle spending habits.

'Malaysia among the worst places to work’

'Malaysia among the worst places to work’

May 22, 2014

Workers' rights in Malaysia are not guaranteed, reports the International Trade Union Confederation.

PETALING JAYA: According to an international trade union coalition, Malaysia does not guarantee workers’ rights.

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has ranked Malaysia as among the worst places in the world to work in its debut report, Global Rights Index which was made public on Monday.

ITUC is an international confederation of national trade union centres with 325 affiliated organisations in 161 countries.

It ranked the best countries as 1 and the worst as 5. Malaysia was ranked as number 5 along with 23 other countries.

In the South East Asia region Singapore scored the highest ranking with number 3. Indonesia, Myanmar, and Thailand were ranked 4 while Philippines and Cambodia were ranked 5 respectively.

According to the report, countries ranked number 5 do not guarantee workers’ rights.

These countries have legislation that spells out rights but workers do not have access to these rights and are exposed to unfair labour practices and autocratic regimes.

There are also countries that are given 5+ rankings. These countries do not guarantee workers rights due to breakdown in the rule of law.

There are dysfunctional institutions due to internal conflicts. South Sudan and Syria are among them.

Countries like Norway and Uruguay that are ranked 1 have irregular cases of rights violation though its collective labour rights are guaranteed. Workers in these countries can defend their collective rights through collective bargaining.

Countries ranked 2 have repeated violations of rights. It has slightly weaker collective labour rights as certain rights are under constant attack by governments and companies.

Countries where governments and companies regularly interfere in collective labour rights and fail in guaranteeing important aspects of workers rights are given a ranking of 3. Canada and Israel are among some which fall within this category.

Tokyo tops list of best city travel experiences

May 22, 2014

Travellers who’ve visited Tokyo are more likely to sing its praises and leave with memories of positive experiences of their trip compared to other cities around the world, particularly in categories like cleanliness, hospitality and friendliness.

Tokyo has emerged as the top city for overall travel experience, according to a newly released survey that asked globetrotters to rate destinations across categories such as culture, shopping, restaurants and hospitality.

In TripAdvisor’s second annual Cities Survey, the bustling Japanese capital outranked New York and Barcelona, receiving high marks across the board from more than 54,000 global survey responses collected last year.

Travelers who’ve visited Tokyo are more likely to sing its praises and leave with memories of positive experiences of their trip compared to other cities around the world, particularly in categories like cleanliness, hospitality and friendliness, taxi service and local public transportation where the city took the top spot.

Overall, Tokyo made the top 10 ranking in 13 of 16 categories in the survey.

After Tokyo, New York also ranked favorably among TripAdvisor users, who gave the city top marks for its dining and nightlife scene and shopping.

Where the city failed to make a good impression was in categories like the friendliness of taxi drivers and value for money: in both groups, the city plummets to 30th position.

Other highlights:
Solo travelers may want to consider Singapore, which was ranked the top city for traveling alone in comfort, while Rome was voted the best city for culture.

And shopaholics and travelers accustomed to the lap of luxury may want to add Dubai to their itinerary, which topped the category for shopping and hotels.

Here are the top 10 cities for travel, according to a TripAdvisor survey:


1. Tokyo
2. New York
3. Barcelona
4. Istanbul
5. Prague
6. Vienna
7. Berlin
8. Rome
9. Paris
10. Dubrovnik

From WeChat to WeBed: Next generation of online hookups

Report from The Heat (Malaysia) dated 29 March 2014 :-

From WeChat to WeBed: Next generation of online hookups



 KUALA LUMPUR: Sam is looking for a hot date. But the 24-year-old student from a private university isn’t “putting his moves on” at a night club or a café. Instead, he keeps his eyes on his smartphone.

He spots his target on screen – a pretty girl, judging by her profile picture.

She is alone and she has deliberately allowed herself to be discovered through her mobile device.

He sends her a message. “Hi, how are you?” he begins.

He would follow it with small talk and trivial conversation.

Eventually, the topic turns to sex.

A week later, they check into a hotel room together.

Sam is just one of the many people who have turned to their smartphone applications for a quick and easy date.

The particular app here is WeChat, a popular instant messaging app from China.

One of WeChat’s most popular functions is Look Around, which allows users to scan their surroundings and link up with other people within a 3km radius.

Other users with the Look Around feature turned on can be discovered and so a conversation can be initiated.

The feature, meant to discover new and like-minded friends within your vicinity, has now been turned into a method for people to discover potential one night stands.

This isn’t a feature exclusive to WeChat. Geosocial networking, as this is called, has been available in “hook-up” apps like Blendr, Grindr and Singapore-based Paktor to set up dates and other misadventures.

WeChat, however, is not designed and marketed for this.

The application has no age restrictions and can be downloaded by anyone.

The application doesn’t require users to register their real names, letting users interact with each other anonymously.

A seemingly harmless instant messaging app might just be used for more than making friends.

Using WeChat as a hook-up application isn’t confined to Malaysia. AsiaOne has reported a story on how Singaporeans have been using WeChat as a means for one night stands and extra-marital affairs.

The story cites the anonymity of the user and ease of hooking up as having made it easy for people to seek and engage in sexual relations.

And it is easy indeed, as Sam puts it. T

he student would enable the Look Around feature everywhere he goes and has been “getting lucky” constantly. 

“When I add people into my contact list after discovering them, I will observe their movements and find out which girls indicate that they’re lonely through their status updates, and whether their photos show that they are a flirt,” he tells The Heat. 

“I would choose a good-looking girl and text her,” he adds, saying the conversation will turn more flirtatious and sexual as it goes on.

  “We sometimes end up sending naughty photos or videos to each other.” Sam uses WeChat to keep in touch with the girls he dates, and they would meet again at the same hotel for sex.

The virtual Casanova also uses the application to simultaneously date multiple girls. “I’m not only engaging one girl with this application. I use it to chat with several girls and date them,” he says. 

“But I don’t end up having sex with all of them,” he adds wryly, saying that this is because hotel rooms are too expensive for students like him.

Sam takes full advantage of the app’s innocent demeanour, as well as some of its notable features. 

“Whenever I’m on a date with my girlfriends, I would uninstall the application and then reinstall it, which wipes out all my conversations,” he says. 

“The best part of this app is that your contacts are not deleted when you uninstall and reinstall it.” 

 Sam says that he also discovers that married women are also using WeChat to find one night stand partners.

He understands that the app is being misused by married people for extra-marital affairs, but won’t deny that it is useful to “look around, chat around and sleep around”.

His housemates are also using WeChat to hook up with girls and date them, adding that he would also set up his friends with the girls from his contact list, and they had dated.

That Sam can so easily seek out a partner using the application is no surprise, as WeChat has an immensely wide user base.

The instant messaging app has over 600 million registered user accounts worldwide, with a 60% penetration rate among Malaysian smartphone users.

But WeChat isn’t just serving as a hub for instant affairs.

Sam notes that people are also using the app for business.

Businesses that include the selling of sex toys and prostitution. “One time, when I was using the Look Around feature, a girl started a chat with me and told me about her ‘service’.

I figured she was a prostitute trying to get customers and I stopped my conversation with her,” he says.

In a media event, Louis Song, WeChat country manager of Singapore and Malaysia, says that “WeChat is a way to make aspects of everyday life more convenient”.

But should it be making things more convenient for people to engage in sexual activities and extra-marital affairs?

Misusing the app as a way for a casual hook-up is one thing.

The fact that WeChat can be accessed and downloaded by anyone of any age means that minors might be subject to inappropriate content.

In November last year, the Chinese media reported that high school students are being exposed to prostitution accounts via the instant messaging app.

A quick search on the Internet also shows that websites selling sex toys would also provide their WeChat addresses as another channel of business.

It could be worse. A regular user unintentionally leaving her Look Around feature turned on might be getting unwanted requests.

Or, like the girls that Sam engages, use it for casual, sexual relationships.

Right now, it is best that parents keep an eye out on their children’s WeChat activities, but the best way to solve it depends solely on WeChat’s initiatives.

Critics have been calling the company to implement real-name registrations to avoid its issue with user anonymity.

Perhaps it is more prudent that age-restrictions or stricter content filtering be put in place.

This app makes it easier to connect with our friends and family, but the misuse of it will become something that will corrupt our generation.