Am I embarrassed to be Malaysian?

Nope, I can never be embarrassed to be Malaysian, this is my home country. I’m not just from Malaysia–I’m from Klang.

I can however, be embarrassed about my government and the policies it seeks to implement. Like how our idea of a space program, is buying a seat on a Russian mission to the ISS, and then having the audacity to call the Orthopedic surgeon we sent to space–an Astronaut. Space tourist more like it.

I’m a big fan of the D-Link DIR 615 router, I think Telekom Malaysia made a pretty good choice selecting it as the default router for Unifi accounts. To be fair, TM have made some bad choices as well, but we won’t go into that here, overall the router isn’t top notch, but it gets the job done.

Unfortunately, D-Link as a company has come under the spotlight for some rather funky security practices. First, there was a rather questionable backdoor that D-Link installed on a couple of older versions of their routers, the router basically granted anyone access to D-Link routers by just changing the user agent string of their browser–worse still the back door carried the name of the author….it was Joel.

However, I’m here to tell you, that as a Malaysian–you want to hold off your pre-order. Now if you want to buy coin to show-off to your less tech-literate friends, then go ahead, but if you’re buying COIN thinking that it’ll simplify your wallet, you’ll be sadly mistaken.

Over the weekend, I saw the following tweet from the star, which I attributed to be either a badly timed April Fools joke, or a typo error:

Friday and Saturday are weekend rest days for Johor from Jan 1. What's your view? #Johornewweekend

— The Star (@staronline) November 23, 2013

Surely, a state like Johor that was trying to attract investment for the Iskandar region from companies like Frost and Sullivan, would not make such a catastrophic error. Alas, upon further checking, I found the information to be true.

Dear Tun,

First and foremost, let me start by telling you that I truly admire and respect your contribution to Malaysia. I remember shaking your hand when you attended my Convocation quite some many years ago. It was quite odd to see that while you were present, you didn’t give a speech, simply because you attended the function not as former Prime Minister of Malaysia, but rather as the spouse of the Chancellor–your wife Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah.

So  it saddens me deeply, that at another convocation–this time where you were giving a speech, you suggested that it is time to censor the internet to counter “distribution of pornography, questionable news and slanders”.

If I may be so bold Tun–censoring the internet is the single most destructive thing that can happen to modern day Malaysia, and something that must be opposed at every turn, even if it involves publicly correcting a senior leader such as yourself. As a citizen of Malaysia, I find it not just my right, but my duty to inform the Emperor when he has no clothes on.

Transcript:

All data stored in your computer is stored in binary digits, or bits. The word binary denotes two, just like bi-lingual, bi-weekly, or bicycle.

A binary number can have a value of either 1 or 0. Just like a switch can be on or off, or a gate can be opened or closed, but since it can only have two possible values, it doesn’t really have much capacity to store much information.

Really cool infographic of the evolution of cell phone to smart phone and how the major players evolved over time.

A couple of things that stood out for me were:

1. Nokia gave up such a dominant position and never came back

2. Just the sheer speed at which Nokia went from Hero to Zero is astounding, it’s like as though Nokia died from a gunshot, as compared to Kodak which died a slow painful death from cancer.

3. Samsung comes on the scene in 1997, but doesn’t make an iota of change, up until Google decide to launch Android almost a decade later. That truly was a game changer.

4. Nokia and Samsung still sell more than twice Apple’s volume in phones, but Apple makes more profit simply due to it’s pricing scheme (a cut from the telcos) as well as the fact that Apple only sells higher-end models with higher margins (5C being the exception).

5. Motorola started it all–but then somehow disappeared. Being first to market counts for naught in this industry, neither Samsung nor Apple were first movers.

It didn’t. We scored a embarassing 426 In just 8 years we went from being above average to bottom third, and the angkasawan program did absolutely nothing to arrest this slide.

Of course, the Good Minister will tell you that we’ve had 24 academic papers published as a result of the program, first of all I couldn’t find the mysteriously ‘well-received’ papers on any google searches I performed. Including papers related to the Food In Space experiment, which was meant to taste 9 difference Malaysian delicacies on board the ISS. Notice also, that the word collaboration is wrongly spelt on this slide.

I’ve been a bit slow on the post these days, part of that is because I experienced a life-changing experience some time back, but mostly because I was experimenting with a new medium–youtube!

I’ve made 3 new youtube videos, and plan to post one every week. Unfortunately, what that means is that there’s less time to spend on the regular blog post. Hopefully by the end of the year, things will stabilize and I should be able to post a youtube video and a blog post regularly. But for now, most of my effort is going to be focused on the creating those videos.

Here's my first video:

Do you know a Groupon Junkie?

It's those people that start and end everyday checking out what sort of 'deals' they can get online, the sort of people who'd buy completely unnecessary items purely because they were on sale. These people literally stalk websites like Groupon or livingsocial to see if they can get a iPhone powerbank for 40% off, or if the Japanese restaurant in Subang Jaya had a deal on Salmon Sashimi.

I was a Groupon Junkie once. I used to religiously subscribe to the mailing list of these group discount websites, and what I found was that I was actually spending more than I was saving. Sure I was trying out new places to eat, but in the end I felt I was spending a lot of money on things I never wanted in the first place--and the things that I actually wanted, were never on Groupon.

To me, the dream was always if I could get Groupon to pick out the items I actually wanted--rather than a random haphazard items that no one knew existed in the first place.

A friend of mine, might have stumbled upon the answer. You see Groupon is a random collection of deals--and the only thing that ties them together is that there's a deal on them. Visiting Groupon is like windows shopping at the 5 dollar store, sure you might find something useful, but most of the time you just bought yourself a bunch of nonsense just because it was on sale. The only thing in common the items in the 5 dollar store have--is that they're 5 dollars, other than that they range from cooking to gardening to stationary and even car care.

The solution to the problem is to have a specialized website. One that didn't sell everything under the sun, but a very specific niche offering, so that people don't feel they're in a 5 dollar store, but a store that was offering a deal on something they ACTUALLY wanted to buy.

But what sort of niche market would that be? What niche market is in high demand--but also would benefit from the concept of group buying.

Say it with me now people-- THE PROPERTY MARKET!

It's a great idea, because not only are properties in high demand, Property buyers are looking for discounts (after all what buyers aren't), and from that came the idea of Propertyplus.