Skip to main content

Posts

NEL Train Fault Shouts Lack Of Crisis Communication

The North-East Line train fault of 11 April 2018 was my virgin experience of a rush hour train fault since I moved to Punggol. One would have thought that with the number of train faults experienced by the North-East Line operator, SBS Transit, they would have improved the communications and handling of train faults. However, my personal experience told another story. First, there were no announcements at the Punggol LRT stations of the train fault even though SBS Transit manages them. The train fault was reported as early as 7.10am as I had a friend who was also stuck in the train. I boarded the LRT at Coral Edge around 7.30am and I didn't hear of any announcement nor was there any signage to inform me o the train fault at Punggol Station. Second, the announcement kept saying that there would be a 15 minutes delay, but 15 minutes passed and the trains, on both side, wasn't moving. If the announcement would be more frank to say it will be a longer delay, commuters would
Recent posts

How UOB's Paper Trail Amplifies IT Greatest Security Threat

UOB required you to do everything on paper. If you want to change your mobile number for your banking account with them or for your credit card, you need to fill up a form. Yet, this paper trail represented a potential security fail for the bank - Human Error. So a bitcoin expert walked into UOB to open a bank account. The bank employee had to print a form from a online pdf document to fill in this bitcoin expert's particulars. When it came to entering the bitcoin expert's email, that's when the forgotten art of handwriting was the most obvious of the digital generation. Wrote Robert Capodieci, My name is Roberto Capodieci, as most of you know. and my email address is very obvious to decode. It is not a p4l_l337_s0u1@gmail.com, but it is a more obvious roberto@capodieci.com, thing that, right after reading my name in the same form, should come out easy. Still, a data entry personnel of the UOB bank (or of a service provider the UOB bank uses) entered it as roberto

Kudos To Huawei 2 Year Warranty For P9 Series

When it comes to smartphones, I think I am jinxed. For my history of owning smartphones, every time it comes close to the end of the two year contract with my mobile service provider. This time round, it happened to my Huawei P9. All of a sudden, the LCD screen sort of decolourised. I thought it was a temporary issue but the decolourisation lasted for a few hours. Then the nightmare began. The touchscreen couldn't be touched. This made it the smartphone a brick. I thought the Huawei P9 only had one year of warrant. With my contract ending in mid-year, I thought I would have to wait it out till the contract ended and allowed me to buy a new phone under a contract. Luckily, a friend reminded me that the phone came with a 2 year warranty. So I decided to go to the Huawei service center, right smack in the center of the city, to see if my phone is under warranty and if Huawei would honour their 2 year warranty. Thankfully, Huawei isn't as popular as the Samsungs or App

China Bans "Livestreaming"?

China has decided to ban "Livestreaming" on the country's Twitter alternatives after the authorities found that censorship is hard work.  Wrote Mashable , Chinese authorities have sent shockwaves through the social media sphere, with a blanket ban on livestreaming across three major online platforms. On Thursday, the government ordered Weibo, iFeng and ACFUN to stop all its video and audio streaming services, according to an FT report. This blanket ban would impact "Livestream" stars like Jing Qi, who underwent plastic surgery to boost her online popularity, and the 30 billion yuan (USD$4.3 billion) revenue produced by this internet platform. The cottage industry that rose from the "Livestream" technology would also be impacted. Wrote Reuters , Live streaming has also bolstered the growth of ancillary businesses, including agencies looking to find the next live streaming star, consumer loans, and even cosmetic surgery. Deng Jian, chai

Google Post Now Available for Google My Business

Google Post, which was previously available for the US Elections in 2016, is now available for all small business who have registered their business with Google My Business. Google Post allow you to put small snippets about a promotion, event, or show case new products,etc. Take my company's Google My Business layout above. If you Google "NetGain Systems", you will see the NetGain Systems Pte Lte Google Business Profile. Below the profile is the Google Post of our free IT monitoring software. According to Search Engine Land , Google says this give businesses the ability to: Share daily specials or current promotions that encourage new and existing customers to take advantage of your offers. Promote events and tell customers about upcoming happenings at your location. Showcase your top products and highlight new arrivals. Choose one of the available options to connect with your customers directly from your Google listing: give them a one-click path to make a

Open Source Is Free But Not Cheap

 have an open source competitor but I don't encounter them that much in Singapore market. If and when I do encounter prospects using this open source solution now, I tend to avoid them. The reason for avoiding them isn't because I am competing myself with free, but rather, I have found these prospect have invested, not just time, but money and resource to maintain this open source software. Let me explain. While the open source solution is free for download from the source website, maintaining the open source solution requires effort. Interestingly, I found that IT teams that use this open source solution, have a manpower or two hired assigned just to manage this open source solution. If these open source IT teams decided to use my paid solution, it would have meant that their investment, in terms of time and money, to get where their open source solution is today, have been a wrong decision from the start. Unless I am to talk to new a IT director who wants to revam

The Curious Case of Singapore Advertising Watchdog AskingThe Medium To Change The Text On The Ad

Cathay Organisation, owners of Cineleisure, has put up Pink Dot ads on its escalators. To the chagrin of those against Pink Dot contacted Singapore advertising watchdog, the Advertising Standards Authority of Singapore (ASAS), to weigh in the legality of the advertisement. ASAS responded and reports highlighted that the watchdog asks Cathay Organisation to remove the phrase "Supporting the freedom to love" as it "may affect public sensitivities due to the issues at hand". ASAS did highlight that the rest of advertisement was ok by them. Read more here . Isn't it strange for the watchdog to ask the owner the medium rather than the advertisers to make changes to the ad? Cathay Organisation also felt that the changes should have been directed to the Pink Dot organisers rather they, the medium owner. “Given that the ownership of the ad belongs to Pink Dot, Cathay is not in the position to decide on the removal of the statement ‘Supporting the freedom