Sales, Social and Tech

(Update: According to a tweet from Melody, she received an email from AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes and a call  from AirAsia to inform her that refund procedures started on Dec 28, 2010.) In Blackberry mobile app AirAsia may trust. A passenger, however, unfortunately encountered a bug in the app that accepted the passenger’s credit card payment, issued a booking number but the ticket was not reflected as confirm when the passenger checked the online system and service staff. The passenger had no choice but to book another ticket online. A few days passed and the passenger was shocked to see her credit card issuer had charged her for making the payment via AirAsia Blackberry app. This started her agonising voyage of trying to get a refund, only to be send in circles. Wrote Melody Ng on Facebook, Nov 9, 2010 -       Made a booking via AirAsia Blackberry mobile app. Payment made via credit card transaction of RM148.00 -       Received booking number (Dxxxxx) but stat

If you are a retailer and considering to provide a group discount promotions on one of the local deal sites, here are three things you should consider before taking the plunge. 1. Repeated customers is not a guarantee The local deal sites will tell you their site will bring new customers. This is true. Reports, like this one , highlight that going on such sites is good for marketing. However, in the same report, most retailers that have went on such sites have reported that it may not as profitable. From the same report, Many of the groupon user [sic] used it for only the value of the coupon (in our case $50) and nothing more.  The return business has been non-existent.  It was very harmful to our bottom line during the months we ran it.  We still get people coming in to redeem their groupon even though the promo has been over for 4 months, and they are very upset they cannot get the full discount. – Restaurant, Midwestern US. 2. Be prepared to track printed coupons.

Have you ever wondered what the 16 numbers on your credit card meant? Mint blogged about the numbers and explained how you can easily check if the card is a fraud. Budget Planner Software - Mint.com

Singapore football coach Raddy Avramovic had one of the worst off the field interviews with the media. Instead of getting the media on his side, he has now become the butt of mobile phone jokes with the local media. Wrote Bryan Huang for The Straits Times who called the coach Singapore’s latest phone guru, National coach Raddy Avramovic gave the attending media a piece of his mind on buying phones, with his little analogy when asked about rumours that local football hero Fandi Ahmad might become his assistant coach. "I think this reminds me of something," Avramovic said. "If you go to a Sony shop and you ask...agent of Sony which mobile phone he will recommend you, I don't think he will recommend you Samsung or Motorola." His quote, reported in The New Paper on Thursday, left many people wondering what he was implying. There were two opportunities during the media interview that Raddy could have made use of to turn the session in his favour, b

Asia Media Monitors (AMM) is the SE Asia headquarters of Media Monitors, Asia Pacific's leading media intelligence company. The group monitors and analyses traditional and online media for over 5000 clients across the region and helps clients to make sense of the media. Asia Media Monitors is a MSC status company and has over 180 employees many of which are based in our regional HQ which can be found in the Menara Taipan building on Jalan P Ramlee in Kuala Lumpur. AMM has offices in Malaysia. Our multilingual monitoring and CARMA® analysis teams adhere to the highest industry standards and as a result the company won several awards at the prestigious International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication Awards in 2009 and 2010. The Media Monitors group has over 28 years of experience and over 800 full-time employees. Media Monitors has offices in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and China servicing government, corporate and pub

Job Description Responsibilities: • PR agency senior position to provide strategic public relations counsel to key technology practice clients; work in partnership with enterprise and other technology clients to develop and effectively develop execute Asia-wide programs • Understand and analyze emerging trends in customer engagement and emerging technology, and recommend strategies that leverage the trends to client benefit • Assist tech practice leader in developing/growing regional tech account roster • Manage a broad array of challenges, including pan-regional events, issues/crisis planning and activation, executive and corporate positioning, and high-level media relations • Facilitate the growth of agency team skills and capabilities • Develop and manage project budgets and forecasts efficiently and effectively for both agency and client • Ensure that account teams provide high-quality executional delivery and at the same time provide smart, strategic and proa

If you go by the recent deals results on Groupon Singapore, those who will potentially benefit most isn’t going to the restaurateur or the retail outlet or even that beauty spa.  The top deal on Groupon Singapore was from aircon servicing company, Refreshing Cool, that offered SGD12 to service each wall mounted air conditioning unit. This was 60% off the original price of SGD30 per air conditioning unit. The offer was so popular that Groupon that 1087 Groupon users bought it. In comparison, the 2nd most popular deal only sold 296 groupons. A Japanese restaurant only sold 69 groupons. It seems Singaporeans are after discounts which offer manpower services around the house as compared to F&B discounts or Spa discounts. The discount would have cost Refreshing Cool about SGD26,088 (SGD19,566 absorbed for the discount and SGD6522 estimated commission to Groupon Singapore), Refreshing Cool probably got more customers referrals than putting an ad in The Straits Times classified

The IT journos are usually the ones asking the spokesperson of various brands their prediction would be for the year ahead. I thought I flipped the funnel to ask IT journos what they are looking out for in 2011 which could shape IT industry. Kashminder Singh, Group Managing Editor at One World Solutions in Malaysia, shared that he be on the look out for the tablets wars between the 9 inches and 7 inches, Smartphone OS competition and IPTV. Kashminder said, “Tablets. Which tablet will prevail? 9 inch tablets like the iPad or smaller ones like the PlayBook? I think BOTH will do well. “Smartphones and the OS wars: Will Android crush Apple? Will Windows Phone 7 stun everbody by delivering a knockout blow one both? Will Nokia rise or sink further? This has all the makings of a top notch thriller. “IPTV. I believe its time has come. If not this year; very soon. I am watching with interest the early days of the trend that will kill off the TV as we know it.” Neighbourly IT journos

The Bangkok Post prints the first and last 2011 issue of Database today as the Thai daily buries the IT supplement after 24 years. Borisuthiboun Dasaneyavaja, editor for Database, wrote in the farewell column that only Wanda Sloan’s two columns – The Sloan Ranger and App-shop – will be the only sole survivour of The Bangkok Post pull out apocalypse which also sees the end of all its pull outs like Motoring, Outlook, Horizon, Real Time, My Life and Education.  Readers of The Bangkok Post will, however, see a new section call LIFE. The team at The Bangkok Post ended the highly popular supplement with fitting tribute of the years gone by. Post Database' founder and former Editor Tony Waltham paid tribute to the wonderful team he had over the years. He wrote, Sadly, this is the last issue of Post Database, the weekly pullout section of the Bangkok Post that had its genesis in February 1987, almost 24 years ago. Since then, and every week since the beginning of 1989, Dat

DK, a ex contributor for Tech65.org, predicted that Near Field Communication (NFC) in mobile phones will see slow pick up in 2011 scratches only the surface of the whole NFC as a payment medium story. DK also failed to see the big picture of what Google intend to do with NFC in its Android phones. I will touch on that point later. Wrote DK , But despite having phones with NFC in the market, services like payments using NFC will not pick up in Singapore. It’s just like using EZ-Link to make purchase. Almost everyone have an EZ-Link card. But how often do you see someone using EZ-Link card to make purchase? Someone need to find a killer feature for NFC in Singapore. Payment just won’t make the cut. EZ-Link’s Achilles Heel is that the card is the only payment medium for taking public transport in Singapore. You can pay cash, but the cost of using cash on public transport is more expensive than if you were to use the EZ-Link card, plus you have to pay full fare when you change

Must be a first for 2011 as SPH’s online site, AsiaOne, publishes rumours about President Obama announcing UFO visits in February 2011 as news. Wrote AsiaOne , American paranormal website All News Web said that US President Barack Obama would be making comments soon about US contact with aliens. The comments about UFO visits and other extra-terrestrial contact would be made within the next month, it claimed. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research and development office for the US Department of Defense, was said to have given the go-ahead for the announcement. As one reader commented, “And seriously, you're running the risk of...alienating your readers who expect real news”.

Wong Voal Voal, the ex Regional Director of Hill & Knowlton’s Technology Practise for Asia Pacific, has started his new PR agency, IN.FOM. Voal Voal was with Hill & Knowlton for 7 years since 2003 and was promoted to the Regional Director in 2008. According to a Facebook update, Voal Voal highlighted that his agency strengths are in Tech, Consumer and Finance. Hill & Knowlton has yet to announce Voal Voal’s replacement. It was also announced last year that Jimmy Tay, SVP Asia Pacific and chief executive of Hill & Knowlton Southeast Asia will be leaving the PR agency in January 2011.

CNET Asia’s managing editor for 12 years, Juniper Foo, has left the online consumer publication to start in a new role in a government agency in 2011. According to her LinkedIN account, Juniper has been with CNET Asia since the days where AsiaContent held the publishing license for the tech website in 1988. CNET Asia has not released any press release about the new managing editor but the site has stopped issuing press release since 2009.

The social media editor for Forbes India responded, under his personal capacity as a blogger, to the accusation by Nitin Pai, editor of Pragati - The Indian National Interest Review of plagiarised cover that Forbes India is only guilty of making reference to Superman ripping his shirt.  Wrote zigzackly's omnium-gatherum , Forbes India's year-end issue cover has a muscular man opening up his sherwani to show that he is wearing a blue undershirt on which is emblazoned a red and yellow diamond shape, within which you see the words "Person of the year 2010." The copy says, "Smarter, bolder, stronger, braver, tougher, bigger, wiser. Better. The Best of the Year." So, if Forbes India is guilty of plagiarism, it must mean that this person that Pragati portrays is an original creation of their...think tank. Let's see now. Have we seen a similar visual somewhere? No, that can't be true. They wouldn't put a fictional American comic book charact