Sales, Social and Tech

A friend was asking what are derivatives and what does it have to do with trading. I explained in local terms and it is something that I feel should be repeated on the blog. Please note that the supermarkets mentioned here are only used for example sake and they may or may not be involved in derivatives trading.  Say it takes a year to grow rice. A farmer starts planting rice in January 2011. The price of rice is SGD1 per kg in January 2011. However, the farmer is worried that by January 2012, the price of rice will drop to SGD0.90 per kg. NTUC is worried that the price of rice might increase to SGD1.20 per kg in January 2012. So in January 2011, the rice farmer agree to sell the rice to NTUC at SGD1.10 per kg in January 2012. When Jan 2012 comes, the price of rice is SGD0.80 per kg, the farmer is protected as he can sell the rice to NTUC at SGD1.10 per kg. The farmer gains, but NTUC loses. The opposite scenario is at Jan 2012, the price of rice is at SGD1.30, NTUC saves, ...

Autodesk is looking for our APAC region - Public Relation contractor for 1 year directly with Autodesk. Job description • Reporting to Asia Pacific Corporate Marcom Lead • 5 years experience, preferably at a PR agency, and in the tech sector  • Excellent written and spoken English • Some travel required, mostly within Asia Pacific, possibly to the US on one or two occasions  • Will help raise awareness and preference of Autodesk in Asia Pacific.  • Function includes developing PR strategies and tactics, working with PR agencies, liaising with the media, writing news releases, developing and coordinating PR content distribution If interested, please send your resume in word format to  vinita.sharma@autodesk.com

Most shops enter into deals with Groupon to reach out to more customers. A cake shop in UK found out that the Groupon swarm effect could also adversely affect their business. Write David Wilkes for The Mail Online , She offered subscribers to the site a 75 per cent discount on 12 cakes – selling them for £6.50 instead of the usual £26. Mrs Brown, from Woodley, near Reading, said: ‘We only expected to get a few hundred orders out of it but we had thousands and thousands pouring in. We had to cut it off at 8,500 orders.’ Her company, called Need a Cake, normally employs eight workers, but it had to bring in 25 agency staff. After spending an extra £12,500 on staff and distribution, she made a loss of £2.50 per order. This is an important warning to all, especially to those that have to deliver real physical goods, that it is important to ensure you set a limit to the coupons offered to ensure that your business don't suffer from the promotion.

News have spread today about Singapore Press Holdings suing Yahoo South East Asia for "has "substantially" reproduced articles from its newspapers without proper licensing or authorization". A few friends on Facebook found examples of articles on Yahoo that may be the 23 articles that is in contention and most of them are found to be without byline. Take this article for example. Wrote Yahoo News , Speaking to The New Paper (TNP), Tan’s 54-year-old daughter, a civil servant who wanted to be known as Miss Koh, said that she hired the maid to take care of her mother. However, on Friday, Koh received a call from her tenant saying that the maid had disappeared and Tan was alone at home. When she got back, she found S$40,000 worth of jewellery and about S$20,000 in local and foreign currency missing. The Yahoo News team cited the interview to The New Paper and therefore assumes that the copyright has not been infringed. However, if this entire article is bas...

If your job requires you to access your Gmail on different computers, or you are travelling and logging into a public terminal, you might to consider getting the 2 steps verification from Google. I have found the 2 steps verification extremely useful in my line of work and feel safer accessing Gmail from different PCs. Here's a video on how to get this security feature from Google.

It is a bad Apple day.  I tried signing up for a new iTunes account and Apple send me an email to verify the account. I click on the link to verify the account, enter my email and password and it keeps saying " This email address is already in use or you may already have an Apple ID associated with this email address. Please try again or sign in using your existing Apple ID." I am not the only one complaining today . 

Now that I have both a Starhub line and a M1 line (for the wife), it makes it easier to compare the two telcos side by side. And customer satisfaction doesn't just end at having a good network but also down to their apps. I noticed that both Starhub and M1 have their own native iPhone apps which allows you to track your current bill and data usage. I tried both, but I stopped at the registration process for the Starhub app and have since removed it from the iPhonoe. Here's why. After you install both apps, it will ask you for your mobile and password. For M1, the process was rather simple and fast as the registration only required your mobile number, IC number and password. These three are usually remembered by any Singaporeans. In order to register a user id and password for the Starhub app, you need to enter, not three, but four unique IDs. There are your mobile number, IC number, account number and password. Who actually remembers their account number? Even when you...

AirAsia is now charging SGD5 to those who check-in at their counter. To avoid paying this additional SGD5, you can either do a web check-in at home, or check-in at the check-in kiosks near their designated check-in counters. What happens if you didn't check-in via the web at home, and you at the airport and the AirAsia kiosks are down? You would have no choice but to check-in at the counter right? But does this mean you, the customer, is reliable for the SGD5 surcharge? I was at Changi Airport Terminal 1 this evening and had to do a document check of my printed boarding pass which I checked in at home. I overheard a commotion from the AirAsia counter staff when the check-in kiosk had a technical breakdown and the staff wanted to charge the AirAsia customer the SGD5. According to the AirAsia counter, there are no options on her system to allow for the waiver for the SGD5 and if the receipts don't tally at the end of the day, she would have to be responsible for that missin...

I was sitting next to a friend for lunch and noticed that he had an iPhone 4s, just like me. Only difference was that he was on Starhub and I was on M1. I asked him to try Siri and he was getting slow respond, and so we decided to do a speed test. The above picture showed that M1 was giving shorter ping time (38ms) and had faster upload speed of 1.77Mbps. Starhub had faster download speed (8.58Mbps) than M1s (5.51Mbps). Starhub ping time was at 131ms. However, Starhub download speed was at 0.07Mbps which was 25 times slower than M1. That explains the slow Siri respond. A difference in upload speeds of 25 times is something that should be of concern to Starhub users. However, do not that this test was only done at one location, Marina Square Link, but it could be a concern because upload speeds are now as important as download speeds average due to the content creation tools that are now easily available on iPhones. The ping times are also a concern because it shows tha...

Andy Rooney, that cranky old man on CBS 60 Minutes, passed away on November 4. His short commentary on 60 Minutes, which he did since 1978, has made him a household name. Here are some of videos for keepsake. There are other official videos on Youtube, but CBS Online doesn't allow embedding. Andy Rooney: My Lucky Life Andy Rooney: Why Andy doesn't like Bill Gates Andy Rooney: Our New President

QR codes seem to be the in thing, but please use some common sense to where you should place the QR code on your advertisements. I saw this advertisement for ACCA targeting students around the Clementi area. See where the QR code is placed. The QR code is placed right at the bottom of the train's gantry, at shin level. Do you expect somebody to bend low just to scan your QR codes? Or is ACCA expecting Hobbits to take up accounting?

A discussion with a local retailer has opened up new considerations to how deal sites make their money. It seems unclaimed vouchers are now become a new revenue source for these deal sites. With about 80+ deal sites in Singapore alone, merchants are spoilt for choice. With these deal sites having almost the same database size, the transaction fees are often what seals the deal for these sites. Groupon is known to charge up to 50% off the discounted price, but some local sites are charging as low as SGD1 per transacted voucher. With transaction fees now being squeezed, deal sites are now dependent on expired and unclaimed vouchers for revenue. When a customer makes a purchase of the coupon, the deal site doesn't pay the merchant instantly. The merchant is only paid when the voucher is claimed by the users. If the voucher expires and is unclaimed, the deal site keeps the full amount that is paid for the voucher. For example, if a F&B merchant offer a SGD20 voucher for S...