hongjun's Blog

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Weekly Address: Milestones on the Economy and the Recovery Act

While there is nothing to celebrate until job numbers turn around, the President cites the recent dramatic turnaround in gross domestic product as a sign of better things to come. He also applauds the fact that the Recovery Act has now created or saved more than a million jobs.

Updated Full Google Twitter Accounts

Full list of Twitter accounts from Google Inc. can be found here.

Is going to court one method to monetize for Facebook?

UPDATE on Thursday, Oct. 29: Today, a San Jose, Calif. court awarded Facebook $711 million in damages against Sanford Wallace, one of the spammers who accessed people's accounts without their permission and sent phony Wall posts and messages. While we don't expect to receive the vast majority of the award, we hope that this will act as a continued deterrent against these criminals. Most notably, the judge referred Wallace to the U.S. Attorney's Office with a request that Wallace be prosecuted for criminal contempt, which means that in addition to the judgment, he now faces possible jail time. This is another important victory in our fight against spam. We will continue to pursue damages against other spammers.

The Fight Goes On [via]

Friday, October 30, 2009

Review on Experts-Exchange

Exchanging of the Experts

This morning, I want to examine another site useful to both PC and Mac users called Experts-exchange.com. This web site helps experts find their answers by connecting them with other experts in their and others’ industries. For those who want a quick answer, or just do not care to interact with other people, they can use the knowledge database of 2.6 million solutions from various experts. For those who want the most up to date answer, they can ask their question, which will receive an answer from one of their 50,000 experts. Most of the time those answers come only an hour after the question. For those who cannot wait for that possibility of an answer in less than an hour, they can sign up under one of the various plans and receive an answer within 30 minutes. For those, who enjoy the hunt, they can explore the various categories for the solutions themselves. Experts-exchange.com offers every expert a way to search for and come to the answer they desire.

For those who need answers to questions regarding Microsoft, they can search under applications, development, hardware, internet protocols, MS forefront-ISA, OS, or server applications sections. For those who need an answer to an Apple issue, Experts-exchange.com offers solutions in five categories: Hardware, networking, operating system, programming, and software. Again, in my opinion, while the Apple section of the website does not offer the plethora of solutions, that is because they are not needed. Also, since Apples can run MS Office, some of the answers in the MS section apply to Macs.

For those who do not have a computer specific question, there is also an internet section that includes answers in nine categories: Anti Spam, Anti spyware, Anti-virus, chat/IM, E-mail clients, File sharing, New net users, search engines, web browsers, web development, web servers, and web trends/stats. Beyond that, Experts-exchange.com also offers answers to questions regarding gamers, digital living, virus and spyware, hardware, software, ITPro, and Developer. Just to the right of the developer section, almost unnoticeable, there are two yellow arrows with the word ‘more’ below them. 'More' includes answers to questions about storage, OS, Database, Security, programming, web development, networking, and even a section for 'other.' In each section, below the categories, Experts-exchange.com lists the top articles; and on the right, they list the top experts.

For those who want to read through random articles; though, don’t want to take the time to filter them, they can read random articles in the Articles section. There, experts can search through articles, filter them into one of several categories, or write an article. Of course, for those who want to write an article, they must first have a membership and be an expert in their field. Beyond all of the answers, for those who feel a bit overwhelmed by Experts-exchange.com, there are video tutorials (It is written in Xhtml or javascript, so I can't blue link it, but it's above the search bar on the right). The video tutorials section includes welcome, getting started, searching for solutions, asking a question, and contributing to the site videos. And after users become familiar with the basic search functions, there are advanced search functions that give them more search control.

All in all, Experts-exchange.com gives the experts the ability to interact and exchange ideas with other experts within and outside of their fields. Come back next week for my next review of a great site that will make your life easier. For more great ways on how to make your life easier using technology, visit me at SEO Bridges.

Written by SEO Bridges [via]

Thursday, October 29, 2009

How to set "Work Offline" for Outlook programatically

The show VBScript code snipppet will toggle between working "Offline" and "Online" for MS Outlook.

Set objOutlook = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")
objOutlook.GetNamespace("MAPI").Folders.GetFirst.GetExplorer.CommandBars.FindControl(, 5613).Execute
Set objOutlook = Nothing

U.S. 3Q GDP up 3.5 percent

Data released today by the Commerce Department show that real GDP grew at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter of the year. This is in stark contrast to the decline of 6.4 percent annual rate just two quarters ago.

On Today's GDP Numbers [via]

Google Maps Navigation for Android

Google just announced the next step for Google Maps for mobile: Google Maps Navigation (Beta) for Android 2.0 devices.

It's a dream owning Android phone! I want one!

Google Maps Navigation (Beta)

Here are seven features that are possible because Google Maps Navigation is connected to the Internet:

The most recent map and business data
Search in plain English
Search by voice
Traffic view
Search along route
Satellite view
Street View

Announcing Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0 [via]

Google launches Music Search

Google is rolling out their new Music Search capability across U.S. gradually. This OneBox is limited only to the U.S., probably because the music sites that partnered with Google can provide full previews only in the U.S.

The picture below shows the music partners with Google.

Google Music Search Feature

Making search more musical [via]

Funds sweat over new CPFIS criteria

Funds sweat over new CPFIS criteria

Business Times - 29 Oct 2009

Some 40% risk being struck off; top quartile ranking is sticking point

By GENEVIEVE CUA

(SINGAPORE) More than 40 per cent of the unit trusts and investment-linked insurance funds (ILPs) in the CPF Investment Scheme (CPFIS) are at risk of being struck off the scheme if they do not fully comply with CPF's admission criteria by January 2011.

By far the most contentious among the criteria is the one requiring the funds to be ranked among the top quartile (the highest 25 per cent) of their global peer group.

This is the sticking point, as fund managers can and have stepped in to ensure compliance with the other criteria. For instance, some managers subsidise the expenses of smaller funds to ensure that their expense ratios do not exceed CPF's caps.

Top quartile is defined along quantitative and qualitative factors, where a fund registered for Singapore sale will be scored and ranked alongside its global peer based on Morningstar's database. Morningstar is the investment consultant for the CPFIS.

Among ILPs, CPF savings' share of a fund's assets could be as high as 70 per cent. Among unit trusts, the share ranges between 30 and 50 per cent. Hence, for some funds, failure to remain in the scheme would have major implications.

As at end-June, a total of $22.9 billion of CPF savings (Ordinary and Special Accounts) is invested in insurance policies and $6.3 billion in unit trusts.

BT understands that numerous funds are scheduled for re-evaluation by Morningstar over the next few months. Some have already made it to the approved list. But those are understood to be a minority so far as most funds are awaiting their turn in a long queue, or are waiting to be told the results.

Based on a list released earlier this year, a total of 147 funds need to be re-evaluated. There are a total of 346 unit trusts and ILPs in the CPFIS menu. The cost of re-evaluation is $5,900 per fund, which may or may not be charged to the fund.

Funds which fail to meet the criteria must cease to take in fresh CPF savings by January 2011. Managers must offer investors three options - to hold, redeem or switch for free to another fund that is fully compliant with the CPF rules. The free switch period is understood to be six months.

An alternative for funds that fail to meet the criteria is that managers could opt to have the fund sub-advised by a third-party manager which must have passed CPF's screen.

BT understands, however, that the idea of external management is unattractive to most managers. In any case, it may not be feasible for larger fund houses such as Fidelity, where the size of its CPF asset base is tiny relative to its offshore investor base.

A unit trust that contemplates a third-party manager may have to call for an extraordinary general meeting to vote on the matter.

The chief executive of a fund management firm said: 'The exercise is very subjective. I don't see how there can be a clear and objective way to measure top quartile ranking.'

He says his firm is not inclined to opt for third-party management, should any of the firm's funds fail to pass muster. 'What makes (the CPF and Morningstar) think a sub-adviser will do a better job?'

However, a source at another firm said: 'If we have to use an external manager, of course we will do it. . . Because if a fund is taken out of CPFIS, what happens to existing investors? They can't do top-ups and it becomes very confusing.'

The other three criteria are that the funds' total expense ratio must not exceed the median expense ratio of CPFIS funds in their respective risk class; their sales charge must not exceed 3 per cent; and they must have a three-year track record.

The admission criteria have been in place since 2006, but they have so far been enforced in stages to enable funds to make the transition.

Some of the largest and most established funds are slated for re-evaluation. These include Prudential's Prulink Singapore Managed Fund, which has more than $2.5 billion in assets as at end-June; and AIG's Acorns of Asia Fund with over $1.2 billion in total assets.

Prudential Assurance's chief marketing officer Tomas Urbanec said the insurer has 19 funds in the CPFIS scheme. Five are fully compliant and 14 await re-evaluation.

'As this is an industry-wide exercise which is ongoing, we would prefer to let CPF announce the final approved list when the exercise is completed.'

Morningstar's quantitative criteria for product inclusion in the CPFIS include performance and style consistency, management tenure - that is, funds with minimum manager changes are preferred; and expenses.

The qualitative analysis looks into a manager's history of success, organisational strength, investment process consistency, and asset size and growth. On the latter point, Morningstar looks into how performance has changed as assets grow.

Cost of Car Ownership in Singapore

I find some figures are overstated.

Cost of Car Ownership in Singapore [via]

Twitter added beta feature to organize people into list

On Oct 1, Twitter has announced that they are launching a new feature that allows friends to be organized and grouped into "Lists" soon. This should make the list of followers more neat.

Today, I am included into the small group of twitters to try out this new feature. The main inconvenience with this new feature is that there is no way we can multi-select friends we followed to and move them to a list. We have to do it one at a time.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Bid farewell to Geocities

For many like myself, especially those who started learning markup language (HTML) for the web in the 90s, we should have tried hosting our proud amateur web site on Geocities. This week, Yahoo!, the owner of Geocities, declared closure of Geocities for good.

I shall bid farewell to Geocities. My first hands-on on web will be with Geocities forever.

Impressed with today's loadmaster

I am completely impressed with today's loadmaster. I hope to elaborate more on today's flight if time permits and if I remember it days later.

The Google Story

A (very) quick look back at the Google story over the last 11 years. From Stanford to Mountain View and around the world, featuring many different products, starting with BackRub (Search) up to Google Wave, StreetView and Chrome.

Happy to see my stocks going up

Despite the many days of fall in stock market for the past few days, I am happy to see mine - Parkway Holdings, Mapletree Logistics and ST Engineering - going up!

Way to go!

Monday, October 26, 2009

Top 10 paradoxes of Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett is definitely in a different league.

Top 10 paradoxes of Warren Buffett [via]

Hanging of a national flag other than Singapore's is punishable in Singapore

To all Singapore stayers, do note that it is against the law to hang a national flag that is not Singapore's. I thought that's pretty straightforward.

China flag hung on HDB flat: Punishable by law, say Police [via]

Man Utd loses to Liverpool

Before the kick off between Manchester United and Liverpool today, I predicted Liverpool is going to break the jinx of losing in this rivalry match, and they really did that in style! I am beginning to believe Chelsea is going to be the new champion for 2009/10 season.

Manchester United, please wake up!

Reds respond in style [via]