Archive for March, 2009

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RSS Feed Web Widgets

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

As more and more people start having their own personal web publishing platform – their blog, web widgets have also started to rise in popularity.  Why?  This very blog (at least for now), has 2 web widgets:

  • Meebo (Chatting Platform)
  • Gymniee (Weight Charting Widget)

Dynamic content is very important for websites nowadays.  Visitors like to see new content once in a while… or minimally… search engines like to see fresh content once in a while.  :P   In fact, just to sort of SEO my company website, I have included a dynamic portion at the footer to showcase the latest blog entries of our company blog (which was also started recently for more or less the same reasons…)

I was thinking.. wouldn’t it be much easier if we can just put RSS feeds on the website for dynamic content generation?  i.e. when you go to my SEO page, I will have a small widget box to stream out content from RSS feeds consumed from SEOChat.  I believe such widgets are already available.  However, problem is… I am not able to choose the feeds I want to show on my website.  It is all too automatic.  What happens if it just shows some trashy article that I do not want to be associated with?

But it will be even nicer say.. if I have a way to bookmark it directly into my website’s rss feed.  Heck.. why not just write something that can interface with your delicious account so that it can retrieve all the articles that have been bookmarked with certain keywords… and expose it as a rss feed on your website? 

It will be so convenient.  I read a cool Web2.0 concept.. tag it on delicious.. and all my web visitors will be able to see it on my website.

Posted in Ideas, Web2.0, entrepeneurship | No Comments »

Fanatic about the weighing machine

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

Warren Buffet was fascinated by the weighing machine during his childhood days.  He will weigh everything from coins, to toy cars, etc… (based on Snowball – biography of Warren Buffet).  Recently, I started behaving like this great man.  I have been weighing myself many times a day… on a digital weighing machine….

And I see interesting results… its like.. my weight actually varies much like a random walk… but such … non-confirmity disturbs me.  I mean… I like to see meaningful results… .and this Gyminee software that I use online… just does not give that.  Man.. they should have worked in some kind of 30 day averaging graph.  (Oh ya.. btw, did you know that the house price index is calculated through a series of complicated monthly averaging stats?  they should definitely have adopted a similar approach…) 

Frankly, most people can only be bothered about the long term trend.  Surely, they are not interested in seeing short term fluctuations, and believe me… a LOT of such fluctuations are activities triggered, i.e. when u do a big business you lose between 200g – 1000g.  If its small, it can range from 200g – 400g (Personal statistics..) .

Anyway, here goes my 3 day statistics.  Tried to make it work a bit better by understating some results.  I actually weighed 71.8kg today… but … did not feel it can be accurate… how can a person lose 2 kg in 3 days???  So rounded it up to 72kg.  Hehe.. this the the manual way of doing the averaging… so that I can kind of see the hopefully… long term trend downwards?

image

Posted in Health, Life's Journey | 2 Comments »

Fast-food chains are expanding – Singapore

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

Isn’t that just amazing when the whole world is getting into a recession kind of thing?

‘There are many restaurant segments priced above us. In this downturn, we are seeing customers trading down from pricier restaurants to our outlets,’ he said. – Excerpt from Straitstimes Online

Well this is the second time I have read something like this.  Something like that happened for the property market too, when people started to take profits on the more costly condos in the CBD and opted to buy sub-urban condos… so I believe at one point of time, condo prices in CBD tank while the sub-urbans one actually increased (as people always need a place to stay….)

Hmmm.. .maybe if this economy persists… HDB will start appreciating… while the sub-urban ones will tank (they are already tanking… just now sure if HDB are appreciating…)

Posted in Economics | No Comments »

Fighting Fats with Sit-Ups

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

Today, I saw Denise doing a lot of stomach crunches to try to make her tummy slimmer.  Hmmm… is that really the way to do it?  Will it really help?  Recently, I have been listening to Snowball – an autobiography about Warren Buffet.  There was a section of the book in which he was talking about how Berkshire Hathaway (which was rich in cash) and National Indemnities (an insurance company) was a good fit, because the insurance companies need to be backed by an asset rich companies so that more capital can be put to work.

By working together, the capital at BH can be worked a lot harder, thus NI can generate a lot of revenue for BH.  Likewise, should unexpected things happen, i.e. when a lion tamer gets eaten by the lion, BH can divert its funds to NI to pay for it.  The funds flow freely to where it is needed.

I think Fats are just a storage of energy, just like assets is a storage of money.  And money flows freely.  In the event of consuming more calories than we are expanding, our body will store such fats at our tummy.  However as long as we exercise more than we eat, the fats at our tummy will also be converted to energy (just like how funds from BH can be used to pay for unexpected risks in NI).  Energy like money will flow freely.  So as long as we just keep expanding more energy than we consume… surely… those stomache fats will go away… without any sit-ups.

So, what the heck am i trying to say?

Well, i think the most effective way to lose fats is to just focus on exercises that expands the most energy.  If we have strong legs and lungs and these have a capacity to work extra hard and consume the most energy we should just run.   If we have strong stomachs and these have the capacity to consume the most energy, we should just do sit-ups.  It is all about choosing the vehicle with the highest engine capacity.. so that the most fuel can be burnt in the least amount of time. 

Since fuel flow freely.. and the only thing that matters… is how much it is burnt.

So work with your biggest, most fuel hungry engines!

Posted in Health | 1 Comment »

Working out the Web 2.0 way -

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

Well, it is official.  I am fat.  Hmmm… its one thing when my friend tells me I am 4 months pregnant.. and another thing when a website actually says that I have moderate risk of heart disease and diabetes… Yeah… 26.5 puts me at moderate risk.

Well, if you guys are keen to do this BMI test, HPB has a page to work it out for you… http://www.hpb.gov.sg/hpb/default.asp?pg_id=997

image

So how do I actually go about doing it?  Well for starters I did a google (isn’t that the universal solution to everything nowadays?).  I got:

http://www.gyminee.com/public/indexb

Signed up for it.. did some configuration and wow… am all ready for my workout.  Got into a challenge to lose 5 pounds… am all committed now.  Just need to upgrade my i-touch to be integrated to Gyminee!  Yippee!

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Keeping in touch the Web 2.0 way

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

I think Facebook has kind of changed our lifestyles in certain ways.  It gives us incentives to update our status… as friends are able to comment on it.  I remember I once changed my status about feeling really tired.. and a concerned friend of mine actually posted a comment on my profile.  I thought that was really kind of the person….

But the point is, it gives us a convenient way to keep in touch.  A blog is also cool.  Friends reading your blog will know what’s happening to your life.  In fact, imagine.. if everybody kept a blog and just write a little about what they are doing… we will be all very, very well connected into each other’s live.  I guess that is how tweeter is working… :P   But did not really have time to look into that.

I looked at Facebook and MSN.  both have an easy way of updating the users’ current status.  Hmmm.. would it not be nice if there is a way for me to update my status somewhere and all my MSN, Facebook, etc… get updated all at once?  I think that will be something really convenient.

But.. hmmm.. maybe that’s how tweeter works?  No idea… and worse… no time…

Web 2.0 status update

Jiang Hao is having 51 beats a min in Facebook but is just back to Singapore on MSN.  Not synchronised status…

Posted in Business, Ideas | No Comments »

Run Command for Microsoft Word – Excel – Powerpoint

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

Have you ever have both your hands stuck at your keyboard and you just need to run the Microsoft Word/Excel App instead of going through the Start >> All Programs >> and hunting for your Microsoft Applications amidst a myriad of trashy applications you have installed in a moment of fancy?

Well, figured out a way you can just launch your Microsoft Apps without too much of a struggle.  Just go to the run command by doing a:

Windows Key + R

image

Then for:

  • Words – Type "winword"
  • Excel – Type "excel"
  • Powerpoint – Type "powerpnt"
  • Calculator – Type "calc"

Posted in Musings, Technical | 3 Comments »

Online Publishing

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

Technology is slowly but surely changing the ways we live our lives.  I used to spend a good part of my time reading the local newspaper everyday, just to play catch-up with the news.  Problem is, news on the local papers are not exactly catered to my taste buds.  Generally, I will just zoom in on the Money section, Commenary and Analysis and Digital Life.  That’s about all.  (Occasionally there will be some kind of Edison scandal or Zhang Ziyi pictures kind of stuff that catch my interests too.. but those are the exceptions… rather than the norm….)

Well, with the advent of the RSS feeds, I hardly even go to Straitstime Online (even though I just paid for a 200 SGD subscription just 2 months ago… )  It used to be good… because online definitely works better for me compared to reading off a bulky 50 page stack of yellowing papers… but the problem became more of relevancy.

Well Google Reader together wih the Plethora of RSS feeds help to solve this problem.  I am able to tap on the latest technology news that I like.  One of my good friends send me an interesting TechCrunch article on some struggling i-Phone developer and I am instantaneously hooked.  Now, I am a TechCrunch subscriber.

I think StraitsTimes way of monetising content will one day be irrelevant.  You see… a large part of straitstimes news, especially the overseas segments are just bought… in-bulk from reuters, bloomberg, etc… These people just stream their content over the internet for free.  The only thing that is really being reported, i.e. sending someone down to a scene to perform your classic interview is generally for very local content.

An avid finanical news reader will just stream in the content from Bloomberg, CNBC, New York Times, etc… and they will be almost all covered save the little tit-bits of local news…. which frankly… did not quite interests me save the gst credits policy… which was really something ingenious.

In that case, should Straitstimes just do it the normal way, i.e. through pure advertising and give their content for free.  They can monetise their feeds through things like feedburner too.. to serve ads to customer.  But as my friend pointed out to me over lunch, this surviving on advertising model alone no longer works.  Online advertising has only worked for one company, i.e. Google.. and they key was in a great business model in the Pay-Per-Click system.

Hmmm… so what is going to happen to our StraitsTimes and SPH?

Posted in Business, Ideas, Musings | No Comments »

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