Francis WORLD 2006 YEAR OF THE WORLD CUP

Sunday, January 30, 2005


COS PLAY UNDERGROUND

Saturday, January 29, 2005


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Thursday, January 27, 2005



6GB 1” HDD by WD now [ 10:27 ]
Author: Selivanov Sergey Translation by: Anja Rytchkova
Western Digital has announced it launched the production of 1” HDD capacious of 6GB for compact devices, such as MP3 players, PDA and digital cameras. Thus, WD eventually completed the list of 1” drives offered by the leading HDD makers.
New HDD by WD will be available in retail in the 2Q 2005. 1” hard drives feature 3600 rpm of spindle rotation speed, 12 ms – access time and CF II interface.


Premini-II: i-mode 1.3-Mpx camera phone by Sony Ericsson Mobile


Premini-II: i-mode 1.3-Mpx camera phone by Sony Ericsson Mobile

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Why S'pore workers are 'bo chap'

Jan 26, 2005 STI

By Natalie Soh
WHY are Singaporean workers 'bo chap', or uninterested? For the answer, look no further than their bosses.

Employees who get no feedback, don't see their best ideas implemented, and also do not get grooming to become the next generation of leadership, simply 'disengage' from their jobs.

And that is what Singapore bosses and leaders need to fix - and fast, says the latest poll by The Gallup Organization, the Gallup Leadership Institute at the University of Nebraska and the Singapore Institute of Management.

In the three-year project, views about their bosses were taken from over 1,000 people in companies - public and private enterprises, small and large businesses. Interviews were also held with CEOs.

Similar studies have been carried out in the United States, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa in an ambitious plan by Gallup to chart what leaders are like in each country.

At a media briefing yesterday, Dr Bruce Avolio, who is the director of the Gallup Leadership Institute and the main author of the study, explained that Singapore leaders were rated highly at meeting performance standards - in both production goals and profit goals.

They were also very reliable, intellectual and had great integrity, it said.

But one major weakness, said the poll, is that they paid little attention to developing or grooming their people.

Explained Dr Avolio: 'If people don't feel they are using their best skills; if their strengths are not developed and their views not heard - they will switch off and channel their energies elsewhere. ' p> The lack of grooming could be explained by the fact that many CEOs are 'accidental leaders' - meaning that circumstances and opportunities made them so.

'This is different in the US where leaders say 'I must get there',' said Dr Avolio, but it also means that Singaporean bosses are less likely to step over others to get to where they are. But because they didn't quite plan for themselves, they are less likely to plan for their workers.

The suggestions for improvement?

First, make the environment conducive for people to air alternative views.

Dr Avolio highlighted a quote by entrepreneurial guru Guy Kawasaki, who said: 'Israel has five million people, six million entrepreneurs and 15 million opinions. Singapore has five million people, six entrepreneurs and one opinion.'

Give a strategic direction, then allow the workers to fulfil that. Then peg people's development to the performance standards the bosses have to live up to.

That way, bosses will have to pay attention, as their own work performance depends on it, said Dr Avolio.

IT SHOW 2005

10th - 13th March 2005
Suntec Exhibition CentreLevels 3
HALL 412
noon to 9pm Daily
FREE AMISSION

Roti to Die For


Storm in a coffee cup

Jan 23, 2005 STI

What are you paying for when you fork out $4 or more for a cup of coffee at a gourmet joint?

By Sujin Thomas
IT'S a price storm in a coffee cup - at least to some drinkers. Why does a cuppa served in a fancy joint cost so much more than in a humble coffee shop?

Ever since chains like Coffee Club opened here in the early 1990s, the once-plain business of selling coffee has been given a booster shot, with a wider product range and ritzy, hip decors.

But these come at a price - you fork out an average of $4 to $5 for a cuppa, versus less than $1 at most coffee shops.

Even then, some players like Spinelli and The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf have recently raised prices.

No wonder some consumers are not happy. 'It doesn't make sense when you pay $5 for a cup of coffee to bring to the office that doesn't stay warm for long,' says Mr Jeremy Seow, 26, a public relations executive.

Gabriel Gopalan, 25, a postgraduate student at Curtin University in Australia, does not believe that 'the product justifies the price'.

He thinks that he's paying a premium only for the aesthetics of the product and the ambience of the coffee joint.

Kopitiam brews are made from a cheaper bean called robusta while gourmet joints mainly use a more expensive bean called arabica.

A check on the International Coffee Organisation website shows that the price of a pound of Colombian Mild Arabica on the New York market last December was US$1.06.

Robusta beans were US$0.38 a pound.

Apart from cheaper beans, Mr Kenneth Lee, 42, a coffee shop owner in Toa Payoh, says that rentals in HDB estates and labour costs are also competitive enough to keep the costs low.

But prices have gone up further at some gourmet joints.

Spinelli recently increased the price of its large latte by 10 cents to $5.20 and medium caramel latte by 70 cents to $5.20.

Its vice-president of retailing, Mr Jason Wong, 38, says it buys only small quantities of high grade arabica beans since it has only 18 stores, compared to, say, Starbucks which has 32 joints here. Hence, it misses out on the savings of bigger bulk purchase.

But how do prices of gourmet coffee here fare against similar brews worldwide?

Starbucks sells its single espresso for $3. At other branches farther afield, it is HK$12 (S$2.52) in Hong Kong, US$1.79 (S$2.93) in New York and �1.25 (S$3.83) in London.

Still, cost is not the only factor in determining where you take your coffee.

'I think paying $4 for a cup of coffee is all right,' says financial analyst Su Teo, 24.

'It's not only the coffee you're paying for but the nice setting and place to meet up with friends and hang out.'




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



THE SINGLE SHOT ESPRESSO TEST


We sent Life! reporter and former barista Sujin Thomas on a sniff-and-sip test of a single shot espresso from the five main coffee chains here to tell you how much bang you're getting for your buck


STARBUCKS COFFEE
Price: $3
Aroma: Mild and discernible only at close sniff.
Body: Watery, lacking volume.
Acidity: Fairly sour aftertaste.


SPINELLI COFFEE
Price: $2.90
Aroma: So strong it's a wake-up call.
Body: Full and round.
Aciity: The barest hint of sourness.



COFFEE CLUB
Price: $3.00
Aroma: Zaps you but is not overpowering.
Body: Fairly rounded but with a weak feel.
Acidity: Mildly sourish aftertaste.


THE COFFEE BEAN & TEA LEAF
Price: $3.20
Aroma: Faint.
Body: Thin, tastes very diluted.
Acidity: A sharp jolt of it.


THE COFFEE CONNOISSEUR (TCC)
Price (Italian espresso): $3.90
Aroma: Strong and inviting.
Body: Full and heavy feel that lingers on the tongue.
Acidity: Just a hint of it.

In China, his pay is hers to spend

Jan 25, 2005 STI interactive

BEIJING - CHINESE women, although not the main bread-winner in most households, have a big say over how the pay cheque is spent in the world's most dynamic economy, a survey has found.

Nine out of 10 Chinese women who are married or living with a partner claimed in the survey that they have at least an equal say over big purchases such as property and cars.

Although 74 per cent of the respondents said they earned less than their partners, 75 per cent disagreed that whoever holds the money holds the power in the relationship.

Half of them subscribed to the philosophy that 'my partner's money is my money, my money is mine'.

These findings were presented by market research company Synovate after polling 314 women aged 15 to 64 in China last month.

It was part of a worldwide study of 4,000 women in nine countries including the United States and Japan on women's attitudes towards financial issues.

'Socially, Chinese women would always claim that their men held final sway over big purchases - it's part of giving 'face' to the man - but it's a different story at home,' said Mr Larry Wu, director of Synovate's China office.

The Chinese respondents answered differently than women in Japan, where marriage often means the end of financial independence. -- AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE


EURO 2006

Saturday, January 22, 2005

Quotes to share

Everything that happens in this world, there is no absolute good or bad
sometimes good things turn out to be bad things eventually
while bad things become a gain
whatever good things that happen to you, enjoy it.
but dont have to hold too tight to it, treat it as a surprise in your life.
whatever bad things that happen to you. dont have to feel too sad or dispair.
In the end, it might not be a total loss after all.
If one can understand this, he or she will find life much happier.

"Have as your goal to do your best and to make a difference.
We are in the world to make a difference,
and everything we do changes the world."

"The greatest thing in the world is not so much where we are,
but in what direction we are moving."

"Once the mind has been stretched by a new idea,
it will never again return to its original size."
...Oliver Wendell Holmes

"We cannot all do great things.But we can do small things with great love."
.....Mother Teresa

You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him. ~Leo Aikman

"If you must trust anyone in life, let it be yourself."
---Renee Leaf

"Life should be enjoyable; too often we think it's about achievement. The truth is that making life enjoyable is an achievement in itself."
---Unknown

"The biggest mistake you can make is continually fearing you will make one."
---Unknown

"Search near and far for your dreams for they may drop right in front of you without you fully realizing...then they disappear and are lost forever...recognize and embrace your dream and enjoy living the dream...make your dreams reality."
---Unknown

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand."
---Confucius

"The first step toward change is acceptance. Once you accept yourself, you open the door to change. That's all you have to do. Change is not something you do, it's something you allow."
---Will Garcia

"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm."
---Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Never waste the chance to say 'I love you' because this chance might never come again."
---Unknown

"We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails."
---Unknown

"Nobody gets to pick their time to die, but living every day to the max is something we all get to do."
---No Time to Cry by Lurlene McDaniel

"You can sit around and wait for the good things to happen to you, or you can go out and make them happen."
---Unknown

"Failure is not the worst thing in the world. The very worst thing is not to try."
---Unknown

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."
---Will Rogers

"It's better to be known by six people for something you're proud of than to be known by sixty million for something you're not."
---Albert Brooks

"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try."
---Unknown

A smile is a curve that can.Straighten out a lot of things.

life is short! if you dont look around once in a while you might miss it

Those who are afraid to fall, will never fly

Love ur enemys... It really ticks them off

If you don't Stand for Something.You will Fall for Everything

da poorest man on earth is not da 1 without money, but is da 1 without a dream

To the world you may be one person but to one person you may be the
world

It's better to be hated for who you are than loved for what your not

Be yourself, there are enough other people

dont frown,you never know whos falling in love with ur smile

if u can stay calm while every1 else is goin mad ... u probably havnt completely understood the situation!

FRIENDS are like stars…you do not ALWAYS SEE them but you know they are always there!..

A Person Who Asks A Question Is A Fool For Five Minutes. A Person Who Doesn't Is A Fool Forever

Dont b afraid 2 expose yourself.Reach out and tell sum1 wot they mean 2 u coz when u decide its the right time it might b 2 late!

Types of IT Woman

HARD-DISK Woman:
She remembers everything, FOREVER.
RAM Woman:
She forgets about you, the moment you turn her off.

WINDOWS Woman:
Everyone knows that she can't do a thing right, but no one can live without her.

EXCEL Woman:
They say she can do a lot of things but you mostly use her for your four basic needs.

SCREENSAVER Woman:
She is good for nothing but at least she is fun!

INTERNET Woman:
Difficult to access.

SERVER Woman:
Always busy when you need her.

MULTIMEDIA Woman:
She makes horrible things look beautiful.

CD-ROM Woman:
She is always faster and faster.

E-MAIL Woman:
Every ten things she says, eight are nonsense.

VIRUS Woman:
Also known as "WIFE"; when you are not expecting her, she comes, installs herself and uses all your resources. If you try to uninstall her you will lose something, if you don't try to uninstall her you
will lose everything...........

Friday, January 21, 2005

Iomega Rev 35



May 7, 2004By , Company:Iomega Corp.
http://www.iomega.com/
Price:$399.99 list with one cartridge
additional cartridges, $59.99 each
four-pack, $199.99
Spec Data:Capacity: 35GB uncompressed, 90GB compressed;
Interface: USB 2.0 (interoperable, but slower, with USB 1.1);
Cartridge Size: 3.0 x 2.9 x 0.4 inches; Drive Size: 6.0 x 4.3 x 1.3 inches

Pros:Small, fast, high-density disks; easy installation and operation; portable
Cons:Expensive drive cartridge; single source; new format
Bottom line:A promising new backup medium that appears to overcome the limitations of prior removable disk technologies. We think Iomega has a hit on its hands.

ReviewYou could call the Iomega Rev 35 a Zip drive for the 21st century, but you'd be doing it an injustice. While the 100MB Zip drive became essential in art departments for storing and moving large graphics files, the Rev 35 has a different mission... click here for full reviewIomega Rev 35You could call the Iomega Rev 35 a Zip drive for the 21st century, but you'd be doing it an injustice. While the 100MB Zip drive became essential in art departments for storing and moving large graphics files, the Rev 35 has a different mission. The Rev 35 holds 35GB of data on a removable 2.5-inch drive and is precisely the kind of backup medium you need for today's machines.First and foremost, the Rev 35 employs removable hard disk technology, which confers the triple benefits of speed, random access, and off-site storage. Second, it offers a practical storage capacity for backing up today's machines. Third, its 2.5-inch disk format means that the cartridge is smaller than a floppy disk and the drive is smaller than a paperback book. It connects via USB 2.0, so it can be moved from machine to machine easily. Iomega also makes a bay-mounted ATAPI-connected version, the same size as a standard floppy drive. The read-write heads are contained in the cartridge for reliability and drive-to-drive compatibility.Before we even put the drive through formal tests, we had an urgent real-life test for it. A college student's laptop was failing to boot, and campus tech support insisted that the only cure was to re-image the hard disk, which would have wiped out all of the data (20GB of useful papers, articles, and the requisite music and movies). We installed another copy of Windows XP in a new drive partition, loaded the Rev 35 driver, backed everything up, and let tech support have at it. Subsequent file restoration was uneventful.Software and hardware installation were simple, as they should be. We used two test data sets to test performance. The first had 512 files totaling 1.75GB, spread over 66 folders ranging in size from several hundred kilobytes to several megabytes. The second had 22,734 files totaling 2.7GB, over 2,379 folders. Using Windows to copy the files, we achieved a transfer rate of 12.15 megabytes per second (MBps) for the first set (large files stored in few directories) and 2.2 MBps for the second (smaller files in many directories). This is very good performance: The fastest USB tape drives barely equal the slower speed and can't touch our higher result, and of course the Rev 35 has the advantage of random access on retrieval. Hard discs are faster, of course, but the Rev performs admirably: The best internal 7,200-rpm hard discs, with 8MB buffers, perform around 40 MBps on copying files, and the Maxtor One Touch external drive tested around 2GBps.The Iomega Rev 35 ships with a version of Symantec Ghost in addition to Iomega Automatic Backup Pro, so you can easily create a Rev disk (or even a floppy) that will reboot your system and then perform a full restore from a Rev drive. The backup software also performs compression, which can boost capacity up to 90GB, depending on the data.The Rev format is new (although it's been selling in Europe for several months) and has some very interesting possibilities. Iomega predicts higher-density versions in the future, and the price of the cartridges (currently $60 each) will likely come down. The company also says that autoloader and multispindle drives are under development, which will be good news for servers with highly dynamic content. We foresee new applications such as video-production backup, in addition to faster, more flexible backup for small offices and ever-growing home machines. All in all, we think Iomega's got a winner on its hands.

Thursday, January 20, 2005

Fitness Gym - The Gym Within Your Reach

The Singapore Sports Council has set up fitness gyms island-wide to give Singaporeans easy and affordable access to a great workout in a pleasant setting. We offer:

qualified fitness instructors
up-to-date fitness equipment
free weights
stacked weights
cardiovascular machines
locker and shower facilities

Entry Fees
Per-entry charges are $ 2.50 for adults and $ 1.50 for students and senior citizens.
Membership Fees
Total Fees Payable (inclusive of S$10 registration fee)
Adults (S$)
Off Peak Membership (S$):From opening time to 4pm, Mon-Fri Only (Not applicable for public holidays.)
6 Months Membership
170

12 Months Membership
310

Corporate Membership
Each annual Corporate Membership costs S$250, and is transferable among staff of the company. Our qualified Fitness Instructors will conduct an orientation programme for first-time gym users. To get your Corporate Membership, contact Parames at 63409651 or email ssc_clubfitt@ssc.gov.sg

Purchase of cards: - Minimum 3 cards (Total: $750.00)

Operating Hours:

National Stadium
Weekdays: 7.00am - 10.00pm Weekends: 7.00am - 8.00pm

Other Venues:
Mon, Wed & Fri: 7.00am - 10.00pm
Tue & Thur : 8.30am - 10.00pm
Sat : 8.30am - 8.00pm
Sun: 9.00am - 8.00pm
Public Holidays: 9.00am - 5.00pm

Wednesday, January 19, 2005


Consumer Electronic Show 2005 USA


Great reviews and technology previews


Great New Microsoft feature

Monday, January 17, 2005


The People's Camera Create ur Screen Saver Here


TRUMP Dog

Friday, January 14, 2005


Samsung Tiny


Samsung Thor


Samsung Odin


Samsung Javelin


Samsung Essence


Samsung D720


Samsung B-Bob


Samsung Bally


Samsung Midas


Samsung Carmen


Samsung z130


Samsung Muse


Samsung Athena


Samsung Astro


Phuket 2004 Nov