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Who is getting rich off the iPhone?

December 11, 2009 By View Comments

so-just-where-does-all-that-iphone-money-go

Now let’s look closer to home. Malaysians pay Maxis (the only telco offering the iPhone) US$714 for a 32GB iPhone 3Gs with a 1 year contract. Let’s assume Maxis pays Apple the same $550 per unit, Maxis still makes $164 just from selling you the phone and you pay the entire sum upfront, Maxis doesn’t have to subsidize a thing and they’ll make even more money from your voice and data plan. There is nothing to lose and all to gain for Maxis. Brilliant.

Did you say “This is so unfair. To think I’ve stayed with them all these years, through good reception and no reception and I get jack”? Well, if you’re the only player in the market, the rules are yours to dictate.

Want to pay nothing or close to it for a Maxis iPhone? Their corporate customers get the iPhone for free. So if you know anyone who’s a corporate customer, you can buy it off her for cheap or convince her to give it to you. Keep telling her it’s a bitch to type with a touch screen keypad – this is the bain of many new iphone owners in the first week of playing around with the device. With a hint of urgency in your voice, tell her to get rid of it (and give it to you) before technology becomes obsolete and she has to pay people to take it off her. Check ebay and she’ll see how many unsold first generation iphones there are. If she has no patience for touch screen, she won’t search ebay and will just take your word for it. Score! Congratulations and welcome to the iPhone owners club.

Filed Under: Business, Feature, Humor Tagged With: ,

Deja-hoo: Yahoo! is finally in Malaysia.

November 26, 2009 By View Comments

The Yahoo! Youreka campaign has ended and ‘somewhat officially’ launch the Yahoo! Malaysia portal. Never mind that they are a decade later than MSN and Google. In the past few months, we’ve been seeing the folks from Yahoo! come down from their offices in Singapore to engage the community of developers and users in Malaysia. It’s great and they have no competition from the other two in winning hearts and minds by meeting Malaysians face-to-face.

But I can’t help feeling like it’s 1999.
The landscape may have changed quite a bit. This time, eyeballs are locked on sticky social media/networking sites, IM chats happen in twitter, email comes through Blackberries and news through RSS readers. If you use Netvibes, you could even get all the above into one dashboard. Why is Yahoo! using aging tech to reach new users. The segment Yahoo! is targeting is not an aging group at all – late teens to 25. Is Yahoo! being arm-twisted to do this by our aging Deputy Education Minister? Or does Malaysia have a third world classification online as well so here’s the best of Yahoo’s third world tech?

I am a paying customer of two of Yahoo!’s services. They also throw great parties, engage the community and give away awesome schwags. I love Yahoo! but they need to do more than just localize a news portal. I don’t remember the last time Yahoo! has announced a new feature or a major product improvement.  Is Yahoo! going forward by going backward? Odd strategy.

Yahoo! Youreka found its winner at a party held at KL Live last night. Semi-finalists who found the elusive tag online, gathered for their final torture, I mean test, to prove their worthiness. They wiggled and pushed their way (as well as pushed JJ to the ground)  in a game of musical chairs to get to the “Sumo” round. Dressed like sumo wrestlers, the pair battled each other to see who’ll be first to form the word Youreka from the jumbled letters. The worthy one went home with a Macbook Air and an iPhone. Congratulations to the winner.

Thanks for the party Yahoo! and welcome to Malaysia.

Filed Under: Events, Feature, Tech Tagged With: , ,

DiGi’s Coat-of-Arms

November 22, 2009 By View Comments

If you were watching twitter this week, you would have been inundated with tweets on the Youth Engagement Summit 2009 (#YES2009), Barcamp Melaka and Singapore, a statement from the Deputy Education Minister saying English at work is weird and Cadraver’s story on “Malaysian Telcos to bear Code-of-Arms”.

I caught Mahyuni’s tweet on  Cadraver’s story which was particularly interesting. He wrote a parody on the Malaysian government who’s now requiring telcos to develop their coat-of-arms and they must be prominently displayed everywhere their brands have a presence. Brand logo? What’s that? Coat-of-arms or else. Read Cadraver’s piece here.

When the news started spreading on twitter this week, DiGi was quick to pick up on it, launching a “request-for-proposal” or a contest for DiGi’s code-of-arms. They will be giving away 5 musical mugs to the top 5 designs. I thought they were joking and I went to ask @digi_telco for the contest rules and was told there were none – not even a deadline. It’s anything goes. LOL. So here are my submissions.

digi coat of arms 1 prepare for glory

Fantastic move on DiGi’s part. Here’s one brand that is not only paying attention to what’s going on in social media but participating and having some fun with the community as well.

Note: I’m not paid or have been paid by DiGi in any way or form to say this.

Filed Under: Feature, Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,

In ReHaB: RHB’s new website stumbles out of the gate.

November 20, 2009 By View Comments

Friday, November 20 2009.

The day I choose to do some internet banking, internet banking chooses to fail.

First surprise was seeing a redesigned website from RHB. Even the URL has changed. It’s a little scary to suddenly find I’m at a new site. A virus can also hijack a website and redirect you to another site. I don’t like to be scared by a bank. Never mind, let’s move on. The new design looks refreshing.

Here’s what I liked:

1. Shorter URL. Instead of www.rhbbank.com.my I can now type rhb.com.my.
2. First question the site asked was “Consumer” or “Business”. Great, just show me what I want to see and kill the rest.
3. It finally works on Firefox.

consumer or business
Consumer or Business.

Unfortunately, the joy lasted for one screen. Now the nightmare:

1. Menu bar has tiny white text against a light blue background. OMG, I’m not as young anymore, don’t strain my eyes please.
2. Every time you get into the site, it repeats the same question – Consumer or Business. Can’t you recognize me? (this was on Friday and the problem seems to be fixed on Sunday).
3. Best of all – LOGIN does not work. I am being asked repeatedly to change my password. If my password isn’t working, it doesn’t give me a clue as to what is wrong. (It’s Sunday and this is still happening)

consumer homepage

See the menu bar? Look harder.

I checked on twitter and @kzamri replied to say he was experiencing the same thing. I tried to re-register thinking maybe there’s a new login system. Didn’t work. I searched every where to see if this site is still a prototype. No luck.

One hour later, @kzamri and I (after a few deep breaths) called the bank. He didn’t get a clear answer and proceeded to write the bank a passionate email – all the way to the top. You don’t want to mess with @kzamri. He knows people, very important people.

I, on the hand was told the site was under maintenance, please try again AFTER office hours. Say what? Actually it’s the best line I’ve heard in a while. If something goes wrong, the bank will be closed all weekend and there’s nothing you can do but wait for it to reopen on Monday. It’s an awesome excuse to buy time.

RHB FAIL

  • Dear RHB, if your site is down for maintenance, please take it down. Go back to the old system or put up a message to tell customers the site is under maintenance and have an idea when it will be up again. Your customers can be reasonable if they’re not kept in the dark.
  • It’s also a good idea to keep Friday trouble-free. If you launch something new during the week, when you run into trouble and still can’t fix it by Thursday, have a plan b, like switch back to the old and familiar.
  • Let your customers know what to expect before you change something as important as your internet banking site. A sudden change like this can reduce trust and confidence in your bank.
  • I also hope you got rid of that tedious security feature customers have to go through to edit information in their account. You have no idea how painful it is to wait for an sms PIN and then trying to enter a ridiculous, finger-twisting, series of numbers from a card that has to be physically picked up from the bank first.  The sms PIN request doesn’t even work half the time. Securing transactions online should be the bank’s job, not the customers’.

Online Banking with RHB wasn’t as simple or convenient as you say it is. Hope to see some real improvements from the new site, I guess by Monday.

Filed Under: Business, Feature Tagged With: , , , , ,

Is Malaysia finally on track towards an innovation and knowledge-based economy?

November 16, 2009 By View Comments

Innovation is a topic close to my heart. I’ve known, seen or met Malaysians who are innovators and are doing great work outside of Malaysia. I often wonder why they don’t do it here instead and I’ve been told that this country hasn’t encouraged innovation. There are no tax breaks or government support for R&D.

When I was invited to attend MSC’s 12th International Advisory Panel (IAP) Learning Symposium earlier this week, I was excited. The theme for this year was on innovation. Will we finally see the government doing something to promote innovation in Malaysia?

There were two half day tracks running simultaneously. Each track had a panel of speakers with solid track records and experience in driving innovation in education or in business. These gentlemen were also brought together by MSC to be on the advisory board to influence policies that could help the country reach its goals.

The business track, which I attended had on the panel Datuk Seri Dr. Maximus Johnity Ongkili, Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation (I only just found out that we now have a minister of innovation); Dr. Ya-Qin Zhang, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Corporation and President of Microsoft China Research; Christopher Forbes, Vice Chairman of Forbes Publishing Co.; and Dr. John Gage, Partner at Kleiner Perkins, Caulfield & Byers, also formerly of Sun Microsystems.

For a detailed account on what each speaker talked about, head over to  Hillary Chan’s write up on CNET Asia. Hillary highlighted an interesting observation. There wasn’t a single Malaysian on that panel. Oh wait, they are all in jail according to Datuk Ongkili. I also noticed there wasn’t a single woman on that panel. Is there no room for women in a knowledge-based economy?

To me, the panelist did not tackle the challenges ahead as clearly as I thought they would. With all due respect, Dr. Zhang presented Microsoft’s roadmap and stressed on their $3 billion R&D commitment outside of the US with a list of cities where research centers are set up. Malaysia is not on that list and there are no short, medium or long term plans to include this country in that roadmap. Datuk Ongkili believes Malaysia isn’t lacking innovators and a lot of them are in prison. With that kind of statistics, we should maybe refocus on prison sourcing next year? Chris Forbes (funny guy, I like him) thinks taking a printed magazine online is innovation but it’s not, that’s evolution. The New York Times is innovating printed news delivery online. Finally we have John Gage (I like him too) who talked about innovating to bring more happiness to the world. People want to buy happy. I like where Gage was heading with that idea. Even if I’m jobless, I guess I would like to be happily jobless. Gage paints a utopia that technology can play a part to bridge the gap but again, little to hold on to as to how we can get from zero to hero.

I was hoping to hear more concrete plans or plans with more common sense. A gentleman I spoke to after the conference told me how Malaysian innovators are not being heard. Instead of an online repository for ideas like myideas.my how about a forum for innovators to post their feedback and opinions? Is the government even interested to hear and fix their pain points? How does an international advisory panel know what to fix or how to help? There is also a lack of recognition for innovation. Could the media have offered some help with a regular column or TV program highlighting innovation in Malaysia? How about an annual Innovation Award?

How about improving our broadband infrastructure? The price companies have to pay for larger pipes is incredible. Surely faster speeds can work in tandem with the government’s efforts in increasing broadband penetration in the country. Why must everyone wait for penetration to reach its target before we can see faster connections? People are increasingly mobile – John Gage also mentioned this. Can the government encourage telcos to eliminate the 2-3GB caps on mobile data plans?  This cap does not help knowledge workers one bit.

So the people have been asked to innovate and pick up speed to compete with the world but is anything being done about the speed bumps all over this roadmap (or lack of one) to an innovation and knowledge-based economy?

Filed Under: Business, Events, Tech Tagged With: , ,

I dreamt of sugar-free typography

November 9, 2009 By View Comments

I dreamt last night that I discovered a way of coding subliminal messages into typography. When people look at the words using my typography (which looks very similar to the Museo font) they would instantly go into a hypnotic trance, absorbing every binoptic (the cousin of binaural) suggestion coming through their computer screens or TV. It was a brilliant idea that only I could think of.

I was making a killing selling my serif typography to global brands. One of them was a cola brand (no name shall be mentioned) who wanted people to believe that it should replace everyone’s water intake. But the binoptic suggestions in the code will only work through my fonts and in a specific point size which means the cola brand has to ditch their san serif bold typography and change their entire brand identity. Are they about to do it? Let’s see. Times are tough. Brand personality and brand values haven’t brought in the numbers, their foray into social media has landed the brand in hot soda causing global-scale backlash (they wished they could blame the agency but final approval did come from their own offices). The cola generation from ten years ago are now diabetic. And the new diet formula is using an ingredient that isn’t FDA approved (the public doesn’t know this yet). Sales is dropping . So? New typography it is.

Filed Under: Humor Tagged With: ,

Can brands use twitter list?

November 2, 2009 By View Comments

twitter Personally, I see twitter lists as another ego stroker. You know it is when people start thanking each other for adding them to a list or getting upset when they have been left out of a list and proceed to block, unfollow or both, the list curator.

I curated a list of Malaysians in Social Media for Listorious.com yesterday which I deleted today because it’s just not worth the emotional hassle. Some names are obviously left out because I don’t have every social media person on my follow list. Even if I did, I don’t count having 18K followers or someone who does not engage with others as being in or having a huge influence in social media.

Ego “twisting” aside for personal lists, there are great reasons for brands to curate their own lists.

Here’s my short list:
1. A brand can show what’s important to them with a list of tweeps they follow. It’s like Tony Hsieh’s alltop page where you’ll find blogs on customer service, lifestyle, fashion, shoes and tech. Knowing what Tony has accomplished in zappos, I want to read what he reads too.

2. I agree with point #5 on this list. Gives brands an opportunity to aggregate multiple accounts. Some brands have different names for different departments. Sometimes I wonder why. Customers want one website, one phone number and one email to reach a company.

Sometimes it works. If different twitter accounts are already established, a twitter list with all the brand’s accounts will help a lot. A great example is how AMC promotes the tv series Mad Men on twitter. Twitter accounts are set up for some of the main characters. One to check out is Betty Draper’s (a character in that show) twitter account. On her profile is a list of the other Mad Men characters which she has listed in her rolodex. It’s incredibly fun to read if you’re a fan of Mad Men like me. Betty also has a list of other people she finds interesting and she has them listed in Mad Men of the future (today’s mad men and women).

3. A brand’s staff/member list can also tell others who work or belong to that organization. Especially useful when someone in your organization deals with other people representing your company. When @xyz representing a publication asks me for an interview for example, I’d like to know if they are legit. Seeing their name listed on the staff list of the publication’s (account verified) twitter account gives me some confidence that he or she isn’t a competitor who just wants to get information on a new product I’ve released to the press that’s under embargo. Good example is the New York Times staff list.

Only three from me. There’s more from the many articles written by twitter pundits which you can do a search on. Final note, if you manage a brand or an organization on twitter, do get your list up soon.

Filed Under: Apps, Feature, Marketing, Reviews Tagged With: , ,

Are you twisted? (that’s tweetspeak for twitter listed)

November 2, 2009 By View Comments

twitter

Twitter introduced the list feature a few weeks ago and announced it on their blog on October 30. I saw it on my twitter profile some time around October 20 and was adding people to lists I’ve set up until it became tedious. Please excuse me if I have not gotten you into a list. I’ll get around to listing everyone soon.

I like that I can put the people I follow into lists so whenever I needed answers to technical question, I could look up my “geekeratti” list and tweet them, for example.  I would like it even more if I could send @ messages or DMs only to the people on one list. Can’t do it yet but until then, it’s still a good tagging system. If you’re unsure of what lists to create, perhaps I can help. Here’s what I have:

For people I think everyone should follow in October, they are in my @thechannelc/vip-october:

vip

For people who would likely not add me back, I put them into my @thechannelc/follow-back-chance-is-nil:

chrisbrogan

BTW, Chris B is not on my follow list anymore but the tag I have set up for him is still there. I really don’t care whether he follows me back.

For people who usually don’t reply  tweets, I have them in my @thechannelc/doesnt-reply-tweets:

doesn't reply

Lists can be a lot of fun. When you add someone to a list or two, it shows up on their profile. They can also see which of your list/s you’ve put them into:

god5

god6

And did you know you can add yourself to your own list?:

me

Finally, lists can be set to private and no one but you can see them. This is good if you want to create a private “pain-in-the-ass” or a “jerk” list.  Remember though that if someone who could make your life difficult is on the PITA list, triple check that it’s set to private.

Filed Under: Apps, Feature, Humor Tagged With: , ,

Yahoo! kicks off treasure hunt ahead of the new yahoo.com.my launch.

October 28, 2009 By View Comments

It won’t be official until next year but the site is live and Yahoo! wants young Malaysians to explore what’s in store at yahoo.com.my with a treasure hunt called Youreka!

How it works is pretty simple. Hidden in all the Yahoo! services – the News page at http://yahoo.com.my, Yahoo! Messenger and Yahoo! Mail are tickets in either red, blue or green. If you hunt enough to be one of the top hunters you can then hunt for the purple ticket. Once you find a ticket, click on it and login with your Yahoo! ID. If you don’t have one, you can register for it. Successful hunters have a chance at winning adidas accessories, blockbuster movie screenings, BlackBerry® Curve™ 8520 smartphones, customizable mi adidas Supernova Sequence and Microbounce shoes, and exclusive passes to the YOUREKA! Finale party on November 25. One lucky hunter will walk away with a Digital Entertainment suite. You can find out more at the Youreka! microsite in http://yahoo.com.my.

Filed Under: Feature, Tech, video Tagged With: ,
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