Monday, July 2, 2012

N8PictureADay #58 - Macro

N8PictureADay #58 - Macro



Macro of vegetation around the office.

Sunday, July 1, 2012

N8pictureADay #57 - Baldie

N8pictureADay #57 - Baldie

My little jailbird was trying out mommyand#39;s shoes.

The Changing Retail Landscape

The Changing Retail Landscape


Part 01 Mobile Generation Malaysia


01 July 2012 - Business is going mobile. It is doing so fast, and it is evolving quickly as it goes along.


The mobile retail environment is a quickly changing landscape, and retailers who are quick to latch onto the latest innovations and trends in doing business with an Internet-savvy generation will stand to gain more than their slower to respond competitors.


Malaysia has a very high smartphone penetration rate. It is about 48% according to the Nielsen Digital Consumer Study 2011.


The Mobile Generation


The Mobile Generation is defined as being a generation of consumers who almost always are connected to the Internet. They have few qualms about buying online, and are smart enough to avoid most scams and traps of the Internet.


Usually, they are socially networked to one another and just as news of a good bargain are quickly spread to friends, so are news of bad customer service and fake sales.


Paypal was in Malaysia recently, and Elias Ghanem, Managing Director of Paypal Southeast Asia and India said that there is a huge competitive advantage to integrate online and mobile sales channels with the traditional brick and mortar sales channels.


[Elias Ghanem, Managing Director of Paypal Southeast Asia and India]


He adds that established brands would do well to leverage on their already considerable market presence by integrating a well-thought out online and mobile strategy to complement their existing business.


Online Commerce in Malaysia


The Nielsen Digital Consumer Study 2011 also tells us that Malaysia’s online commerce went from RM 1.8 billion in 2010 to RM 1.97 billion in 2011. That is a 9% increase year on year, and Paypal expects this figure to triple to RM 5.76 billion by 2015.



[Projected Growth of Malaysia’s online commerce. Graphics courtesy of Paypal]


What is behind such growth?


They think that it is due to lots more people in Malaysia shopping online. There were 1.6 million Malaysians shopping online in 2011. That is a huge 44% increase from 2010.


There were a number of factors given for this explosive growth.


a) New consumers joining the market and purchasing online


b) Retailers adding or improving upon their online sales presence


c) A number of International retailers marketing directly to Malaysian consumers


Breaking it down – the figures


Malaysia spent some RM 1.97 billion online in 2011.



[Malaysia’s online spend by Income bracket. Graphics courtesy of Paypal]


According to the research from Paypal and Mobile Shopping Insights 2011, middle income earners (RM 4001-8000) spent RM 819 million in 2011, the largest chunk of that online commerce market at 42%.


Next was the lower middle income group (RM2001-4000) which spent RM 521 million or 27% of the total. Together, the middle income group accounted for 69% of the spending, which indicates that online shopping is increasingly becoming an accepted part of everyday life.


Next: Part 02 Domestic Commerce & Concerns


♠ JC

 


Saturday, June 30, 2012

N8PictureADay #56 - Lonely cloud

N8PictureADay #56 - Lonely cloud



On a bright sunny summer day the only thing you could spot in the skies was this lonely cloud.

Friday, June 29, 2012

N8PictureADay #55 - Frozen fruits

N8PictureADay #55 - Frozen fruits



I took this one in a supermarket at the frozen fruits stand. Shot with macro mode.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Tweetian for Nokia Belle review

Tweetian for Nokia Belle review

Twitter just got a new client on Belle. After the classic Gravity the shaky TwimGo and the AMOLED killer Tweeties, it's time for Qt to deliver it's best Twitter client yet. Don't get me wrong, it can't hold a candle to Gravity, but it's biggest advantage? It's free. If Tweeties was meant to help you migrate to a new OS, Tweetian is here to make you stay.




Tweetian is very easy to navigate and use. It has three homescreens for your Timeline, Mentions and Messages. Swipe to the left to reveal each of them. I would have liked Tweetian to include loop scrolling here so I could reach the first screen from the last easier.




Tweetian offers pull-down to refresh, cached images and tweets which is good to have in order to keep your Twitter API rate up. The user interface is as quick as it gets with Qt apps but I have to say that the author used a paining system similar to Gravity's, meaning that while you scroll trough your tweets, the images are no loading. When you take you finger off the screen they start loading. That means no more chunky scrolling. It's actually a very impressive app.

You can add photos and location to your tweets easily and the tweet editor integrates well with both the default Belle keyboard and Swype. Retweeting, replying and adding a tweet to your favorites is a breeze and can be done from the bottom toolbar.




In the user profile panel you can see practically everything about that user, the Bio, the tweets, the followers, the following, the lists, the favorites by swiping trough them.





The settings are comprise of three tabs. In the General tab you can switch the theme, enable the option to include hashtags in replies and a sign out button in case you want to switch the account. It is good to know that unlike Gravity, Tweetian does not offer support for multiple Twitter accounts, so enterprise users need to look elsewhere. The second tab is called Refresh and there you can set the automatic refresh timings for various items. By default auto refresh is off. The third tab called API Limit does exactly what it tells. It shows you your Twitter API limits. It's just a status panel that you can check after using Tweetian heavily.

That being said I can honestly tell you that this app is going places. It can easily replace your Nokia Social client when it comes to Twitter. The app is very fast and I like it. Usually with Qt apps the scrolling and loading of panels is chunky and slow but somehow Tweetian works around those issues making it very fast and clean.

Download:Tweetian at Nokia Store

Google Nexus 7 tablet out in July for USD 199

Google Nexus 7 tablet out in July for USD 199


28 June 2012 – Rumours of a 7-inch tablet by Google proved true after all, with the company unveiling the device, which will be manufactured by ASUS, at its keynote event earlier.



There is much to be excited about; the tablet has a 1280x800 IPS display coated in "scratch-resistant Corning glass,", as well as a front-facing, 1.2-megapixel camera. The device will be powered by a quad-core Tegra 3 processor and 1GB of RAM. Connectivity options include GPS, Bluetooth, 802.11b/g/n WiFi and Micro USB as well as NFC. To top it all off, it will come with a 4325mAh battery and weigh only 340 grams. The price? Just USD 199 for 8GB of storage.


The Google Nexus 7 will be available mid-July via Google Play in North America and Australia, with more regions to be announced on a later date.