Recycle your phone

Can one phone save the world?

If every 3 billion phone users recycle just one phone, we van save over 240,000 tonnes of raw materials. The result is equivalent to stopping CO2 emissions from 4 million cars. Every phone contains significant amounts of copper, aluminium, gold, plastic and other non-metals that can be salvaged and reused.

By recycling just one phone, you can shield the environment from a lot of harmful substances. With our Nokia Kiosks, saving the earth has never been easier.

You can find Nokia Kiosks at these locations:

- Nokia Concept Store, The Gardens

- Nokia Store, The Curve and KLCC

- KTS Cellular, Giant Hypermarket Bandar Kinrara

More : Recycle a phone, adopt a tree

Google News comes to town

Search giant Google has just introduced yet another new product — this time it’s the localisation of its news aggregation site, Google News.

Officially live on Sept 18, the localised site, which is accessible from http://news.google.com.my, gives the user a page of constantly updated local news of the day.

“Our mission is to organise the world’s news info and make it accessible to everyone,” says Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, product manager for Google News.

Rahul said that the intent of the Google News site is not to take content away from publishers but to help people find what they’re looking for as fast as possible.

Hopefully, this will also channel traffic as quickly as possible to the publisher’s website, he says.

The main advantage of Google News Malaysia is to give readers a choice of a wide range of articles and views on the same story.

The technology that runs Google News is much like the one used for its search engine, i.e. webpages are ranked based on their popularity and certain predefined patterns of traffic on the Internet.

Currently, Google News Malaysia culls news snippets from more than 4,500 English-language sources such as The Star and The Borneo Post.

Like the US version, Google News Malaysia is split into several categories, ranging from technology to sports, all of which offer news from local sources.

Creative Thinking -Scamper Techniques

SIMPLY put, creativity is about coming out with something new. Being creative may not make you another Michelangelo, but new ideas are certainly necessary for today’s fast changing world.

As Edward de Bono, the world’s foremost authority on lateral thinking and innovation, said: “It is no longer enough to be efficient and solve problems. Businesses need creativity … to make the shift from administration to true entrepreneurship.”

You can also use creativity in your daily life. You can look at what you are doing and find alternative ways to improve. Problems become opportunities for you to use your creative thinking.

Critical versus creative

Our brain’s left hemisphere is all about logical, rational and sequential thinking while the right brain hemisphere is concerned with intuitive, random and subjective thinking.

Schools tend to concentrate on boosting the left brain in “scholastic” subjects and right-brain activities such as creativity and aesthetics tend to be downplayed. As a result, many people end up being more critical than creative.

Stimulating the right brain can be done by attempting tasks that require imagination and a fresh approach. The human brain has the ability to create an infinite amount of ideas. Unfortunately, most people use only 2 to 3 per cent of their brain capacity.

As a technique for generating ideas, take a look at a classical method called Scamper, an acronym for a collection of seven techniques. There are success stories for each of these techniques:

Substitute: The Russians failed to market vodka in the United States in the 1930s because clear alcohol was not popular. Heublein bought the rights, and looked for other ingredients (substitute) to colour the drink. Moscow Mule, Screwdriver and Bloody Mary were born and caused vodka sales to rise from 6,000 cases a year to 38 million in 1988.

Combine: Customers of American gas company Arco asked if they could walk over to the adjacent convenience store to pick up a hamburger and a quart of milk after they had pumped their gas. As a result, customers can now do all three (combine) all at the same petrol kiosk.

Adapt: William Durant, the founder of General Motors, had great ideas but could not run the company profitably. He was replaced by Alfred Sloan, who was able to take many of Durant’s ideas and turn them (adapt) into reality.

Modify: 3M’s advertisements to sell Post-It pads did not cause sales to pick up. Its general sales manager, Joe Ramey, noticed that people who used the pads could not stop. He convinced the company to modify its marketing approach by giving away free samples. Since then, the Post-It has become one of 3M’s all-time champion products.

Put to other uses: A toilet tissue manufacturer discovered a carload of paper that was too thick to be made into tissue. Unable to return it, he asked himself what else could be done with the paper?” (put to other use), and paper towels were born.

Eliminate: Before 1836, mail charges were paid by the addressee, with the fees computed according to distance and weight. This made correspondence expensive and slow. Rowland Hill proposed that postage be uniform regardless of distance (eliminate), and that this fee be prepaid by buying and affixing a stamp.

Rearrange: Xerox’s first copier was priced at $4,000 and few companies were willing to make such a capital investment. Xerox understood this and began selling what they produced: copies. At 5 cents a copy, company staff could pay for the documents from petty cash (rearrange).

Taking up a hobby is a good start to being creative, and magic is one hobby that requires a lot of creative input. Since magic tricks rely on illusions, it takes a lot of creative effort to make something that is not real appear believable.

You will find that the process of conceiving a magical idea and communicating it to the audience through a performance is a creative process.

Source: Straits Times/Asia News Network

Sony -Asia's favourite brand

Japanese electronic giant Sony is Asia's favorite brand, according to a survey of Asian shoppers released on Sunday that was dominated by consumer technology firms.

Sony replaced Finnish phone maker Nokia as the region's top brand, ahead of another Japanese electronics firm Canon and U.S. sportswear firm Nike, according to the survey by Media magazine and market researchers TNS.

The appeal of technology across the region was highlighted by the presence in the top 20 of U.S. firms Hewlett-Packard and Apple, South Korean giants Samsung and LG, as well as Japan's Panasonic, the survey found.

U.S. Internet firm Google was seen as the top media and telecommunications company, while Coca-Cola was the most popular beverage, the survey found.

Asia Pacific’s top 20 brands

RANK	BRAND	RANK	BRAND
1	Sony	11	Nokia
2	Canon	12	Colgate
3	Nike	13	Nestle
4	Google	14	Starbucks
5	Hewlett-Packard	15	Panasonic
6	Coca Cola	16	Honda
7	Adidas	17	Apple
8	Samsung	18	LG
9	7-Eleven	19	Nescafe
10	Yahoo	20	Toys-R-Us

A total of 3,600 consumers in 10 different markets including Australia and China were interviewed for the survey.

Asia, including increasingly China, has become a key market for many of the world's leading firms in the past 10 years, with many targeting the region's gadget-mad consumers.

Complete Story: ‘ASIA PACIFIC’S TOP 1000 BRANDS’ 2008 FINDINGS

New Media: GigaOm.com

GigaOm.com which deliver technology news, analysis and opinions on topics ranging from broadband and online games to Web 2.0 was founded by Om Malik in 2006. Before launching his own publishing venture, Om was a senior writer for Business 2.0 magazine covering telecom and broadband stories. Currently they serve a monthly global audience of 1.75 million consumers and professionals interested in the latest news in the world of high-tech.

According to a special write up by Sin Chew Daily, GigaOm.com having a daily hits of 50,000 which generate monthly advertisement income of USD50,000. Compare with The Wall Street Journal which having 2 mil of subscriptions and out of 80,000 is log in daily for news, GigaOm.com is a great example for success New Media provider as it is open and free.

Beside GigaOm.com, here are some highlights by Zhan Hongzhi [詹宏志]:

- with the exist of Blog, everyone is a media; when information is floated, review and guide become effective; who can eliminate quantities will create values

- with the exist of search engine like Google, everyone will refer to Wikipedia, great encyclopedia was ignored as you have to pay for it; editor new role is to ensure this information are correct, accurate and relevant.

- has a vision in you, no one will come and tell you what happens next