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"Kiwi!" is an animation about a Kiwi - a type of bird that cannot fly, who spends its whole life working towards achieving his dream. The kiwi strived to create the illusion that it was flying over a forest as it soared down through the sky from the top of a cliff. Thus, the kiwi spent what must have been its whole life nailing trees to the side of a cliff. All this, to fulfil its one dream of flying, even though it was technically unable to. There are several powerful messages behind Kiwi, but mainly, it makes you think: no matter how absurd and seemingly out of reach your dreams are, what's stopping you from achieving them?
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Police officer crashes his car into pillar along walkway at Jurong
SINGAPORE : A police officer crashed his car into a pillar along a walkway at about 6pm on Monday.
The incident happened in front of Block 274D at Jurong West Avenue 3.
A police spokesman told Channel NewsAsia the plain-clothes officer had lost control of his vehicle.
It then mounted the kerb and hit the pillar.
No one was injured, but the car's bonnet was dented.
The police are investigating the incident. - CNA/ms
Outsourced work plagued by cost overruns, underperformance: survey
By Jeana Wong, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 19 March 2007 2028 hrs
SINGAPORE : The practice of outsourcing has not really brought in its much-touted benefits for companies, according to Deloitte Consulting's latest outsourcing survey of 280 of the world's biggest global firms.
The survey revealed that outsourced work have been plagued by underperformance and cost overruns, leading companies to start counting beans and to manage such work proactively.
To prevent costly mistakes, legal and accounting experts suggest that companies examine their own processes and think hard about exit strategies.
Outsourcing has been a popular catch phrase among companies looking to cut costs by hiring external parties to provide specific operational services.
But a Deloitte survey has found that outsourcing itself could lead to more staffing and tweaking of the services than expected.
And this ironically raises costs and eats into any expected cost savings.
"Typically, for organisations that outsource, they might have variations in terms of their practices across different regions or perhaps different operating companies. These different practises would mean that they are not able to accept the standardised solution offered by a vendor in a wholesale manner," said Phua Jer Hong, regional practice leader of Strategy & Ops Advisory at Deloitte Consulting.
"In other words, the majority of the organisations have yet to realise the cost savings that they are originally entailed or have identified in their business case. They are also putting in place a larger-than-expected retained organisation to manage outsourced vendors, as well as to manage the outsourcing deal itself."
Rather than being fixated on cost savings, Deloitte suggested that companies think of outsourcing as part of their overall business strategy.
For instance, a company entering a new overseas market could outsource its human resource operations. This would turn what would have been fixed costs into variable costs.
Companies could also transfer their risks and liabilities if they outsource non-core operations like disaster recovery.
Deloitte said companies could also start by centralising and standardising their own processes first before outsourcing what they identified as their non-core functions.
While there are many benefits from outsourcing, legal experts say companies will need to figure out their exit strategies right from the outset, so they are better prepared during transitions or when the relationship with an outsourced partner sours. This is especially if in-house staff have been transferred over to work with the vendor team.
"When you are in a transition out, make sure you think about where these employees are going to go and how you are going to downsize the relationship. Employees for certain jurisdictions in certain countries are, of course, a very political issue, a public relations issue, so you want to make sure you get this right from the outset," said Chin Hooi Yen, associate director of Gateway Law.
"The other thing is intellectual property. You want to ring-fence your IP and protect it throughout the relationship. And when you exit, you're still in control of your intellectual property, and not left it in the control of the vendor."
Of the 70% of respondents in the Deloitte survey expecting cost savings from outsourcing their work, nearly 40% had paid extra or hidden costs for services they believed were included in their contracts.
In the same survey, nearly two-thirds of respondents who outsourced have brought those services back in-house. - CNA /ls
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Malaysia's telecoms regulator has named four newcomers as winners of Wimax wireless high speed internet licences.
The winning bidders were Bizsurf Sdn Bhd, MIB Comm Sdn Bhd, Redtone-CNX Broadband Sdn Bhd and Asiaspace Dotcom Sdn Bhd.
The firms are expected to invest up to 300 million ringgit ($85.7m; £43.9m) within the service's first three years.
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McDonald's beats Starbucks in coffee smackdown
By David Colker, Times Staff Writer
11:37 AM PST, February 2, 2007
In the ultimate coffee smackdown, it was yuppie Starbucks vs. Ronald McDonald.
And the clown won.
Consumer Reports magazine said today that in a test conducted at two locations of each emporium, its tasters found McDonald's coffee to be "decent and moderately strong" with "no flaws." On the other hand, the Starbucks brew "was strong, but burnt and bitter enough to make your eyes water instead of open."
The March issue of the magazine, due out Monday, thus advises, "Try McDonald's, which was cheapest and best."
Actually, not all that much cheaper. McDonald's now charges $1.35 for what the magazine considers a "medium" sized cup of Joe. Starbucks gets $1.55 for about the same size cup. But of course, McDonald's has yet to offer half-cap lattes and it's hard to imagine Ronald in basic barista black.
Other fast-food coffees in the test included those from Burger King ("tasted more like hot water") and Dunkin' Donuts ("inoffensive").
No matter how much McDonald's revels in its win of the taste test, the company might be hard-pressed to use it in promotions. Consumer Reports, which takes no advertising, strictly prohibits companies from using its findings in ads.
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, further trembles has been felt in the building. Please remain calm.
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, no further trembles were felt for the past few hours. Please continue your normal operation
Microsoft's Live OneCare security software has failed tests which check how well it spots and stops malicious programs designed to attack Windows.
OneCare was the only failure among 17 anti-virus programs tested by the AV Comparatives organisation.
Microsoft's software only spotted 82.4% of the 500,000 viruses that the independent group subjected it to.
The test is the second in less than a month that Microsoft's anti-virus software has failed.
Apple makes great play of the fact that its OSX operating has yet to be attacked by a virus while Windows XP machines are plagued with problems.
Q9. Is this recall related to the Sony battery recall?
A. No. The two recalls are unrelated.
Q10. I replaced a defective Sony battery in my notebook PC. Are any of the batteries shipped as Sony replacements being recalled?
A. No, none of the batteries we shipped as replacements in the Sony recall are affected by this recall.
