Review: Hotel Reservations

How does Hotel Reservations stand out among its peers and competitors?

Here's what I think. Because of my background, I will be coming mostly from an Usability point of view and I do hope that the website owner will find my criticisms constructive enough to actually implement some of my recommendations to further enhance its website.

Homepage: Upon entering the homepage, I am bombarded by tons of information. Tons! The Homepage is too cluttered, just like most other online websites. Online surfers are impatient people with short attention spans, so they are easily put off when an encyclopedia wealth of information is being thrown in their face.

Recommendation Sub-page: I have problems getting started or even knowing how/where to get started; If I happen to be brought to the homepage without a destination in mind, will I know what to do next or will I just look for the exit? I hope the website can design a "Recommendations" page for those who were stung by the travelling bug but are clueless as to where they wanna go in the meantime.

Book Online: If you guys notice, there's a "Book online" tab near the top right hand corner of the screen. It would be useful to turn this plain text into a hyperlink to direct potential customers straight to the "Hotel Reservations" page.

Hotel Filter: At the Hotels sub-page, you can sort the Hotels according to "Best Value", "Quality", "Price" and "A-Z". Here's a breakdown of what this means:-

"Quality" - Hotels are arranged from 5 stars to 0 stars
"Price" - Hotels are arranged from the cheapest to the most expensive
"A-Z" - Alphabetical order

My question is - What does "Best Value" mean? Cheapest Hotel in each Quality standard? How does it differ from "Price"? (I did a sort according to both "Best Value" and "Price" and they both return different results) Maybe it would help if there's a pop-up text box which explains the above 4 categories when users do a scroll-over.

"Save up to 70% off": At the top right hand corner, I am sure you will be attracted by these 5 words. It would definitely help if HotelReservations.com can explain or give a breakdown as to why users can save up to 70% off when they make online bookings through the website.

"$100 Rebate" Promotion: There's an ongoing promotion which gives up to $100 cash rebate with online booking. The catch? You gotta make a 12-night booking. I'm sure you have heard of the phrase: "Nothing in life is free". Well, I have a personal saying which goes: "Free stuff often comes at a high price".

Conclusion: I have seen about 10 out of the 71 posts made by other bloggers, and they were all generic in nature, and nothing which were specific to HotelReservations.com. I do hope that the owners will appreciate my honest review of their website and implement some of my recommendations. Competition is stiff in this industry, and we must all strive to improve continuously. Overall, I think it is a good online travel website, but with a few tweaks, it can become better.

Investment: How many Stocks should you own? (Part 2)

Click here for Part 1 of this post.

So the heck with diversification, right?

Well, not exactly.

First, the least-diversified investors frequently lagged the market; they just lagged by less than investors who held more stocks. Second, because stock returns are so uneven, the "average" undiversified investor doesn't really exist. At any given point, there are something like 10,000 stocks in the United States. Most of them are mediocre, but a handful are what Bill Bernstein of Efficient Frontier Advisers dubs "superstocks" capable of delivering gargantuan returns for years. Think Microsoft in the '90s, when it returned 9,000%. More often superstocks are lesser-known companies. (aC: This is so true; That is why my strategy is always to go after penny stocks with great fundamentals. You can buy more volume of stock A that's worth only $0.20 and wait for it to move to $1.20 as compared to a stock B that's worth $2.00 and watch it move to $3.00, even though the latter will usually move faster. With the same $10,000, you can buy 50 lots of stock A and reap $50,000 in gross profit as compared to 5 lots of stock B and gain just $5,000. Of course, the hard part lies in identifying those Stock As; Stock Bs are your typical Blue chips)

Across a large group of people whose portfolios are mostly in one or two stocks, the lucky few with superstock portfolios will make the group's average return look great, even if the vast majority of individual members have lousy or middling results.

On the other hand, investors who spread their bets across dozens of stocks have only a slightly better chance at catching a superstock. And if they do land one, it won't have nearly as much impact on their portfolios, or on the group's average return.

So the real story is that you need a lot of stocks to be adequately diversified, and you need a concentrated portfolio to give yourself a shot at striking it rich. An unsolvable catch-22? Hardly. In fact, you can have it both ways by employing a straightforward, two-part strategy.

First, direct 90 percent of your U.S. equity allocation into a total stock market index fund that automatically gives you a stake in thousands of companies. (aC: In Singapore terms, this will your ETFs that track indexes like your STI ETF 100) That guarantees you a piece of every superstock that already exists or might emerge later - and, more important, it means you'll be adequately diversified and your investing costs will be at rock bottom.

Then pursue your search for the next Microsoft or Google by researching the daylights out of a very small number of companies and putting the remaining 10 percent of your portfolio into your one to three best ideas. This way you'll let yourself have a little fun. You will also minimize your risk and maximize your hope.

(aC: Hmmm... I have a different recommendation here - I would recommend the allocation to be 70% ETF and 30% "undervalued penny stock". If it's 90/10 as recommended above, I dont think gains from the UPS portion will provide any meaningful offset to the market return of the ETFs.)

Review: Submit2Please

Traffic - The currency equivalent of the Internet realm.

Submit2Please is an online business which offers manual directory submission to various directories across the world. They promise that your website's URL will not only be submitted but they will eventually be listed on the targeted directory.

So why is directory submission important?

Directory submission has 3 major benefits and they can be broken down as:-

Higher Positioning in Search Engine Results
Indexing of Web Site/Blog
Higher Probability of Click Through Traffic (otherwise known as CTC)

How much is it?

Submission to 500 Directories within 18 days - $99.95

Submission to 250 Directories (of PR 3+) within 14 days - $74.95

Submission to 250 Directories within 14 Days - $64.95

Submission to 150 Directories (of PR 4+) within 8 Days - $49.95

Guaranteed inclusion in Google index within 10 days - $9.95

Is the above expensive? That depends on how much revenue you are currently generating from your Blog/Website in the first place. My rule of thumb is 30% of your revenue should go into online marketing/advertising expenditure. So how do we put this into practise? Let's say your Blog is currently generating $50 a month, I would advise you to sacrifice 1 month of your revenue and pay for the 150 Directory submission and see if this boost up your revenue. If it does not result an increase in your monthly revenue by 200% (i.e. $150), then I would say it was a waste of money.

Lastly, let me touch on the ROI considerations provided by the website as follows:-

Assumptions (worst case scenario):

Consider our deal of submission to 500 directories for USD 99.95
Consider only 50% directories accept your site submission
Further you can safely consider that every directory which accepts your website will send your way at least four visitor in the entire year! So you still get 250 x 4 = 1000 unique visitors in an entire year for a cost of USD 99.95. So you get one unique visitor for less than 10 cents!

Here's what I think of the above. Firstly, a 50% hit rate is overly optimistic; A more realistic figure would be 5%. Secondly, I will use back the assumption that each directory will only send 4 visitors to our targeted URL over a one year period, because I think this is reasonable.

What we have is the following: 25 X 4 = 100 unique visitors over a one year period for a cost of ~US$100 or approximately US$1 per visitor. I personally find that too expensive. Furthermore, there's no guarantee that these visitors will return for a 2nd visit. Anyway, for those blogs that have 100 visitors in a single day will probably not be too thrilled by this kinda stats...

59th Emmy Awards - Stronger

"Th Th Th Tha hat that dont kill me
Can only make me Stronger
I need you to hurry up now
Cos I can't wait much longer"

Haha! Have you guys seen the Emmys? The above video is super funny (if you take away the whole Ryan Seacrest part)

Rainn Wilson of "The Office" (US) fame has to compete with the king of hip hop, Kanye West in a rap song contest in order to win... NADA! As Wayne Brady puts it, the people at the Emmys are rich enough; They don't need no more prizes. Instead, the winner of the rap song showndown will get to present the next award - "Best Reality TV Series" (which explains the whole setup)

Review: PayPerPost

I have been with PayPerPost, an online business that pays Bloggers to write sponsored content for them, since early August 2007. I have written about 7 Posts for them in this Blog so far (you can identify them by their "Sponsored" label) and have had both good and bad experiences with them.

Here's my story:-

The Good
(1) Support Ticket System - Fast response and some of the support personnel are very helpful.
(2) Active Community - Just pay a visit to their Forums section and you'll know what I mean; Some of the other Bloggers are very helpful too.
(3) PPP Direct - This is a feature of PayPerPost which brings advertiser directly to your doorstep. My first PPP Direct client found me within 2 weeks and if you are interested in reading this post, it is labelled as "PPP Direct".
(4) $1K Tuesday - There are loads of Opportunities (that pay a premium as high as $500), being released on every Tuesday. Such Opportunities are open to everyone, even those Blogs with a low Google Page Rank.

The Bad
(1) Support Ticket System - The response is fast but responses from some of the support personnel make you feel that they are more concerned with closing the ticket promptly rather than addressing your concerns
(2) Post Review - The posts are almost never reviewed within 72 hours as claimed by the TOS. I always have to send a trouble ticket to remind them.
(3) Payment - Have to wait for 30 days after your Sponsored Post has been put up.
(4) Opportunities - If you are joining this with hopes to snag a $500 Opportunity or even $50 ones, I would advise you to think again. Such Opportunities are rare gems and are snapped within seconds. No kidding, they are snatched the moment they are released. The highest amount I have gotten so far is $20.

The Verdict
It will be worth your while to sign up, but it will not make you the next Internet millionaire.

Investment: How many Stocks should you own? (Part 1)

The answer is a lot more, and a lot fewer, than you probably think.

By Jason Zweig, Money Magazine senior writer/columnist

With the market near record highs and yet bouncy as a beat-up couch, you may be thinking it's time to focus on a small number of stocks that you know really well. What better way to keep returns up and risk down?

Conventional wisdom and new academic research certainly seem to suggest
that this is the way to go. Many financial planners and brokers will tell you that a portfolio of as few as 12 stocks (and up to 30) will
sufficiently diversify your (entire) holdings. (aC: The benefits of Diversification can be measured mathematically by the correlation coefficient of a portfolio; There is diversification benefit only if the addition of a new stock to a portfolio leads to a decrease in the overall correlation coefficient of a portfolio. So, the above study is saying that the addition of an additional stock (or more) to a portfolio of 30 stocks will not lower the overall correlation coefficient, and hence there is no diversification benefit from doing so.)

And three recent studies have found that individuals who own fewer stocks do better than those who own many.

However, as is often the case with conventional wisdom (and academic research), there's a lot more to the story. Fact is, if you build your portfolio entirely on the principle of "less is more," you're a lot more likely to end up with less than more. Here's why and what to do instead.

Those were the days
The idea that 12 to 30 stocks are all you need dates back at least to the 1960s, when academics, including Burton Malkiel, author of the classic "A Random Walk Down Wall Street," concluded that that's what it took to eliminate most of the risk from a portfolio. (They usually defined "risk" as the chance of suffering big swings away from the average market return.) (aC: Or even more specifically, it is defined as "unsystematic risk" - the kind of risk that can be diversifed away by adding certain uncorrelated stocks to an exisitng portfolio. There's also another kind of risk known as "systematic risk" that cannot be diversified away.)

But back in the days of hula hoops and transistor radios, and before computer-generated trading became common, stocks didn't bounce around the way they do today. In 2001, Malkiel found that it took 50 stocks to get the risk reduction that 20 used to provide. Others estimate that true diversification requires hundreds of stocks.

The focus factor
Just recently, however, researchers studying the performance of individual investors have discovered something that, at first glance, seems electrifying: The more concentrated a portfolio is, the higher the returns. One study found that investors whose portfolios were dominated by one or two stocks outperformed the most diversified stock owners by 0.8 to 4.8 percentage points annually on average. That's a huge gap. And roughly 8 percent of the top performers had portfolios concentrated in a single stock.

(aC: If you look at the definition of risk as defined above, you can see that risk may not neccessarily be a bad thing. If risk is the fluctuation around a certain mean/average return value, then this fluctuation can also be positive. In other words, becasue of the added risk, your portfolio returns can be higher. This is the basis for the saying - "Higher Risk; Higher Returns")

Continue here.

Review: CompuCram

For those interested in taking the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) (previously the National Association of Securities Dealers or NASD) Series 7 license exam, do check out CompuCram.

The Series 7 provides an individual with the qualifications necessary in order to make different types of trades with all types of corporate securities, excluding commodities and futures. It is also one of the steps necessary in order for a member firm associate to register with FINRA. The Series 7 exam must be passed in order to take many other principal exams offered by FINRA.

So how will the CompuCram Exam Preparation Software help you pass the Exam? At a mere $69, you will enjoy the following benefits:-

(a) The software is written by a team of financial industry experts, all of whom are working professionals with up-to-date knowledge and experience.

(b) There is virtually an unlimited no. of exams which are continually updated with the latest questions; I guess this is the most important factor, because we just gotta practise, practise and practise for such financial exams.

(c) CompuCram provides a 100% guarantee that if you do not pass the exam, you will get a refund of your original purchase price (if you call them within 30 days of activation), so its virtually risk-free.

(d) There is no expiration date on the system.

Investment: The Top 10 Trading Rules - Part 2

This is continued from my earlier post.

(6) Adapt your style to the market
At various junctures, different investment approaches are warranted and applying the right methodology is half the battle. Identify your time horizon and employ a risk profile that allows the market to work for you.

(7) Maximize your reward relative to your risk
If you're patient and pick your spots, edges will emerge that provide an advantageous risk/reward. Proactive patience is a virtue. (aC: This is very true in a sense; I realised that my Contra trades will never do better than the stocks that I hold even for just a few months)

(8) Perception is reality in the marketplace
Identifying the prevalent psychology is a necessary process when trading. It's not "what is," it's what's perceived to be that dictates supply and demand. (aC: On the philosophical side, isn't "Reality" itself just a matter of one's perception? One person's reality may be completely different or even opposite from another person's)

(9) When unsure, trade "in between"
Your risk profile should always be an extension of your thought process. If you're unsure, trade smaller--or paper trade--until your identify your comfort zone. (aC: THIS is the time to do that - during times of great volatility and extreme price fluctuations.)

(10) Don't let your bad trades turn into investments
Rationalization has no place in trading. If you put a position on for a catalyst and it passes, take the risk of win, lose or draw. (aC: Alright, hands up! I'm guilty of this too, but there ARE times when bad investments can be turned into good ones; That's a strategy I will leave till another time.)

There are obviously many more rules but I've found these to be my common threads through the years. Each of you has a unique risk profile and time horizon, so some of these commandments may not apply.

As always, I share these thoughts with hopes that they add value to your process. Find a style that works for you and always allow for a margin of error. No approach is failsafe and any trader worth his or her salt has endured periods of pain.

Good traders know how to make money but great traders know how to take a loss. For if there wasn't risk in this profession, it would be called "winning" rather than "trading."

Source: CNN Money.com

Pingo Mobile

I previously owned a pre-paid card and it had a one year expiry date. When my card expired, I didn't even know about it until I tried making an outgoing call. The service provider should have the courtesy to inform its customers that their cards are expiring because of the following drawbacks when one's card becomes expired - Firstly, the stored value in the card is unredeemable. Secondly, the mobile number cannot be re-used, even when you offered to pay to do so. I guess such a problem wouldn't happen with Pingo since its prepaid calling cards have no supposed expiry dates (I would however recommend one to call their customer hotline to confirm this as this info isn't explicitly mentioned on their website.)

So, let's get down to it - What are some of the perks of becoming a Pingo user?

(a) Special phone card blog discount coupon: “ppp3” valid for $3 off Pingo

(b) Pingo offers one of the Cheapest Phone Card

(c) Receive $25 phone card for just $17 (I personally wouldn't be enticed by such offers becuase I don't believe in spending X dollars to save Y dollars)

(d) Pingo’s calling card affiliate program pays $15 for each new customer you refer

Why wait? Sign up for their instant calling card now!

(P.S. Pingo is a service of iBasis, which is a major provider of international long distance service to phone companies around the world.)

Investment: The Top 10 Trading Rules - Part 1

By Todd Harrison

I remember why I wanted to be a trader. I figured that the easiest way to make money was to stand near the cash register. Of course, as I discovered through my 17-year career, there's a reason why consistent producers get paid the big bucks. Flashy bets and big swings sometimes connect but, in the end, a disciplined approach pays the bills.

I've tripped plenty through the years, the types of missteps that almost cost me my livelihood. But I persevered, climbed the ladder and morphed those mistakes into valuable lessons.
I evolved and matured as a vice-president at Morgan Stanley (MS), a Managing Director at the Galleon Group and as the President of Cramer Berkowitz, a $400 million hedge fund. My approach wasn't always constant but, in the end, certain rules allowed me to stay in the game.

These are those rules.

(1) Respect the price action but never defer to it
The action (or "eyes") is a valuable tool when trading but if you defer to the flickering ticks, stocks would be "better" up and "worse" down and that's a losing proposition.

(2) Discipline trumps conviction
No matter how strongly you feel on a given position, you must defer to the principles of discipline when trading. Always attempt to define your risk and never believe that you're smarter than the market.

(3) Opportunities are made up easier than losses
It's not necessary to play every day, it's only necessary to have a high winning percentage on the trades you choose to make. Sometimes the ability not to trade is as important as trading ability. (aC: Oh man, this is so true! The tempation to make a quick buck is always there, so one of the top trader's discipline is to resist temptation.)

(4) Emotion is the enemy when trading
Emotional decisions always have a way of coming back to haunt you. If you're personally attached to a position, your decision making process will be flawed. Always take a deep breath before risking your hard earned coin.

(5) Zig when others Zag
(aC: This is otherwise known as the Contrarian rule; Contrarians believe that the general investing public is usually wrong in its trading strategy, so the smart thing to do is to do the opposite) Sell hope, buy despair and take the other side of emotional disconnects (in the context of controlled risk). If you can't find the sheep in the herd, chances are that you're it.

Read Part 2 of this Post here...

Writing a New York Times Bestseller

For the professional writers out there, if you are wondering why your books don't sell like Robert Kiyosaki's, even if you may be a more qualified writer than he is (Robert has always claimed that he has failed English in school), then you gotta check out John Kremer's webpage: BookMarket.com. John will teach you the tips on how to market your simple book to become a New York Times Bestseller List.



P.S. If you are wondering who Robert Kiyosaki is... You are probably in the wrong business to begin with...

The 10 Principles of Economics

This is an interesting video on the 10 Principles of Economics. Don't worry, it's not boring nor dry... In fact, if only all economics professors were half as humourous as this guy, we would have more interesting macroeconomic articles in our local newspapers...

Improving Home Improvement

Whenever I have free time (haha, does anybody has that nowadays?), I like to decorate or reorganise things around my house (esp. my room and study area). I will wonder: "How would this look here?" or "Would this be more accessible if I place it here?" or "How can I create more space as my room's pretty cramped and cluttered with stuff?" Well, if you share the same thoughts as me, why not hop on by to Anglian Home Improvements for more ideas?

Oh, do also check out their Conservatory page. I currently do not own a Conservatory at my place, but looking at the following pictures really makes me consider building one:






Imagine just chilling out in your own Conservatory with a good book. It's an ideal place to show off your plants to too!

Don't think you know it all, IDA

Before I am where I am, I actually went for an interview at IDA. The job posting on Recruit highlighted that the role was that of project management with no hint that one must be very technically sound. The 1st part of the interview was the standard essay questions (as for most government or civil service related jobs), which was relatively routine. The second part was an interview with the immediate supervisor. You can tell right away that this guy was a techincal nerd and he started firing me all the technical questions after 5 mins of pleasantries. I was dumbfounded half the time as I didn't expect the job to be techincally focused. I went there with the mindset that the job requires you to understand the technical jargon but it does not require you to exemplify it. And he gave me a "What is this guy doing here?" look. I then told him that: "Well, your recruiting advert clearly stated that you are looking for a Project Manager with no requirements in technical expertise mentioned at all. But it seems to me that you are looking for a Project Engineer instead since the job is so techincally focused." HR then apologised for the misrepresentation.

Notwithstanding this, the techincal interviewer continued with his assault and asked me one final question: "So what do you think of IDA's 10 year masterplan?" I told him that it is quite a well conceived plan, encompassing the Financial sector to Education. However, there's one area that is not covered, and that is Transport. I'm a public transport commuter and there's a problem that bugs us public transport users which private car owners like y'self wouldn't understand. When I'm at the bus-stop, it would be helpful to know when my bus is arriving. And I think this problem can be easily solved using the same GPS technology that the EZ-link tap reader incorporates. An information (LED-display) board can then be constructed at bus-stops to show the estimated arrival times of each bus.

The arrogant interviewer then told me that: "Do you know why it is not done right now, even though we have the technology? This is because it is not economically feasible for LTA to do so. How are they going to fund such a project? They might have to increase transport costs by a dollar if they want to implement something like that. This is why this transport scheme is not part of the Masterplan."

Well, I beg to differ. Looks like LTA and I share the same thoughts. I seriously think that if this short-sighted, arrogant guy continues to a Director at IDA, I don't see how Infocomm can ever take off in Singapore.

LTA rolls out pilot project to provide arrival info at bus stops

By Asha Popatlal, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE : The Land Transport Authority (LTA) has rolled out a pilot project to provide real-time bus arrival information at selected bus stops. This is expected to take the guesswork out of waiting for a bus for commuters. Panels with LED displays will be set up at the bus stops. They will list bus service numbers, what time the next and subsequent buses will arrive, plus or minus three minutes, and whether they are wheelchair-friendly.

The panels will be progressively installed at 30 selected bus stops in the Orchard Road, Ang Mo Kio and Yishun areas, at a cost of just over a million dollars. For now, it is a pilot scheme for 6 months. Although the panels will be located at a fairly low level, LTA says they should be fairly tamper-proof as they are made up of strong tempered glass surrounded by stainless steel frames. Many commuters say they are all for it, if it works well. "Sometimes you don't know when the bus is going to arrive. Supposedly they say bus interval is about 15 minutes, but it can be delayed by up to half an hour or one hour, (especially) during traffic jams. So with these bus panels, I think it will be... useful," said one commuter.

"Sometimes I'm not sure if I'll be late for school. So if I know the bus is taking too long, I can take a cab straight away and won't waste too much time," said another. "But the thing is that - will they really come? If they say 5 minutes, will the bus really come? To me, it's the same - not much difference. I'm used to waiting already." This is not the first time the LTA has tried out such a system. In 2003, the LTA aborted a three-year-old venture with homegrown company Stratech for a bus commuter information system. But Transport Minister Raymond Lim said things are different now. He said: "The main difference is that technology has improved and cost has come down."

Mr Lim added that the authorities want feedback from commuters before they go any further. Still, even if the scheme works well, it will not be going island-wide. Mr Lim said: "Because it's not cost effective. There are 4,000 over bus stops. You might not want to put one in every single bus stop. You look at where are the major areas where there are high commuter traffic and you target them." Also introduced on a pilot level are Key Bus Services Maps which will be installed at 36 key bus stops around Orchard Road by end-August. Primarily meant to help tourists, they are pictorial representations of surrounding landmarks and how to get there using the nearest bus stops and MRT stations.