Everyone probably knows about the change of heart that Tatarah had recently - changing the lowest unique bid model to the highest unique bid model. Frankly, if they admit that it’s part of a marketing strategy or that if they find the model unsustainable, I’d be quite ok with it - but you know what they blame it on? They blame it on Singaporeans who are not used to the lowest bid model.

See lah! All you guys who tried Tatarah! It’s all your fault!

Right. Blame it on the users.

YOU might have seen the advertisements on buses and MRT trains, and maybe even sung along to the ‘Ta-ta-rah!’ jingle on radio.

You might also have heard that one lucky man drove away with a new Suzuki Swift after bidding just 23 cents for it.

But barely a month after its launch on Oct 26, much-hyped online auction site Tatarah.com has hit some snags. From technical hiccups to a sudden change in its auction format, the site could well be renamed ‘Tatar-argh!’.

When it started, Tatarah got netizens excited with its novel premise: Unlike conventional auction sites like eBay and Yahoo Auctions where the person with the most dosh wins, it allowed the ‘lowest unique bidder’ - the only person who had bid at the first lowest price - to net the prize instead.

Depending on the price of the product, each bid - made via the site or through a text message - was also subjected to a ‘processing’ fee, usually from $1 to $3.

From electronics to spa vouchers from partners that included Harvey Norman, Guerrilla Games and Aramsa Spas, new products were put on auction at a minimum bid of 1 cent.

Bargain hunters like civil servant Jason Yue, 31, were won over. He scored a Nokia N95 mobile phone for 35 cents, a Louis Vuitton Speedy 30 handbag for 38 cents and an Olympus FE220 digital camera for 30 cents.

Mr Yue also earned enough ‘T points’ - loyalty credits given by the site every time a member registers, refers a friend or makes a bid - to offset his total.

He recalls with glee: ‘When I went to the Tatarah office to collect the items, I didn’t pay anything at all.’

But trouble started to brew for Tatarah on Nov 1. The site crashed and remained ‘under maintenance’ for 11 days.

The abrupt closure rankled marketing executive Claudia Lim, 26, who had two outstanding bids, for a Louis Vuitton bag and a Nintendo Wii console. ‘They should have done a stress test on their servers before they launched the site.’

Last Monday, the site went live again after resolving its technical problems. But another surprise awaited. Replacing the ‘lowest unique bidder’ auction format was a ‘highest single bid’ system favoured by eBay and Yahoo Auctions.

To keep the prices low, the site capped the maximum bid for each item at half its listed retail price while keeping the minimum at 1 cent.

It means members now have to bid higher and near the capped price to win.

A Sony PSP Slim was sold last week for $119.05, about $1 below the maximum bid of $120. Under the previous format, another set had been sold for 25 cents. The handheld game retails in stores for $299.

The about-turn prompted netizens to wonder if the earlier ‘lowest unique bid’ system was merely a sales gimmick that could not be sustained.

Finance manager Alexander Tan, 32, reckons that Tatarah’s business model was ‘flawed from the start’. ‘How can they cover their costs if they are selling items that have fixed cost at such low prices?’ he asks.

For Ms Lim, the change has robbed the site of its novelty. She says: ‘The idea of the lowest bidder winning was what attracted most people.’

What’s the deal, Tatarah?

LIFESTYLE visited the company’s office at Sime Darby Centre in Dunearn Road for answers.

The outfit, which has a team of 12, is headed by managing director Soh Szu Wei, 42, and chairman Lai Seck Khui, 56. Mr Soh was formerly the cluster general manager for Singapore, Mongolia and DPR Korea at British American Tobacco Group while Mr Lai was formerly chief executive officer of Times Publishing.

The men, who have no background in IT, hit upon the idea of Tatarah last year while pondering a business with low overheads. Says Mr Soh: ‘Google share prices were going through the roof. We thought why not e-commerce?’

The company was started with a ’seven-figure’ investment, most of it going to a $600,000 marketing budget.

Tatarah’s technical issues, he explains, were a ‘happy problem’. The site crashed because more surfers - some 30,000 of them during peak periods - than expected visited the site at certain times of the day, such as after dinner.

About 15 auctions had to be cancelled, with 7,000 bids affected. The company is now in the process of refunding processing fees to its users.

It has since beefed up its computer servers.

And as for the change in auction format, Mr Soh says this was done in response to member feedback. ‘The general public is more used to a ‘bid up’ system versus a ‘bid down’ system.’

He admits that members now pay more, but maintains that bidders still get a bargain because the eventual price can be subsidised by the T points they have collected.

The company buys items at wholesale prices from their partners, or at retail prices from other vendors. It then re-sells the goods at discounts to members.

Most of the revenue is expected to come from advertising, in turn driven by the number of people drawn to the site. It has amassed over 1.8 million page views since last month.

The processing fee required with each bid goes mostly to the telcos, he adds.

Ultimately, Mr Soh hopes to use his existing database of more than 10,000 Tatarah members to expand the business into other sectors of e-commerce.

So it’s not the sales profit but eyeballs which count.

Everyone who visits a site has an intrinsic value to site owners and advertisers, he says.

‘Look at Yahoo,’ he adds. ‘They provide a search engine for free, but they are worth millions now.’

sandral@sph.com.sg

Article obtained from straitstimes.com on 18th November 2007

Apparently the cost of petrol has went up to as much as $2 per litre - that’s easily 30 cents more expensive than what it was about 3 months ago for an Octane-98 petrol.

In view of such hair raising prices, most people have resort to spending less time travelling and preferring to work from home where possible. Of course, this mostly applies to business owners. Most employees would still have to spend time travelling down to their office.

For people who get a fixed reimbursement for travelling during work, it might also spell the end of “benefiting” from the fixed amount each month if the companies do not react to adjust the payment per kilometre travelled.

Heeding Mr Lim Hng kiang’s advice, it might be better to switch to Octane-95 petrol now, since it’s cheaper and isn’t supposed to make much differences to cars.

PROJECT manager Tresno Santoso, 28, hardly shows up at his office these days. Instead, he works from home at least four times a week.

He has cut down on driving to save on petrol, which soared past $2 per litre last week. A full tank for his 1.6L Honda Civic used to cost him $65 but now, Mr Santoso has to fork out $15 more for the same amount of petrol.

By cutting down on trips between his Punggol home and his Kent Ridge office, Mr Santoso refills his tank once every 10 days instead of once a week, which saves him about $80 monthly.

‘Unless it’s absolutely necessary, I won’t go to the office,’ he said. ‘The high petrol price is hurting my bank account.’

Driving instructor Peck Chin Huat, 54, has also changed his driving habits since petrol prices started climbing in April. He no longer picks his students up from their homes. Instead, he meets them near a driving school in Ubi.

‘I can’t afford to waste petrol by picking them up,’ said Mr Peck. ‘My income has dropped 20 per cent from last year because of the high petrol price.’

Soaring petrol prices have hit motorists hard. In the past 11 months, the price of petrol has shot up eight times.

The price for 98-octane petrol was relatively stable from January to March, at $1.637 per litre. But from April, it jumped thrice to reach $1.840 in July. It climbed to $2.030 last week.

This surge in petrol prices brought on by rising crude oil prices - which reached a record of US$98.62 (S$143.11) per barrel last week - has forced some motorists to re-think the way they use their cars.

Of the 30 motorists with whom The Sunday Times spoke, more than half said they avoid making unnecessary car trips.

Ms Huang Li Min, 29, a tutor, said that, instead of driving, she now takes a 10-minute walk to the provision shop near her Ang Mo Kio flat.

Sales executive Alan Ang spends 10 minutes every morning planning his route before leaving his house in Toa Payoh. He makes at least four trips a day to see his clients.

The 31-year-old, who reckons he saves $20 monthly by planning his journeys, said: ‘I’ll try and schedule all the meetings in one area around the same time. Previously, I can be in the north at 10am, then in the west at 11am.’

Sales and marketing executive H.S. Xie, 55, said his $400 transport allowance is hardly enough these days. He meets up to eight clients a day and now spends about $600 on petrol a month, up by $200.

‘I need to top up every three days and each tank is about $65 now, $10 more!’ he said. ‘So now, I spend less on 4-D to pay for petrol.’

Determined not to fork out more petrol money, civil servant Titus Kwok, 29, downgraded his petrol instead. He uses 95-octane petrol, at $1.956 per litre, instead of 98-octane, at $2.030 per litre.

A spokesman for the Singapore Petroleum Company said the company has seen a slight shift towards lower-grade petrol.

Pump assistant J.M. Yu said she gets a earful when motorists drive up to her station in Braddell. ‘They always complain, ‘So expensive!”

She said that one in about every 10 customers will opt for lower-grade petrol, compared to about one in 15 in the past.

Sales executive Eric Yip, 31, goes the extra mile to save on petrol. He drives his Nissan Latio to Johor Baru every fortnight, catches a movie, does some shopping and tops up his tank.

‘The petrol is like half the price here since it’s the same price, but in ringgit,’ he said. ‘I can save about $30 by filling my quarter tank there.’

Some motorists have even switched to public transport. Project manager Tan Chong Hong, 32, ‘parks and rides” whenever he has to run errands in town. He leaves his car in a designated carpark, pays a flat fee of $3 and hops on a train.

‘If I drive and park in town, it may cost more than $20 a day,’ said Mr Tan.

The rise in petrol pump prices has also led to car buyers re-doing their sums. Accountant Brenda Chan, 27, said she is buying a 1.6 litre car instead of a 2 litre car. ‘If not, the petrol alone will cost me a bomb.’

mavistoh@sph.com.sg

Article obtained from straitstimes.com on 18th November 2007

There had been a recent increase in the number of PRs and citizenships in Singapore and while this is good for nation renewal, the issue of assimilating them into the Singapore society has almost never been a non-issue, as far as I know. Most people who eventually apply for citizens have a mindset to settle down here and hence are usually more proactive into blending into the society, while the others who apply for PRs - usually for the sake of work, may not put as much time blending in.

This usually results in conflicts between the locals and foreigners, at times resulting in a bad aftertaste. Take for instance 2 recent incidents between Singaporeans and foreigners - the Briton and the Trishaw man incident, where the latter was bullied by the Britons, one of whom, Bo Davis had since apologised, and another incident involving a Singaporean girl, Michelle Quek, who was assaulted by an oversized Caucasian who thought that she had assaulted his girlfriend first.

Both incidents reflect some disparity between Singaporeans and foreigners - as with other countries. However, what happens when such differences in culture are left unchecked? Foreigners may sometimes bring their culture into Singapore which may in turn not be welcomed here. This could be in the form of behaviour or belief, which left unaddressed may lead to social discrimination and typecasting.

One such example is the assimilation of the PRC Chinese into the local culture, where due to local TV dramatization, has resulted in the local Chinese looking at PRC women with disdain, usually thinking of them as people who have came empty-handed and in search of a husband to marry and settle down so that they can have a better life compared to their hometowns. This view had 2 major flaws.

Firstly, which immigrant do not go to a better country to settle down? Naturally, if Singapore is able to provide for them, why wouldn’t they settle down eventually?

Secondly, they do eventually contribute back to society - sometimes complementing roles held by Singaporeans or even be able to top up the brain drain that Singapore is now potentially suffering from.

Obviously, some Singaporeans may view such influx as a threat to their rice bowl - however, Singaporeans sometimes fail to realise that PRCs, as a foreign talent, do not usually get employment priority over Singaporeans - that is to say, if a Singapoeran and a PRC apply for a job, there’s local:foreigner ratio that the employer has to abide too. Of course unless you are talking about hiring PRCs vs the local men who have to do ICT. That might give a skewed result.

Hence, the key challenge is really 2-fold - for the PRCs to adapt to the local way of life and for Singaporeans to accept PRCs as foreign talent who will eventually help to contribute back to society in 1 way or another. Of course, I am being too simplistic in my views here and there are many more implications. However, it does seem like (i) foreign influx to Singapore is imminent just like how some Singaporeans would want to work overseas and (ii) as long as the renewal rate is not on par, Singapore will have to get their people elsewhere.

WITH the number of new citizens and PRs expected to outstrip last year’s record figure of 70,500, cracks are already appearing not just between different ethnic groups, but also within races.

This sobering observation came from Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong, who was speaking at the 10th anniversary of the Community Development Councils (CDCs) on Friday, as he outlined the challenges facing them.

Mr Goh related how there are already signs of Singaporeans lowering their trust towards one another.

At his annual reception in his Marine Parade constituency for new citizens and PRs, Mr Goh noticed how “the new residents did not mix easily with Singaporeans” and Singaporeans, in turn, “tended to leave them alone”.

And within the Chinese and Indian communities, crevices are deepening.

Said Mr Goh: “In terms of accent, culture and habit, Chinese Singaporeans are different from their PRC counterparts. As for Indians, I have heard that the Indians from India tend to bring their caste culture with them, and that some of them sometimes come across as sikit atas (slight air of superiority) to our local Indians.

“On the other hand, some Indian Singaporeans also display the same attitude towards the many low-skilled workers from India.”

Citing the studies of Harvard University political science dean Robert Putnam, Mr Goh said that the phenomenon of “hunkering down” takes place as a society becomes more diverse and multi-cultural. Left unchecked, it would reduce social solidarity and erode community trust. For example, people will have a lower likelihood of giving to charity or volunteering.

And as Singapore must continue to open its doors to new immigrants to boost its population and economy, Mr Goh hopes the CDCs would “find ways to bond new Singaporeans and PRs to our people”.

He also identified two other social divides that must be bridged: That between less well-off and more successful Singaporeans, and also the gap between the elderly and the young.

Said Mr Goh: “We must involve more successful Singaporeans in a concerted community effort to help the poor and the dysfunctional families.”

Likewise, Singaporeans have a critical role to play to help senior citizens lead active lives.

Apart from employers, the mindset of Singaporeans towards their elderly parents must also change.

He added: “Children sometimes discourage their own elderly parents from leading active lives … . In truth, the 60-year-old of today is very different from the 60-year-old of 20 years ago.”

Mapping out the priorities for the CDCs, Mr Goh said they must enlarge the common space which brings together Singaporeans and immigrants.

On top of intra-group bonding within faith-based organisations or various professional and interest groups, the CDCs have to “encourage inter-mingling” between the disparate groups.

CDCs should also engage in “preventive intervention”, instead of providing “downstream pain relief”.

One positive example is the Home Ownership Plus Education programme, which helps families become self-reliant through housing and training grants, as well as education bursaries for their children to help them break out of the poverty cycle.

Likewise, efforts to promote active ageing should begin before retirement, said Mr Goh.

While there are existing programmes to address these social divides, Mr Goh called on the CDCs to do so “holistically”.

Otherwise, he said, Singapore’s social unity would be “eroded gradually and imperceptibly but with long-term implications on the harmony of our society”.

Article obtained from todayonline.com on 18th November 2007

The cabbie who knocked down the financial planner after a minor accident, and subsequently causing the death of the latter, had been found guilty of rash act. He will be sentenced next month.

I’m not sure what was going on through the cabbie’s mind when he knocked the person down. Being a town area, I am sure that he’s aware of his own acts. Are the taxi companies coming down too hard on the taxi drivers to the extent that some are beginning to have pressure to work harder to pay for the ever raising costs of driving a cab (especially rent)? Will this lead to more drivers not thinking before they do something silly… like racing down the expressway?

Then again, I don’t mind a racing cab as long as he has control; but isn’t speed and control an oxymoron?

THE taxi driver who drove off with a man sprawled on the bonnet of his cab and caused him to fall off was yesterday convicted of causing death by committing a rash act.

District Judge Victor Yeo ruled that the evidence against relief taxi driver Lee Yuet Kong was “overwhelming” and that his defence was a “non-starter”. He said Lee’s “wilful disregard” for the life and safety of financial planner Alex Lim Wee Chong was “obvious” given the anger and distress of the witnesses in the trial.

At about 9.20pm on April 9 this year, Mr Lim, 30, and Lee, 68, were involved in a minor accident along Paterson Road. An argument ensued after both drivers pulled over minutes later along Scotts Road.

To stop Lee from leaving before giving his particulars, Mr Lim stood in front of the taxi, but the cab driver moved off nonetheless, throwing him onto the bonnet. Lee then accelerated and braked abruptly, causing Mr Lim to fall backwards and hit his head on the road.

Mr Lim fell into a coma and died about a month later in hospital.

The judge also described Lee as being “vague and evasive” during the trial, and slammed Lee’s account that Mr Lim had jumped onto the cab’s bonnet as “far-fetched” and a “mere afterthought”. Refuting Lee’s claim that he was afraid of Mr Lim, the judge added that there was “no evidence to remotely suggest that (Mr Lim) was going to be violent”.

Lee will be sentenced on Dec 3. — Teo Xuanwei

THE taxi driver who drove off with a man sprawled on the bonnet of his cab and caused him to fall off was yesterday convicted of causing death by committing a rash act.

District Judge Victor Yeo ruled that the evidence against relief taxi driver Lee Yuet Kong was “overwhelming” and that his defence was a “non-starter”. He said Lee’s “wilful disregard” for the life and safety of financial planner Alex Lim Wee Chong was “obvious” given the anger and distress of the witnesses in the trial.

At about 9.20pm on April 9 this year, Mr Lim, 30, and Lee, 68, were involved in a minor accident along Paterson Road. An argument ensued after both drivers pulled over minutes later along Scotts Road.

To stop Lee from leaving before giving his particulars, Mr Lim stood in front of the taxi, but the cab driver moved off nonetheless, throwing him onto the bonnet. Lee then accelerated and braked abruptly, causing Mr Lim to fall backwards and hit his head on the road.

Mr Lim fell into a coma and died about a month later in hospital.

The judge also described Lee as being “vague and evasive” during the trial, and slammed Lee’s account that Mr Lim had jumped onto the cab’s bonnet as “far-fetched” and a “mere afterthought”. Refuting Lee’s claim that he was afraid of Mr Lim, the judge added that there was “no evidence to remotely suggest that (Mr Lim) was going to be violent”.

Lee will be sentenced on Dec 3. — Teo Xuanwei

Article obtained from todayonline.com on 18th November 2007

Starhub MaxOnline is going to increase the download speed of the lowest plan - MaxOnline Express to 8Mbps from the current 6Mbps. For those who are looking for better deals, do wait till Sitex 2007.

MaxOnline Express Subscribers To Get A Higher Download Speed at No Additional Cost

Subscribers will soon be able to enjoy always-on, unlimited broadband access to the Internet at up to 8Mbps

Singapore, 16 November 2007 - StarHub today announced that from 1 January 2008, customers on the MaxOnline Express subscription plan will be able to connect to the Internet at a higher download speed of up to 8Mbps. Currently, this plan provides a broadband speed of up to 6Mbps for downloading.

The speed boost will come at no additional charge to MaxOnline Express customers. MaxOnline Express is priced at S$56 (S$59.92 with GST) monthly.

To benefit from this upcoming enhancement, MaxOnline Express customers need to simply reset the cable modem by turning the electrical power source off and on from the effective date to enjoy the improved online experience instantly.

StarHub’s MaxOnline range of post-paid broadband plans are packaged to meet the different bandwidth requirements of residential users who surf the Internet regularly. For occasional or light Internet users, StarHub also offers two MaxOnline pre-paid services. As at 30 September 2007, there are 338,000 households on the MaxOnline service.

More exciting MaxOnline offers for new sign-ups and recontracts can be expected at Sitex 2007. Visit StarHub’s booth at 6D01 (Hall 6) from 29 November to 2 December 2007 to find out more!

For more information on StarHub, visit www.starhub.com.

Article obtained from Starhub Press Release on 18th November 2007