Thanks to SinGeo for spotting this. GoogleMap finally supports Singapore map, it is now up to our creativity to make full use of it. :)

The startup wave is getting warm here. Thanks to Entrepreneur 27 Singapore for helping to foster entrepreneurship among the young, especialy for those under 27.

I was invited by Justin Lee to say a few words about BookJetty.com on their upcoming event, E27 3.0: Startup Republic (hm… I know that I’m slightly overage, but rest assured I am still 18 at heart, we all are, aren’t we?). Anyway thank you Justin. There will be other speakers from ping.sg, blurbme.com and Woolert as well.

If you are free, do drop by for this rare event. I bet it will be fun. Say hi ya, shake some hands ar, ask questions, get to know some new friends there.

Seats are limited, so reserve fast, click here or image for more information on reservation details. For those who are coming, will c ya there.

I’m not sure about you, but I always listen to music when I work. It creates the mood.

If you and I alike, can’t afford to buy songs that last you a week without repeating “Superman” for at least 20 times (additional 1 more time if you watch Paul Twohill last night on TV), listening to radio is one option, it’s free anyway. :)

But when things get serious, and you need to crack your head for your one-million project, you wouldn’t want to listen to DJ’s jokes, song dedication messages, or some ads about big sales in town. I love DJ’s jokes btw, Daniel Ong is my favourite, but not when doing really serious stuff.

The alternative will be Pandora (I love this name). If you have not heard of it, it is okay, that is the reason why I am writing about this anyway. It was released some months back, and it has been indespensable for me.

Using Pandora is like playing your own radio station, you start creating a new station by entering an artist name or a song title (the one that you love). Then using a smart algorithm, it will play songs similar in tune, rythm, and groove with the artist/song title that you have just entered.

You can even vote if you like or hate the songs suggested, and it will remember, and the algorithm gets smarter I presume, coz I just fall in love with the station each day. And some unheard artists with songs of your taste may also pop up. Smart! Isn’t it?

If you have not tried it, go and check it out, start creating your own radio stations, the way you love it. And big thanks PANDORA!!

Neah..not another jobsite, that could be your first thought. But in reality, I think we seriously need at least another jobsite that looks at a different perspective of doing things.

The jobsites in town are either too expensive, or free to use, but not very nice for your eyes, yet they are usually quite complicated and troublesome to use. I remembered how I hated signing up for a jobsite because of amazingly long list of fields I have to fill up. Is there a better way? Yeeah, honestly I think there is.

JobJetty aims to be a simple, fun, and pleasant jobsite to use. It aims to avoid complicated data entries, provides no-brainer forms, and minimises clicks. Come on, life is hard enough when have to look for a job. Why let a jobsite makes it harder for you.

For recruiters, JobJetty will be affordable. Pluit Solutions is the leanest organisation that you can possible think off, and it will stay lean and effective. That will keep the cost affordable.

Btw, it is FREE to post job offers during BETA release. Sign up here to be notified of its BETA release.

QuoteJetty is the other project that I am working on. It is an e-procurement site for local businesses and companies. A place where your can submit your procurement needs to to a pool of local suppliers.

You may have heard of Gebiz, Singapore’s government e-procurement portal, which has saved the government millions of dollars. It gets the suppliers to participate in a fee market place by submitting their quotes and getting the best offer for their procurement needs, which is very good. But what’s missing is the procurement site for the private businesses and companies in Singapore.

Once, I wanted to print a set of bookmarks for my Toastmaster club. I had never done any commercial printing before, so I digged out my dusty outdated yellowpages; lost in the long list of suppliers, I called up some of my friends, but most of them were not sure either. I ended up calling some randomly picked printing shops; and to my suprise, there was quite a big gap in their quotes.

During that time, I wished if there is an e-procurement site in Singapore where I can just post an invitation to quote to print the bookmark. It would be nice if there is also some kind of indicators to show if the suppliers were commended by their previous customers. This will help me to decide which company I should engage, well, even if they can be slightly more expensive, but at least I know that they are good.

So, I wasted a couple of hours, I tried my luck with a printing company; and I was still not sure if I was getting the best deal, or at least a better deal.

QuoteJetty tries to solve this problem, it will be a place for Singapore’s private businesses and companies to submit their quotation requests, respond to quotations, and commend good suppliers.

QuoteJetty can help you to save some money in your procurement needs, and it can also be a place to look for new business opportunities. Well, Gebiz serves the government procurement needs, and QuoteJetty will serve the private sector, except it is going to be simpler and more user friendly.

So keep a lookout for its BETA release, the registration is FREE with a limited number of quotations per month. Register your email now to be notified for its BETA release.

I remembered when I was a little boy, my bro went to Singapore to accompany my mum for an operation. When he was back, he brought along a Nintendo game console, and it was a console that I had never seen before.

I had played Atari a couple of times at a friend’s place, and we were already jumping around shaking the joystick and pressing the red hot button enthusiatically. But Nintendo had a different game controller, instead of Joystick, it has a “plus” button with two red hot buttons. Soon both of us were glued to the TV, playing Mario Bros days and nights, and soon also my friends, my brother’s friends, and our neigbour’s kids stormed our house joining the fun.

After the Nintendo wave, Sega came, Sony introduced Play Station, and Microsoft joined the game-console market with XBox, leaving Nintendo trailing behind Sony and also behind the new kid-in-the-block, Microsoft. But not now, if you are like me, a blog sucker that has been reading blogs all over the places, Nintendo has made a super-hero-style come back, it introduced Wii (pronounced ‘we’), just like the old days, Nintendo is creating a big BUZZ in the game-console market again.

What’s so different about Wii is the game controller. Nintendo has revolutionised the game controller into something that we have never ever thought before, a short and fat wand with a trigger and a tv remote-controller look a like, called Nunchuk Controller. Look can be deceiving, the controller is also packed with laser pointer and motion sensor.

Playing games will never be the same again. Based on the experience of Time magazine reporter, Lev Grossman, if you want to swing a sword, just swing the controller, if you want to fire a gun, just aim the wand and pull the trigger, to play tennis, just swing your wand, as if you are swinging your racket. I think this is FUN!!!

Wii is a revolutionary game console, but what drives Wii is what we all should learn. Microsoft and Sony are racing to produce a better and faster console, better graphics and better online service. But, Nintendo was looking at another problem, how to turn non-gamers into gamers.

There is a large gap of statistics between gamers and non-gamers. Non-gamers mostly find that the current game controllers are too complicated to operate. So Wii is going to change that, with the new revolutionary controller, Nintendo is not only attracting the gamers, but also tapping the unreached, the non-gamers, and their cash registers are expected to be busy ringing again.

Similar with Wii, competition in the web development is not about racing for faster server, better content, better graphics. Simply, it should be about how to improve the user experience. How to make the web simpler, more intuitive, and more fun to use. When your web site/application is able to attract not only the current users, but also the previously unreached users, that is what I think the spirit of Web 2.0.

Bookjetty.com is my first initiative to release an application for the public. I found myself doing repetitive tasks of finding good books in Amazon, and checking each book if they are available in Singapore National Library (NLB).

The chore was quite time consuming, so I decided to create a search engine that combines both results under one roof. The concept is not new, but lately famously known as Mashup, a website that combines the result from multiple sources seamlessly. A9.com search engine is an example of that, Bezurk.com, a travel search engine, is another example; and one of awes me is Trulia.com, it combines the search results from real estate sites and merged them into Google Map.

Stunning, isnt’ it? Thanks to the advancement in Javascript lately, the introduction of AJAX and browser suport for DOM document manipulations, all these Web 2.0 experience are made possible.

The site was designed from library user perspective. It aims to help user to find good books as fast as possible in the library.

• Popup is  used to avoid unnecessary clicking.
• Catalogue location is grouped for easy visibility.
• Sorted by “Not On Loan” groups on the top, as that group matters most.
• Book locations are grouped for easy readability.
• Total books, Total Available books, Total Not On Loan books in the listing, for a quick view of book availability.
• Short description for each book on mouse over for those who don’t have time to read too much.
• Print catalogue to bring it as a reference to the library.
• Sales ranking and customer average reviews for quick assesment of the book quality.

Bookjetty.com is still at its infancy, sometimes the listing by amazon only shows the latest edition of a book, and the latest edition may not be found in the library, but other editions may be available. This was due to the Amazon webservices Application Programming Interface (API) does not provide other editions information. But thanks to another online book service, called xISBN service, which provides other book editions list. The list will then be matched back to retrieve book information from Amazon and NLB.

I will be working on this feature this week. So stay tune. Thanks to those who have find this site useful and thanks to many who have sent in their feedback too. Please help to spread it to your friends, family or your kids too.

Note that currently the site is hosted on a shared server in the States, so the response maybe a bit slow at night.

I’ve just upgraded Pluit Solutions site to incorporate blogging. The previous design seems to be out dated, as it was done in a rush mid last year.

I decided to use Wordpress, but I was also considering using Typo, with all the AJAX features, I thought, it would be cool too have. But at the end I decided to stick with Wordpress, coz my current server does not support Ruby, and to migrate is just too much hassle. Besides Wordpress has been around for quite some time and loads of plugins available and very well documented.

With the new look to match the spirit of Web 2.0. This year I’ll be focussing on developing applications with Web 2.0 features.