Advice for small business owners

It is estimated that over 98% businesses in Europe, N. America, and Japan are small businesses. However they are not that small when you consider that they employ more than 50% of local populations and produce nearly 50% of the countries GNPs and create more than 2/3 of new jobs. This is according to Cullen and Parboteeah, 2005 in their book Multinational Management: A Strategic Approach.

Anyway, I just came across this really interesting site, which provides free advice for small business owners.


One of the posts was regarding the prediction of Home-based Business Trends in 2007. According to the list compiled by Homestead.com, E-Learning will be one the biggest trends.

With advances in new web application tools such as podcasts and video blogs, development costs will decrease.

Small business owners and entrepreneurs in the US might find the post on the impact of tax law changes on their business, particularly useful.

This is a sponsored post.

Tags: Advice Small business

Compostable bottles

It's quite amazing, the interesting stuff we come across at the strangest of places.

A few days back, I found this empty mineral water bottle in our car, where my wife had left it. As I was about to throw it away, noticed the words:

The UK's first compostable bottle.

That got me curious and I sat down and read what it was all about. It turns out that Belu natural mineral water bottles are made from corn and hence can be composted. According to their website, "Belu donates all it's profits to fund clean water projects in the UK and around the world".

That's pretty amazing.

Some funny stuff on the bottle:
"The penguins approve".
"Store in a clean, dry, rabbit free place".

This post was NOT sponsored by Belu.

Tags: Belu Bottle Compostable Mineral water

Finding love online

Have heard a lot of people saying that you can't find love online. I know for a fact that this is not true. You can indeed find your soul mate on the net.

Four of my closest friends found their partner online and got married to them.

Anyway, even if you are not looking for a life partner, found this great site for Online Dating.

What makes this site different from other dating sites?

Well JustSayHi.com is totally free. Yes that's right. you don't have to pay anything to register but still offer you great features as on any paid site.

Signing up is so easy and fast. You provide your email address, date of birth, inform whether you are looking for a man or woman, your country, your postal code and you are done. You can search by age or by distance. Unfortunately, the locations are limited to cities in the US. So if you are a guy in the UK or Malaysia, looking for someone in your area...Sorry!

However, if you are looking for someone in the US, you are in luck.

This is a sponsored post.

Tags: Online dating JustSayHi

Mother Earth

Wrote this in 1991 while I was an undergraduate student in India., titled : Where is the World going to?

Destruction of the rain forests- the lungs of the Earth; increasing number of human beings fighting for limited resources; growing urbanisation and industrialisation -- more and more cities and factories, cars and other vehicles- churning out smoke and rubbish; polluted rivers and oceans; endangered species of flora and fauna and most serious of all - toxic and radioactive waste.

The warning signs are already here, but we just ignore them. Warming of the Earth's atmosphere, ozone holes over the poles, melting of the polar ice caps and acid rain.

Are the increasing incidences of floods, storms, earthquakes and other natural disasters, the emergence of new deadly and strange diseases - AIDS, the JE Virus, the Nipah virus, Chicken Flu, Mad Cow disease - a sign that Mother Earth has had enough.

Why do we forget that, even though we are separated by man made boundaries - we live on the same Earth and breathe the same air.

Are we really superior to other species of animals?
The way we act sometimes, shows that deep down we are the worst of beasts. If we don't stop to think and act before its too late...
In the end, it might be us the human beings, who come under the endangered list.

When we talk about the Environment and the need to preserve it, many people just ignore it saying:
- It's none of our business;
- It's the Government's Job;
- Why should the Third World worry about polllution when the developed countries are the worst polluters;
- What can we do?
- Leave that to Green Peace and other tree huggers.
.... and so on.

Come on Guys! We can't continue giving excuses. The environment is everybody's business. After all we inherited it from our ancestors and we are only borrowing it from our children.

The fact that the developed nations are the worst polluters doesn't mean that the developing world has to follow them. We should learn from the mistakes that they made and avoid making the same. We can start by teaching our children to recycle, teaching them the wonders of nature and to save energy. We can't leave that to the Green Peace movement. It's everybody's duty.

"The Forest is a peculiar organism of unlimited kindness and benevolence that makes no demand for its sustenance and extends generally the products of its life activity; it affords protection to all beings, offering shade to the axe man who destroys it." -- Gautama Buddha

Tags: Earth Environment

Cheap Hosting Plan

In the past few years, I have noticed a growing trend. A lot of people are moving away from Geocities and other free web hosts and building personal websites with unique domain names.

Of course not all of them intend to use their sites for commercial purposes but is more of a "buying my home on the net" thing. This includes a lot of my friends who have suddenly realised that "selling" yourself is not necessarily a bad thing, especially in the education and consulting sectors. Many of these guys have a blog instead of a static site (which is a relatively new development in Malaysia)

After talking to some of my fellow bloggers I have come to the conclusion that most people are looking for a basic web hosting plan. Most want a host that 1) has lot of storage space (you will be surprised how much you have posted once the blogging bug bites), 2) A lot of bandwidth, 3) Is affordable. Only a few are looking for Content Management Systems (CMS) or e-commerce tools.

I just came across on of the most amazing hosting plans on the net. The basic plan on Lunarpages Web Hosting gives you 800GB of data transfer and 35GB of storage space. They are also giving you $700 worth of CoffeeCup webmaster and design software for FREE. That's not all. The most amazing part is that this package includes a Free Domain Name for Life for the life of the hosting account. All of this for only $6.95 a month.


In case you are wondering about the $700 worth of CoffeeCup software. This includes over 35 free scripts such as the VisualSite Designer, HTML Editor, Direct FTP, Web Video Player, Flash Photo Gallery, Flash Blogger and lots more.

For your information, the company has been in business for over 6 years and have one of the most reliable servers in the industry are housed in 2 data centers (99.9% uptime). Their award winning support is available 24/7. this does not include the help desk, forums, tutorials and their blog.

Guys who are already stuck with other hosts need not worry. They have a special offer whereby, the paid time (up to 6 months) will be added to their new 12 or 24 month hosting plan with Lunar Pages.

If you utilize the transfer offer which is upto 18 months of hosting plus the extras, it will still cost you $70 (comes to around $3.80 per month).

Lunarpages also offers additional domain names and domain transfers for only $7.95 each.

To get $25 off any 12/24 month Basic, Business, Windows or VPS plan, use the following Coupon code: lunar25off

However please note that the coupons are not stackable. So if you are pushing the transfer time offer please phone in your order and they will apply the extra time plus the discount.


This post is sponsored by Lunarpages.com

In case you do choose to host with them, you can help me earn some money by going over to joining in the Lunarpages Affiliate Program.

Tags: Lunarpages Hosting

The New Look

Brand New Year, brand new look for the ah ok lah blog.

I have always wanted a 3 column layout and after looking around found a nice template. Tweaked it around a bit and came up with this.

So what do you think?

BTW, in case you are wondering why I haven't converted to the new Version of Blogger, the reason is that I can't. I clicked the "Switch" button but all I got was

Thanks for your interest in the new version of Blogger! Unfortunately, we cannot switch your Blogger account at this time, because one or more of your blogs cannot be moved. Please see our help article for more information.

I guess I have too many posts and comments.

Tags: Blog Layout Template

Hidden Nanny Cam

In most households today  both spouses have to work. One of the problem that ultimately arises is the question of "who's going to take care of the kids?"

Some people are lucky to live near their parents / in-law houses where they would drop off the kids. Some would prefer to enroll their kids at a nursery. In Malaysia however, many have opted for maids who can take care of their kids at home. People in the UK and the US prefer to use the term "nanny". However I have heard so many horror stories, that I sometimes wonder whether it's worth to hire one.

One of our friends who has a maid looking after their baby, was relating her own story. One day her neighbour informed that a man had been visiting their house while she and here husband were away at work. Probably the maid's lover.

They didn't know how to confront the maid as they didn't have any proof and when they finally did, she just denied it.

I suggested putting up a hidden camera or "nanny cam" to keep an eye on the house while they were away at work.

Recently came across a security site which has a huge collection of covert cameras disguised as ordinary household items including clocks, air fresheners, smoke detectors, books, plants and even teddy bears.

Apparently, it is actually quite easy to set up one of these cameras.A lot of people are increasingly investing on such cameras but for another reason - Home Security.

Of course, some may argue about the "intrusion of privacy" issues but then, I guess a parent is willing to do anything to make sure their home is secure.