garry blogs

A friend of mine just launched HomeSpace.sg.It’s really promising!

HomeSpace.sg provides a powerful and intuitive graphical map interface that showcases not only properties listed for sale, but also amenities in the vicinity such as MRT stations, bus interchanges, schools and shopping centres. Home buyers are also able to streamline their searches according to their desired price range, property type, floor area and even number of rooms.

Unlike other online real estate search engines currently serving the Singapore market, HomeSpace.sg boasts a clean and uncluttered visual interface, ridding its website of unnecessary links, advertisements, news and information that are commonly found in other websites. It is the sole aim of The Real Group to provide home buyers with an easy-to-use “no-nonsense” platform to get their tasks done as quickly and easily as possible without any detractors.

HomeSpace.sg also features a Clientele Managerâ„¢ and Agent Portfolioâ„¢ features which cater to real estate agents. The Clientele Manager feature enables an agent to add, edit and view clientele and their property preferences online, empowering them to access their client information from any computer. Their Portfolio automatically synchronizes with their listings on HomeSpace and showcases their property portfolio on a personal professional webpage, dramatically reducing barriers for agents to go online.

I’d say go check it out… esp if you are a property agent!

(more…)

As many of you know, I’ve recently moved to Wordpress for just slightly over 2 months. And it’s been great! The extensibility of Wordpress and its stability is impressive.

But I’ve also been keeping a close eye on Typo, a Ruby on Rails blog system that’s kind of similar to Wordpress. And it’s COOL! It’s not as stable now, i suspect, but I think it’ll be cooler and more powerful than Wordpress might ever be. I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

Ok I admit I’m a little biased just because it’s powered by Ruby on Rails. Hah. But, well, the only thing that’s keeping me from switching now is (1) stability and extensibility issues currently - it’s not as mature as Wordpress is; and (2) I’ve had a hard time configuring my Wordpress man! Not gonna switch just yet when everything’s working SOOOOO well.

We’ll see.

For most of us, air tickets constitute a majority expense when we travel. You just can’t escape it - unless you decide to walk or sail from Singapore to London.

What makes it worse is that the cost of air tickets fluctuate ridiculously, even more so that the price of oil! Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating, but you get the point. Sure, you can scan all the travel sites like Expedia or Orbitz, but that doesn’t tell you anything about the possibility that the price of those tickets are gonna drop by a hundred bucks barely one day after you purchase those tickets.

(more…)

Finally, an app that shows us the true power of web 2.0 - Netvibes. A company that just won $15 million in funding, its potential really shows.

Think Netvibes as a cross between a RSS browser, a Web 2.0 site aggregator, Mac OS X’s dashboard, and your browser’s start page. It is super Web 2.0 friendly, allowing you to add all kinds of Web 2.0 modules to your “dashboard”, such as Flickr, delicious, and also allows you to track your GMail and eBay listings. You can add new tabs (new “dashboards”), and there are already 300+ modules you can add right now!

The key differentiator is the Netvibes ecosystem - there’s an API that allows anyone to add any modules they want to the ecosystem, and thus, works somewhat just like Apple’s dashboard. You use Billmonk, maybe, but there isn’t a module? Well, get them to come up with a Billmonk module, or just do it yourself using provided APIs!

With my world getting increasingly online, Netvibes is exactly what I need. You should check it out too.

I recently heard someone say:

Entrepreneurs don’t fail - they just run out of cash.

And indeed, that’s very true. Everything costs money - your website hosting, website design, namecards, stock photos, software. Even invoicing your customers cost money! But thank God for the Internet! With free resources abound, all you need is to know where to look.

(more…)

Cool stuff. My job just got a whole lot easier. Justin, take note!

Moo.Fx, A Super Lightweight Javascript Effects Library

Those of you still pitifully stuck on Windows without a chance to experience the power of the Mac OS X Dashboard which we call out on a whim, here’s a similar experience with what they term Mooglets.

Not bad at all, i must say! Use it as your start-page!

This is late, but I’ve decided to write my complaints about it. MeeboMe is a web IM service that connects to MSN, Gtalk, AIM, ICQ, etc. What’s more exciting is that it’s released a widget that you can embed into your blog that allows anyone on your blog to chat with you via IM!

Bjorn Lee, a friend of mine, has it installed on his blog. However, I hate to use it because it’s just so unfriendly. Instead of creating a new account and letting visitors chat with you on the IM client that you already use, it forces you to log on to their website and use their web client. I must say that is irritating. Plus, the web client is sssssllloooowwwww.

So, too bad MeeboMe, I won’t be using your service anytime soon.

I must say it’s a really good attempt at producing viral marketing for their web IM service, though. Entrepreneurs, look and learn!

Billmonk has been an invaluable tool for me. Roommate situations often crop up, living overseas and all, and it helps to keep disputes between friends to a minimum.

I use it to track shared purchases whenever I pay for shared items, or when someone elses pay for my items. They even have a library feature now!

Best of all, they support multiple currencies (even game currencies) and recently, on my trip to Peru, Easter Island and French Polynesia, I discovered that the French Polynesian currency, Comptoirs Francais du Pacifique franc (XPF), wasn’t on their list. I emailed them in Peru and oh my god, they added it within 2 days! It may have been one - I don’t check my email all that often on the move.

Now I can track the shared purchases in French Polynesia easily

Well if you’re not on yet, you SHOULD. You can even update your oweables or what people owe you through your mobile phone.