Commentary

 

For years now both locals and expatriates of Singapore have been sending funds into Australia to take advantage of higher interest rates paid on deposits relative to what can be earned in Singapore. Nobody can blame them for this or even be surprised given the 3.5 – 4.5% interest payable that is possible within Australia, but what else must these investors be considering when it comes to making this investment.

Some of us may have read BBC’s twitter feed early Wednesday morning on our way to work and had a shock. The news report was on yet another malicious attack by a Syrian group, but this was a domain name hijack and the victim was The New York Times. In January 2012, the Russian embassy in Singapore found their website attacked similarly by Syrian hackers.The NewsOn 27 August 2013, Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), a group loyal to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, successfully hacked into an Australian registrar’s system to alter DNS zone records of the domain addresses NYTimes.com, HuffingtonPost.co.uk and Twitter.com. Insodoing, they managed to alter WHOIS information to reflect themselves as public owners of these domain addresses, changed the nameservers to those of a Syrian Electronic Army server and re-directed genuine website visitors and tweeters to phishing sites of their choice.

It was interesting to read that Singapore Airlines (SIA) passengers can now use their mobile phones and the Internet on long-haul flights between Singapore, Newark and Los Angeles.

As the medical tourism movement grew in popularity over the past decade, Vishal Bali has had a front row seat watching the industry flourish in his role as the Group CEO of Fortis Healthcare Limited, a healthcare provider in the Asia Pacific region. From his vantage point, Bali notes, “There have been significant changes in the forces of globalisation of healthcare patients. The trend is maturing and geographies are shifting. Healthcare providers in different countries are taking strategic positions to compete for the global healthcare consumer “

Good communication will be the key to closing the salary expectation gap between candidates and employers in Singapore

In previous parts of this series, we discussed why a domain address can be your strength, your weakness, an opportunity or a threat to your business locally, regionally and globally. You understand why having a defensive and expansive portfolio of domain names is important for your business.

Singapore’s taxi’s have something new to complain about. Visa. The company have banned the payment method from all Singapore cabs. Is this just a PR stunt from Visa or a serious play to be the people’s champion?

“What movie ‘42’?” I can hear you say. Not, perhaps, the best way to start, and no doubt a phrase that would make a studio executive’s blood run cold. However, ’42' is a movie that, unless you live in the US, you won’t have seen.

There's an emerging trend for the digital detox. Some upmarket travel agencies are promoting holiday destinations on the grounds there are no phone signals or wifi, and an upscale London department store has opened a Silence Room, where people leave phones (and shoes) at the door and cut off from city and retail life.

Internationally, the corporate and government risks relating to cyber attacks have never had a higher, or more confusing, profile. It is becoming increasingly hard to pinpoint where and what attacks are coming.

As tempting as it may be, never use a potential employer’s job offer as a bargaining chip to get your current company to increase your salary.

I just had a drink with a local friend at a pub. He lamented that as a boss, he took so good care of a female employee to the extent that his wife who worked in the same company suspected that the female staff might be his mistress.

Uncertain markets force big decisions on businesses. When there’s pressure to maintain cashflow and customers, firms often have to take bold steps to achieve greater efficiency or competitiveness.

Social media is fiercely debated whether it’s a transformational derivative or an evolutionary by-product. Arguably, it’s a tilted blend. It had been evolving for a long time with a swifter transformation lately. Of course technology is the catalyst and that’s gumption. But in current context, will harp on outcome and not the enabler.

There are two ways to predict the future: the first one is to turn to the experts and trust their wisdom; the second is to look at the gap between what people expect and what they’re able to do, and see in it the shape of things to come.