1/3 Rest Day to go - End of day Asian Indices

Was lurking around Bloomberg.com and I came across this "Guess whose wine might appeal to teenage girl" by Richard Vines.
Article - Marc Andrea, head sommelier, young 22 years old, tasting wine. Great summary with 95% compression ratio. A few wines with names I can't pronounce, then this one caught my attention - Chateau Clarke Listrac-Medoc, 2002, France. I think i tried Medoc before. This guy has about 60 words to describe the wine, professionally.
I will say "Dry, Merlot like, more bitterish dry after taste" - 8 words ^_^ UNprofessionally. I just realised that taste can be described as 'oak-y'.

Let's get back to Indices;
Ok, my bad, the wine that will most likely appeal to teenage girl you need?
=Te Mata Gamay Noir, Woodthorpe, 2007 New Zealand=
Andrea for a while thought this is fruit juice ^_^

Indices

Nikkei 12,834 down 238
Hang Seng 20,906 down 355
Singapore ST 2,709 down 29
Topix 1,230 down 24
Looks like all Indices listed here are slightly weaker than 1st trading session.
Crude Oil is still at $116 slightly down from last week at $117. Oil rigs still pumping vigorously despite hurricane risks? The black Gold now costs more than Mineral or Drinking water. Some life your car has ay?

Source: Bloomberg

Top 10 Best Selling Digital Camera - 1st September 2008

Another round up of Top 10 digital camera best sellers via Amazon.
1. Canon PowerShot A590IS - took the crown with 8MP and 4x optical IS zoom
2. Canon PowerShot SD1100IS - Bluey
3. Canon PowerShot SD1100IS - again. but this is Silver.
4. Canon PowerShot SD850 IS
5. Canon PowerShot SD750 - down from No.1 best seller. Must be offer period expired ^_^
6. Flip Video Mino Series Camcorder
7. Canon Digital Rebel XSi - down from 5th
8. Canon VIXIA HF100 HD Camcorder
9. Canon PowerShot SD1100IS - again..... brown
10. Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5K
Some more curiousity brings us to;
22. Nikon D90 - wowweee. body only mind you.
32. Nikon D90 - with 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 ED AF-S VR DX Nikkor Zoom lens *drool*
I think I'll go look up on Canon's latest DSLR for expensiveeee entry level category.

National Day Rest - Money still not enough

Not today, Malaysian National Day is on 31st of August, which is yesterday. Which year? Every year doh. (Money not enough 2 alike)
Malaysia's composite index is asleep today because of public holiday. But the world's indices are 'red-ing' pretty badly.
Its about noon time for Asian countries and we're looking at;
Nikkei at 12896 down 176
Hang Seng 20913 down 348
Singapore ST 2710 down 29
Topix 1235 down 18
All Asian indices are down at least 1% in the morning. Let's see if the market with sthrengthen in the 2nd trading session.
Hai yooo Hang Seng... there goes my PB China funds.

KLCI shot up from 1074 up 30 to 1100 lead by Maybank (Stock: 1155), Genting (Stock: 3182), Commerz (Stock: 1023), and PBbank (Stock: 1295).
KLCI is currently testing the super LOWww since two years ago of about 1060 points.
Wonder how would Malaysian own KLCI perform tomorrow with all the Political Monkey shows going on. Any pen knife or razor sharp 'parang' to catch? ^_^

Source: Various financial sources

Crude Oil Price per Barrel

Crude oil price has declined from a recent high of more than US$130 to about US$114 today.
A sudden bump from US$115 to US$121 was seen when relationship between US and Russia tensed up. Crude oil eased off to US$114 later of last week when US dollars strengthened.

This should imply 1 American Barrel = US$114
1 American Barrel = 158.98 liters in volume.
Meaning.... 1L = US$0.717
In Malaysia 1L will be ... RM$2.39
In Singapore 1L will be ... SGD$1.01
In Thailand 1L will be ... BAHT$24.36

Please note that some conversion is from self assumption

Best Selling Digital Camera - 24th August 2008

8MP digital camera with 4x Optical Zoom with image stabilizing technology can go as cheap as $137.99 nowadays. Check out these best sellers.
1. Canon Powershot SD750
2. Canon Powershot A590Is
3. Canon Powershot SD1100IS
4. Canon Powershot SD850IS
5. Canon Digital Rebel XSi (also known as 450D, Kiss X2)
6. Flip Video Mino Series Camcorder (huh?)
7. Canon Powershot SD870IS
8. Flip Video Ultra Series Camcorder (hmmm)
9. Canon Powershot SD790IS
10. Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5K
Curiousity leads to....
21. Nikon D60
22. Canon EOS 40D with EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM lens

Notice the common brand at Top 10? Canon. Might be because I'm referring to house-of-Canon Amazon. Thus standings might be a little Canon-sided.

"THE NEW" Perodua Myvi

Perodua has announced a new Myvi variant. Its a 'normal' Myvi + Facelift. Facelift has always been welcomed by the consumers especially for popular models like Myvi with excellent sales track record.

[Detour]Myvi has sent many sales personnel at Perodua showrooms and sales center to all corners of the world. Reason: Boss uses 7 days 6 nights trip to Bali, Phuket, Macau, etc etc to motivate his sales personnel. With Myvi, no one misses the target ^_^ everyone goes - Yippee~ - and the trip has to be divided to 2 or 3 sessions so that someone stays behind to get more sales. Serious..... not purely gibberish. [/Detour]

Design - Not bad. Sporty-ier look. Calmer grill. Winking bonnet... really... winking.... Sporty front bumper too.
New features - The most desired perhaps by Myvi owners - MP3 and WMA support. Thumbs up + Toes up. USB and Bluetooth support too. Droolss. No more need to buy Daihatsu center dashboard frame to put your own head unit and save the risk of having your windows violated thus saving the risk of major want-to-chop-off-thief-fingers feelings. Bad for health...
Heart - The engine actually. Still 1.3L with Dynamic Variable Valve Timing (DVVT). I guess fuel consumption will be still as hungry. Slurppp. *Burp*
Fog light - Is it screwed into the bumper this time? The old model's foglight can be taken out within seconds. Just un-hook and un-plug and escape. Hopefully its screwed in this time.
Cost - Still as expensive, price/performance ratio should be better than classic Myvi

I think a picture can summarize everything I've said. Ask Uncle Google at Top for more details. Cheers

Dream Team marches on - Olympics Basketball

U.S.A beat Australia to move on to the semifinals of Olympics Men Basketball, but the Australians put up a really good fight, that is until the end of the 2nd quarter.
Kobe Bryant looks plain, then came out big during the beginning of the 3rd quarter leading USA to a 14 to nothing run, scoring 2 3-pointers from well beyond the arc and a layup + 1 free throw (he missed one)
No windmill or super duper jams, as bodies were thrown everywhere, great bravery shown by Australia bringing the ball to the basket. Both sides shows great defense but the US are grabbing twice as much of rebounds attributing to many 2nd chances during offense.
At one moment I thought I could see Lebron's steel-hard arms tear of somebody's head, when a hard foul was thrown at Carmelo Anthony. But no fight.... darn. Lebron's magnitude is too much for the Australian players in the paint, his bull-charging potential energy can shield off two or three bodies then throw up the ball with the last panting dying forward motion.

English Premier League is BACK~

Yippitiduu. EPL is back in business. Bookies will get busy $_$
Chelsea started the season with a 4 - 0 win over Portsmouth. A good start, is it half success? We'll see.
Man Utd was tied to a 1 - 1 draw with Newscastle with No. 7 watching from the sideline.
Liverpool, Arsenal and Bolton got off with a winning start too. Bolton never fail to perform for the first 5 to 7 matches ay? If the league is 2 months long Bolton might win a few Trophy ^_^

I just noticed USA swept Gold, Silver and Bronze for the Olympics Men's 400m hurdles. Woot.

Men's Basketball Olympics;
USA is through to the quarterfinals facing Australia after beating Germany. Watching Kobe Bryant, Lebron James and Dwayne Wade in the same team is so much fun.

ATP Tennis;
Rafael Nadal takes over World No.1 spot after his win at the Olympics, replacing 237 weeks of World No.1 - Roger Federer.
Pete Sampras has 286 consecutive weeks as World No.1 under his belt. As well as many many million dollars.

Atom-ic Energy Saver Athlon64

After Intel's recent success, always been successly, with Atom, AMD fights back with under-clocked Athlon64 core.
Some quick stats;
Die size: Atom - 24mm², Slow-Tuned Athlon64 - 77mm²
Power Hungry-ness: Atom - 4W , S-T Athlon64 - 8W
L1 Cache: Atom has about half of S-T Athlon64's

Cost aside, assuming both Atom and S-T Athlon64 uses the same wafer size, and maybe the same number of metal or overall process, and considering no side leakage of $$$ to people with power, Atom has a clear advantage with its small die size. And tai-lou (Big-boss) Intel can always deploy an ever effective finishing move - pri€e $la$h

Atom works with a smaller platform of miniITX, imagine Asus Eee. Athlon64 is not losing out with better cooling (even works without cooling), and better onboard graphics with its newer mobo platform.
No matter what happens, if S-T Athlon64 sells at 2/3 the price of Atom, it should do well enough not to get booted out....maybe. ^_^ Or maybe Intel will Slow-Tune a Core2Duo to match this.


Note: Writer is nooby. Please refer to Uncle Google at TOP of page for clarification.

Competition is good.......

Competition is always good. Only for the consumers maybe. Manufacturers will scratch their head trying to figure out the best price to sell their upcoming products.
"Wait and see" might be the better tactic. But sometimes it works only if you are the Lao Da "Big boss" like Intel or Nvidia.

Speaking of Nvidia, the big boss might suffer a bit of pain in the @$ with ATI's new ATI 4850 and 4870 selling at an average of $200 and $300. ATI's new core codenamed RV770 has 956million transistors, processed with 55nm technology. I wonder which layer is the one with 0.055µm? Nvidia is holding up pretty well with 9800GTX+, the additional '+' is referring to the clock speed, more clock speed, but with smaller die.

Display cards are becoming so much cheaper that its hard to put one model up against the other model from a different chipset to compare. With an increase of 10% of cash, you always 30% more performance, making you ending up with at least the SECOND most expensive card.

I think I'll go check out Crossfire ATI 4850's performance ^_^ and maybe Nvidia price slash rumours $_$

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