Asian Tiger

In a few weeks, I will be flying over to London for about a week. This is going to be my first time I will spending such a long time in that city. On previous occasions, I have stayed no more than 18 hours in London. Most of my time are spent in Oxford and the countryside where peace and nature prevail.

This time around, I would be stuck in the big city and my main problem is that I do not know of any good and cheap hotels. I gave a call to my friend who has been based in central London for quite some time for a recommendation. Instead of getting a normal lists of hotel names, he gave me a web site address. He recommended me to search for hotels on Sol Melia. I asked why and he said that the site contains quality hotels around the world and that site was what he used when he travels around the world on business trips.

I did a quick check on the site and yes, it contains a number of worldwide hotels for the Sol Melia hotel chain. The site is very easy to navigate and information is very comprehensive. There is only 1 hotel in London. Based on the description and the images of the hotel, it looks quite cosy. I think I’ll fit right into the hotel just fine.  London’s Meliá White House is where I will be staying (did a quick check for hotels in Malaysia and Melia Hotel in Kuala Lumpur is listed).

Tags: London, Melia, travel, hotel

For you folks who have no idea what Google Buy or GBuy is, it’s a payment service made available by Google. This service is very similar to that of Paypal.

Google first beta tested GBuy last year via it’s classified services called Google Base.

Comparing to Paypal, is it said (read speculation) that Google will charge merchants 25 cents and a 1.5% - 2.0% transaction value. Paypal on the other hand, charges 30 cents and 1.9% - 2.9% transaction value for Business and Premium accounts. With lower transactional fees by Google, GBuy will be favoured by merchants.

Webmasters and merchants around the world is hyped up on GBuy and many of them are very excited to try it out including yours truly (Don’t we all love new toys?). The question that remains in everyone’s mind now is, “Will GBuy be made available in all countries?”. For Malaysians, Paypal is available but we are not allowed to withdraw the money unless we have a bank account in certain countries. That is the many pain for webmasters around the world. With GBuy in the foray of online payments, it is expected that the competition will raise service levels for other payment providers.

June 28th is heavily speculated as the date that Google’s GBuy will be launched. If any of you kind readers have a GBuy invite, please please please invite me! If you want to have a sneak peek of GBuy, head on to Barry Schwartz’s post, documenting the buying and accepting payments process.

Tags: Google Buy, GBuy, Paypal, online payments, payment providers, GBuy invite

One of my buddies was recently blessed with his third child (a daughter). It is the law of this country to register the birth of your child within 14 days otherwise, a fine will applicable to the parent or guardian.

Though my buddy wanted to quickly register his child, he and his wife could not decide on a name for their newborn. The husband wanted an easy to remember name while the wife wanted unique baby names.

We tried a number of ways to match their newborn with the siblings but the mother was a little bit “stubborn”. Just then, the wife exclaimed “Wouldn’t it be great if there were baby names database online which we can do a search?” I suddenly remembered of a fairly new website that has a comprehensive list of baby names as well as baby names meaning.

Using CompleteBabyNames.com, we were able to sift through a number of names (learning of meaning and also the baby names origin) and finally compromised on an easy to remember name and yet unique.

Hello Elene, welcome to your world.

Tags: baby names