2009 is said to be a very bad year for everyone, even though the fortune tellers (or feng shui masters) are saying otherwise. I do believe that whenever there are bad news, there will always be good news as well. Same goes to opportunities vs problems. Whenever there are a lot of problems, there will always be a lot of opportunities. It’s just a matter of whether you are able to notice and utilize them.

But before that, we need to be able to predict what is going to happen in 2009. This is important since it will allow us to prepare ourselves better, and also to ensure we are ready to pounce when the opportunities present themselves.

Without wasting too much time, here are some of my predictions for the year 2009 (I do sound like I’m giving a speech eh?).

Will business hire someone to downsize in 2009?

Business in general

• More companies will close down.
• More startups will appear….and disappear.
• 2009 might be the beginning of some well-known corporations. Do remember that some of the famous brands we have now started during recession periods in the past.
• A lot of companies will start cutting cost, and some might mistakenly cut elements which are necessary for the long term prospect of the company. And this might send the companies to a downward spiral.
• There will still be businesses which can profit from this recession period. Do some research and you are sure to get some ideas.

Economy

• The world’s economy will become worse in 2009 since all the previous negative forecasts will become a reality. Also, more companies will report losses or minimal profits.
• Malaysia will most likely enter recession in 2nd or 3rd quarter of the year, even though our economy experts are saying otherwise. Malaysia has the highest number of people with debts/loans in Asia Pacific and even if our banks are very strong, we can’t deny the fact that there are a lot of multinationals in Malaysia. Struggling multinationals might start retrenching people or closing down their operations, thus increasing the number of jobless people. Jobless people will not be able to pay the debts/loans and this can be quite bad.
• I expect the stock market to bottom up in 3rd quarter of 2009 and starts its long journey towards recovery in 4th quarter of 2009 or beginning of 2010.
• USD will continue to rise against Malaysia Ringgit. I expect it to reach 3.7-3.8 range.

Health

• Cures for some diseases or illnesses will be found.
• However, more unknown illnesses will start to appear.
• Old illnesses will also start to become a problem but I doubt there will be any global epidemic in 2009, thanks to our advanced medical science.
• More and more people will start to become health conscious. Healthy food will become more popular this year. So will hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and labs (for blood test).

Job & career

• More people will lose their jobs due to recession and retrenchments.
• Number of candidates per job opportunity (especially in a multinational company) will increase tremendously since everyone wants to work in a stable company in 2009.
• Average salary will become lower because people no longer dare to ask for too much. Benefits might not be so good too.
• The differences will be very obvious between employees with good attitude and employees with not-so-good attitude.
• There will be lesser interesting jobs and more boring jobs. Why? Because interesting jobs tend to be risky at times and most companies prefer to do things with low risks in 2009.
• More people will go for certifications and additional trainings in order to make themselves more attractive to potential employers.
• Hiring and recruitment process will be stricter than before because nobody wants to hire someone useless. Also, terminating someone can be very expensive. Thus, prevention is better than cure.
• Starting salary for fresh graduates might be worse than years before because companies would prefer to hire someone who can hit the ground running on his/her first day.
• Employees should be prepared to step outside their “comfort zone” and be more than what they have been hired for. If they don’t do that, someone else out there will be more willing to do that.

The new IPhone which will change the world? You must be joking

Technology

• Internet connection will become faster.
• Mobile applications will be more popular but not the next “IN” thing.
• Web applications will be even more popular with the introduction of affordable netbooks.
• Microsoft’s future will rely on the upcoming Windows 7.
• Steve Jobs’ creativity will be greatly missed in Apple. I do hope he’ll be fine.
• Desktop applications which allow users to work online and offline, could be the next “IN” thing.
• Open source technologies will become even more popular this year since they’re free and every business wants to cut cost.
• However, be prepared to have a lot of IT projects (especially the big ones) suspended or postponed since IT projects are normally one of the many things struggling businesses would love to cut.

That’s all I can think of. Spent a lot on this. LOL and I just remember I’ve yet to work on my project today!

Do feel free to comment or to add on

Source: http://www.cartoonstock.com

When economy is bad, it’s pretty normal for businesses to try their best in cutting cost. But during the process of cutting cost, some businesses tend to look for short term solutions and thus neglecting the long term prospect. They might start cutting cost on things which are necessary to keep their business running. And one of them, perhaps, has to do with business continuity. In other words, backup plans to ensure their businesses can run 100% without fail during the official operating hours.

Some of the top management people might think that their business will not be so unlucky to suffer any problem during the operation hours….since their business has been running without any problem for the past few years. So why bother to continue with all those expensive equipments which are meant for business continuity? Just scrap them off and allocate the money to somewhere else.

They shouldn’t do that. Here are some of the reasons why:

• Luck is outside your control but having a solid business continuity plan is something you can control. Why bother to remove something within your control, for something outside your control?
• Everyone suffers from bad days once in a while and the last thing you want is to be unlucky when there are tonnes of customers waiting for your business to run efficiently.
• If your competitors have a better business continuity plan than you, customers might actually prefer your competitors than you because they can rest assure that everything will be fine while dealing with those competitors.
• Your customers will not be happy if your business fails while dealing with them. And an unhappy customer is not a good customer.
• Can your business still run efficiently if it failed without any proper business continuity plan?

From the points above, it is quite obvious that having no backup plan or no solid business continuity plan will not bring anything but disasters. Your clients will leave when your business fails. They don’t have so much time to fool around with you.

Just imagine this. If you go to Tesco, and there are a lot of people waiting to pay at the counters…and suddenly, all the system went down. DEAD. They started using the traditional method, and old machines to calculate the amount and need to call the banks for EVERY credit card transaction. No backup plan, nothing. Well, they do have a backup plan, but it’s not even half as efficient as it is supposed to be. What will be your reaction? Pissed? Frustrated? I bet you will if they left you waiting for more than 10 minutes even though it’s your turn to pay.

The same thing could have happened to any business, including yours. Remember that it’s a very competitive world out there. Any business which can make the customers happy (and not frustrated), will be able to retain those customers…and maybe even gain more new customers.

So if your business is planning to cut cost…..please don’t cut on such critical things. It’s just too risky to rely on LUCK.

Today my colleague told me about a fellow blogger who bombarded her in his (the blogger) blog. I know this guy, as in the guy in the blogosphere, not the real person. And I was surprised that he actually directed all the attacks at my friend. The remarks are pretty rude and my friend was not very happy. I’ve tasted something like this before and I know the feeling.

It’s funny how some people are so “open” when it comes to attacking people verbally, but not so “open” when it comes to revealing their identity. This guy uses a nickname. Well, I do respect people if they choose to remain anonymous but finger pointing at another fellow blogger is not that good especially if that blogger is using a real name. After all, everyone has the rights to voice their opinions. It’s good to discuss and argue, but to do something that rude is totally a different story. After all, my friend’s points are pretty valid.

I will not disclose my friend’s name and blog, and neither will I disclose the attacker’s identity in the blogosphere. I just hope that fellow bloggers will learn to respect each other and not directing attacks to one another like this. True, you have the freedom to talk whatever you want, no doubt about that but please do it in a more pleasant way. If you don’t, it will just show how immature you are. Well, at least, your immaturity does give us a good laugh.

Oh, and for that guy, it’s better to find your facts before accusing or attacking people. The remarks you made in your blog are not valid at all. There are a lot of female leaders out there who can handle stress better than male leaders, and there are a lot of female IT experts out there too.

Remember, at the end of the day, RESPECT is the keyword. Let us respect other fellow bloggers and together build a helpful and friendly blogosphere.

Cheers!

On another note, a fellow blogger named Pelf contacted me (and other bloggers) for help. Here’s the email content.

I am sure we all know who Yvonne Foong is. She was diagnosed with NF2, an incurable genetic disease in which tumors grow in the brain and spine — 6 years ago when she was 16. Since then, she has undergone 5 major surgeries since 2002, the last being an Optic Nerve Decompression surgery on Nov 19th, 2008. And now that you are busy preparing for Christmas and New Year, shopping and wrapping gifts for your family and friends, planning the end-of-year parties and what-have-yous, Yvonne is raising funds to save her eyesight.

If we could all take 5 minutes to send Yvonne a little donation, that would definitely cheer a girl with an incurable disease up. But of course, if you could afford more than “a little donation”, that would mean a lot to her. And I am sure your donation would be the best form of Christmas present for her

Yvonne’s Maybank account number is 5142 3580 5099 (Yvonne Foong Ming Niang). Alternatively, if you’d prefer to donate via PayPal, her PayPal account is yvonnefmn@gmail.com.

I’ve donated a little money from my PayPal. It’s not much but I do hope it can help. I know we’re having recession and it’s a bit difficult to ask people to donate. But well, just try to help as much as you can either by donating or by spreading the message.

Thanks!

In case you’re wondering what exactly is Firefox, it is the world’s most popular internet browser. No, the world’s most popular browser IS NOT Internet Explorer, much to the dismay of Microsoft .

The recently released Firefox 3 has been quite unstable for a while. My Firefox 3 browser has crashed several times before this and most probably it was due to the plugins. If you ever encountered something like that, it’s either you remove all the plugins, or you reinstall the Firefox 3.

If everything goes fine for you, then rest assure that you’ll find yourselves falling in love with Firefox 3. You can customize the browser with the themes which you like, and also installing add-ons to do amazing things with the browser.

Here are some of the useful Firefox add-ons. Hope you’ll like it.

Video DownloadHelper

With this plugin, you can download videos (in *.flv format) from the likes of YouTube, Crunchyroll, etc.

There’s another similar add-on to this named Fast Video Download. I’ve yet to try this so I couldn’t recommend it.

DownThemAll!

This add-on helps you to download anything with the option of pausing and resuming. You can also increase the download speed by assigning more “bandwidth” for a particular download.

This is definitely more useful than the typical “Save as” which we know from the Internet Explorer era.

ColorfulTabs

Just to spice up your browser’s life and your life a little by giving colours to your browser’s tab.

Firebug

This plugin helps me a lot when designing web pages and it is certainly helpful for web developers who want to edit, monitor or debug any Javascript, CSS and HTML “live” on any web pages.

Cooliris (formerly PicLens)

I must say this is one of the coolest add-ons I’ve ever seen. It’s meant for photo viewing. You will be amazed by it but just ensure you have a good internet connection.

Actually, the add-on in Firefox will just call to another external FLASH application which will retrieve the information of the photos from the web. It’s not like people can do something like THAT inside the current web browser. We’re not that high-tech yet.

StumbleUpon

If you’re a hardcore (or half-core) internet user, you should know about StumbleUpon. It’s sort of like a review site for you to recommend blog posts or online articles to other people – strangers and friends. With this plugin, you can easily choose which articles/posts that you like by a (or few simple) mouse click(s).

There are other add-ons which can be quite useful, such as advertisement blockers and web security stuff. But I don’t really use those. That’s why I didn’t include them here.

If you have any other good add-ons to recommend, feel free to post them here.

Last but not least, if you’re feeling helpful and nice, do help me to Stumble this post with your new StumbeUpon Firefox add-on.

The current theme is cool and nice, but a bit slow especially for those with slow internet connection. The words are also too close together……and the gap on the sidebar is quite large. I browsed through my existing themes but i couldn’t find any good one.

I’ll stick to this theme for a week maybe before i go and search for better themes. Sorry for any inconveniences caused (see? Alvin so polite already)