Nyan Min

Changes to the ACCA Qualification from 2011

2010-06-24T01:39:00.000+08:00

Syllabus changes, most are just minor add/remove to some areas but a few paper will be affected significantly. Click here to view the article in pdf.

The Secret Powers of Time

2010-06-13T12:41:00.001+08:00

I need more time!

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World Cup Fever

2010-06-13T05:10:00.002+08:00

via news.bbc.co.uk

World Cup in day two, I cannot watch it right now. Our TV had broken a few months ago and we unsubscribed from cable, bummer! I cannot go out too to watch because I have exam in progress. A good thing though otherwise I'd be sitting in front of it rather than studying. Still I frequently go online to check the result. BBC World Cup 2010 is an excellent place to absorb all the news. And their live commentary is fantastic. They infuse remarks from ex-footballers, pundits and fans, who are discussing their views on BBC service and other places like twitter, into their live report stream during the match. In addition I can read after match interviews from the coach and players themselves instantly, for example England vs USA tonight. Nothing is better than watching it Live on TV, but for now I have to depend on BBC, not so bad of an experience in fact!

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CEO Remark Gone Wrong

2010-06-10T07:53:00.002+08:00

It's amusing to read this story from 1997, at that time Steve Jobs was just back on the board of Apple. CEO of Dell computer, Michael Dell was asked what could be done to fix the Mac maker. He replied,

"What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders,"

Well, people make mistakes while predicting future but for Mike he did it big time.

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MSFT, AAPL and GOOG

2010-06-10T03:38:00.003+08:00

While Apple and Google are leading a mobile OS, the buzz from Microsoft camp, the world biggest producer of operating system for personal computers, is relatively quiet. Now it's all about iPhone vs Android in Mobile OS world. Meanwhile Google is offering more and more MS like softwares, threatening their core business too, although the gap about quality and user based between them are still wide, Google is big and competitive company, and it can afford to give them free while in Microsoft, their long standing business practice is always to charge their products. Who is going to win? You tell me.

Apple will still be a niche, high-end computer maker and mobile company producing its own software for its own products. It won't license any of Mac or iPhone OS to others hardware companies. I don't like Apple's way of doing business because their business model is close and tightly controlled by its wall gardened service like iTunes store. Customers are effectively locked in to their products, they've gotten a habit of shopping spree and Apple make big money. Apple products are for a small group who can afford such luxuries. It won't worry much as long as their fans keep buying, and that fan group are expending into middle size due to the factors like economic boom in China, mass production with cheap outsourced industrial labor ..etc, And the more they can sell, the better they can reduce the price. Besides, Apple is market price leader and their products are still relatively expensive so they are making a huge profit margin.

Let's do a little bit of history here, If it was not Bill Gates and Microsoft's great vision that every home must have a computer that running MS Windows on it, the technology may not be that far-reaching as today, especially people like me from third world countries have benefited from it. Microsoft lacks that kind of game changer nowadays.

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iPhone 4G

2010-06-09T02:33:00.003+08:00

Although I kind of dislike Apple's business strategy, iPhone 4G is a pure beauty from design point of view and Steve Job is the man behind all those success who singlehandedly saved Apple and raised it to its current position, no 1 tech company in terms of market cap. Here is the keynote. Apple's products are intended not for the folks like me obviously due to its exclusiveness and high end nature. Even if I can afford to, I still find no points of buying a new product from them every 6 month and several others paid apps, unless of course I won a million dollar lottery!

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If You Have...

2010-06-07T04:27:00.001+08:00

via whatshername13.deviantart.com

I don't know as to how much extent those numbers are true, but that's shocking!

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Eminem - Not Afraid

2010-06-07T02:26:00.001+08:00

via youtube.com

Latest release, as always a great tune with powerful lyrics...

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A Place Called Home

2010-06-06T23:16:00.002+08:00

via reflectionof.me

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Music City

2010-06-05T13:18:00.001+08:00

CC Image courtesy of thomashawk on flickr

It looks like a Pansodan street, Yangon. Doesn't it? Just that ours has obviously less neon.

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U2 - Kite

2010-06-03T18:39:00.001+08:00

via youtube.com

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Lifestreaming

2010-06-03T10:53:00.001+08:00

If you like to share news, blog posts or nitty gritty of your daily life, Facebook is the place to go. But if you want to do those things to the world, without exposing too much of your privacy, Google Buzz and Posterous are the best. And another added plus, you don't need to involve in growing firms and gang fights anymore.

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I Got, Nothing To Lose

2010-06-03T09:50:00.001+08:00

via reflectionof.me

Besides, I need to pass my exam.

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iPhone vs. Android : Robert Scoble Discuss

2010-06-03T06:29:00.003+08:00

via ustream.tv

I want that HTC EVO 4G!

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Wrong Turn Into Yesterday

2010-06-02T22:19:00.001+08:00

Insane by 9Tomorrows

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Google Buzz: Your Personal Blog Aggregator

2010-06-02T07:52:00.005+08:00

The advantages of Buzz is that Google give you your own personal news/blog aggregator site like Techmeme for free. How?

In Google Reader subscribe rss of all the blogs you read, you might already have some of them. But if you haven't got an account yet, create one from here.

From there you can share things you think is really good, cream of the blog crop.

Then connect Google Reader to Buzz. Bingo! all the posts show up on Google profile, your new on line magazine.

Happy sharing!

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Importing Posterous posts to Google Buzz

2010-06-01T18:53:00.003+08:00

Posterous doesn't have Google Buzz set up for autoposting, neither has Buzz Posterous in its connected sites list. Still there is a simple workaround, I autopost it to blogger, for Buzz enable to pull from it.

I like importing this way, even better than pulling everything from the feed. Sometimes I want to be selective as to what specific posts to go which services to suit the target readers.

Normal posts created by emailing post@posterous.com autopost to all your other sites. You can also specify where you want to post via the email address you send to.

You can email to specific service types on your account. Do you want to update your Twitter but not your Facebook? You can do that.

Email posterous@posterous.com if you don't want Autopost at all.

Email a service twitter@posterous.com to Autopost to just that service type.

Email multiple services twitter+facebook@posterous.com to Autopost to all services listed.

You can use the following service names to email to: twitter, facebook, flickr, picasa, blog, blogger, tumblr, youtube, vimeo, friendfeed, delicious, laconica, identica, livejournal, plurk, shopify.

update: There is an official blog post explained how to integrate both sites in detail instructions. A lot better than my quick fix of course, now Google has provided API available to developers, I'm waiting update from Posterous debuting Buzz as a fully-featured autopost site.

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Hey Windows wake up!

2010-06-01T12:28:00.001+08:00

Financial Times reports that Google is phasing out the internal use of Windows OS.

“Linux is open source and we feel good about it,” said Google employee. “Microsoft we don’t feel so good about.”

“Many people have been moved away from [Windows] PCs, mostly towards Mac OS, following the China hacking attacks,” said another.

More business are making transaction to all Mac office, while tech people are leaving Windows in droves. Apparently it's uncool being a pc guy these days. I don't mind about it. Though I get frustrated by it's occasional sluggishness and various viruses. Apart from that I've found no reasons to switch over yet. In fact Windows PC works best for average users like me and avid gamers like my brother. I don't want to see them fail, but if I were an exec of Microsoft, I'd be really worried.

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Tweaking My PC

2010-05-31T19:57:00.004+08:00

Soluto is quite popular among early adopters and pc geeks. I haven't tested it yet, perhaps I will wait until normal users weight in and talk about it's real usefulness or when it's out of beta and introduces some more good features. Meanwhile I'm still satisfied with my boot time.

About 3 years ago, I tweaked my pc by following some instructions I found on this article, since then I leave my new settings unchanged. It's for the experience users and involved a lot of manual works so I won't recommend to change all they say, especially not for going deep into Windows registry, it could mess up with your pc.

And here is my favorite tweak that disables system sounds, particularly Windows shutdown. Because the last thing I want is waking up my friends in the middle of the night with my speaker power volume accidentally on when I switch off my computer.

Open Control Panel

Click Sounds and Audio Devices

Check Place volume icon in taskbar

Click Sounds Tab

Choose "No Sounds" for the Sound Scheme

Click "No"

Click "Apply"

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Slash - By The Sword

2010-05-29T10:57:00.001+08:00

via youtube.com

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Google Apps Marketplace and prospect of accounting softwares

2010-03-13T05:03:00.006+08:00

Image via Wikipedia

Google Apps is getting bigger and more ambitious now, it has set up Apps Marketplace. I see some cool accounting & finance applications that can be integrated directly into Google Apps. Already more than two million businesses embracing, Google is counting thousands more sign up every day. There are some featured apps, I find interesting; FreshBooks online billing, Intuit Online Payroll, Concur Breeze - Expense Reporting..,etc.

As for accountancy students, we'd better be prepared familiar with Google Apps, along with some great standalone softwares such as QuickBooks, MYOB and Microsoft Excel. With advance in technologies and enabling access to the Internet at lightning speed, I see cloud computing has a brighter future. A lot of advantages for choosing it, for example, ease of collaboration, cost reduction in license fees, as well as maintenance.

I can see more accounting softwares going cloud and even more businesses will follow suit. It will be a huge shift. How can this impact on the account and audit professionals and the way they do things? Well, we will see soon :).

Online Learning Monday

2010-03-08T08:39:00.001+08:00

I've been taking two online lectures on Monday.

One is from Steven Strogatz, a professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University. He writes mathematics on "The New York Times". It amazed me how simple and interesting it becomes when he deal with those complex formulas and numbers. It's such a joy reading his column, I've learned how to appreciate my high school math.

Another is from Fred Wilson, a New York-based venture capitalist and a prominent blogger. He talks about finance on his blog. He's been writing it for the benefit of his readers, and so far, the topic of the post has been suggested by one of them. Here is what he explains about it.

"I'd like to announce a new series here at AVC. I'm calling it "MBA Mondays". Every monday I'll write a post that is about a topic I learned in business school. I'll keep it dead simple. And I'll try to connect it to some real world experience."

Wikinvest N' Wolfram Alpha

2010-03-02T10:43:00.002+08:00

I have added two more sites to my blog side bar which I think is of valuable to accounting students, Wikinvest and Wolfram Alpha search engine.

While Wikinvest specialize in finance and investing, Wolfram Alpha has more, in fact anything in general, including Money & Finance of course. Both are truly great, just like the rest I've already mentioned, at least a lot better than my school library ;).

Oh boy, we've got such an enormous online resource centers anytime at your convenience, the more you spend digging out from there, I believe the better equipped with your future profession are.

So instead of I saying how good these two are, just dive in here and here for what they have to say about themselves.

Simple trick to upload PDF file from web directly to Google Docs

2010-02-27T09:54:00.004+08:00

To save online PDF file in Google Docs for later reading, normally I download it to my harddisk and re-upload it to Google server.
Here is a quick way to do with a single step.

Copy the PDF url you want to save.
Go to Google upload page.
Click an upload link.
Instead of selecting file from your computer,
Past the url you've just copied into the box next to 'File name', click 'Open'.
Wait for a few seconds.
And press 'start upload' button.
Done!

I'm using this from my Google Chrome browser and not sure whether this could still be working with other browsers and other file types.

Google docs search engine

2010-02-22T04:07:00.006+08:00

I find Google docs a very useful tool for a student. I've done all my school works on it. But one thing I particularly like about it is that now I can make use of Google's powerful search engine, especially Google docs can index the contents of PDF files.

I've downloaded all my past exam papers from ACCA and upload them on my Google docs account. So now if I need to find a quick reference, I don't need to worry about which papers to look for. I just type whatever terms I can remember in the search box, it will show me exactly the one I wanted, plus Google docs is way faster than ACCA website.