Review of BAK2u Loss Recovery Service

Originally written for SPUG. You probably know what this feels like. Having just misplaced your PDA, you rush back to where you might have dropped it, only to find an absence accompanied by that unmistakable, heavy sense of helplessness. All you can do is wait... knowing that you probably won't see your gadget again. A new service called BAK2u might just be the thing you need to help you recover your lost property. Let's say you've lost your Palm; it is not easy for a person who picks it up to immediately know who the owner is, and this is where BAK2u comes in. The service includes labels that you stick onto your device. On the label is a number and website for the finder to go to and report the missing device. The finder only needs to log into the website or call the toll-free number to report the loss, making recovery much easier than if no such label is found. BAK2u labels are sold in packs that cost SGD$9.90 each. Each packet contains two labels of different lengths (5x2cm and 6.5x1cm). After applying the label onto your device, you will not be able to peel it off and re-adjust the positioning and alignment, so be sure to get it right the first time. Next, we go to the BAK2u.com website and register our label. Each label is valid for three years. Click on the Activate Label link... If you haven't created an account before, you'll be asked to fill in your contact and credit card details. The last step involves filling in the serial number and any interesting characteristics of your device. You can also specify any additional reward for the finder. Does it work? You can use the labels on your mobile phone, PDA, MP3 player, digital camera etc. If someone finds a lost device, he or she won't be able to contact the owner without some sort of identification on the device. With the label in place, a finder would have no trouble calling the toll free number printed on the label to report the loss. Loss reporting can also be done through the Internet. When it is confirmed that that finder has found the lost item, a courier will meet the finder at his or her convenience to retrieve the item. Now, this is what I really like about the service. I think it might be the tipping point for a reasonably good Samaritan to decide to return the device rather than to keep it for himself or herself because of the 'difficulties in trying to return it to the owner' self-justifying excuse. There is no cost or hassle for the finder to do the good deed. In addition, the finder will also be rewarded with a S$49.90 gift pack (5 packs) from BAK2u. Is the price worth it? The price for two labels is S$9.90. Now, I do realise there are those who don't believe that any finder would return lost property, especially expensive gadgets! I think that's a fair point. Then again, it is also not totally impossible that there are nice people around who would want to return lost property, and that would be virtually impossible without some sort of identification or labelling on the device. Bottomline: Without any identification, the probability of loss recovery is almost zero! So I think for the price of a Big Mac meal for a label that's valid for three years, it's very well worth the price. When a lost item is successful found through BAK2u, the owner pays BAK2u an additional service fee of S$49.50 plus shipping charges and tax. If the item is found locally, the shipping charges will be the local courier fee. If the item is lost and found overseas, the owner can choose to have it couriered by DHL International; the delivery cost would depend also on the weight and size of the item. Although the extra fee seems costly initially, the cost and benefit analysis is straightforward: the cost to replace a lost item will almost always be more than S$49.90 plus shipping anyway. Factor in not only the inherent price of the lost device itself, but also the cost of not recovering important and sensitive information that resides in your gadget, and the need for a small investment in labels becomes compelling. I have one slight complaint with the adhesiveness used for the labels. By design, the labels, while strong, can be peeled off by a persistent bad guy who picks up the lost item. Now, this is due to customers' requests so that if the labels are not needed in the future, no ugly marks will be left behind. I'd prefer the adhesiveness of the labels to be strong enough to leave behind some 'residue' if it's really torn so that a bad person would think twice before reselling a found item. I'm told this might be considered future revisions of the product. Other than that, for the purposes of identification and loss recovery, the BAK2u serves its purposes well. The website is intuitive, and more importantly, a good Samaritan will be provided with just that needed extra push to return a found item. Discuss here.

New Blog: Recovering Christians

I've started a new blog called Recovering Christians, hopefully it can become a community blog eventually. :)

Getting Married At The Zoo

I was just looking at Cowboy Caleb's call for help to get more information on the workings and protocols of a Chinese wedding ceremony, and it got me thinking of the kind of wedding I'd like. Not like it really matters because I don't even have a partner to marry and I've real doubts about the institution of marriage itself, but just for the sake of wondering aloud...

I once attended an acquaintance's wedding at a huge open space/void deck, and hundreds of people were invited. Seriously, I can't imagine going through that myself; I figured the groom knew personally only about 10% of the guests. The rest were neighbours and friends of friends and total strangers. These people were only there because traditions dictate they should attend the function.

My ideal wedding would be a simple affair at the Botanical Gardens, or maybe one held at the zoo. And I would also ban everyone from bringing gifts and red packets. So I'd print on the invitations: PLEASE DO NOT BRING GIFTS. ALL GIFTS AND RED PACKETS WILL BE FORWARDED TO THE NKF. JUST BRING YOURSELF AND ENJOY THE FREE FOOD AND ELEPHANT RIDE.

So probably you can imagine my angst at the current state of things, primarily on the issue of 'the market value of gifts'. What is this, the stock market of best wishes? Today VOCC (Value Of Close Colleagues) is trading at $60, POTN (Price Of The Neighbour) is going for $40, COIR (Contributions Of Immediate Relatives) is moving at a six-month high of $80 and projected to climb even higher next week, and MSFT (Met Someone For Tea) is trading for a peanuts $30.

I think gifts are fine; it's just this whole business of feeling that state of despair when a wedding invitation is received and one doesn't really want to go because of the bonus monetary hardship that attending it entails. There shouldn't be any feeling of sorrow when attending a wedding!

The other thing is the quantification of good wishes. Frankly I don't care if anyone even brings gifts to my wedding. Your voluntary, unstressed and happy presense alone is a far, far better gift than I could ever hope for, or could ever deserve.

Of course, there's the other economics consideration. Given that the venues for weddings cost money, there is a purpose in these sorts of calculations, to achieve a not so unfavourable outcome in the bookkeeping. So one would constantly look at the balance-and-loss sheet and hope for only a slight loss, if not to break even. I really don't like this sort of thing. It's a wedding!, not a 'my friends should help me cover my losses' activity. But when all is said and done, traditions still matter to a large extent (maybe the article HuiChieh points out can save me lol) I wish Cowboy will eventually find the information he needs and plan the perfect wedding!

BlogConII@Hideout And Related 感想

So there was a much smaller con at Hideout last night. Managed to get two Kilkennys at half price, haven't had that for around three years, so that's good. But before that, met my ex-gf in the afternoon before wandering into a library that's along the way and deciding to pick up a book on the I Ching but managed to find two instead (fascinating stuff, I should talk about it in a few days.) Went to Macs to get some sidedish, reading the books, and waiting for Angela and later Stephanie... Hideout is amazingly tiny (compared to the pictures), but it's the perfect small place. But the end of the night, it was filled with bloggers, otherwise ordinary people who've graciously decided to write and share their wisdom and themselves on the Internets. Met Tym and her husband Terse. Now Tym is one blogger that I distinctively remember because I had stumbled onto her gripes page (back then in 2000 it probably wasn't called blogs) and read the whole thing until 3 in the morning. So that's pretty surreal to meet the author! Also met RamblingAlcoholic, MailOrderBride. Other folks were were there included YewJin and friend, La Idler, YanYing, Angela (longgg hair wahahaa! :)), Stephanie, Yuhui, Eddy, Kelly, Chin, AirHole, BigFStarStarStar, UrbanMaleBitch, mrbrown, miyagi and SarongPartyGirl who arrived just as we were leaving... I've been involved with another online tech community, the SG Palm Users' Group, and I learnt early on that the tech/PDA business is really just a sideshow, a nice excuse, for the actually objective of networking, and that was one approach I adopted in managing the forums. So I think early on, the folks behind SPUG really encouraged online people to meet offline both for the advancement of the community (it's far less likely for forum flamewars to occur if folks actually met), and to increase the perception of 'reality' (as compared to anonymous nicks). This in turns encourages emotional investment (in the sense that thoughtful people who contribute their expertise know that there're other clever people whom they've actually met listening to them.) The value-add lies, not just the technical stuff behind the initial raison d'etre, but the things that might result from this. For example, there have been two couples who're married partly due to SPUG related opportunities (I myself met my ex-gf from the SPUG IRC.) The local blogsphere is also on a similar path, as it should be. But there's a difference: the main activity of blogging isn't a sideshow, it's part of the actual show! Bloggers who go for meetups already have done one thing: mass disclosures of their personal lives. Which is what I sense (maybe it's just me), a feeling of respect and honour among thieves that fills the air at Hideout. Or maybe, it's just because I'm a little drunk... So I think this development bodes well for the blogging community. For a start, the amount of free material and wisdom to be had is just quite extraordinary. I've just had a glimpse of RamblingAlcoholic's stuff... I know I'll finish reading his entire blog in the next few days LOL PS. The lovely cover version of Sade's Your Love Is King is actually not done by Guy Sebastien but by Will Young, found in the soundtrack of Bridget Jones...

Blog Terrorism: Xiaxue Hacked

So anyway, the terrible news today was that Xiaxue's blog was hacked and entries and thousands of her email were deleted from her email account. Now, Streetdirectory.com.sg was also hacked yesterday, but somehow I don't feel much sympathy for them. But Xiaxue's different. There's so much material inside, in the form of personal diaries, that it's a personal space (and not merely a commercial website.) Even worse was that last Saturday, she explained at the library one reason why she started her blog was because the girlfriend of her old boyfriend threw away her paper diary. So by putting up her stuff online, no one would throw that away. According to CowboyCaleb, the bad guy will be caught. I'm researching how to backup blogspot entries, it doesn't seem entirely straightforward. The default instructions for doing Blogger backups aren't good enough; some variables need to be tweaked further... Update (!): Rather than use the default backup template that seems to be missing some things, I'm using the following. Substitude "[","]" with "<", ">". Have fun with template tags! Where's MyBloggerSQL when you need it?!

[Blogger] TITLE: [$BlogItemTitle$] [BlogDateHeader] DATE: [$BlogDateHeaderDate$] TIME: [$BlogItemDateTime$] [/BlogDateHeader] ----- BODY: [$BlogItemBody$] -------- [BlogItemCommentsEnabled] [BlogItemComments] COMMENT-AUTHOR:[$BlogCommentAuthor$] COMMENT-DATE:[$BlogCommentDateTime$] COMMENT-BODY:[$BlogCommentBody$] -------- [/BlogItemComments] [/BlogItemCommentsEnabled] [/Blogger]

Update (!!): Another blog, WonkyTong, was hacked yesterday, using the blogger's own computer, by her colleague. Truly bizarre and criminal. I was just saying to Angela, these folks probably don't feel a thing, there's no empathy...