Reasons for increase volume trading during End-of-Quarter

Much of the recent rally has been traced to end-of-quarter window dressing by fund managers, who typically sell losers and buy winners to make their portfolios look better.

The Federal Reserve ends its $600 billion bond-buying program, known as QE2, on Thursday and has not offered any hints of more monetary easing. Markets were volatile in May and June, partly on concerns about QE2's end.

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US STOCKS-Wall St rallies for fourth day into quarter-end - Yahoo! Singapore Finance

US STOCKS-Wall St rallies for fourth day into quarter-end - Yahoo! Singapore Finance
http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/US-STOCKS-Wall-St-rallies-rsg-450933985.html?x=0


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The Importance of Reinvesting Dividends | Fundsupermart.com

http://www.fundsupermart.com/main/research/viewHTML.tpl?articleNo=5303

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Singapore, Malaysian state investors to develop $9.86 bln projects - Yahoo! Singapore Finance

RPT-Singapore, Malaysian state investors to develop $9.86 bln projects - Yahoo! Singapore Finance

http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/RPT-Singapore-Malaysian-state-rsg-1496243692.html?x=0

S'pore resale prices of private housing rose at faster pace in 2Q- DTZ - Yahoo! Singapore Finance

S'pore resale prices of private housing rose at faster pace in 2Q- DTZ - Yahoo! Singapore Finance

http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/S-pore-resale-prices-private-rsg-1484731921.html?x=0

Singapore Exchange to introduce all-day stock trading from Aug 1 - Yahoo! Singapore Finance

Singapore Exchange to introduce all-day stock trading from Aug 1 - Yahoo! Singapore Finance
http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/Singapore-Exchange-introduce-rsg-4094767060.html?x=0

Dell to keep up acquisitions, sustain margin growth - Yahoo! Singapore Finance

Dell to keep up acquisitions, sustain margin growth - Yahoo! Singapore Finance
http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/Dell-keep-acquisitions-rsg-2029751045.html?x=0

The Real Reason Behind This Rally - How High Will It Go? - Yahoo! Singapore Finance

The Real Reason Behind This Rally - How High Will It Go? - Yahoo! Singapore Finance

http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/The-Real-Reason-Behind-This-etfguide-1957656932.html?x=0

Couple Dynamics

Useful online tools

1. http://www.quickmockup.com/webapp/QMockup.html#
2. https://www.dropbox.com
3. http://www.sliderocket.com
4. https://www.proposable.com
5. http://www.freshbooks.com/
6. http://www.box.net
7. http://cacoo.com

1. http://speckyboy.com/2010/01/11/10-completely-free-wireframe-and-mockup-applications/

Warren Buffett holding as of 24th June 2011

KO Coca-Cola Company	$65.04	0.06 (0.09%)	24.75% of portfolio. 8.72% held. 200 million shares. Position unchanged.
WFC Wells Fargo & Co	$26.96	-0.08 (-0.30%)	20.27% of portfolio. 6.5% held. 342.62 million shares. Position unchanged.
AXP American Express ...	$48.50	-0.71 (-1.44%)	12.79% of portfolio. 12.61% held. 151.61 million shares. Position unchanged.
PG Procter & Gamble ...	$63.02	-0.44 (-0.69%)	8.82% of portfolio. 2.74% held. 76.77 million shares. Position unchanged.
KFT Kraft Foods Inc	$34.43	0.17 (0.50%)	6.16% of portfolio. 6.02% held. 105.21 million shares. Position unchanged.
JNJ Johnson & Johnson	$65.12	-0.55 (-0.84%)	4.71% of portfolio. 1.56% held. 42.62 million shares. Position unchanged.
COP ConocoPhillips	$72.69	-0.31 (-0.42%)	4.34% of portfolio. 2.04% held. 29.1 million shares. Position changed by -8,000 shares.
WSC Wesco Financial C...	$385.08	0.17 (0.04%)	4.14% of portfolio. 80.1% held 5.7 million shares. Position unchanged.
WMT Wal-Mart Stores Inc.	$52.58	-0.71 (-1.33%)	3.79% of portfolio. 1.12% held. 39.04 million shares. Position unchanged.
USB U.S. Bancorp	$24.03	-0.26 (-1.07%)	3.4% of portfolio. 3.59% held. 69.04 million shares. Position unchanged.
MCO Moody's Corporation	$37.22	-0.45 (-1.19%)	1.79% of portfolio. 12.39% held. 28.42 million shares. Position unchanged.
WPO Washington Post C...	$409.59	-2.38 (-0.58%)	1.4% of portfolio. 25.12% held. 1.73 million shares. Position unchanged.
MTB M&T Bank Corp	$86.26	-0.02 (-0.02%)	0.89% of portfolio. 4.46% held. 5.36 million shares. Position unchanged.
COST Costco Wholesale ...	$80.14	-0.26 (-0.33%)	0.6% of portfolio. 1% held. 4.33 million shares. Position unchanged.
USG USG Corporation	$14.28	-0.34 (-2.33%)	0.53% of portfolio. 16.6% held. 17.07 million shares. Position unchanged.
TMK Torchmark Corpora...	$62.21	-0.52 (-0.83%)	0.35% of portfolio. 3.64% held. 2.82 million shares. Position unchanged.
GE General Electric Co	$18.08	-0.30 (-1.63%)	0.29% of portfolio. 0.07% held. 7.78 million shares. Position unchanged.
SNY Sanofi	$37.28	-0.40 (-1.06%)	0.27% of portfolio. 0.16% held. 4.06 million shares. Position unchanged.
UPS United Parcel Ser...	$70.81	-0.51 (-0.72%)	0.2% of portfolio. 0.2% held. 1.43 million shares. Position unchanged.
GSK GlaxoSmithKline PLC	$41.34	0.23 (0.56%)	0.11% of portfolio. 0.06% held. 1.51 million shares. Position unchanged.
MA MasterCard Incorp...	$271.45	-1.68 (-0.62%)	0.1% of portfolio. 0.18% held. 216,000 shares. Position new.
BK Bank of New York ...	$25.19	-0.25 (-0.98%)	0.1% of portfolio. -1.4% held. 1.79 million shares. Position unchanged.
XOM Exxon Mobil Corpo...	$77.88	-0.56 (-0.71%)	0.07% of portfolio. 0.01% held. 421,800 shares. Position unchanged.
IR Ingersoll-Rand PLC	$43.79	-0.75 (-1.68%)	0.06% of portfolio. 0.19% held. 636,600 shares. Position unchanged.
GCI Gannett Co. Inc.	$13.58	-0.06 (-0.40%)	0.05% of portfolio. 0.73% held. 1.74 million shares. Position unchanged.
CDCO Comdisco Holding ...	$7.49	-1.51 (-16.78%)	0.03% of portfolio. 38.18% held. 1.54 million shares. Position unchanged.

Factors affecting Economy recovery

The economy, he says, is like a four-cylinder engine, and a recovery usually requires all four to be firing. They are consumer spending, employment, housing and the reversal of the inventory cycle.

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Five Ways to Re-Energize Sales

[ extracted from yahoo - Scott Gerber, On Thursday 31 March 2011, 19:36 SGT ]




I'm a firm believer that businesses must always grow or face extinction. So, early last year when my business -- which specializes in producing short promotional videos known as "sizzle reels" -- was seeing high levels of return business but not much in the way of new customer acquisition, I immediately set out to make some big changes.

Over the next 30 days, my sales team and I conducted a full assessment of the sales operation -- everything from lead generation through the point of sale -- with the goal of improving new client acquisition. After careful analysis, we came up with a five-point game plan that helped to significantly improve revenues in less than six months.

 

Here are the five steps we came up with, as well as some of the lessons we learned along the way.





1. Instruct the sales team to operate with a 2-for-1 mindset.  

Whenever we sold a new client we encouraged our team to turn that one client into two. We created a program that gave free gift cards and catered breakfasts to clients who gave us referrals. Not long after, our business's bottom lined surged without having to spend a dime on lead generation.

Today, most of our clients have morphed into as many as four new clients. For every $250 we've spent on referrals, we've received an average of $4,000 in gross sales.
 
Related: Get More Referrals by Asking 



2. Adjust our keyword strategy based on client feedback.

Over many lunches, conference calls and email exchanges, we asked our clients to tell us what they thought about our service, where they heard about us and why they hired us. The most telling thing we learned was that most of our clients found us online but rarely by using any of our traditional keywords. Some were minor differences (while we were already using the phrase "sizzle reels," we found that "sizzle reel," the singular form, generated 10 to 15 times more interest). In other instances, our clients were using keywords we hadn't even considered.

This led us to the conclusion that how we defined our product and how our clients defined our product were on two separate wavelengths. Adjusting our pay per click and organic search engine optimization strategies increased our online traffic by nearly 100% in a single month.

It also helped fortify our market position online. Based on the keywords our clients suggested to us, we bought up several keyword-rich URLs, for anywhere from $100 to $4,000 per URL. After reviewing a year's worth of Google analytics, we realized that buying these "hot ticket" URLs and turning them into highly-optimized landing pages was helping us to build our search engine rankings while also locking out the competition.

Related: Google's Keyword Tool Can Point You Toward Profits 

3. Simplify the information-gathering process. 

Client feedback also taught us that they didn't want to call us or send an email through our general inquiry address because they didn't know what to ask in order to get a quote. In response, we added a "request a quote" page which asks customers to answer questions we think they might ask us in order to get a quote. This way, we can collect everything we need to provide them with an accurate quote without needing to have an actual conversation. The page cost $100 to build and helped us book $15,000 in new business in just the first week it went live on our site.



 

4. Compute in the cloud.

Moving our company's operations online not only helped us provide information to customers quicker and close deals faster, it also slashed our overhead expenses by $2,500 a month on average. 

We were able to develop a much leaner, more efficient selling system by using online tools such as SlideRocket.com and Proposable.com -- both of which offered us instant access to our most updated documents and real-time viewing analytics for our proposals and presentations -- and others such as Freshbooks.com, Box.net and Google Docs.

Related: How to Move Your Business to Cloud Computing 

5. Use testimonials to build our reputation.

We were fortunate to have a roster packed with name-recognizable clients including Old Spice, Pampers and Gap. We needed to reach out to several of our clients for testimonials, which we could then use to sell new clients. We collected those testimonials and display them on all sales materials and online. While we can't put an exact dollar amount on what this tactic generated revenue-wise, it is clear that it has made it much easier for our sales people to close sales. Big names equal instant credibility.





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Singapore is building our own Satellite... Its in Space now

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The Students are building UAV too

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Laser Scanner - World's Most Compact Level Size

Great for Installation in Small Spaces

This simple and versatile Safety Laser Scanner OS32C is able to solve many safety applications. Its low profile allows installation in small spaces making it ideal for collision avoidance of AGVs (Automated Guided Vehicles).

For complex AGV applications, up to 70 combinations - each with one safety zone and two warning zones can be set. What's more, replacing a damaged sensor has never been faster and easier! No re-programming is required as the configuration which is stored in the I/O block can be detached from the sensor block.

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3D Printer Trend

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Tutorial - SPI interface

SPI Interface or Serial Peripheral Interface bus is as you might expect a serial interface meaning data is shifted out (and in) one bit at a time.


It is intended for transmission of data from a master device to/from one or more slave devices over short distances at high speeds (MHz).

It is simply based on an 8 bit shift register shifting data out on a single pin and shifting data in on another pin.

Note: some devices use more than 8 bits!



 
Its main use is to replace parallel interfaces so you don't have to route parallel buses around a pcb.  For example you can buy an SPI 12bit ADC and instead of 12 parallel wires to read the data you only need 4 SPI connections.  Actually you may only need three as you may not need to send data to the device!


 With the SPI interface you can communicate with a device transmitting and receiving 8 bits of data at the same time and it is suited to high speed streaming data transfers.

Note: The trade off between using a parallel interface and the SPI interface is speed e.g. if you read a parallel 12bit ADC at 200ksps then you could read the device at a 200kHz rate but if you want to get the same data rate using SPI then you need a serial speed of 200kHz x 12 = 2.4MHz.  So the actual trade off is speed and the consequential noise introduced into the circuit.


Unlike I²C there is no concept of transferring ownership of the bus i.e. changing bus master and there are no slave device addresses.  SPI is a much simpler protocol and because of this you can operate it at speeds greater than 10MHz (compared with the 3.4MHz maximum for I²C).

The best feature of SPI is that you can do full duplex data transfers (data in both directions at the same time) which you can not do with I²C and you can do it fast.

Note: The maximum rate for a PIC Micro using a 20MHz clock is 5MHz.

SPI Interface : Signals

SPI Interface Signals
PIC name	Master	Slave
SCK	Serial clock output from master [SCK]	Input to slave [SCK]
SDO	Serial data output from master [MOSI]	Input to slave [MOSI}
SDI	Serial data input from slave [MISO]	Output from slave [MISO]
SS	Optional slave (chip) select [SS]	Slave select [SS]

[] denotes SPI naming convention

Here is the setup for a single SPI device connection:

SPI Interface - single device

Note: The chip select signal SS is optional for a single device system as you could tie the SS input at the slave low if the other lines are dedicated to SPI use.

There are two ways to implement multiple slave operation:

• Use a separate chip select for each slave device.
• Wire all the slaves together DataOut to DataIn (daisy chain).

SIP Interface : Using chip selects

SPI Interface using separate chip selects

With this scheme you control each slave device using its chip select line (usually active low- red arrows show control lines).  When disabled the Data output from the slave goes into a high impedance state so it does not interfere with the currently selected slave and the data input is ignored (check datasheet).

The advantage of this scheme is that you can consider each device separately when you compare it with the daisy chain method.

SPI Interface : Daisy chaining

With this scheme all data sent by the master is shifted into all devices and all data sent from each device is shifted out to the next (shown by red dotted arrow).  For this scheme to work  you have to make sure that each slave uses the clock in the same way (see clock and data) and you have to get the right number of bits - so there is more work to do in software.

Compared to I²C these are very inelegant slave selection mechanisms and look like kludges to get round the fact that SPI was designed really as a simple single master to single slave protocol.  Having said that the above methods will work but for daisy chaining you will have to be careful of clock polarity and clock use as this is not defined in the SPI standard.

SPI Interface : Clock and Data

How a device reacts to clock input is undefined!!!

Data can be sampled at the rising or falling edge and data can be generated after the rising or falling edge!

This is why you can set the clock output from a master mode device in multiple ways just look at the diagram below - the first four signals are the four options you have to select the output clock.

SPI Interface PIC signals (extract from DS39582B)

You match the output clock to the clock that your device requires.

Note: This is why daisy chaining may not be a good idea (or you have to think very carefully about it!).

Note: For Master or Slave mode when using PICs you need to set the TRIS direction of the SCK pin appropriately.

Problems with the SPI interface

• The clock scheme may not be the same between devices.
• The data length can vary from device to device.

Advantages of the SPI interface 

• Very fast > 10Mhz.
• Simple protocol (easy to program in software if you have no SPI hardware module).
• Simple interface (no bidirectional pins c.f. I²C).
• Supports full duplex data streaming.

 
 
 
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How did PAP government miss all the signs?

[ extracted from Yahoo.com -By Andrew Loh | SingaporeScene – Sun, Jun 5, 2011 ]

(Yahoo! photo/ Fann Sim)

On 28 May, at a dinner to thank People's Action Party (PAP) volunteers, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong defended its grassroots leaders and activists from accusations of not having provided proper feedback to the party.

Critics said this shielded party leaders from being cognizant of the unhappiness on the ground surrounding various issues.

However, PM Lee said the fault could lie on party leaders themselves. The Straits Times reported the PM as having said:

"Unfortunately, we may not have picked up and interpreted it correctly, and acted on it the way we should have done, but it's not for lack of trying on the part of the activists."

To pinpoint the communication failure at the party grassroots channels alone would be simplistic and inaccurate. It is not just how feedback from the grassroots were "interpreted" that should be the cause for concern.

The government, and indeed the PAP as well, has many channels to receive and distil feedback -- both within and without the party or government framework. There are the newspapers, the Internet, the Meet-The-People sessions, the much-touted REACH portal, even radio shows and public forums.

The question therefore is: How did the government miss all the signs and was apparently deaf to the alarm bells?



Crux of the matter

One popular reason believed by its detractors, and not without justification, is that government leaders had become arrogant, perhaps believing in their own superior wisdom and dismissing criticisms and genuine feedback as "noise", as one minister put it during the Tin Pei Ling saga.

Having many feedback channels is useless if, at the end of the day, these are not taken seriously.

Thus, it is not about the channels per se or even the processes and procedures in place. It is about the mindsets which government leaders adopt towards criticisms and queries. This really is the crux of the matter. Indeed, the grassroots are not to blame, ultimately.

Ministers, who are themselves MPs in their constituencies, conduct Meet-the-People sessions, too, and interview residents face-to-face. They also speak at public forums.

New Minister of State, Amy Khor, has been and still is in charge of the REACH feedback portal. Ministers too are aware of what is reported in the newspapers and said on the Internet.

So really there is no excuse for not having "interpreted" the sentiment "correctly". After all, even Brigadier-General Tan Chuan Jin, new Minister of State, said he had been aware of the "frustrations, angst" even when he was being considered for candidacy by the People's Action Party for the May elections. "Obviously you hear it from friends, family, so that was something I was very conscious of," he said on Channel NewsAsia.

The problem could lie squarely on the mindsets and attitudes of those at the very top. Consider how government ministers have stoutly, and at times arrogantly, defended their policies when perceived flaws were brought to their attention. 

Sometimes, those who highlight these flaws are scolded and dismissed as "irresponsible", or "daft" and ascribed many other not-so-kind terms.


Obvious issues

There needs to be a change in attitude towards criticism. Ministers must realise that gone are the days when they could hide behind a wall of silence, protected by a compliant media which continuously sing their praises while the masses outside cry out for relief.

Yet, some problems in the last few years were so significant that even if no one brought it to the ministers' attention, he should have known about them anyway.

Consider the sentiment surrounding the housing issue. Many had been expressing unhappiness that prices of public flats were getting beyond their reach. Yet, the minister in charge repeatedly stood his ground and vehemently defended his policies, instead of perhaps taking the feedback seriously and looking into whether there was any truth to them. One newspaper even gave the minister a weekly column to explain why his policies were right even as prices continued to escalate.

The paper would have done better if it had used the print space to highlight to the minister what were wrong with his policies instead.

Another example is the tented homeless communities spread out across public parks in Singapore in 2009 and 2010. How could the Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports be apparently ignorant of these?

The point here is not about who gives feedback, or the channels available. It is, I would argue, not even about how feedback is "interpreted".

It is ultimately about whether ministers accept that criticisms are important, despite who is making them, and whether it is willing to see and acknowledge that one cannot be right all the time.

It is heartening to know that PM Lee has now embarked on a "reform agenda", as some have put it, and that his new Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, has set the tone by promising to listen to feedback.

One hopes that his attitude will be an example to his MPs and that they will shed that armour of arrogance once and for all -- the holier-than-thou mindset which drew a most stunning backlash during the recent elections.

[ Andrew is the co-founder of socio-political website The Online Citizen and helmed it for more than four years until June 2011. He also writes frequently on issues which are close to his heart.]





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Amazing Shocking 360º Flip Throw Goal of High School Student

Floods worse this time around (Singapore)

 extracted from Yahoo.com - By Jeffrey Oon | SingaporeScene – Sun, Jun 5, 2011

Basement of Tanglin Mall flooded (courtesy of @onglette)

Several retail malls along Orchard Road said the flash floods that took place on Sunday morning was worse this time around than last June.

Tanglin Mall was among the hardest hit with several shops having to close temporarily after flood water from Level One , which was at road level, started pouring in.

Within minutes, water fell like a mini-waterfall onto Basement One. Several businesses -- a supermarket, food court and various shops -- were submerged in ankle-deep water and had to close. There was also widespread chaos after the basement carparks were also affected.

"The shop was flooded to about ankle-level and everyone was running around. The car park was flooded (and) cars were stuck. So everyone was frustrated (and) confused," said Family-Com salesperson Dominic Ngiam, as reported on Channel NewsAsia.

Even the St Regis Residences carpark and Forum Shopping Mall were badly affected by the flash floods.

In June 2010, similar floods along Orchard Road cost businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But this time, employees said the floods were worse.

The Little Gym instructor PJ Lucero said on CNA, "The last time it happened, it was actually more mild. We were still able to open the facility for the day. Today (Sunday), of course, everything got submerged, that's why we had to close down.

"In fact, after the first time it happened, we had sandbags ready. We did use those sandbags today (but) it didn't work. The water just went through it".

Chen Jiahui, store manager of Spinelli Coffee Company along Forum Shopping Mall, added, "This is the second time (it flooded). It's really bad, so I hope that the management are doing something about it".

National water agency PUB said the severity of the flood at Tanglin Mall was something it had not seen in the last 25 years.

It said rainfall was more intense than that of June last year, when various parts of Orchard Road were flooded. About 65mm of rainfall was recorded within 30 mins on Sunday morning, compared to 100mm within two hours on June 16, 2010.

Later in the day, at a press conference which was also attended by Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Vivian Balakrishnan, PUB explained that the flash floods on Sunday morning were caused by two bouts of heavy rainfall.

It said the first bout of rainfall started slightly past 6am, and second downpour, which was more intense, occurred at about 10.30am.

Speaking after inspecting the flood areas at Tanglin Mall, Dr Balakrishnan said, "Personally, I think our weather has changed. I'm actually psychologically prepared for it to get worse."

"You're dealing with nature, and you're dealing with the weather; you have to be prepared that there is a limit to human engineering and what we can deliver, " he added.

"But having said that, let us make sure we have done the best we can and within those limits, then cope with whatever else that nature throws at us."

In a Sunday post on his blog entitled "Focus of floods: 5 Key questions", the Minister also wrote "We are dealing with Nature, and Man needs to be humble when addressing the challenges that Nature poses".

He also admitted that "sometimes despite our best efforts, we cannot win" when dealing with flood issues but he promised that "we will be open and transparent. We will share as much data in real time as possible so that solutions and precautions can be devised for the immediate and long term."

PUB chief executive Khoo Teng Chye, meanwhile, said he is studying some possible solutions to prevent future occurrences.

"These include, possibly, building a big retention pond near where we can then trap some of the peak flows," Mr Khoo said.

"The other alternative is to really create a diversion canal from where this pond is to the Singapore River. But given Singapore's built-up situation, these are very, very expensive schemes."

Eng Neo Avenue flooded (courtesy of @Nadya_HutaGalng)

The heavy downpour early on Sunday also triggered flash floods across several parts of the island. 

Senett Estate, Potong Pasir, MacPherson, Toa Payoh and Bukit Timah were also partially submerged by floods. 

Two lanes along Bukit Timah Road near Cuscaden and Hillcrest Road were completely impassable to traffic at one stage. So too was the Kranji Expressway (KJE) at the slip road towards Woodlands.

Micro-blogging platform Twitter also lit up with hundreds of tweets, shortly after the flash floods (#sgfloods) hit.


 

Tanglin Mall flooding (courtesy of @onglette)

Ex-model and VJ Nadya Hutagalung (@Nadya_HutaGalng) tweeted, "Eng Neo avenue flooded!"

Another Twitter user Akmal Hadi (@Athrun988) tweeted, "Singapore is gonna be another Venice at the year end monsoon season if the government's not gonna do anything about it soon."

Another user, Jacqui T (@jacquilah) tweeted, "First world nation with third world drainage system. Wonderful." 

Charlotte Ong (@onglette) also posted a series of pictures of Tanglin Mall flooding and tweeted, "Check out the waterfall in the shopping centre" and "First level flood pouring down to basement." 

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Service On Demand (SOD) system; SOD - RAP5000

SOD - RAP5000

(Recover Air Platform - 5000m)

• Last known "lost" air platform location prior to lost link
• Automatic program RAP5000 to last position
• Launch RAP5000
• Turn on the telemetry to link with Ground Station as well as the "lost" platform
• Perform rebroadcast function
• Very fast forward to last position
• Estimate probable "lost" platform position based on last position, velocity, direction, time till now
• Project new position and move RAP5000 to new location with consideration of more time needed to reach there
• Establish link and update "lost" platform with new set of commands
• Recover RAP5000

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Power-One Launches 300W Micro-Inverter and DC/DC Power Optimizer

[extracted from Yahoo.com - Press Release Source: Power-One, Inc. On Thursday 5 May 2011, 1:57 SGT]

SOLAREXPO 2011, VERONA, Italy, May 4, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 

Power-One, Inc., a leading provider of renewable energy and energy-efficient power conversion and power management solutions, today announced the launch of its new 300W micro-inverter as well as its DC/DC power optimizer.

With the AURORA MICRO-0.3 inverter, Power-One introduces an alternative to the traditional string inverters the company is well-known for. By linking a micro-inverter to each module, the output of every single panel can be individually controlled and optimized. The second product, the AURORA OPTI-0.3 power optimizer, is also linked to one module and helps maximize the energy output.

"We offer something new to Power-One customers with these two products," said Paolo Casini, Vice President, Product Marketing at Power-One. "Both micro-inverters and power optimizers were designed to help our customers make the most out of installations which have to cope with difficult conditions like partial or temporary shading or significant panel mismatching. Moreover, the MICRO-0.3 is the perfect choice for customers who want to adjust the size of their applications easily."

Micro-inverters like the AURORA MICRO-0.3 offer customers attractive benefits. By equipping each module with its own micro-inverter, each panel benefits from a separate MPPT, creating the optimum power curve for individual panel conditions. This does not only minimize efficiency losses in challenging conditions, but also allows for controlling every module individually, ease of plant expansion without the hassle of string re-sizing or panel matching.

Additional features of the device include efficiency ratings of up to 95.5 percent, a rugged outdoor enclosure and HF isolation, allowing it to fit any application requiring the grounding of either one of the input terminations. The micro-inverter is electrolyte-free to further increase the product lifetime and long term reliability and can be easily installed due to a proprietary wireless communication hub and grid interface included in the package. Up to ten micro-inverters can be connected in a string.

Power optimizers like the AURORA OPTI-0.3 perfectly complement all Power-One AURORA inverters as they optimize the energy harvested from each module in an array. Usually, solar panels are joined together in a serial pattern. If the functionality of one panel is impaired, the energy being produced from the entire installation is reduced accordingly. 

This effect can be significantly lowered by using power optimizers. The AURORA OPTI-0.3 uses DC-to-DC technology to maximize the energy produced by each module within a string as it optimizes the voltage or current for any given weather conditions.

Moreover, the device helps to minimize loss caused by partial or temporary shading and mitigates PV panel mismatch and to acquire single panel data radio transmitted to a communication hub which is part of the package. This helps installers to create the largest installations possible and increases the return on investment (ROI).

The AURORA OPTI-0.3 offers efficiency rates of up to 99.5 percent, a single panel Maximum Power Point Tracker (MPPT) and a temperature hardened construction.

About Power-One

Power-One is the world's second largest designer and manufacturer of photovoltaic inverters. Its renewable energy products enable the industry's highest yielding conversion of power from both solar arrays and wind farms for use by utilities and homes.

Power-One has a 40 year history as the leader in high efficiency and high density power supply products for a variety of industries including renewable energy, data storage and networking, industrial and network power systems.

The company is headquartered in Camarillo, CA and has global sales offices, manufacturing, and R&D operations in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Power-One is traded on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol PWER. For more information about the Company, please visit www.Power-One.com.

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Facebook Scams - You Need To Know About

The 9 Most Common Hacks and Attacks

Given Facebook’s fame, it was only a matter of time before con-artists brought their scams onto the network. Facebook today is infested with dozens of different scams, with increasing reports of users falling victim to foul play. If you’re an avid facebook user, here are 9 common scams that you should look out for, and avoid when they inevitably come your way.

1. Clickjacking

[Source: Cheerleaders Gone Wild Clickjacking Tempts Facebook Users] Ever seen applications asking you to paste certain chunks of technical (and illegible) code in your browser address bar? This is essentially what clickjacking is; tricking you to paste harmful code in your browser that authorizes foreign access to your Facebook, baiting your curiosity with “Find out who is stalking you!” claims.

2. Fake Friend Requests

Ever get friend requests from strangers? That might be because programmed bots were created to expand a scammer's social network for personal gain. You might think it’s harmless to accept their request, but what you are unaware of is that they might be just looking to send you spam or viruses. We know it’s hard to turn down a friend request from a Megan Fox lookalike, but think about it, are you really that lucky?

3. Phishing

Phishing simply means an attempt to steal your important personal details (credit card info, passwords) by posing as an authorized or trustworthy site. Facebook has had several of such scams, including some tricky ones that resemble a facebook portal asking you to re-login. The best way to spot phishing sites is to look out for unusual-looking URLs in the address bar.

4. Malicious Pages, Groups & Events

Many scam pages exist solely to extract and collect personal information from you. Such pages and groups often try to trick you into inviting your friends to join them or participate in their quizzes (sometimes booby-trapped with phishing schemes) by offering you phony gifts and rewards. Some of these pages may be pose as authentic companies like Microsoft or Apple in order to gain your trust.

5. Fake “Team Facebook” Emails

The real Team Facebook always sends messages telling you they will never ask for personal information such as passwords, and they mean it. If you ever get an email or message from “Team Facebook” asking you for passwords, you can be sure they are looking to steal your personal information.

6. Worms & Viruses

For a content-rich network like Facebook, there are plenty of opportunities to lay mines for worms and other computer viruses. One such example is the koobface worm in 2008, which posed as links to Adobe Flash Player updates and were circulated to disastrous consequences. Although Koobface worms have mostly been stamped out, there are still cases of infection so watch out for those.

7. Western Union Money Scam

An extremely scary scam, this one poses as your friend, sending you a request to urgently transfer cash to him via Western Union (most commonly) or through other wiring services like PayPal. This is where it works best. How do you turn down a friend in need? You don’t, and your money gets stolen. Be very wary when you are asked for money. Tell your friend to call you personally if he needs it that desperately.

8. Unauthorized Surveys

It’s extremely common to take polls and quizzes on Facebook. Everyone does, and it’s not a surprise to see your friend update his status about how he is "Captain America of the Avengers”. It’s fun, but watch out for the kind of quizzes you are taking. Some surveys redirect you outside of Facebook, while others require you to enter personal details such as your contact number before you can view results. Reject these, as most of them are scams looking to get your personal details.

9. Harmful Apps

Harmful apps often look like they are the real thing. They disarm you with images and text that make them look authentic and harmless, whereas in reality they just want to trick you into “allowing” the app. Once allowed, the app now has liberty to send fake announcements and messages to your network of friends. Heard of the infamous “Facebook Shutdown” scam? This was how it originated.



[extracted from yahoo.com - by Shaun Zhang ]



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