Submit Income Tax with LHDN website

You should have submitted your personal income tax by today. If you have not submitted, you have one more change to submit by electronic form before 15 May 2014. (Read here)

If you are new to LHDN e-filing, you need some help to register an electronic account with LHDN.

Once you have the login access (means the username and password), you can access to e-filing:
1. Desktop.
2. Mobile site.

I suggest your last submission for the income tax filing should be done on desktop version, as the mobile site didn't allow you to save the filing as a PDF file.

If you just want to get things done and doesn't want to keep any record, you can complete the filing from both website.

The good:
1. The e-filing has improved from using PDF file to html website filing.
2. They even have a mobile friendly site (since 2012, refer tweet here).

The bad:
1. Can't save PDF file if submit from mobile site.
2. Once submitted you can not access the record anymore. That means, if you don't save the PDF file right after you have submitted, you can't do that anymore. I will prefer e-filing open up to 7 years of record to be accessed.

Impact of Internet technology to publishing industry

A few weeks ago, I have blogged about the impact of Internet technology to movie industry (refer here, Chinese blog). This time I am going to take it one step further, the Internet impact to music, TV broadcasting, printing and publishing.

Let's start with audio. The iPod and iTunes has changed the music industry. Consumers don't buy music CDs, they purchase music from online store. Consumers buy music online with single songs, not the full album. The podcast is a Internet offline broadcasting through iPod (or mp3 devices), audio streaming services like Pandora take one step further, live audio broadcast through Internet. This is the pass.

This similar things happen to the TV broadcast industry. Video streaming services (eg. Netflix, YouTube) will threaten and changed the existing TV industry. The TV series "House of Cards" was premiered on Netflix, not on the traditional TV broadcast channel.

In traditional publishing industry, many book store has closed down, losing their business to online book store like Amazon. The Washington Post, one of the oldest newspaper, sold to Jeff Bezos (Founder of Amazon.com) in year 2013, after a tremendous in year 2012. Not just for newspaper industry, same thing will happen to magazine and book publishing. The publishing business will never like before.

365 Millions Traffic Information Failed

The Malaysia ITIS (Information Transport Information System) has failed with RM365 millions, now need another RM200 millions to revive the project. The project was started in year 2002 by the federal government to solve the congested traffic issues.

I do not have the full details of what ITIS trying to do, to solve the traffic issues. I don't ITIS will includes the traffic light control system. It is just a real-time traffic monitoring system. I have blogged about the ITIS website many years ago, check here.

The system failed for many reasons, some can be summarise as "vandalism and obsolete technology".  It was reported that only 30 cameras out of 1000 plus cameras are working. What a shame.

I look back my own post back in year 2008. I think providing real-time video online is just a waste of bandwidth. Photos should be good enough, even a text-base traffic status is good enough for the drivers, a status of smooth, moderate or heavy traffic.

If what was doing the pass is not working, the related parties should redesign another solution for the traffic monitoring system. If it doesn't came out with a better solution, another RM200 millions is just a waste on the project. Adding alarm system to the CCTV cameras is not a good solution.

Out of idea? Take a look at Waze. Waze is a community base mobile apps which navigate the drivers. Waze show drivers the route to the destination, and it can avoid heavy traffic if possible. Traffic monitoring system is already on the smart phones.

Reference:
Guan Eng: Additional RM200m on failed transport system waste of public fund
Failed Traffic Surveillance, theStar

From Hong Kong movies to technology 2014

香港電影敗給非法光碟，非法光碟又敗給了 BT...

第33屆香港電影金像獎頒獎典禮，昨晚順利落幕。王家衛導演的“一代宗師”，十四項提名，最終獲得了十二個獎項。包括了最佳電影，最佳導演，最佳女主角等，成為最大的贏家，是本會的亮點。

整個頒獎典禮，不過不失，沒什麼精彩之處。當中有一段，主持人提起在十幾年前，許冠文先生在金像獎頒獎典禮一段經典的棟篤笑內容。當年翻版影碟猖獗，扼殺了香港電影的生存空間。



後來翻版光碟又敗給了非法下載。而最新的潮流，使用者也懶得下載了，使用串流技術 (video streaming), VOD (Video On Demand), 直接在互聯網上觀看影片。

拜科技所賜，像是高速的光纖網絡，影音的壓縮技術，互聯網的盛行，平易近人的平板電腦，人們可以很容易地觀賞影片。互聯網上的影音服務如 YouTube, PPStreamTV, PPTV, Netflix 等都已經越來越成熟。

今天到電影院的人潮有回流的現象，可是以出租影像起家的百視達 (Blockbuster LLC), 卻因為敵不過 Netflix 等競爭者而關門大吉。

電影業者應要改變思維。iPod, iTunes 的出現對唱片業的影響己是前車之鑒。 在軟體，硬體，網絡，服務都已準備就緒之，就只是欠缺臨門一腳（我不知道是那一腳）。要是業者們還不醒覺，受影響的豈只是電影者而已。