FAQ - Existing Life Policies

Many people asked for my advice on what to do with their existing life polciies, which has been giving a poor yield. My views are set out in this article.

Survey: views of young people in Singapore

This survey is for local-born Singaporeans, aged 30 and below, to express their views on life in Singapore.

DirectAsia.com

Dear Mr Tan,
I accidentally chanced upon this website, www.directasia.com which sells insurance directly to consumers. Would you care to take a look at it and comment about it on your blog?
jenny

REPLY
Can you try this website and give me your findings. You can apply for motor insurance and compare with your existing rate.

NOTE TO READERS
Please try this website and share your findings here.

Develop a second website

Comment posted in my blog
Dear Mr. Tan
Do you really expect the government agency or large company to abandon its current website, where they spend many millions of dollars and thousand of hours of development and training staff, and go for your prototype website?
Are you sure that your website prototye is robust and free of bugs? Can the organisation take the risk?

REPLY
I suggest the government agency or business organisation create a second website, which is linked to their current website by a label such as "Click here to view an alternative, simple website". This will provide an alternative for the public to test. The organisation can measure the number of transactions on the current and new website for 6 to 12 months.

The cost of developing a second website based on my proposed prottype is small, just a few thousand dollars, instead of a few hundred thousand dollars.
If the second website is popular and more than 50% of the transactions have moved over to the second website, the organisation can decide on the time needed to remove the current webiste (which is developed on the spider web concept). If the second website is not popular, it can be also removed in 6 to 12 months time, just by removing the link.

Tan Kin Lian

Subway on the Street

Here is an interesting article about solving problems of transport in a city.

My views
I am in favor of having certain raods that are dedicated for use by buses. Cars can use these roads, but they have to pay a heavy ERP fee (but they enjoy congestion free). Here are some of my ideas:

• The bus should operate on short trips with a flat fare
• The flat fare has to be paid on entry using stored value cards (i.e. no cash payment)
• For longer distances, the commuter has to changed buses
• The buses uses dedicated roads, which are relatively congestion free

My sugestion is for a system that can take care of most commuters. People who do not have stored value cards or do not like the flat fare can take other buses that operate on a distance-based fare. Anyway, all train rides require a stored value ticket anyway, so why not make it compulsory for buses?

Internet browser

I used Google Chrome previously as my internet browser to access G Mail and other Google applications. It gave problem in downloading a PDF attachment. I tried ways to get around this problem, but it failed. I waited for Google to fix this problem. It was reported in Google website, but there was no fix.

After some time, I decided to switch to Internet Explorer, even for the Google applications. It worked fine. So, I have stayed with Internet Explorer since. If Google fixed the problem with the Chrome, I may try it again.  My colleague tried Firefox and it worked well.

Can you share your experience on using the various internet browsers?

Tan Kin Lian