Call it the private life of Brian. Primary 4 pupil Brian Lim has three private home tutors, each coaching him on a different subject.

Tuesdays: English; Wednesdays: Chinese; and Thursdays and Sundays: Maths.

His mother, Mrs S.L. Lim, says simply: ‘The tuition is necessary, or he will lag behind his classmates because they all have tutors too.’

Mrs Lim, 38, an accountant, and her son are not alone. So pervasive is the practice that wags have called Singapore the ‘tuition nation’.

The tuition business is booming, and more parents are signing up their kindergarten and nursery-level children as well, tuition providers say.

Just two weeks ago, five parents wrote in to The Straits Times’ Forum page, commenting on the country’s ‘tuition syndrome’. They knew of Singaporean parents enrolling their children in multiple tuition centres, some even shelling out up to $3,000 a month.

Booming business

A Sunday Times poll last week of 100 primary, secondary and junior college students found that only three students do not have any tuition at all.

Of the other 97 students, 49 engage private tutors while 32 attend classes at tuition centres. 16 have both ‘types’ of coaching.

The most popular subjects are Maths and English, and a session typically lasts two hours, whether held at home or at a centre.

Private tutors do not need to register with the Ministry of Education (MOE). They may advertise in a newspaper’s classified section but their best ‘sales pitch’ is word-of-mouth recommendation.

They can also register with tuition agencies which match them with students.

MOE requires tuition centres to be registered as schools.

Tuition agencies, which play middleman between students and tutors, are commercial set-ups usually registered as a business with the Accounting and Corporate Regulating Authority.

Figures from the Singapore Department of Statistics show that there were 417 tuition centres in 2005, up from 387 in 2004. In total, their annual turnover was about $110.6 million in 2005 and $105.9 million in 2004.

MOE statistics show that there are currently 1,231 registered private schools, of which 425 are tuition centres.

The Consumers Association of Singapore (Case) said that there were 17 complaints about the tuition business in 2006 as well as last year.

For this year, five complaints have been lodged to date.

When The Sunday Times spoke to 10 tuition agencies, most claim to have a pool of some 4,000 tutors.

The director of Xue Hai Tutorial Centre, Dr Low Boon Yong, said his centre opened three branches within a year. He has also received more than 30 inquiries about franchising his business.

Dr Low, who is also a senior consultant in orthopaedic surgery at Changi General Hospital, said all this activity is ‘a testament of the good business tuition centres are making’.

His centre offers tuition on core subjects.

Starting young

Tuition centres say students sent to them are getting younger.

Aspire Home Tuition’s spokesman said parents of kindergarten and nursery-level children have been asking for phonics tutors, so that these kids can have an early start in learning to speak English properly.

The spokesman for Score tuition agency said that two in 10 requests are now for kindergarten tutors.

He added: ‘Parents want tutors to teach their kids how to read properly, to help them build a strong foundation.’

And it seems now that ‘smart kids’ have also caught the tuition syndrome. Mr Stanley Tan, 43, a full-time tutor for 16 years, has noticed a change in his clientele.

‘Previously, only students who are failing or barely passing their subjects come to me for tuition,’ said Mr Tan, who has 14 students. ‘Now, even those scoring distinctions – 80 and 90 marks – are coming for tuition.’

To cater to this seemingly insatiable demand, education centre chain SmartLab Education launched an online service this month.

It now offers students a ‘virtual classroom’ where they can log in from home to post questions to teachers on messaging systems or virtual whiteboards.

SmartLab’s managing director Hazel Poa said its aim is to eventually enable students to get help from tutors at all times.

Its online tuition service costs between $49 and $79 monthly, and caters to upper secondary and junior college students.

The market rate for private one-on-one home tuition is between $10 and $150 an hour, depending on the student’s level and the tutor’s qualifications.

Group tuition classes cost between $60 and $350 monthly.

Necessary, say parents

From the Sunday Times survey, 12 students said their parents spend $500 or more monthly on their tuition fees.

Dr Low of Xue Hai Tutorial Centre estimates that the majority of parents spend $250 monthly on tuition for each primary-level child. Secondary-level tuition will set parents back by about $400 monthly.

Parents said they are willing to fork out such sums because tuition is increasingly seen as a necessity.

SmartLab’s Ms Poa offered this explanation: ‘When everyone else is getting extra help, it raises standards all round and even schools start to expect you to get tuition.’

Madam Choo Swee Lin, 49, a manager, is one parent who initially resisted sending her son for tuition. She eventually gave in when she found her son, now 13, lagging behind his classmates when he went on to secondary school.

‘I regret not sending him for tuition earlier, as his foundation is now so weak,’ said Madam Choo. ‘I now tell all my friends with school-going children that tuition is very necessary.’

She pays $350 a month in total to her son’s three tutors, who teach Maths, English and Chinese.

Another parent, marketing manager Tan Eng Hong, 50, was shocked when his Secondary 4 son’s teacher told him to engage a private tutor.

‘The school conveniently pushed the ball back to parents, to tell us to engage private tutors for our kids,’ he said. ‘This is a serious failure in the education system.’

Singaporeans have become ‘over-dependent’ on tuition, he felt. Mr Tan signed his son up for a maths tuition class at $300 for 10 sessions.

Help or hindrance?

MOE’s stance is that it understands parents want the best for their children and that it is their decision whether to engage tutors.

It also advised parents to allow their children sufficient rest and avoid cramming their time with too much tuition.

It added that Singapore’s schools provide a ‘holistic education’ to meet the educational needs of students.

‘Students will be adequately prepared for the demands of the school’s curriculum and national exams by their schools,’ it said.

A secondary school teacher, who wanted to be known only as Mr Ang, felt that tuition has its pros and cons.

It helps those who are ‘slower’ or shy in class. One flipside, however, is that students will not pay attention in class because they can ‘turn to their tutors for help later’, he noted.

Other teachers The Sunday Times spoke to agreed that it has become harder to ensure that every student can cope in class. Co-curricular activities, marking of students’ work and administrative matters leave teachers little time to provide individual classroom coaching.

Meanwhile, among the 97 students in the Sunday Times survey who have tuition, 68 found it ‘useful’ and 64 even found it ‘enjoyable’.

Brian definitely says he cannot do without tuition, even if it is tiring.

He said: ‘Sometimes I wish I can replace tuition time with computer games, but then I won’t be able to catch up with the others in class.’

School teacher does it for free

Four years ago, Mr Anthony Fok started Xue Hai Tutorial Centre with only 25 students.

Now, there are five branches in Singapore with about 600 students in total.

Instead of basking in the success of his venture, Mr Fok sold all his shares to his business partner last year and switched to teaching full-time at Hong Kah Secondary School, covering Principles of Accounts and Mathematics.

The 25-year-old Nanyang Technological University accountacy graduate said: ‘I feel more fulfilled teaching in a school because I can help all kinds of students there, even the poor ones who cannot afford tuition.’

However, Mr Fok continues to teach the 80 students under his charge at Xue Hai.

The tuition centre charges $100 for four lessons at the secondary level and $150 at the junior college level.

He does not receive any salary for his lessons at the tuition centre, where he teaches Economics and English. He said: ‘I teach for free here partly to help out, but mostly because I really like this job. As most of the students started with me long ago, we have become quite close.’

As he is well known for his ability to deliver results, parents try all means to put their children in his class.

Last year, a parent offered him $250 an hour to teach her JC son Economics three months before the A levels. Although Mr Fok rejected the amount offered, he accepted the student because he was ‘hardworking and really willing to learn’.

The student, who used to fail the subject badly, got an A for his exams and even went overseas on a scholarship.

Mr Fok spends his weekdays concentrating on teaching his students in school, but his weekends are fully packed with classes at Xue Hai.

When asked if his family and girlfriend minded his busy schedule, he said: ‘I’ve been busy all along, even when I was in university, so they understand. I just need to plan and manage my time well.’

From $220 monthly takings to $20,000

In the first three months of becoming a full-time tutor, Mr Phang Yu Hon earned a mere $220 monthly from his one student.

Now, the physics tutor has close to 90 students and earns about $20,000 a month.

The 41-year-old gave up his research engineer job after four years at the Ministry of Defence in 1994 and decided to tutor full-time.

‘I had been giving part-time tuition and found I had a flair for teaching,’ said Mr Phang.

He said it is not uncommon now for an entire extended family of children to attend his sessions.

‘Word gets around and, year after year, cousins, siblings, the whole family, they come back to me for tuition,’ he said.

Mr Phang has turned one of the rooms in his three-room Bishan flat into a mini-classroom, with desks, chairs and a whiteboard.

On weekdays, he gives lessons from 7 to 9pm.

Weekends are packed with classes from 12.30 to 9pm.

Until two years ago, MrPhang was ‘running around the island’ giving individual one-on-one sessions.

‘Group tuition can be achieved only by tutors who have reached a certain degree of stature and experience,’ he said.

‘When I started, I gave individual sessions, driving around Singapore like a taxi driver.’

The full-time tutor of 14 years was a Raffles Institution student.

He graduated with first-class honours in electrical engineering from the National University of Singapore.

Mr Phang, who holds classes every day, has turned one of the rooms in his three-room Bishan flat into a mini-classroom.

She makes study a fun ride for students

With her help, 95 per cent of her students score As – in maths and science.

And every top student in her tuition groups is rewarded with a ride in her ‘cool’ two-door Renault convertible.

Ms Laura Oh, 26, is a Nanyang Technological University materials engineering graduate turned full-time tutor. She specialises in maths and science subjects from primary to junior college level.

A private tutor for the past 10 years, she now takes home a ‘substantial five-figure salary’ each month.

She believes her popularity derives from selling more than knowledge. ‘It’s a whole package – friendship, values and customised assessment material,’ she said.

Ms Oh has about 80 students under her charge: 15 come for one-on-one sessions and the rest for group tuition.

She is so popular that there is a queue of 31 students waiting to join her classes.

One parent, she recalled, even rang her every two days to check if there were any vacancies for her son.

Ms Oh, who is single, is also a shrewd businesswoman. She has 10 full-time tutors working for her. Very often, students attend lessons at her Loyang condominium unit.

Otherwise, she goes to students’ homes.

While she said tuition ‘is now a necessity because everyone is so competitive’, she feels a good tutor helps a student shorten the learning process so as to hit ‘his peak’.

Ever energetic, she has also written a series of children’s stories revolving around the adventures of her and her dog, titled Laura And Chester.

The stories involve maths and science concepts, told in a fun way.

Drama spices things up

‘I don’t guarantee results, but they always get them,’ said Mr Tong Yee.

‘Them’ would mean distinctions or at least very good grades in one of those hard-to-ace subjects: General Paper (GP) and English.

That is why the 34-year-old former teacher’s tuition centre, School Of Thought (SOT), which he set up with three friends, has 170 students on its waiting list.

About 400 students are enrolled currently.

Mr Tong does not admit it, but he clearly is the ‘star’ at SOT. The other tutors take about eight classes a week, but he handles 16. Each class has 12 students at most.

Mr Tong, who teaches only GP and English, said that his students did well because they were encouraged to ‘genuinely care about what they write’. His students ‘never sleep’ in class, he said.

The centre charges $180 a month for four GP sessions.

Mr Tong, who majored in drama at the National University of Singapore, thinks that his personality is what connects him with his students: ‘I find it very easy to dramatise issues and draw out an audience.’

And he always makes a point of availing himself to his students, often playing the role of a counsellor.

Mr Tong and his colleagues produce a monthly magazine, Broader Perspectives, which has news analyses and essay tips. About 16,000 copies are sold a year and eight junior colleges have made it compulsory reading for their students.

Mr Tong makes about $11,000 a month from teaching, directorial fees and the magazine’s earnings.

SOT’s founders have now started a cafe too. Its name? Food For Thought, of course.

Maths guru ‘saves’ kids

A poster in the room at Goldhill Centre reads: ‘Miss Loi’s temple, enter and be saved.’

Joss Sticks is the name of Ms Celine Loi’s tuition centre, where at least 20 students walk in every weekend to work on their maths. The full-time tutor of eight years has about 80 students under her charge now, each paying $60 a lesson.

The maths guru earns a five-figure monthly income from tutoring. News of her centre spread by word of mouth and also through her website (www.exampapers.com.sg).

The interactive webpage of the 33-year-old, who is single, is laced with humour. For example, students can avail themselves of her services for the ‘effective prevention of last-minute Buddha foot-hugging syndrome’, a Chinese idiom for last-minute exam cramming.

Ms Loi also sells exam papers at about $60 a subject on her site.

The maths graduate from the National University of Singapore has at least 10 students on her waiting list now.

She also has no qualms in ‘sacking’ any student. ‘I tell those who refuse to work hard and do not need tuition not to come back,’ she said.

Her ‘favourite’ ones are those with an F9 grade. Every year, a month before the final exams, Ms Loi gets SOS messages from at least 10 such students.

‘I had students who scored less than 10 marks for their preliminary exams and ended up with an A in the O-level exams,’ she said.

Ms Loi typically has a 3 to 10pm workday. On school holidays and weekends, she works from 8am to 10pm. But when the exams draw nearer, she works past 11pm at times.

‘Sometimes, I get gastric pains because I don’t have time for meals,’ she said. ‘I also don’t have much personal time.’

Internet giant Google is running the final tests on its much-anticipated cellphone operating system, which it will roll out in a few months.

The company showed off the software, called Android, yesterday, as part of the pre-opening activities at CommunicAsia, the annual telecom trade show.

Google’s senior director of mobile platforms Andy Rubin said that such free or open-source software would encourage more innovations for the benefit of the global users of over three billion cellphones. ‘Open-source software’ means the programming code is freely available, which enables other software developers to create new applications for it.

Mr Rubin estimated that cellphones running on such software would be about 20 per cent cheaper because of the savings on software costs.

He declined to say how many phones would be shipped with it, but showed off several of the system’s advantages, including its customising features and multi-tasking functions.

The most prominent feature is its ‘mash-up’ architecture, which allows different applications to be combined.

After an initial tepid response, Android, which brings together in one package a number of applications Google has developed for cellphones, has been gaining in acceptance.

More cellphone operators, such as American giant AT&T, are leaning towards offering handsets that run on the system.

Meanwhile, more than 1,700 applications for Android have already been written as part of a competition, the Android Developer Challenge, which has a total purse of US$10 million (S$13.8 million).

One big feature of the Android operating system is the number of Global Positioning System (GPS) based applications available.

Enkin, for example, tells users the names of the buildings around them and how far away they are. All they have to do is use their phone cameras to scan their surroundings.

GPS is even featured in Android’s games: In Parallel Kingdom, players make use of GPS and maps to role-play, defending their turf or ‘warring’ with players in their geographical vicinity.

Growth in sales of GPS-enabled devices worldwide has exploded in the last year or so, and manufacturers are coming up with devices that measure a runner’s speed and complex navigation aids.

Android is being developed by Google and 33 other technology companies – such as cellphone makers Samsung and Motorola, and Japanese telco NTT DoCoMo – as part of the Open Handset Alliance, a group which works to make the mobile world more open and free.

By signing up with online ad-placement services like Google Adsense as well as local ones like Advertlets, Blog2U and NuffNang, top bloggers here are ringing in thousands of dollars per month.

According to media services firm ZenithOptiMedia, the total ad market for Singapore in 2008 is worth about $2.07 billion. Google estimates the value of the local online ad market at 3 to 5 per cent of the total ad spending.

Given all that moolah, legions have signed up with the ad placement firms. NuffNang has 13,000 local bloggers, Advertlets 12,000 while the latest entrant Blog2U has 5,000 – but there are overlaps. Google keeps mum about its numbers.

Indeed, Singaporeans come up as the top bloggers regionally. Mr Derek Callow, marketing manager of Google Southeast Asia, said: ‘There are more active bloggers in Singapore (using our Blogger product) than in any other country in Asia Pacific.’

For the handful of very successful opinion-casters – and they are just part-timers, mind you – the earnings are more than loose change.

There’s 39-year-old Dr Leslie Tay, who likely earns a five-figure sum as a general practitioner. In addition, he gets a small pile monthly just by posting reviews and mouth-watering pictures of various hawker food on his blogsite, ieatishootipost.sg.

Nineteen-year-old, part-time model Peggy Heng pockets between $500 and $2,000 monthly while model and celebrity blogger Dawn Yang, 23, gets anything between $4,000 and $6,000.

Not bad for personal rantings about their daily lives and the occasional commentary on social issues.

How the money-making goes

All three parties – bloggers, ad placement firms and advertisers – stand to gain.

Bloggers earn money in several ways. The traditional way – a la Adsense – was that Google would place banner ads which match the content on the blogger’s site. Bloggers are paid for page views every time a netizen clicks on the ad. In blogspeak, these are called ‘impressions’ and ‘click-throughs’.

Bloggers can also be paid a fixed sum when an advertiser places a banner ad on their homepage for a period of time. Blog2U, for instance, pays about $5 for a banner ad which stays on a blog for 30 days.

At NuffNang, co-founder Cheo Ming Shen said: ‘Bloggers just need to maintain a daily minimum of 20 different visitors to their blogs in order to bring in the dough. NuffNang would then invite advertisers to select the blogs that they wish to run their ad campaigns on.

‘Should the blogger be selected, they will be notified via e-mail about the type and duration of the campaign.’

Through such ads, a blogger can pull in anything from $50 to $2,000 a week. According to NuffNang, a high-profile blogger like Wendy Cheng (xiaxue.blogspot.com), who attracts 20,000 readers daily, could get about $1,000 a week.

Bloggers can also be paid for talking about new products and services. That extra – in the case of Advertlets – is anything between $15 and $250 per post.

Said Josh Lim, founder of Advertlets: ‘This service makes sure that even lower traffic bloggers get a piece of the action.’

While most bloggers earn from local vendors and through the syndicates, Sabrina Ong, 23, gets about 70 per cent of her income from advertisers directly from the United States.

‘They contact me directly and ask me to blog about a certain product or service. I get between US$50 (S$68) and US$500 for each post,’ said the business and law student who is attending classes at a private school here.

Certainly, the ad placement firms take a cut too. NuffNang charges advertisers from $1,000 to $50,000 per week for an ad. It declined to reveal total revenue.

Advertisers, from Nokia and GAP to Hewlett-Packard, feel that their spending is justified.

Lim Wee Khee, the head of Nokia’s sales unit marketing division, considers the Nokia N82 ads which are placed on teen blogs, an ‘innovative way’ to reach its customers.

She said: ‘We aim to garner more depth and visibility in the virtual space through placements on suitable blogs.’

The big picture

To be sure, the blab-and-get-paid trend is not new. In the US, where selling online opinion is estimated to be a billion-dollar business, the commercialising of opinions has been around since 2003.

Take the teams behind tech blogs like TechCrunch, Gizmodo and Engadget. In the case of Gizmodo, the six-year-old site attracts up to 50 million ‘eyeballs’ a month. This lets them demand a hefty price tag of US$3,000 for each ad placed on its site.

Right, this is where the wary takes one step back. Remember the expression ‘If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is’? Would that wisdom apply here?

Dr Lim Sun Sun, assistant professor at the faculty of arts and social sciences at the National University of Singapore, believes that sites like NuffNang and Advertlets could well become ‘industry standard’ one day.

‘The Internet is such an unpredictable environment that a service which may first appear fly-by-night may well become tomorrow’s industry standard.

‘If you think about it, services such as eBay must have appeared suspect in the first instance but are established and widely accepted today,’ she said.

Even so, how full is that pot of gold?

For student-model Peggy, the few hundred bucks (and up to $2,000 a month) fuels weekend shopping jaunts.

Ming Shen admits that some of his members earn only $1.68 per week.

Nineteen-year-old student Benjamin Toh, who uses NuffNang’s service, said: ‘NuffNang doesn’t give us ads every single week and sometimes we might not have ads for weeks on end. So we won’t earn money for that period of time.’

Celeb blogger Dawn offered this caveat: ‘Making substantial amounts of money only apply to blogs with substantial daily readership. For lesser-known bloggers, I think it may be harder to make money.’

Although blogging provides her with a ‘decent full-time salary’, she doesn’t rely on NuffNang alone. She also uses services like Google Adsense and Adbrite.

‘The ad campaigns are not frequent enough,’ she said.

But she hopes a wildcard will come into play.

‘If NuffNang grows big enough to provide its bloggers with a regular stream of advertisers, I have no doubt I could be earning a full-time income from just NuffNang alone.’

Customers in shopping centres are having their every move tracked by a new type of surveillance that listens in on the whisperings of their mobile phones.

The technology can tell when people enter a shopping centre, what stores they visit, how long they remain there, and what route they take as they walked around.

The device cannot access personal details about a person’s identity or contacts, but privacy campaigners expressed concern about potential intrusion should the data fall into the wrong hands.

The surveillance mechanism works by monitoring the signals produced by mobile handsets and then locating the phone by triangulation – measuring the phone’s distance from three receivers.

It has already been installed in two shopping centres, including Gunwharf Quays in Portsmouth, and three more centres will begin using it next month, Times Online has learnt.

The company that makes the dishes, which measure 30cm (12 inches) square and are placed on walls around the centre, said that they were useful to centres that wanted to learn more about the way their customers used the store.

A shopping mall could, for example, find out that 10,000 people were still in the store at 6pm, helping to make a case for longer opening hours, or that a majority of customers who visited Gap also went to Next, which could useful for marketing purposes.

In the case of Gunwharf Quays, managers were surprised to discover that an unusually high percentage of visitors were German – the receivers can tell in which country each phone is registered – which led to the management translating the instructions in the car park.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) expressed cautious approval of the technology, which does not identify the owner of the phone but rather the handset’s IMEI code – a unique number given to every device so that the network can recognise it.

But an ICO spokesman said, “we would be very worried if this technology was used in connection with other systems that contain personal information, if the intention was to provide more detailed profiles about identifiable individuals and their shopping habits.”

Only the phone network can match a handset’s IMEI number to the personal details of a customer.

Path Intelligence, the Portsmouth-based company which developed the technology, said its equipment was just a tool for market research. “There’s absolutely no way we can link the information we gather back to the individual,” a spokeswoman said. “There’s nothing personal in the data.”

Sharon Biggar, the company’s chief operating officer, said that one of the stores which had already deployed the receivers did not want its name revealed for fear of alarming its customers.

Liberty, the campaign group, said that although the data do not meet the legal definition of ‘personal information’, it “had the potential” to identify particular individuals’ shopping habits by referencing information held by the phone networks.

The receivers together cost about £20,000 to rent per month. About 20 the units, which are unobtrusive, cream-coloured boxes about the size of a satellite dish, would be needed to cover the Bluewater shopping centre.

Bluewater, in Kent, said it had no plans to deploy the equipment. A spokesman for Gunwharf Quays was not available for comment.

Owners of large buildings currently have to rely on manual surveys to find out how customers use the space, which can be relevant to questions of design such as where the toilets should be located or which stores should be placed next to one another.

Other types of wireless technology, such as wi-fi and Bluetooth, can be used to locate devices, but the regular phone network signal is preferable because it is much more powerful and fewer receivers are needed to monitor a given area.

Phone networks have long been capable of gauging the rough location of a handset using three phone masts, but the margin error can be as great as 2km. The process is also less efficient when the phone is indoors. Path Intelligence’s technology can tell where a phone is to “within a couple of metres.”

“You’re basically going to know that that person has been in Starbucks,” Toby Oliver, the company’s chief technology officer, said.

Even when the owner is not using it, a mobile phone makes contact with the network every couple of minutes, which is enough for the receivers to get a reading on its position.

Get together with other like- minded shoppers online to buy products via ‘sprees’, or Internet mass orders, to enjoy cost savings. You could even pick up exotic items not otherwise available in Singapore.

In recent years, such sprees have spread like wildfire.

On the SingaporeMotherhood.com site, for instance, you can go on dozens of sprees for health supplements, branded baby clothes and educational toys.

At HardwareZone.com forums, mass orders for computer parts, Crumpler laptop bags and Bluetooth headsets are abound, while car forums offer deals on Mugen bodykits and leather steering wheel wraps. Even classified ad websites like ST701.com have got in on the act, organising sprees for fashion labels such as Gap, Old Navy and Victoria’s Secret lingerie.

The appeal of sprees is easy to understand – you enjoy lower prices at online merchants than at the shops, and you can share the cost of shipping the items to Singapore with others.

Another bonus: Banding together with others can get you further bulk discounts that individuals will not enjoy.

In addition, with the Internet, Singapore shoppers are no longer limited to what local merchants choose to bring in.

Capitalising on this trend are new logistics services, such as ComGateway.com, that help online shoppers ship in goods at less than what the merchant would charge.

But while sprees are attractive, there are risks.

For example, a warranty issued by an overseas merchant might not be honoured by the local distributor. If you have problems with the item, you would have to send it back overseas, possibly incurring significant freight charges.

Sometimes, items arrive damaged – or not at all, having been lost in transit.

Some spree organisers have been known to cheat buyers, either replacing the items ordered with fake or cheaper items, or simply running away with the money.

Probably the most sensational case in Singapore involving a runaway spree organiser was in 2006, when 24-year-old Goh Chin Soo ran sprees on popular car forums.

He claimed he could get car accessories at amazingly low prices, and convinced many car aficionados to hand over thousands of dollars. He eventually ran away with the money. Although he was subsequently arrested, he jumped bail and is currently at large.

The lesson? Be careful of deals that sound too good to be true.

There are ways to protect yourself from scams or, at least, minimise the risks. For instance, join sprees on sites that have already run some checks on the organiser. If you are not in a hurry to get the item, wait and see how a spree by a particular organiser turns out; if it goes well, join his next one.

Finally, be sure there is a solid audit trail to follow in case things go wrong. For instance, get the organiser’s mobile number, pay via an online banking service, and keep the transaction reference numbers and the organiser’s bank account number.

Sprees can be found on the message boards of many community and hobby sites. For instance, fans of Japanese animation can try sgclub.com’s anime and manga sections.

A good way to find a spree is to check out popular websites and their forums. Keywords to search include spree, bulk order, mass order and group buy.

The organiser will usually set certain rules that stipulate, for instance, the foreign exchange rate he will charge if the purchase is from a foreign website, the payment methods, how shipping charges will be shared and local collection points.

Once you have checked the rules, you can register for an account. You post what you want to buy and also your contact details. The organiser will usually contact you to finalise the deal.

Most organisers want payment upfront, typically via an online banking service. The reason is that there are no fees for online banking transactions between individuals.

At the same time, buyers get peace of mind because the money trail should lead directly to the seller if something goes wrong with the spree.

After the spree closes, it might take a while – several weeks, in some cases – for the merchant to process the order and ship the items to Singapore. Once the organiser has collected the items, he usually updates the original spree posting to inform the buyers that the items have arrived and to arrange collections.

Typical collection options include normal post, registered post or self-collection. Self-collection is the cheapest, but organisers usually have pre-determined collection points and schedules. Normal post is cheap but not as reliable as registered post.

Consumers will be able to find out how much their favourite hawker dish should cost by visiting the Consumers Association of Singapore (Case) website from next month.

The average prices of 10 popular dishes by area will be listed, which means consumers will be able to compare prices of cooked food. The guide will also list the stalls with the highest and lowest prices for each dish.

To gather this data, over 30 ‘mystery shoppers’ will fan out across the island for two weeks next month.

Case president Yeo Guat Kwang said this will not only make prices more transparent and enable consumers to make better choices, but it will also deter hawkers from profiteering.

He said Case did not know how widespread profiteering was, so the survey would ‘give us an understanding of the magnitude of the problem’.

He said the consumer watchdog was concerned that some hawkers – claiming the need to cover the rising cost of raw ingredients such as rice and noodles – are getting away with charging exorbitant prices.

The Ministry of Trade and Industry has disclosed that more hawkers have raised their prices in the last two months: 65 per cent are holding their prices steady, down from 75 per cent two months ago.

The ministry conducts price checks on 1,271 randomly chosen stalls in hawker centres and markets. Every two weeks, it dispatches about half a dozen officers to check for price increases at these stalls.

Case has received 14 public complaints regarding overcharging at hawker centres and coffee shops since the start of the year – against 38 such complaints for the whole of last year.

Besides publishing cooked-food prices, Case plans to help consumers battle the rising cost of living by making its annual publication of grocery prices a monthly affair from this month.

The survey, which establishes baseline prices for common household items and groceries in supermarkets here, will also be published online and updated for the next four to six months.

Mr Seah Seng Choon, Case’s executive director, said: ‘Right now, market prices are changing rapidly. So we are trying to keep our data up to date.’

Drawn by the prospect of big savings, a growing number of Singapore Internet users are banding together for online buying binges.

Industry players have seen an increase in so-called shopping spree websites that let netizens pool their orders and get big discounts on a raft of online buys.

A Straits Times check found at least 15 active Singapore Internet forums geared towards sprees. Many more smaller blogs have also issued a call to arms for online shoppers looking for clothes, bags, cosmetics and even food.

At any one time, up to 20 sprees are open on each site, some closing once the orders hit a cap of $400. That is when the 7 per cent goods and services tax sets in.

Spree participants said buying in big groups means they save money on shipping costs and get bulk discounts.

The process is fairly simple. A spree organiser posts a thread or blog entry calling for other participants to join the mass order, usually for an overseas website. Buyers write in with their wish lists and send the organiser their money via online banking.

Within three weeks or so, the items arrive and the organiser mails them to participants or meets them to dole out bigger items.

While sprees have become popular, there are dangers to handing money over to strangers.

One Singapore spree organiser was arrested last year for fleeing with participants’ money. Chew Kiew Cheng was collared in October following a scheme in which buyers were cheated of $11,245. In February, Chew was jailed 24 months for the offence.

The Straits Times also found some dodgy sprees organised by overseas websites that sold pirated bags. Two such sites hawked imitations of popular brands such as Chanel, Gucci and Hermes.

That has not dampened the enthusiasm of many online shoppers.

Lawyer Elizabeth Xue, 25, said sprees are hassle free and the good variety of sprees on one website suits her busy schedule.

‘The organisers do everything for me. I don’t have to liaise with overseas websites, which can get very troublesome,’ she said.

Spree organisers here are not looking to make money but want to save on their own online shopping, according to five who spoke to the The Straits Times.

Student Ler Kar Leng, 19, started 10 blogs with different spree themes because she ‘loves to shop for different things from many sites’.

Such sprees are so popular, ST701, the online classifieds arm of Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), and online shopping service Comgateway will launch a portal for spree-seekers in the second week of next month.

Called ST701 Spree, it will be hosted on www.ST701.com and plans to offer ‘a few hundred’ online American merchants for a start.

ST701 said the website will come without the risks of spree-ing with unknown parties.

Said Ms Elsie Chua, executive vice-president of SPH’s classified advertising department: ‘Often, the shoppers don’t know the real identity of organisers, who could run away with their money. ST701 offers online shoppers a secure platform.’

We may be living in a ‘throwaway’ world but the Internet has helped revive an old-fashioned practice, even among the young: barter.

YouSwop, a Singapore-based website set up in August last year to allow people to swop things they did not want for something else, is proving to be a hit.

The website has been gaining popularity, with some 6,000 members joining in just the past six months. Teenagers make up 35 per cent of the crowd.

Membership is free.

‘This idea works because people want to barter away things they bought on impulse which others might find more useful,’ says Mr Patrick Lim, 32, co-founder and manager of the website.

Members put up notices informing others about items they want to swop. The site is popular because of its flexibility: There can be a direct swop between two parties.

Or, a member can ‘sell’ an item to someone else for YouSwop dollars (YS$). The value of any item is up to the seller.

The virtual credit earned can then be used to buy other items on the ‘swopping board’.

The actual exchange of items takes place through postal delivery or a direct meeting at a location agreeable to both parties. Postage charges are usually borne by the seller.

Young adults and teenagers who spoke to The Sunday Times like the website.

Ms Ivy Tan, 21, is one such fan. The undergraduate from Nanyang Technological University usually swops clothes, vouchers and books for bags and collectibles.

She joined YouSwop in January, after a friend told her about the site.

‘It’s novel, and the fact that it’s virtually cashless helps me to keep tabs on my spending. I get a fresh supply of items I want to use without shelling out any cash,’ she says.

The swopping facility has since evolved to include contests in which members can win movie tickets.

Members like this feature too.

‘This site totally feeds my need for a great bargain,’ Ivy says with a laugh.

Another member who is fast becoming a regular YouSwop user is 16-year-old Hazel Tan. The Methodist Girls’ Secondary student joined the website in December last year.

She admits that she is a shopper who buys things ‘on impulse’ quite often.

Hazel feels that the concept of passing on unwanted but still useful items to someone else is sensible.

‘Just throwing away such items is wasteful. Giving them to those who want or need them makes sense.

‘Besides, doing this earns me credits to get other items I want, which is good for people with limited cash like me,’ she says.

The website even has a feedback system which allows people to find out who are the reliable swoppers.

Site manager Mr Lim, a business consultant, admits that he had not expected YouSwop to become so successful.

He had started it with two friends simply as a nifty way to get rid of excess goods on their hands.

However, they soon realised it was a great way of helping the green movement – as the website’s popularity increased, mainly by word of mouth.

‘It became clear that we were doing something similar to recycling, basically helping the environment while leaving everyone satisfied,’ he says.

Mr Lim hopes that the young people who use his website will one day bring swopping to a greater level.

He says with a grin: ‘In future, these young people will influence others about swopping. It might become a popular culture, even a norm.’

Still, the swopping website has its share of problems.

There have been cases, for example, where one person has not kept to his part of the bargain in the swop. Mr Lim and his ever vigilant team will then swoop in to mediate.

Besides YouSwop, another site, sgfreecycle.com, works on a different model – no barter trade is involved here.

Members dispose of items they no longer want. Other members indicate their interest on a first come, first served basis.

Teen stuff takes up a significant proportion of items on offer on this website, ranging from Playstation games to arcade tokens.

University student Lim MayAnn, 27, managed to satisfy her craving for her favourite movies through the website.

‘I was thinking of watching old movies like A Time To Kill, but I didn’t want to have to spend money and go around hunting for them,’ she says.

‘So when someone said he was giving his copy away, I headed down to his place in Bishan, which is pretty near my home in Upper Thomson, to collect the movie.’

An online check revealed that there are more websites which offer teens in Singapore the chance to swop items.

They include Swapace and Bookmooch, with the former offering quirky items such as a pet spider and hair-styling clay and the latter focusing on books.

Netizens are flocking to Singapore – the virtual version, that is.

A growing number of businesses and individuals are customising parts of the map of Singapore on Google Earth, and are using it as a marketing tool, to exchange notes, or to indulge in a hobby that is catching on – 3-D modelling.

Google Earth lets users view a topographical map of practically any spot on earth. Users can zoom in even on street corners – clicking on a magnifying glass icon, for example, could give you a view of the top of your apartment block.

The original imagery is two-dimensional, but users are working to change that.

Creating 3-D models of real buildings and forming a virtual city online are among the activities generating the biggest buzz online.

Mr Nathan Choe is among those who spend hours creating virtual buildings. The 19-year-old undergraduate at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture says he is ‘passionate about building models’.

So far, he has built over 15 of them, mostly of buildings in the Central Business District.

Among the growing band of 3-D modellers flocking to Google Earth is a group of Temasek Polytechnic students who have created a 3-D model of their campus.

Ms Sim Poh Leng, 20; and Mr Ryan Chia and Mr Benjamin Liew, both 19, took six months to finish the job, and the polytechnic now intends to put it to good use.

It wants to let students access courses within the campus using Google Earth.

Mr Oh Chin Lock, a lecturer at the poly’s infocomm and IT school, said: ‘We might do this within the next six months – upload YouTube videos of lectures or maybe even a live feed via webcams. Students just need to click on their faculty and view the pop-up video.’

Other schools, like Anglo-Chinese School (Independent), have jumped on the bandwagon, while other modellers have created 3-D representations of attractions like the Singapore Flyer and the route for the F1 race in September.

Even condominium residents have put up models of their blocks – The Straits Times found at least two, Springdale and Goldenhill Park.

Companies – from small set-ups to restaurants and hotels – are also turning to Google Earth to raise their visibility. The firms have added information to their locations on the map.

Clicking on the location for the Pan Pacific Hotel, for instance, brings up a page showing a picture of the hotel, with its address and Web link, as well as reviews.

Since Alenu IT Business Solutions, a small firm in River Valley Road, added its contact details and website address to its location on the map last year, it claims it has gained potential partners and clients ‘from all over the world’.

Temasek Polytechnic’s Mr Oh thinks property developers can also capitalise on the new trend. ‘They can show the plot of land and the 3-D model of their property even before it is built. This will benefit overseas buyers too,’ he said.

It is not just businesses that are getting a boost from Google Earth, though.

Two Google Earth Singapore communities have sprung up online – Earth@sg and SinGeo – and their numbers are increasing.

The members discuss issues and create new uses for Google Earth and Maps. For example, SinGeo has created a simple animation of dengue hot spots in Singapore, which can be uploaded and viewed on Google Earth.

Earth@sg had 40,000 unique visitors the past month, up from 15,000 in the same period last year. SinGeo has on average 37,200 hits monthly, up from 6,200 last year.

Software developer Jon Petersen, 44, who started SinGeo, said there is another use that has not been tapped yet: tourism.

But to do this, he added, Singaporeans should get on the map quickly. ‘We should start putting nice photos, videos, and any other information of our city attractions on Google Earth.’

What does Amazon.com have in common with Grameen Bank? Both the e-retailer and the microfinance pioneer ride on what is now called ‘The Long Tail’.

It is commonly said that 20 per cent of the market accounts for 80 per cent of the sales of the iPhone. Or that 20 per cent of all music on sale – the smash hits – rakes in 80 per cent of industry revenue. And so on. This is the ubiquitous 80-20 rule – also called the Pareto Principle. Here’s why.

What emerges in free markets when consumer purchase patterns are graphed is not the famous bell-shaped curve – or ‘normal distribution’ in statistician-speak – but the long-tailed one.

Called the ‘Pareto distribution’, this graph has a tall, slim body standing upright that tails off quickly as a curve and flattens out horizontally for a long way, coming very close to but never quite touching the floor. The latter is the long tail. In it resides the non-hits while the body carries the smash hits.

Can the long tail be monetised? Many of the non-hits can potentially be sold because many people may like them. However, business finds it more economic to market just the hits. It is very cumbersome for consumers who want alternatives – the back catalogue, obscure labels, niche genres – to actually get their hands on them.

In 2003, MIT researchers demonstrated that Amazon.com was making a lot of money selling obscure books that brick-and-mortar stores usually don’t stock. By aggregating sales from here, there and everywhere, millions of books were sold. The benefit to consumers from this increase in choice was 10 times larger than that derived from the lower prices found online.

To Amazon, it does not matter whether it sells a blockbuster or a nearly out-of-print title because the margins for both are about the same. For it, profits are spread as evenly as sales because its books are stored in a central location. Storage costs, spread out over such huge numbers of books, are kept low.

In contrast, brick-and-mortar bookstores stock only books that the owners reckon will fly off the shelves. For them, shelf space costs money because of rental, utilities and personnel. Moreover, the store’s geographical reach is limited to, say, tens of miles around it. With Fed-Ex or UPS at its beck and call, Amazon’s pool of customers is effectively worldwide.

Likewise, e-Bay makes a killing selling basically one-offs – the long tail of hard goods. Meanwhile, Google rakes it in through many small advertisers, charging a small fee per click from the billions of searches consumers make all over the world every day – the long tail of advertising.

Journalist Chris Anderson has done a lot to popularise this idea of the long tail.

It’s the old saw: Many a little makes a mickle. What helps an Amazon sell so much from way down the list or deep in the catalogue is the ‘filter’.

This may be software that asks you to rate the offerings – thumbs up or down, or one to five stars. In this way, the choices Amazon offers you in the future will be more akin to your preferences.

The ‘filter’ could also be something like Amazon’s ‘people like you’ approach, which utilises user recommendations to target likely customers with similar inclinations.

But how can consumers keep an eye on the ball when there are so many balls up in the air? RSS – Really Simple Syndication – has made that task much easier.

RSS is an automated ‘feed’ that summarises the content of sites – usually news, blogs or podcasts – that you subscribe to. You do that by clicking that distinctive orange-coloured RSS icon in your browser. You can then check for new content when alerted.

With millions of consumers able to keep track of new, idiosyncratic offerings online, the long tail can potentially combine enough non-blockbusters to create a market that may, in total, exceed the hits.

All this is not to repudiate the 80-20 rule per se. It is simply that the rule applies only to hits. The 80-20 rule upholds the tyranny of the hit. It applies only to the body of the curve.

The trick then would be to recognise where long-tail niche opportunities lie and grow those markets. Their exploitation will be enabled by Internet technologies, but not always. The Bangladeshi microfinancing institution called Grameen Bank, which won its founder Muhammad Yunus the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, also taps the long tail.

Since its inception in 1983, Grameen has been offering tiny loans to the very poor so they can start very humble businesses and work towards financial independence. Built up with tiny amounts of seed money, these businesses have done well despite the relatively high interest rates they have to pay.

As of last October, Grameen had offered a total of US$6.55 billion (S$9 billion) in loans and recovered US$5.87 billion from a total of 7.34 million borrowers. Peer pressure from fellow borrowers serves to ensure credit discipline. Meanwhile, Grameen stays afloat with donor support and also by selling bonds guaranteed by the Bangladesh government.

There is now also an online microfinance site at Kiva.org. People from anywhere in the world can offer tiny loans to the very poor somewhere else. Using a credit card, you can start by lending as little as US$25 to any borrower whose profile is featured on the site.

When your loan is repaid, you can take back your money or lend it out again to another poor aspiring businessman. Imagine the loans a few million people can give out in aggregate.

Business can likewise try to reach potential customers using social networks such as YouTube or MySpace. But the key remains the inventory and distribution costs. When these are high, only massively popular products can be sold profitably. If these can be kept low, you can use the Internet, especially social networks, to work the long tail and wag the dog. Through e-word of mouth, niche interests and idiosyncratic tastes can be served profitably.

Many a mickle will finally make a muckle.