Hakuna Matata

The staff at the Tea Club prepares a cake to celebrate the restaurant’s eighth anniversary on Friday. Photograph: SP Loh

With the arrival of many new restaurants and coffee shops in Phnom Penh, the complexion of the food and beverage market is swiftly changing, according to restaurant owners.

Tea Club owner SP Loh said existing restaurants had to work harder to retain their customers in light of the new competition.

“The important thing is you need to keep the quality of the foods and provide good service. The variety of the foods is equally important,” she said.

Loh, whose father passed away last month in Malaysia, kept her eighth anniversary Tea Club celebration on Friday a small event, in respect to a Chinese tradition of a 100-day period of mourning.

The Tea Club opened on May 18, 2004, and specialises in Asian Chinese food with an Asian buffet lunch from Monday through Friday for US$4.80.

On weekends and public holidays, the Tea Club offers Malaysian specialties curry laksa noodle soup, nasi lemak and curry chicken rice.

Owner Carl Saunders of Aussie XL, a traditional Australian pub located on Street 51 in BKK1, said Phnom Penh was becoming over-serviced with restaurants and coffee shops with a trend toward the up-market.

“Gone are the days of renting a place for $250 and setting up some plastic chairs,” he said. “Nowadays you’ve got all the big takeaways, the big beer gardens and the coffee shop culture has gone berserk. I’ve coffee shops open, close down and re-open again.”

Saunders says the key to a successful restaurant is having a system and targeting the market before you open.

“I’m sure the market is saturated. If someone was to ask me, I’d say do your homework big-time, study your location, capital and customer base because to build it will take a long time, unless you’ve got a franchise.”

Saunders said for his Aussie XL business, which employs 14 people, the customers were regulars who mostly came from word of mouth, with a roughly equal split between Australians and British customers, “a smattering of Kiwis” and various others, mostly foreigners.

Meals include steaks, fish and chips, pizza and other Western fare, ranging in price from about $7 to $18.

“People are creatures of habit. Once they get into the habit of going, wherever they are used to, that’s all they want.”

Saunders will often have a rugby league or Australian football game on the big screen television, in classic Aussie pub style.

“This is not to everyone’s taste. I’ve had people come in and complain that the music’s too loud or that the game is on. You can never please everybody. If I walk into a place and the beer’s hot, I’ll go somewhere else,” he said.

Saunders opened Aussie XL two years ago and has seen a big transition in the restaurant scene during that time.

“The standard has been brought up a lot better, but I’ve seen a lot of places go under. It is easy to fail,” he said.

“The secret to my success is perseverance. Don’t go thinking you can undercut someone else’s prices. You’ll go broke; you’ll kill yourself. People will pay for good service at the end of the day.”

In keeping with his “grill it and they will come” philosophy, Saunders says the key to his success has been perseverance. Originally from Adelaide and in the golf course construction business, Saunders first came to Cambodia in 2003.

“It has been a gradual process of introducing myself to the people in the area,” Saunders said.

Kouch Sokly, managing director of CBM group, which owns the Pizza World, BB World and T&C brands, with 22 outlets in total, agreed that the food and beverage landscape was changing.

“The international franchises are coming. If you cannot compete with them, you cannot stay in business,” he said. “We target the middle class and that middle class is increasing in number,” he said.

The Tea Club’s SP Loh said the Cambodia’s youth is helping to lead the industry, and the country, forward.

“The education of the younger generation is very important to the country’s development. Twenty years ago, you could hardly find staff who could speak English or Mandarin Chinese to work, but now this younger generation is one of the great assets to Cambodia.”

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php

The price of crocodile hatchlings in Siem Reap province has dropped drastically, and many local farmers are worrying about the future viability of crocodile farming.

Tim Bunseng, a crocodile farmer in Siem Reap with around 200 female hatchlings, said the price he can get has dropped from US$23 to $24 to $17 in less than a week.

Tim Bunseng speculated that the price will drop further because more hatchlings will be on the market soon, adding that he has only sold about 200 hatchlings this year, while last year he sold more than 2,000.

Tim Bunseng said that eggs are laid once a year and the eggs start hatching from April to August and that most of the hatchlings are exported to sell in Vietnam.

Chou Sedavuth, a crocodile farmer in Siem Reap and a buyer exporting crocodile hatchlings to Vietnam, said that the price is currently decreasing because of a drop in purchases.

“I am worried because the price continues falling as we compete to sell [hatchlings], causing Vietnamese buyers cut down their buying to lower the price,” he said.

Chou Sedavuth said that up until now, he had exported about 6,000 crocodile hatchlings to Vietnam.

A fisheries official, who has asked not to be named, said that the number of exporters buying up hatchlings has dropped significantly, in turn causing the price to drop.

Siem Reap, he said, has more crocodile farms than any other province, with approximately 300.

In order to stabilise the market the Ministry of Agriculture is urging farmers to raise crocodiles for skins rather than selling them as hatchlings to Vietnam, he said.

Crocodile farmers have reported falling prices since mid- to late-2011, when they blamed flooding for the decrease in the price of the animals.

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php

A lobster salesman earlier this year in Takeo province holds his product near the river in which it was caught. Photograph: Abe Becker/Phnom Penh Post

The government and international organisations are working to restore Cambodia’s once plentiful freshwater lobster market, officials have said.

Technically a freshwater shrimp, the crustacean is a popular foodstuff in the Kingdom, selling for up to US$10 for a single lobster.

Efforts are being made by the Fisheries administration to provide technical assistance on the farming and hatching of the lobsters and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has provided financial assistance to farmers since 2006, acccording to the JICA website.

They have trained 70 farmers nationwide and currently most farms are situated in Kampong Speu, Kampot, Takeo and Prey Veng provinces.

The centre for research and freshwater aquaculture of the fishery administration has hatched about one million lobsters, which is a step toward their stated goal of releasing seven million lobsters into the wild to boost numbers said Sam Narith, deputy director of the centre.

“Releasing young lobsters in the wild rivers is very important to increase livestock because lobsters are decreasing,” Sam Narith said, adding that “if we don’t do it, production will be less and less in the future”.

The lobster population has decreased drastically during the past 10 years, officials have told the Post.

Lobsters have been found in the current market to be 10 to 20 times more profitable than farming fish on the same amount of land.

Yan Dee, a lobster farmer in Takeo province has a seven-hectare farm and says he can usually produce around 70 kilograms of lobster per pond.

“Now I can deliver about 100 kilos of lobster to Phnom Penh alive every two weeks,” Dee said.

He reports he produces very nearly a tonne of lobsters a year, which he considers to be about one-tenth of total production in Cambodia.

Om Savath, director of the fishery alliance coalition team said that illegal fishing is still a concern for the fisheries sector, because there was a large increase in illegal fishing from March to April compared to the same time last year.

Om Savath said there are reports of corruption, bribery and misunderstanding of the law among fisheries officials that puts the future viability of the lobster in some doubt.

“Officials should crack down on illegal fishing actively, and they should continue to educate fishers not to use illegal fishing tools,” said Om Savath.

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php

A man walks in a shipping container area at Yangshan Port of Shanghai earlier this month. Cambodia and China plan to double bilateral trade to US$5 billion by 2015. Photograph: Reuters

Cambodia’s Power Partner Profit Group has signed 10 memoranda of understanding with Chinese companies for cooperation on agriculture, mineral resources and electronics.

Insiders said the penning of the MoUs, which do not guarantee a final agreement, was another step toward realising a US$5 billion bilateral trade goal reached by Prime Minister Hun Sen and Chinese President Hu Jintao in April.

The domestically owned firm signed the MoUs on Friday without announcing a specific value of the deals should they be followed through.

The potential deals would focus mainly on agriculture, namely contracts for 60,000 tonnes of rubber,

1 million tonnes of cassava, 500,000 tonnes of milled rice and some processed foods, Yim Sawy, PPP Group president, said on Friday.

Deals would also look at Chinese mobile phones produced in Cambodia – which now don’t exist – clothing materials and agricultural equipment, Yim Sawy said.

“China has a huge demand for agricultural products. And at the same time, Cambodia has a great potential for agricultural products,” he said. “These MoUs will help in Cambodia’s goals for proverty reduction and job creation for our people. They will help find markets for their products.”

A wide range of Chinese companies joined in the signing.

Yunnan Yun Manganese Group inked MoUs on minerals, water resources, electricity and real estate. Sichuan Jingong Chuangpai Flavoring looked into fish, chicken and shrimp seasoning.

“I suggest local investors cooperate with PPP Group if they want to export their rubber,” Yunan Yun Manganese Chairman Li Yong Seng said on Friday.

“We see the Cambodian government is very careful with foreign investors like China, and that builds the confidence needed for more investors to come here.”

Bilateral trade between Cambodia and China reached $2.49 billion last year, a 73 per cent increase on the year before, according to data from the Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh.

Cambodia’s exports to China, totalling about $184 million, constituted only a fraction of the total trade but increased by nearly 100 per cent compared to 2010.

Serie Kosal, vice chairman of Cambodia’s One Village One Product National Committee, a government project that supports local products, said the MoUs were a sign of strength in the bilateral trade relationship, and should help reach the goal of $5 billion in bilateral trade by 2015.

He added that the country’s political stability had played a role in attracting the Chinese investors.

Vijit Yang, Chairman of the ASEAN-China Economic and Trade Promotion Association, said on Friday that the MoUs would draw closer business ties.

“We are going to get Cambodian cassava, rubber and agriculture products into the Chinese market. I will bring more Chinese investors to Cambodia,” he said.

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php

One of the great features of the search engine DuckDuckGo are its zero-click information boxes that are automatically displayed at the top of the search results for select queries. The information may display various meanings if there are more than one and if it is not clear what the user is looking for, and they may also provide direct information which can act as a starting point of research.

Google is currently rolling out a similar feature called Knowledge Graph, that is limited to people, places and things at the time of writing. If you are a Google user at heart, or sometimes use Google in addition to DuckDuckGo or another search engine, then you may be interested in a new Chrome extension that is adding DuckDuckGo’s Zero-Click Information at the top of relevant Google search queries.

DuckDuckGo Zero-click Info is a new extension for Google Chrome that works immediately after it has been installed. When you search for something on Google Search that the DuckDuckGo search engine can provide an instant answer for, you will see those answers displayed in a box on top of the regular results. Good news is, the box is displayed even on top of advertisement that Google usually displays at the top of the results.

These instant answers work for many different queries, including people, places and things, but not restricted to that like Google’s Knowledge Graph technology is.

You can for instance have the search engine display a random number in that box, compute the average of several numbers for you, or get information about the HTTP 404 error code. You can check out the goodies page over at DuckDuckGo for a feature overview. Keep in mind though that not all of the searches work on Google Search. You can also check out our previous coverage of the feature here.

If you are a Chrome user and like at least some of the options that DuckDuckGo offers with its instant answers page, then you may like the Chrome extension. It would obviously make more sense to switch to DuckDuckGo as you will have access to all of the features and not only some of them. Support is solid however and you will find that many will work.

www.ghacks.net

Great programs like the file hosting downloader JDownloader or the feed reader RSSOwl require Java to run. That’s fine if you have full control of a system, and not so great if you sometimes have to work on a system where Java, in the form of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is not installed. If you want to take your apps with you, you need to find a way to get them to run on the system despite that.

The answer is jPortable, a portable Java Runtime Environment that is provided by Portable Apps. While designed for use with portable programs offered by the site and service, it is not restricted to that.

First thing you need to do is download the installer from the Portable Apps website. Please note that this is a web installer, which means that the installer will download files from the Internet during installation.The whole package has a size of roughly 38 Megabytes. The installation basically moves all files into a folder that you have selected before. This can be an USB drive or stick, or an internal hard drive for instance.

The portable version of Java is installed in PortableAppsCommonFilesJava by default, and recognized automatically by other programs of the Portable Apps suite. You can however use it as well for programs that are not part of the suite. Let me show you how you can get RSSOwl working with a portable version of Java.

Once you have installed both the portable Java version and RSSOwl, you need to copy the Java directory into the RSSOwl directory. Once it is there, rename the Java folder to jre, and start RSSOwl. You will notice that it will start up just fine, even with no Java installed on the system.

There is a second option available, which works if you can modify the system paths. Use the Windows-Pause shortcut to bring up the System control panel applet. Click on Advanced system settings there, and locate Environmental Variables in the window that opens up. (this is the way it is done under Windows 7)

Here you find user and system variables.  Find path under System, select it, and click on Edit to modify it. Simply append a ; followed by the full Java portable directory path to it, and click on ok afterwards to save the new setting. If you prefer a better editor interface, try Redmond Path instead.

You can also use the command line to start Java programs from there.

Having access to a portable version of Java can be quite useful in certain situations. You do however need to remember to update it regularly when a new version of Java gets released by Oracle, to avoid any kind of trouble with security issues or other issues that are fixed with updates. (The article is an update to the first review of Java Portable which we have published back in 2010)

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One of the cool features of the Opera web browser is its keyword functionality. While not exclusive to Opera, it provides users with options to assign keywords to bookmarks or search engines. Keywords basically speed up access to bookmarks and services at their core level. Once mapped to a bookmark, it can be opened by entering the keyword into Opera’s address bar. While that’s interesting in itself, it does not really provide much of an advantage nowadays as browser’s display suggestions once you start typing in the address bar.

What makes the feature great is its advanced feature set. One of the features in this regard is the option to map keywords to search engines. This can then be used to run a search on that engine by simply entering the keyword followed by the search term into Opera’s address bar. Lets take a look at how this is done.

Open the search engine that you want to use in this way and locate the search form on the page. We are using my favorite DuckDuckGo for this. Right-click the search form and select Create Search from the context menu. You will see a configuration menu just like the one below. Opera has filled out all the relevant fields automatically, except for the keyword field that you need to configure yourself.

You can enter one or multiple characters in the keyword field, and will be reminded by the browser if a keyword is already taken. A click on ok completes the process. You can from that moment on search on the search engine by entering the keyword followed by the search term (in this case d ghacks to search on DuckDuckgo for ghacks).

This in itself is pretty useful, but it gets better, as you can also use this method for other types of forms. You can for instance configure a keyword for Google Translate’s translate a page feature, a dictionary lookup using Leo’s search engine, a whois request to find out more about a domain name you enter, or a torrent search on your favorite torrent indexing site.

You use the same method in all cases. For Google Translate, you would visit the website and configure the search accordingly by selecting the output language that you want the pages to be translated to.  You then add the search to Opera with a right-click in the form on the page and the selection of Create Search from the context menu. Assign the keyword, and translate web pages automatically by adding the keyword to the address bar, e.g. gt http://www.ghacks.net/ if you want this site to be translated into a different language. (thanks to dXm99 for the tip)

www.ghacks.net

Rogue applications are malware that try to fool the user in believing that they are legit programs. The most common form are rogue antivirus applications that are disguised as antivirus software, when in fact they are the exact opposite of that.  It can be quite difficulty to remove rogue applications once they have been installed on a computer system, as they are often protected from being simply uninstalled. Another issue that comes with many is that they make modifications to the system, with the Windows Registry as the main target.

ESET’s Rogue Application Remover has been released yesterday. The free program has been designed to remove rogue applications from a Windows system and to remove changes that they have made to the operating system’s Registry. According to ESET, the application focuses mostly on “rogue applications that affect the operating system in a negative way ” and that ESET products may have difficulties removing thoroughly.

The portable program can be launched right after it has been downloaded to the local system. Windows users do however need to make sure that the program is launched with elevated rights.

ESET Rogue Applications Remover’s does not require an active Internet connection to scan a system for malware, but will be limited in its detection efficiency in this case.  Several command line switches are available that the program can be run with. This includes options to restore changes using the /r switch or /? to display the help file listing all supported command line switches.

You can download the 32-bit or 64-bit version of the rogue applications remover from the ESET website. The program itself can be started in safe mode or normal mode.

Probably the biggest issue at the time of writing is the lack of information when it comes to the program’s cleaning abilities. It is for instance not clear which, or at least how many, different rogue applications it supports. Still, if you suspect your system to be infected with rogue malware, you may want to give ESET Rogue Applications Remover a try to scan your system for traces. (via JKWebTalks)

http://www.ghacks.net

One of the first things that I do after installing Vista or Windows 7 on a new computer is to change some of the default visual effects the operating system ships with. On Windows 7, I immediately switch from the Windows 7 (Aero) theme to Windows 7 Basic which does away with lots of the eye candy that I’d otherwise be annoyed at. This includes first and foremost Aero Glass with its transparent window chrome, but also other visual effects that I find more distracting than helpful.

You may see this different, and there are certainly users who appreciate the Aero interface with its transparent chrome and visual effects. Microsoft however did reveal that it will change the Windows 8 desktop in this regard.

We applied the principles of “clean and crisp” when updating window and taskbar chrome. Gone are the glass and reflections. We squared off the edges of windows and the taskbar. We removed all the glows and gradients found on buttons within the chrome. We made the appearance of windows crisper by removing unnecessary shadows and transparency. The default window chrome is white, creating an airy and premium look. The taskbar continues to blend into the desktop wallpaper, but appears less complicated overall.

To complete the story, we updated the appearance of most common controls, such as buttons, check boxes, sliders, and the Ribbon. We squared off the rounded edges, cleaned away gradients, and flattened the control backgrounds to align with our chrome changes. We also tweaked the colors to make them feel more modern and neutral.

This basically confirms that Microsoft intends to drop Aero Glass, and several other Aero effects that the majority of Windows users have come in contact with in recent years. For me personally it is a welcome change, as I would have turned off those effects anyway on computer’s running Windows 8.

Some visual changes will be included in the soon to be released Release Preview of Windows 8. The majority of them are however only included in the final release, and not the release preview. This is kinda interesting, as I had assumed that the Release Preview would be the operating system’s release candidate, which usually marks the end of development.  It is possible that Microsoft has included the features but disabled them in the release.

I personally like the design that you see on the screenshot above. What about you? Do you think Microsoft is heading into the right direction with these design changes? (via The Verge)

http://www.ghacks.net

When you are only interested in a specific object on a web page, like a video player or Flash game, you may sometimes prefer to hide or remove the remaining page to concentrate fully on that single element. Maybe is it because the page is distracting you with advertisements, or because you would like the freedom to resize the object as you see it fit.

Back in 2011 I reviewed an add-on for the Firefox web browser that let you detach videos and games from the browser window. This allowed you to only display the selected video or game in a window, and to resize it anyway you wanted to.

The Firefox add-on lmnpop has been updated recently to be fully compatible with newer versions of the browser. Unlike the add-on mentioned above, it allows you to move any object that you see on a web page into its own resizable window. While it works excellent for videos and games, you are no longer limited to detaching Flash contents from the web browser.

Once you have installed the extension and restarted Firefox, the option to detach an element becomes available in the right-click context menu. You can use it to play videos in their own fully resizable window for instance. Why I’m highlighting the features of the extension with a video? Because it is a lot easier to detach a larger element from a page, than it is to detach a smaller one. Please also note that YouTube may not be the best example in this regard,  considering that it comes with its own pop out option.

The easiest way to detach an item from the page is to right-click on the page or item. Why two different approaches? Because some plugins, like Flash, block the standard browser right-click option, so that you do not see the browser’s context menu, but the Flash context menu instead.

The extension recognizes objects, which can be games, videos or apps automatically, and displays them prominently in the context menu. A click on the object of choice pops it out of the browser into its own window.

The extension picks up selectors in the site’s source code, which you can modify in the program options. It by default recognizes the selectors embed, video, audio and object, with options to remove or add selectors quite easily here.

The selected object is by default moved from the page into its own window. If you close that window, the region where the element was on the page remains empty. You can however configure the program to clone elements instead, which basically loads a second instance of the object in the new window without removing it from the original website.

The add-on allows you to pop out a div that the mouse is currently hovering over as well, which improves the functionality significantly.

Please note that the latest version of the add-on is currently listed under Other Versions on the add-on page, and that an older version is provided as the main downloaded when you click on the install button on that page.

www.ghacks.net