Friday 4 January 2013

Income limit eligibility for My First Home increased to RM5,000

This should be great news for the middle income earners. RM5,000 is not ideal but it surely make more sense than RM3,000.

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KUALA LUMPUR: The income limit of individual borrowers for My First Home Scheme (SRP) will be increased from RM3,000 to RM5,000 per month effective January 2013.

This enhancement was one of the SRP’s eligibility criteria slated for improvement under Budget 2013’s announcement last year, Cagamas SRP Bhd said yesterday.

For joint borrowers, it said the income limit had been increased up to RM10,000 per month, subject to the individual borrower’s income not exceeding RM5,000 per month.

“In addition, the requirement for a savings record equivalent to three months installment and minimum employment of six months will be abolish,” Cagamas SRP said.

It said the scheme allowed homebuyers to obtain 100% financing from participating banks, enabling them to own a home without having the need to pay a 10% downpayment.

“Cagamas SRP will guarantee the initial 10% of the loan under the scheme,” it added.

Cagamas was mandated in 2011 to play an active role of helping young, working Malaysians in the private sector to own their first homes under the SRP. — Bernama


Toshiba to make Lytro-like phone camera with over 30,000 mini-lenses

Wow! That's a lot of lenses to put into a small cellphone. Must be expensive.


What is LYTRO camera?



Lytro camera is a camera that allows users to change the focus of a picture after the picture is taken. Plenoptic cameras such as Lytro's are a new type of camera that dramatically changes photography for the first time since the 1800s.


Toshiba developing Lytro-like phone camera

Toshiba is developing a tiny digital camera module similar to the Lytro camera, which shoots tens of thousands of individual photos and then allows the user to pick the point of focus.

The new camera will have from 30,000 to 50,000 tiny lenses, yet still be small enough to fit in modern smartphones and tablets. The company aims to have a product ready for sale by March of 2014.

The concept is similar to that behind a much-hyped camera launched by California-based Lytro earlier this year. Lytro calls its technology "light field capture," and photos taken by the device can be adjusted for focus and perspective after they are taken.

"Lytro doesn't make semiconductors, so the camera module is a product that Toshiba is probably better-suited to make," said Toshiba spokesman Atsushi Ido.

Ido said the concept behind the camera module is similar to the compound eyes found in many insects. He said much of the processing involved in taking and combining the individual images with the new camera would likely be handled by the module's hardware.

Toshiba is among the world's largest manufacturers of CMOS image sensors, where it competes with rivals including Sony, Samsung and OmniVision. Toshiba is better known for its massive NAND flash operations, where it cranks out memory chips for hard drives and memory cards.


Source