Spin 11: Anthony Yong earns no commission from sales of GPS devices at M3Tech

This just in via email: In his declaration to Malfreemaps members, Anthony Yong says he doesn't earn any commission from sales of GPS devices sold by M3Tech. What he doesn't tell you is that by being a shareholder, this allows him to earn more money from those sales, i.e. from M3Tech's profit.

If a Garmin GPS device costs RM1000, the commission that goes to the salesperson is usually about RM50-RM100. Now hear this: The profit of the sale for that particular GPS device can be anywhere between RM300 to RM500! A profit is a markup of the price from cost. That's a lot more "commission" than a salesperson would get!!

Now bear in mind that M3Tech's core business is not just selling GPS devices. See here for M3Tech's other Products & Services. That's a lot of money to be made there as a shareholder!!

Anthony Yong is one smart man. He is transparent no doubt but lets take that transparency a little further. Please divulge the monthly consultant fee you are getting from M3Tech and yearly dividends as a shareholder.

If we do not get the dividend data from Anthony Yong himself, we can still find out from the Registrar of Companies (ROC) how many percent of shares he owns in M3Tech and what was M3Tech's profit for fiscal year 2008. From there we can calculate the dividend he earns as a shareholder. Can someone volunteer to spend RM30 to do an ROC search for M3Tech and send me the Company Audited Reports for 2008, usually in PDF format (see sample). Thank you.

Update 19th March 2009: Anthony Yong earns RM5,000 a month at M3Tech

Spin 10: Anthony Yong drew KLR

This just came in via email: KLR is a combination of maps drawn by many mappers who contributed the source map files, called the MP file. How could Anthony Yong claim that KLR was drawn by him? It is preposterous to claim that the KLR was drawn by a single person when in actual fact, many mappers were involved.

The spin of Anthony Yong stops here.

Spin 9: Malfreemaps data is not for sale

Anthony Yong wrote in his blog that Malfreemaps data is not for sale. This contradicts with his parting words when he left Malsingmaps:

5. Our long term future is not secured because we are releasing unauthorised Garmin maps. Our agreement with Mapking lapses when they release Mapking 2009. I am consulting part-time with a local IT company. I am working on a win-win deal between the company, the new community and a software navigation company. If I can get the new community to be recognised as an official map provider, we will doubt our future no more.

As they say on The O'Reilly Factor; The spin stops here. Malfreemaps data IS for sale.

Spin 8: Malsingmaps chased the KL, PRK, NPM and EPM mappers out

This appears to be untrue. The mappers was influenced by Anthony Yong to move to Malfreemaps for his own agenda. See Fact 1.

I am glad to know that Malsingmaps has opened the doors for the old mappers to return (see image below). I certainly hope they do. Mappers like sunn and dinamix (ongcc) are legendary in their attention to detail.

Spin 7: Malsingmaps forces users to contribute by locking their maps

The locking of maps at Malsingmaps was initiated by Anthony Yong while he was at Malsingmaps. This locking requires users to submit data before being eligible for the unlock key.

When Anthony moved to Malfreemaps he no longer locks his maps. This is to entice users to use Malfreemaps over the locked Malsingmaps.

Malsingmaps now gives out the unlock key to her users freely, not requiring any prior contribution.

Spin 6: Malsingmaps delete posts to hide their guilt

Although I am not a fan of censorship and forum post deletion, I can understand why posts are deleted at Malsingmaps: to protect her members from mudslingers from malfreemaps.com. Even a lot of my friends do not like the politics of deception going on at malfreemaps.com.

Malfreemaps encourages mudslinging in open forum to probably mislead their user base as Malsingmaps members do not browse there to answer. So arguments over at Malfreemaps are one sided mostly. So much for transparency.

Malsingmaps appears to protect its users from these spinners. Good for them!

Spin 5: Malsingmaps reversed engineered KL, PRK, NPM and EPM

Rumour has it that Anthony had already resigned as a mapper at Malsingmaps well before he formed Malfreemaps and gave his source file to the remaining mappers at Malsingmaps.

Later on, when he formed Malfreemaps he decided to take the source file back.

So mappers at Malsingmaps did not reverse engineer the maps it seems. Anthony had already given his source map file to the remaining mappers at Malsingmaps.

Also refer to Spin number 2 on Map Ownership.

Spin 4: Malsingmaps copied maps from Malfreemaps

So far I haven't seen any proof of this. The KL, PRK, NPM and EPM maps at Malsingmaps are still not updated since September 2008, when Anthony and his mappers (sunn and dinamix aka ongcc) left Malsingmaps with these tiles, creating a rebel website, malfreemaps.com.

On the other hand I saw Anthony's posting about Malsingmaps accusing Malfreemaps of copying Jerome's Singapore map of which Anthony admitted and took the map out of Malfreemaps release, only to be put back later on with the details adjusted. So you adjust the detail a little bit here and there and that makes it alright? That isn't copying from Malsingmaps? Please don't insult our intelligence Malfreemaps. I've heard inside rumours that Jerome's easter eggs are still inside Malfreemaps.

Malfreemaps are pirates. They only appear holy on the outside but are crooks on the inside it seems.

Refer to Spin number 2 about Map Ownership.

Spin 3: Mappers at Malsingmaps are making money

The mappers at Malsingmaps have categorically denied this. The one that is making money out of this endeavour is only one person: Anthony Yong, the owner of malfreemaps.com. He is employed by m3tech.com as a consultant to supply map data.

Spin 2: Mappers own the maps

Anthony Yong claims that he owns the maps drawn from community contributions when he was a mapper at Malsingmaps.

No, the community owns the maps. The mappers are merely custodian of the maps. The mappers are nothing without community contribution of tracks and POIs.

Spin 1: Garmin compiled Malsingmaps will not be free after a year

This post by SOSweet at malfreemaps.com was deliberately meant to mislead malfreemaps.com's userbase. The sentence "FREE update at anytime up to one year after the date of your unit's first satellite acquisition" refers to the TeleAtlas map and not the Garmin compiled Malsingmaps it seems.