Vending in the post-pandemic era

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit humanity hard. Starting in the end of year 2019, it has disrupted man-kind lifestyles, social and economic activities in all aspects and angles. The retail industry is one of the high impact zones as it heavily relied on the flow of foot traffic and social activities which are restricted in most cities around the world ever since. Vending operations are not spared under this circumstance unfortunately. As many used-to-be high-traffic vending locations like airports, shopping malls, offices and schools are turning into sparely populated areas, vending operators are facing the fierce challenges to sustain and endure the pandemic.

During this time, e-commerce and online retail have nonetheless taken over even much more of the physical retail portion of the economic pie. Some brick-and-mortar retailers have closed while some holding on for the dawn after long dark night. It always gets worse before it gets better and it is happening now. Retailers and vending operators need to suit up for the reshuffled market and new game rules in the post-pandemic era.

Humans are social creatures. They roam and mingle. It has been so for millenniums and will always be so as long as time flows. E-commerce will continue to play an important part in the new world after the pandemic but physical retails are indispensable to human nature. We always enjoy the freedom to move around and meet with friends and families in all different places, where physical retails will continue to receive demands.

During the pandemic, while some locations are highly impacted due to the reduced foot-traffic, vending locations in the proximity of the residential areas gets more patronage and rendered better sales than before. This trend is expected to remain so in the post-pandemic era to different extent as many of the citizens will continue to work from home or reduce shuttling to work locations. While the vending operators would grow their location network in the residential areas, they should also look into diversifying their offering of merchandises and services from their vending machines which would elevate the convenience to their existing client base. At this moment, some might think that simply putting in all different types of vending machines operating independently would just fulfill this purpose. Indeed, this does not really fill in the gap of the consumer’s heart seeking for convenience shopping. Linking up multiple types of vending machines in the master/slave combination to sell more variations of products need be achieved without compromising the user experience by maintaining the same purchase flow on the same point of purchase and same interactivity with probably only the exception of collecting the dispensed product from different machine. The users should be able to purchase multiple items in a way of virtual shopping cart in a single transaction. Besides, the vending machines combo, which plays the role of more like a convenience store, should be capable of combining multiple types of vending machines such as vending locker cabinets for larger items, hot/cold beverage and coffee vending machines, frozen vending machines for frozen foods and so for more choices of shopping convenience.

Working spaces like offices and factories are hoping to bring more convenience to their employees to reduce their needs of going out for foods and meals hence reducing the risk of infection from outside. This leads them to install all sorts of vending machines, micro-markets and smart fridges in the offices and factories regardless of the sizes of the companies. Smart vending machines with employee dispense control features allow the companies to also offer free and subsidized drinks, snacks and foods to their employees based on specific rules and criteria defined by the company management. Besides bringing convenience and keeping their employees safe, it has also helped boost the morale of the overall workforce.

Vending operators must also take care of the general concerns for public hygiene and safety in the post-pandemic times. The consumers are generally now more particular and demanding about personal hygiene and looking for worry-free experience in all their public encounters including those with vending machines. Touchless and contactless capability is no longer luxury but fundamental on each and every vending machine. Vending operators should ensure that all their vending machines are capable to allow the users to purchase from their vending machines without touching the common points from making selections of products to making payments. These can be achieved by using smart vending technology like touchless vending interactions which allows the users to use their mobile phone to interact with the vending machines to view and select products as well as contactless and cashless payments.

Personalizing customer experiences does not only apply to the retail stores. Vending machines must get rid of its stereotype as cold metal boxes sitting in the dark corners used only in the after hours. Vending machines must evolve into providing personalized experiences to its consumers in strategic and targeted ways. Vending machines shall also support shopping cart, combo purchases, promo codes, members discounts and privileges. The vending operators can also analyze the sales trends in various locations and hours of its vending machines to plan its product offerings and pricing strategies as well as optimizing its restock operations to ensure continuous stocks availability in all its vending machines to bring better consumer experiences to its community. This shall increase customer loyalty which further drive the sales of the vending machines.

This will be a turnaround time for vending machines and vending operators, especially for those who are embracing the changes and seeing it as an opportunity to leap into new levels.

Global Market Trend and Needs of Smart Vending

Smart Vending and Automated Retail has been attracting much attention and significant investment in many countries around the world these few years. The following are some of the points that I have shared in the 2018 Worldwide Vending Industry Forum in Beijing during my speech titled "Global Market Trend and Needs of Smart Vending".

Let's first look at some of the global market data. The install base of vending machines deployed globally at the moment reached about 16 millions units, of which 84% are conventional vending machines that are not connected. From year 2017 to 2022, the compound annual growth rate of connected vending machines is 16.2%, which is expected to reach 5.4 million install base in year 2022  (Data source: Berg Insight). These figures also mean a huge business potential: The large number of conventional non-connected vending machines will be gradually upgraded to or replaced with smart vending machines, which will be a huge potential market.

From Silkron's global market reach in over 45 countries around the world, I have roughly crunched and analyzed the data and experience to categorize the use case and applications of smart vending into 7 categories, and at the same time, investigate some of the main key factors that drive the market of smart vending machines globally.

First of all, the first use case is to replace the conventional vending machines to sell beverages, snacks, coffee, hot drinks and so on. From the global market data above, the existing vending operators have been operating large number of conventional vending machines. Therefore, they will only slowly and progressively replace their old machines and upgrade to smart vending machines. In contrast, for those new comers who are just entering the market as vending operators, they will be directly deploying smart vending machines at much fast paces.

Secondly, smart vending technology has enabled the possibility of selling unconventional merchandises, such as higher-value products, nutritional food, special drinks and so on. Smart vending machines allow the consumers to view the details of the products clearly from the touch display of the machine, such as the product specification, nutrition facts, and even the product demo video. In the United States, Silkron has customer selling gifts, jewelry, decors and so on, while in Philippines, customer sells printer ink cartridges from smart vending machines. Our Australian customer also designed the smart smoothie vending machines, while in United Kingdom, there are customers selling nutritional and health products via smart vending machines.

Another use case, is for marketing and promotion, mainly for the consumer brands to promote new products, perform brand engagement and interactivity with the consumers while collecting consumer data via smart vending machines by means of surveys and so on. Most of the time, after users performed these interactivity, the smart vending machines shall dispense free gifts to the users as a token of appreciation. For instance, a well-known franchised fast food restaurant using a social networked vending machine powered by Silkron smart vending platform dispensing free burger sauce upon sending Tweets with specific hashtags. Another sports brand also collected user data via smart vending machines dispensing free gift of the sports brand including sports shoes. A coffee brand use dancing vending machines to promote their new coffee products. In United States, there is a premier automotive brand performed consumer surveys with free gifts via vending machines.

Smart vending technology also enable selling controlled and regulated merchandises, such as beers, cigarette and even cannabis that has been legalized for recreational use in certain states in United States, Canada and European countries. Integrated with smart technology, these machines can perform age verification and identification to ensure the users fulfilled the minimum age restriction as well as to monitor and control the respective user consumption.

Unmanned shops can be implemented by combining and integrating multiple various types of smart vending machines to sell more variety of products and merchandises. For example, in Singapore, our clients leverage Silkron's machine-agnostic platform integrating various different kinds of machines to operate automated retail shops and cafes selling merchandises, gifts, souvenirs, snacks, drinks, food and coffee. In Malaysia, there are also cashless smart convenience store operating under the same concept. In the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, there are also numbers of automated stores selling travel kits, toys, gifts and electronic gadgets.

Health care will be another sector that will drive smart vending machines, primarily to sell or regulate the dispense of heath care products and medicine, to operate 24-hours unmanned pharmacies, as well as to dispense medications verified on doctor's prescriptions and personal identification. Silkron's customer in South Africa also operates 24-hours pharmacy while in New York, there are also smart vending machine that sell first aid items and medicine. Besides, in Belgium, Slkron's customer also operate smart vending machines that sell dental care products.

The last use case category is industrial vending. These machines are deployed to dispense spare parts, personal protective equipment, employee meals and so on, so that the employees and workers at the workshops, production floors, work sites or any other industrial locations to collect those items using their employee badges as the identification. It also allows the corporate management to control and monitor the consumption of their employees according to their respective roles, to reduce wastage and to improve productivity and to reduce operating cost.

According to the real-time big data dashboard of our smart vending cloud platform - Vendron Cloud, among all the deployed machines by the customers around the world, the cashless transactions are about 65% of the overall transactions while cash transactions are 35%. Currently, besides China, the fastest growing regions for smart vending machine deployment are South-East Asia, mainly due to that this region is heavily influenced by China which also aggressively promotes the use of mobile payments. Other regions like North America, Europe and Middle-East shall be going through the same trends as well.

Nevertheless, based on the overall global install base of vending machine including conventional vending machines, cash payment in the global vending market is still the primary payment method. However, cashless payment is the main driving factory of smart vending machines. Cashless payment methods are credit cards and debit cards which are already very popular, as well as all different types of membership reward cards, and mobile wallets that are getting more and more popular around the world. Generally in many countries globally, the transactional costs for cashless payment is relatively higher, which is one of the resistance to its popularization. Besides as opposed to the couple of mobile wallets that are dominating in the China domestic market, the mobile payments in the other countries globally are mostly highly competitive with many players in the market without obvious dominant leader, yet.

Global Market Needs and Expectation on Smart Vending Machines

First of all, reliability of software and hardware. In some of the countries especially in Europe and Americas, the cost of mistakes is very high, which means when anything faulty or unexpected event occurred, the risk and the price of the consequences is prohibitively high. For example, sending a personnel to maintain or repair the machine, which involves labor cost, transportation cost, parking fee and so on are much higher, added up with loss of sales opportunities, the overall loss in operation is very significant. Moreover, in some of the cases, the operator might have to bear legal responsibilities. Besides, even if the cost to purchase the machines are low initially, the long-term operation cost must be seriously considered. Sometimes I would hear some of our clients feedback positively that, the quality of the vending machines made in China are getting better and better (relatively) while the pricing is getting more and more competitive over the years, which means the cost-effectiveness is increasing gradually! In terms of vending machine hardware, it should provide more hardware real-time status, equipped with more variety of sensors, door switch, motion detector, temperature sensors and so on for more effective remote manageability and big data collection. The vending software and cloud backend must also provide comprehensive remote manageability, route planning, content management, digital signage management as the total solutions of remote manageability.

Smart vending ecosystem, must enables the participation of various ecosystem partners in the operation, to interact with each others on the same platform. It should also encapsulate multiverse of functionalities to fulfill the needs of various perspectives. For example, the smart vending ecosystem allows various partners like machine manufacturers, landlords (the owner of the locations where the machines are deployed) , restock personnel, service team, retailers, advertisers, consumers and so on through various different channel interact and operate with different roles and access rights, which makes up the whole smart vending ecosystem, including various payments and identifications, social medias, interactive content, advertisement and all variety of existing and new functions in the future.

When the operator would like to expand their business to achieve higher revenue growth, to sell more different types of products and to explore more different types of locations, they would need a machine-agnostic platform, a platform that can support all different types and makes of vending machines and hardware, which gives them the freedom of choice to find the machines that fit their desired requirements, budget, quality expectation and so on. Meanwhile, smart vending platform must also be scalable continuously, be able to support customization by the operator or 3rd party developers, such as development that is more sensitive in terms of intellectual property and so on. From a long-term perspective, machine-agnostic platform will give the operator unlimited space of expandability and scalability.

The global market would also require the smart vending software platform and hardware that are continuously developed and upgraded, that are continuously maintained and supported with after-sales services, so that they can grow their operation without concerns. Besides, they would also require the continuous development and integration of new technology, new hardware and to support new functionality in order to meet the market demand and challenges, and to improve their profit margin.

In this era, artificial intelligence (AI) is something that must not be ignored. Smart vending must also make use of AI to push to the next level, to provide more intuitive, personalized and highly intelligent experience and functionality. Smart vending machine is a source of huge data, where big data analysis will result in more effective sales strategies, higher productivity and lower operation cost, higher profit margin and so on. Moreover, new technology will also enable more different applications, such as face recognition that leverages the user experience, dispense control and verification, or age, gender and emotion detection for product recommendation, targeted ads and audience analysis.

智能售货机及自助零售在全球的发展动向和需求

智能售货机及自助零售近几年来在全球各国受到大量的关注及投资。以下是我上个月代表释能受邀在北京自助售货行业高峰论坛上发表主题为“智能售货机及自助零售在全球的发展动向和需求”的演说时分享的一些重点。

我们先来看看一些全球市场的数据。全球自动售货机的运营总数今年大概达到了1600万台，其中84%为传统未联网的自动售货机。从 2017 年到 2022 年，智能售货机运营台数每年的年增长率为16.2%，预计在2022年达到了540万台。这些数字也意味着庞大的商机：传统未联上网的大量售货机将会持续渐进地转成智能售货机，这也是智能售货机庞大的潜在市场。

释能在全球的市场覆盖，客户分布于全球 39 个国家。我从这些全球各地客户的项目稍微做了些整理，把它们的应用场景归类为 7 个分类，同时也看看这些在全球推动智能售货机市场的主要因素。

首先，第一个应用场景，是取代传统售货机，售卖饮料、小食、咖啡热饮等等。从刚才全球市场数据所看到，现有的传统售货机运营商，已经运营着大量的传统机器，所以只会逐步地淘态旧机器及升级到智能机。反观一些刚入场的新运营商，直接投放智能售货机的步代要快得多。

第二，智能售货机的技术，也可以售卖非传统商品，比如较高价值的商品、营养健身食品、特制饮料等。智能售货机让消费者可以从触摸屏上更清楚地了解这些商品的信息，如产品规格、营养价值、甚至观看产品示范视频。在美国有释能的客户用智能售货机来销售礼品、首饰、艺术品等，在菲律宾则有用来售卖打印机墨盒的机器，也有澳大利亚的客户设计智能冰沙自动售货机，而在英国更有客户用智能售货机来销售营养和健康产品。

另一种应用，是品牌促销，主要是品牌商要推介新产品，进行品牌与消费群的互动，同时也可以通过智能售货机收集用户信息，及进行问卷调查等。一般上用户在完成这些互动之后，将会从智能售货机上领取免费礼品。例如，一家全球知名连锁快餐店在澳大利亚通过整合社交网络推特，让用户发送推文后由搭载释能平台的智能售货机自动配送免费汉堡酱。另一家运动品牌则通过智能售货机收集用户信息并送出该品牌的运动装备，包括运动鞋。一家咖啡品牌推介新咖啡产品，让用户在智能售货机前跳舞互动。在美国，也有汽车品牌进行问卷调查自动送礼的售货机。

智能售货机的技术，也可以实现售卖受管制的商品，如啤酒、香烟，甚至在美国、加拿大和一些欧洲国家已经合法化售卖休闲用途的大麻。整合了一些智能科技，这些机器可以进行年龄及身份识别，确定用户附合最低年龄限制，以及对个别用户的购买量进行监管。

无人商店：这里所指的无人商店，并非中国国内目前非常火红的扫码走入小箱子里面购买的那种，而是综合各种各类的智能售货机，来实现售卖多样化的商品。例如：在新加坡，我们有客户通过释能的跨机器平台，整合了各式各样的机器，同时售卖各种商品、礼品、纪念品、小食、饮料、食品，和咖啡的无人商店和无人咖啡厅。在马来西亚，也有通过同样的模式运营的无现金交易智能便利店。在吉隆坡国际机场也有不少自动化商店，销售旅行用品、手机配件、手信等等。

医疗也将是另一个推动智能售货机的领域，主要用来售卖或者管制发放医疗产品及药物，运营 24 小时全天候药店，并通过智能科技来实现医生开的药方机器上认证取药。释能有南非的客户运营 24 小时药店，在纽约也有销售急救物品和药品的智能售货机。另外在比利时，释能的客户也运营销售牙科护理产品的智能售货机。

最后一个应用场景类别，工业用途。这些机器主要发放工业备件、个人保护设备，以及员工配餐等，让车间、工地或其他工业场景的员工可以员工证来认证，从机器上领取这些物品；也让企业跟据个别工作岗位的需求来设定及监管使用量，减少浪费，提升工作效率和降低营运成本。

从释能云后台的实时大数据来看，这些全球客户投放点的各种机器上进行的非现金交易，大概占了65% ， 现金交易则为35%，相信这和中国国内的比例大同小异。目前海外智能售货机发展比较快速的区域，则为东南亚，主要是因为这区域受到中国影响最深，极力推动手机支付的普及化。其他区域如北美、欧洲和中东也将会随着这个趋势发展。

无论如何，按所有全球的售货机总数，包括传统售货机在内的话，现金支付在海外仍是主流。但是，非现金支付是推动智能售货机的主力。海外的非现金支付方式，主要有已经非常普及的信用卡和转账卡，另外也有各式各样的会员积分卡，和下来将会风行全球的手机支付。海外许多国家的非现金交易成本较高，也是其中一大阻力。而相对于中国国内一两家手机支付系统独大的局面，国外的手机支付目前则是百花齐放、百鸟争鸣。

国外市场对智能售货机的需求和期许

首先，稳定的软硬件。在海外一些国家如欧美等国，错误的代价，就是说在发生故障或意外的事件时，其风险和成本是很高的。比如派人去维修机器的话，所涉及的人工费、交通费、停车费等都很昂贵，加上销售收入的流失，成本损失不小。另外，有些情况还可能必须负上法律责任，如不久前我刚读到一则新闻，美国那里的一些残障人士协会，起诉当地一家无人快餐店，起诉他们投放的点餐机歧视残障人士。还有，开始购买机器时的价格虽低，但长期运营成本也是考量之一。我时有听到一些海外客户正面地反馈说，中国制造的机器品质，每年都在提升，越做越好，而且价格也逾年下调，性价比和竞争力逐年上升！机器硬件方面，需提供更多有关硬件实时信息，如更多不同方面的感应器，门开关、动作传感器、温度感应等，以让更有效的远程管理及采集更多数据。软件和后台也需提供全方位的远程管理、补货路线规划，屏幕内容、广告内容完整的远程管理方案。

智能售货机的生态系统，需能够让多方及各方的伙伴参与运作，并在同一个平台上交互及互动。它也需富有多元功能，满足各方面的需求。例如：智能售货生态系统，可以让各方伙伴，如机器设备厂商、业主（也就是售货机投放点位的业主）、补货员、维修员、运营经理、广告商、用户等等通过不同的管道在同一个平台上，以不同的角色与权限，进行互动和运作，实现整个智能零售的生态环境，包括这些支付系统，身份识别、社交媒体、互动内容、广告等等零零种种的功能或者末来的新功能。

当运营商想扩展业务，达到更大的营销成长，销售更多种类的商品，以及开拓更多不同点位场景，他们需要一个跨机器平台，一个能够支持各种各类机器和硬件的平台，让他们在迎合个别品质、预算、环境及功能的要求时，拥有更大的灵活性和自主空间。同时，智能售货平台也必需可以持续扩展，支持运营商或第三方针对特定需求进行二次开发，比如进行知识产权上较敏感的开发项目等。长远来看，跨机器平台将可让运营商拥有不受局限的发展空间。

外国市场对于智能售货机，也需要长期持续开发与提升的软件平台和硬件设备，并提供持续性的维护及售后支援服务，以让他们可以无忧无虑地拓展业务。同时，他们也要求持续对接新科技、新技术、新设备，以支持更多的新功能，来面对市场的挑战及提升利润的成长空间。

在这个年代，不能不说到人工智能。智能售货机也需要应用人工智能，以推向另一个层次，提供更加人性化、更深层智能的新体验和新功能。智能售货机是一个可提供海量数据的管道，通过大数据分析，可以推动更加有效果的销售策略、更高效率及低成本的运营、更大的盈利空间等等。此外，新技术也可实现更多应用方式，如人脸识别提升用户体验、管制商品发货，或者应用年龄、性别及情绪识别，来作出商品推荐、推送定向广告、和进行受众分析。

Smart Vending

It's been many years that the technological progress in the vending machine industry has been slow, and snail-ly slow as opposed to the advancement in all aspects of life. You still see many vending machines around you operating in the ways that are not much different than 10 or 20 years ago. ATM machines, for example, has been going through vast changes and improvements since its inception.

However, this situation for vending machine industry is changing now. Next few years will witness the unprecedented vast leap in vending industry in terms of technology deployment and improvement. With the falling price of new technology such as touch display, wireless connectivity, camera and so on, the adoption rate of these technology which will make up the concept of Smart Vending will increase drastically in the next few years to come.

Smart Vending is a concept that encapsulates the application and integration of multimedia interactivity, cash and cashless payment, digital signage, video analytics, telemetry and cloud-based remote manageability as well as other emerging technology with the objectives to enhance the user experience of the vending machines and the effectiveness of the operation from the perspective of the vending machine operators. The vending operators always seeks to improve the effectiveness of their operation with their vending machines with the end in mind of lowering their operation cost thus increasing their profitability.

Users at the vending machines, while looking to buy what they want to buy from the vending machine, are also expecting something other than just inserting coins and pressing a selection button. They have been pampered with various convenient and interactive web and mobile applications, devices and gadgets such as smart phones, smart TV, and smart "many things". Yes, the user expectation on everything has been raised. Anything that is not on par with this expectation is deemed as outdated and lame. The users are addicted to cool stuffs and fun. The users or rather the crowd, are the kings nowadays. Pleasing user experience is no longer an additional luxury, but a basic requirement for all consumer-facing applications, products and services.

Running a business is always challenging since the days of barter system. Running a vending business is even more challenging in the current era.The trend of the retail business is going automatic and self-service direction. Vending machine is already on this track since many decades ago. With the availability of Smart Vending technologies, vending machine operation should be no longer regarded as selling merchandises on automated cabinets that accept money and dispense products automatically. There are more to be offered and more to make from the same estate. The possibilities and opportunities are great and beyond limitation.

For fast time-to-market deployment of Smart Vending, Silkron provides all-round product and solutions: https://www.silkron.com/smart_vending

Penang to be an international city

We have been hearing the toutings that "Penang will become an international city" for many years in the past and with the very positive progress in the recent few years, that has become quite optimistic and closer to becoming reality now.

Penang is already the most livable city in Malaysia. It ought be more livable in the global context. Penang has many features and attributes that can be the pre-requisites to be an international city, such as variety of nature attractions (sea, hill, forest), balanced mix of city lifestyle and nature, harmonious mix of multiple cultures, great and variety of food and cuisines, vibrant economy with various industries and tourism, availability of good educational and medical institutions and so on...

To turn into a true international city, we need more push for the following:

• Great minds (many seeds of great minds are grown and nurtured in the good schools in Penang but sprinkled and scattered around the world currently. We need them back)
• Opera theater for cultural and musical performance and concerts (did I say opera house? Some might say this is not necessary as the streets in Penang are all the open opera houses under the sky for the folk custom and traditional operas throughout the year)
• International convention center (there is one underway finally - SPICE, and another one in the plot - PWCC) for more global events and conventions
• World-class stadiums and sports centers for more global sports events
• Mass transit system (subway or underground rapid transit, is more suitable for Penang due to its scarce land and high density development, instead of monorail / elevated rails)
• Green parks and more parks (with many trees) throughout the city (and must be well-maintained, not built-and-forget)
• Sculptures, art masterpieces throughout the city and streets (the recent murals around the city is a good start)
• Science center (for kids and tourists)
• Fountains and large fountains with musical rhythm where kids can walk into it and play (the weather is hot, we all knew, so why not give them some splashes...)
• Museum (do we have one? I think yes, but certainly it needs better attention)
• Zoo (Balik Pulau can be a good location candidate for this)
• Marine park and aquariums
• Sea cruise along the coastline from north to south of the island (this can be a good business idea)

If you have more ideas, just throw into the comments.... Bravo Penang!

Giving way on highway, in a safe way

Yesterday another deadly car accident happened again on the north-south highway near Slim River leading to 5 deaths. And according to the news report, right before the accident occurred, the driver was giving way to a rear coming car that flashing beam light to him and as soon as he changed his car to the left lane, they banged on the punctured lorry on the left lane.

If you have been driving on the north-south highway, you will get to be flashed with beam light or be approached closely from a car on your back from time to time especially when you are taking the right lane, even though your speed is already at the maximum allowed speed limit of 110km/h. I have seen few cases where the car being flashed react near-panicly by immediately changing to the left lane to give way to the flashing car. Giving way is something gentleman on the foot, but on highway in such scenario, is it something wise to do?

Everyone has the right to use the highway safely, not to say you have paid for it. And when you are already driving at maximum legal speed (even on the right lane) and being urged by some hasty car behind you, be it a super luxury wagon or sporty car, I think it is not your obligation to give way to it, of course unless it's any emergency response vehicle like ambulance etc. Just take your time as long as you are comfortable with, and definitely until you have found a safe spot to give way to the hasty fellow. But if you are driving a turtle, please do not occupy the right lane unless you are overtaking, ya, the right lane is supposed for overtaking.

Nobody like to be rushed, so if you are someone who used to be the hasty fellow, be polite and gentle even you are on hurry (by the way, why so hurry?). Do not simply flash your beam light to the front car. Just follow it at a safe distance (not too close of course) so as not to give any pressure to the front guy. After a while, he will be aware of you and give you the way you wanted at his comfort. Everyone has equal right. Respect every drivers and the precious lives of every living creature on the road.

May there be no more unwanted casualties on the road...

If you are using Ubuntu and not used to the Unity user interface, the better choice will be gnome-shell. Gnome-shell comes with many extensions that can be added easily. Below are some of the must-have and nice-to-have extensions:

Must-Have:
- AlternateTab
- Alternative Status Menu
- BackSlide
- Bolt
-Disable Window Animations
- No Topleft Hot Corner
- Panel Settings
- Places Status Indicator
- Settings Center
- Status Icon Fixer
- TaskBar
- Weather Indicator

Nice-to-Have:
- Coverflow Alt-Tab
- Dock
- Journal (if you are using the original Gnome Activites instead of Bolt)
- SystemMonitor

You can also remove the maximized windows title bar to give you more working space. Install "Maximus" from Ubuntu Software Center, then run gconf-editor (install this also if you don't have it), and go to apps -> maximus and enable "no_maximize". You will need to logout and login back to get it in effect.