Dee Kay Dot As Gee

Dell/Alienware launched the Alienware M11x last week in Singapore. I’m not a gamer personally, but a number my gamers friends are excited about this device.

The M11x is a 11.6 inch laptop with graphics power of a 15 inch laptop. It has a 1GB NVIDIA (GeForce) GT335M graphics card. Comes with 2GB RAM which you can pump up to 8GB. I was kinda surprised that Alienware choose to use a 1.3Ghz Intel Core2 Duo SU7300 processor instead of a Core i7. But although it is using a lower power chip, the performance wasn’t compromised. And it managed to push the price of the M11x to a very attractive level.

The M11x comes with HDMI, VGA, Firewire and 3 USB ports. The M11x weighs around 1.99kg. That’s rather heavy for a 11.6 inch laptop. But with this kind of performance, you won’t mind the extra weight. Oh, did I say that the M11x has a 8.5 hours battery life according to specs? Maybe that’s where the extra weight goes. Pretty good for long flights, if you can find enough space to use a mouse.

Like all Alienware laptop, the M11x is very beautifully designed. Alienware put in lots of effort in the branding and design. The design is so cool that every gamer wants to have one. I personally love the backlit keyboard. It doesn’t matter if I cannot make it at first person shootout games and didn’t manage to frag anyone. At least I play in style.

The Alienware M11x is now available in Dell online store from S$$1,699. That, I think, is perhaps the cheapest Alienware PC you can find. Will do a review if I managed to get my hands on it.

Steven Colbert showed off the Apple iPad during the Grammy Award. Super funny.

Something tells me that this is a product placement by Apple.

It seems like Nokia has been following one important rule when releasing new product: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. The Nokia E72, a successor to the popular Nokia E71, is a clear example. If you put the Nokia E71 and E72 side by side, you won’t notice much difference. Not surprised actually, since the Nokia E71 is a huge success.

Let’s talk about some of the basic specs of the Nokia E72 first. The E72 comes with a 2.4 inch QVGA non-touchscreen display which is capable of up to 16 million colors. I mentioned this several times that that Symbian S60 platform is very good with non-touchscreen operation, so don’t worry about the no touhscreen part. 11.4 x 5.8 x 1 cm and weighs 128g. It has 250 MB internal memory and a 4GB micro SD is included in the sales box. 5 megapixel auto-focus camera which is able to do VGA video recording. The E72 comes with a lifetime subscription of Nokia Messaging for push emails. Like most decent smartphones nowadays, the Nokia E72 comes with WIFI, Bluetooth, A-GPS and digital compass. There is also a 3.5mm audio jack and MicroUSB for data transfer.

Here’s the weird thing. Although the Nokia E72 has a MicroUSB port which can be used for charging, the E72 also comes with the Nokia proprietary charging port. In fact, the charger provided in the retail box is the Nokia proprietary charger instead of the MicroUSB which we all know will be the standard charger for future phones. Strange decision, but no complains since the MicroUSB port can also be used for charging. Although I wish that Nokia would do away with their proprietary charging port entirely and just use a MicroUSB post.

One of the thing I love most about the Nokia E72 is the physical keyboard. The Qwerty keyboard feels very comfortable when you type. If you compare the E71 and E72 keyboard, you will notice that not much has been changed except for the last row. This is good because from what I understand, most E71 users love their keyboard. What Nokia did was just small adjustment to the Qwerty keyboard to improve the experience. The Ctrl button is back on the E72. On the E71, you need to press shift and the chr/ctrl button. The Ctrl button is very useful for the “advance” E72 users. There are lots of shortcuts available using the Ctrl button. Basic shortcuts like Ctrl-X for cut, Ctrl-C for copy and Ctrl-V for paste. There are tons of other shortcuts available. If you are interested, refer to the user manual. My only complaint about the keyboard is that the spacebar is too small for my liking. One interesting thing to note is that you can long press the SPACEBAR button to turn on flashlight (Using the camera LED flash). A very useful shortcut. And the LED light is pretty bright too.

The biggest change on the E72 is the addition of Optical Navi Key for navigation. The Optical Navi Key is great for scrolling thru menus and browsing website. In fact, I prefer Optical Navi Key to trackball. My biggest issue with trackball is that after prolong usage, you will get dust trapped between the ball and sensor. Optical Navi Key does not have this issue. Optical Navi Key is also much easier to control. But one thing I don’t like about the Optical Navi Key is the sensitive setting. I tried doing a quick flick to scroll down but the webpage only scroll down a little. You would expect it to scroll further when you do a flick. And note that I’m at the highest sensitive setting. But I guess this is just the firmware issue. Being their first Optical Navi Key device, it will take some time for them to figure out the best setting.

But if you are not a fan of Optical Navi Key, the 5 direction controls are still there.

As a whole, the Nokia E72 is a great phone. The phone feels sturdy and has a professional look. If you are a great fan of E71, you will love E72 too. As I was doing this review, Nokia announced free turn by turn navigation on their newly improved Ovi Maps. Now, that is one more bonus point for the E72.

In short:
A great Symbian Qwerty phone

Likes:
Qwerty keyboard
Shortcuts

Dislikes:
Optical Navi Key’s scrolling

Lazy to watch the recent iPad keynote? Here is a 180 seconds summary for those who don’t have time.

If you are free, do read up on reality distortion field.

Next time when I launch my product, I’ll try to do this too.

I got this Urban Tool slyDog as door gift few weeks back when I went for the Urban Tool event. It’s a pretty looking pouch for your gadget. Actually, I quite like it. EXCEPT for 1 little problem. I don’t have a gadget that is small enough to fit the pouch. This pouch is great for iPod Nano or candy bar phones which I don’t have. So instead of praying someone will give me a iPod Nano, I decided to give this pouch away to 1 lucky reader.

You can hook it up on the sling of your bag or get a lanyard. The packaging also suggest that you can hook it to your belt, but I highly advice against that. It will look a bit the uncle if you hook the belt. So if you get this, please hook it to your bag or anywhere but your belt.

How to apply:
Just drop me an email me with the title: “Dee Kay Dot As Gee Giveaway: Urban Tool slyDog”. Closing date is this Friday, 5 Feb 2010, 2359. I will randomly select the winner via the usual method. Refer to the rules for more details.

And promise me you will not hook this to your belt.

I got a shock last evening when I couldn’t login my Twitter account. I’m sure I typed the correct password. But after 3 tries, my account was locked out for 1 hour. Something is fishy here. I tried to request for a password reset even though I’m definitely sure that I got the right password. That’s when I saw another email from Twitter that came a couple of hours ago. It said that my Twitter account may have been compromised in a phishing attack.

That email itself looks like a phishing email. But it isn’t. It is really from Twitter and they really reset my password. That’s why I couldn’t login to Twitter.

NOTE: If you got similar email, I suggest that you do not click on the link. Instead, go to Twitter website directly and reset your password manually. Just to be safe, since you are not the person who requested for the password reset.

Mashable reports that this could be linked to @THCx user on Twitter. That explains why I was following that account yesterday morning when I’ve never seen that nick before. I didn’t thought that my account was compromised. I just thought that it might be a bug or I might have accidentally click follow. (Or some stupid website that makes me automatically follow their Twitter account after I use them)

I didn’t thought about reporting them or anything. Damn. Now I feel stupid. How could I just ignore this common symptom of a compromised account?

Twitter updated it’s status blog on what happen. It appears that for a number of years, a person has been creating torrent sites that require a login and password as well as creating forums set up for torrent site usage and then selling these purportedly well-crafted sites and forums to other people innocently looking to start a download site of their very own. However, these sites came with a little extra — security exploits and backdoors throughout the system. This person then waited for the forums and sites to get popular and then used those exploits to get access to the username, email address, and password of every person who had signed up. Additional exploits to gain admin root on forums that weren’t created by this person also appear to have been utilized; in some instances, the exploit involved redirecting attempts to access the forums to another site that would request log-in information. This information was then used to attempt to gain access to third party sites like Twitter.

Hmmm….. I don’t remember registering for any torrent forums. But it’s quite hard for me to pin-point which forum is that since they said the person might have waited for a number of years. Maybe I’ve registered for one several years ago but I forgot?

WHAT I do know is that I should change all my password. Serve me right for reusing my password for some accounts. This is bad bad IT practice. I know. They taught me in school. Never reuse your password for different websites login. I just choose to ignore it. Tsk tsk.

OK, you may laugh at me in the comment section.

Another evidence that Singapore doesn’t lack musical talents. It’s just that we don’t know where to find them.

Found out about Juliet Pang when I saw my friend post photos of her performance at Esplanade on facebook. I must say that her voice is pretty good. If only she don’t add those “special effects” on her youtube video.

Check out her website here.

You didn’t read the title wrongly. Pre-sales of the JooJoo went up after the iPad announcement. SERIOUSLY! But not I say one. Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan, CEO of Fusion Garage said that during an interview with SGEntrepreneurs.

Really? Pre-sales of the JooJoo went up after the iPad announcement?

Look, the iPad is not a perfect device. It didn’t live up to the hype generated. There are several shortcomings. There are some things that I think Apple could have done better on the iPad. But having said that, I do not see how the JooJoo would solve those problems better than the iPad.

For a start, the iPad’s battery life is 10hr while the JooJoo has only 5hr. I’m actually surprised that the iPad managed to get such long battery life. I suspect it could be because of the custom A4 processor by Apple. JooJoo, on the other hand, is using a Intel Atom Z530 processor.

In term of pricing, the iPad (lowest end version) and JooJoo both cost the same at $499. The JooJoo has a 12.1 inch screen which is bigger than the 9.7 inch iPad. It also has a camera which the iPad doesn’t. The JooJoo can even play Flash. But do you remember the Creative Zen? In terms of specs, the Creative Zen is better than the Apple iPod. The Zen even cost cheaper than the iPod. But who is the market leader for MP3 player?

In term of user experience, the iPad wins JooJoo hands down. Apple is well known for it’s touchscreen. The JooJoo on the other hand isn’t that responsive when it comes to the touchscreen. We’ve seen during the hands-on video that even typing a short URL seems to be a challenge. Speaking of virtual keyboard, I personally don’t like the iPad’s virtual keyboard. But honestly speaking, the JooJoo’s virtual keyboard is even worst. Well, at least the iPad got a keyboard dock and can connect to a bluetooth keyboard. Does the JooJoo have accessories? Can it connect to a bluetooth keyboard?

And the thing that makes the iPad different from the JooJoo is the developer ecosystem behind the device. We all know that the iPad can run existing iPhone applications. That’s 140,000 apps and growing everyday. And the iPad also comes with iBook which allows users to buy books directly on the device. (Although the service is currently only available in the US) Does JooJoo has any similar service?

How many 3rd party apps does the JooJoo has? How many 3rd party developers sign up for their developer program? Hmmmm… Let me guess. Somewhere between 0 to 10? Maximum 12! Cannot be more than 13. But that is just my wild guess. You never know. I might be wrong. If the pre-sales of JooJoo can go up after the iPad announcement, anything can happen. Maybe they could have millions of developers queuing up for their SDK and wanting to develop for JooJoo.

But wait, even if there are millions of developers wanting to develop applications for JooJoo, they can’t. I quote Chandra’s interview with Venture Beat:

Venture Beat: Will there be JooJoo apps?

Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan: No. Most of the apps in Apple’s store are a reflection of things that are already on the Internet. And now you have to build them twice — once for the iPhone, and once for the much larger, higher resolution iPad screen. Our app store will be the entire Internet, completely open and completely uncompromised.

Honestly, Chandra has no idea the phenomenon behind the iPhone apps store and how it make the iPhone successful. It is so successful that almost all the other mobile OS copied this idea. We all know that webapps is not as good as native apps. Instead of looking into ways that developers can create applications for JooJoo, Chandra decides to downplay something that is clearly successful. OK, maybe he is right. Even if they have their SDK and Apps Store, who will develop for the JooJoo to begin with?

You may think that I’m being an Apple fan boy here. But honestly, I’m not impressed by the iPad. I felt that it could had been better. I’ve been telling everyone that I won’t be getting the iPad. But if someone points a gun at my head and ask me to choose between the iPad or JooJoo, I’ll choose the iPad. Just look at the pictures.

The choice is pretty obvious.

Which is why it really puzzled me when I saw the interview with Chandra. Pre-sales of the JooJoo went up after the iPad announcement? Seriously? Really? Wow, that must be the 8th wonder of the world. Come on! I know you guys are all very skeptical about this. But miracles do happen. You never know, they might find Osama hiding inside the White House tomorrow.

PS: Increase in pre-sale by 1 is not counted hor.

I have 5 pairs of tickets to the Asian Civilisations Museum Treasury of the World exhibition. The exhibition is from 12 Feb to 27 June 2010.

How to apply:
Just drop me an email me with the title: “Dee Kay Dot As Gee Giveaway: Treasury of the World tickets”. Closing date is this Thursday, 4 Feb 2010, 2359. I will randomly select the winner via the usual method. Refer to the rules for more details.

Thanks to Asian Civilisations Museum for making this giveaway possible.

PS: I almost post the title of this blog entry as “Dee Kay Dot As Gee Giveaway: Treasury of the World”. No, I don’t have the treasury of the world to giveaway. I only got 5 tickets to see the Treasury of the World. Haha.

I was invited to have a sneak peak of the upcoming exhibition at Asian Civilisations Museum. Treasury of the World is a stunning collection of 402 exquisite gem stones and other precious objects from the glorious era of Mughal-ruled India. The Mughal Empire dominated the Indian subcontinent for 300 years (1526 – 1858) and were renowned for their lavish lifestyle, love of beauty and vast collection of precious objects.

17th century British ambassador, Thomas Roe, once described Emperor Jahangir as “The treasury of the world”. Emperor Shah Jahan, Jahangir’s son, was considered one of the greatest Mughal emperors. Under his reign, the empire grew significantly and many magnificent monuments, including the Taj Mahal, Jama Masjid and Red Fort, were built.

One of the interesting display is a dagger and scabbard that is thought to have been commissioned and designed by Emperor Jahangir around 1619. It has 1,685 rubies, 271 unpolished diamonds, 62 emeralds, 321 pieces of transparent emerald-green glass, 39 pieces of blue glass, 9 pieces of ivory and 6 layered agates. That’s a total of 2,393 stones, plus another 26 which are now missing. I wonder where did the 26 go. The rubies form a pattern of birds and flowers. I don’t mind if someone kill me with that.

Another interesting treasure is a bracelet set with rubies, diamonds and chrysoberyl cat’s eye. Bangles that terminate in confronting animal heads were popular in Indian jewellery design. This bangle is adorned with enamelled tiger heads. The exterior is gem-set with rubies and diamonds. It kinda looks like the tigers are kissing. Interesting huh? As you all know, this is the year of the Tiger and Chinese New Year happens to fall on Valentine’s Day.

All images are courtesy of The al-Sabah Collection, Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah, Kuwait. I didn’t get to see the exhibit yet. As I’m writing, the staff at ACM are busy unpacking them. But I’ll definitely visit ACM when the exhibition is ready.

The Treasury of the World will be on display at Asian Civilisations Museum from 12 February to 27 June 2010. Tickets at $8 and $4 for adults and concession respectively. Check out ACM website for more info.