Dee Kay Dot As Gee

Sorry for the lack of blog and twitter update for the past few days. As most of you guys should know (I hope), my company had a big product launch last Thursday night. As I’m typing this on Saturday afternoon, I’m still feeling dead tired from the crazy week. Which makes me wonder how did I even drag myself to go drinking last night…..

ANYWAY….. as I was running all over the place in and out of the busy event hall last Thursday evening, I was being entertained by great music from a local band call 53A. OK, I know I’m always many steps slower than most people when it comes to music. They are all over the Singapore music scene and I only heard of them last Thursday. Tsk tsk….

Didn’t have time to really pause and enjoy the music. But I must say they are pretty good. They even use the iPhone piano app to play a few songs. Didn’t manage to take my camera and record them in action. But here’s some video that I found online. Enjoy!

Check out their blog.

Someone told me that I know Sara Wee’s sister. Singapore is small.

We heard rumors that gothere.sg is doing a iPhone App for almost a year. Well, it’s finally official. gothere.sg has submitted their iPhone App to Apple App store for approval. Check out this short demo video.

Some of you might be wonder why the need for a native iPhone App when the gothere.sg mobile site is already doing a good job. Well, the loading time for native App definitely beats the mobile site. You have less things to load. You don’t need waste time and bandwidth to load the interface. The interface is already on the App itself. And you can do lots of fancy stuff on the native App that a mobile website can’t. And most importantly, branding. Having your application on Apple App store’s top 25 downloaded application is a good form of advertising for your company.

Good job gothere.sg team! Looking forward to seeing it on the Apple App store soon. I guess there shouldn’t be any problem getting approval.

And the next big question now is……. When will you guys be releasing Android version? And BlackBerry, Symbian, MeeGo, Bada, Windows Phone 7 etc etc etc….. You get my point.

12 years ago, Blizzard Entertainment launched the successful StarCraft. I still remember being hooked on the game, spending hours at home playing mission after mission. I also remember playing StarCraft with my friend in poly and avoiding sysadmin. Those were the days. StarCraft is one of the best real-time strategy game for me.

Well, after several years of development and an extensive beta test that resulted in focused feedback from thousands of players worldwide, Blizzard Entertainment finally released StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty yesterday in Singapore and and several other countries. The launch event was at Funan. I managed to rush down during lunchtime to check out the crowd. The queue is crazy. I think the last time I saw such a long queue was at the iPhone 3G launch.

Come to think of it, there are lots of queuing opportunities for Singaporeans lately. The iPad queue last Friday, the StarCraft II queue yesterday and the iPhone 4 queue this coming Friday. I wonder who is queuing for all 3.

Battle.net has been redesigned from the ground up with several enhancements and new features, such as voice communication, cloud file storage, leagues and ladders, achievements, stat-tracking, and more. The Southeast Asian version of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty gives players immediate access to play on servers based in Southeast Asia, alongside gamers from Australia and New Zealand. This datacenter provides high-quality gameplay and connectivity for local gamers, as well as a deeper, more accessible community experience complete with exclusive multiplayer leagues and ladders. Blizzard also intend to let players in Southeast Asia have the ability to play on North American servers at no additional cost. This option is not available currently but Blizzard will make it available no later than 60 days after launch. But of course it would be better for players to use local servers as they offer lower latency.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is retailing at S$109. You can also purchase the game digitally at www.starcraft2.com.

I guess the world’s productivity level is about to go down for the next couple of months.

With all the iPad and iPhone discussion going around, Apple thinks that they could pull off a magic trick by adding a Magic Trackpad on the online store without anyone noticing.

Sorry Apple, tough luck here. We saw that Magic Trackpad sneaking in. In fact, rumors of a gigantic trackpad surfaces back in June. But I must say that the timing took us by surprise. Between the iPad and iPhone launch in Singapore? Wow, the folks at Apple must be super busy lately.

The Magic Trackpad uses Bluetooth to connect to your iMac (or MacBook / MacBook Pro if you insist). It works the same as the Trackpad on your MacBook. Which means you can perform the same shortcut gestures now on your iMac with the Magic Trackpad. Now, that’s magical.

The Magic Trackpad looks pretty good when placed next to the Bluetooth Keyboard. And it runs on 2 AA battery.

Speaking of AA battery, Apple has also started selling Rechargeable Battery and Charger. Seriously, if someone told me that this morning, I’ll say that’s a joke.

The Magic Trackpad is selling at a magically price of S$98 while the Battery Charger + 6 AA Rechargeable Battery cost S$44.

Time check, we are 18 days away from the first ever Youth Olympic Games. As you are reading this (assuming you read it on the day I post), the Youth Olympic Flame is making its way around the world before arriving in Singapore on the 6th Aug 2010.

Samsung, The International Presenting Partner of the Journey of the Youth Olympic Flame (JYOF) and Worldwide Olympic Partner, celebrated the lighting of the Youth Olympic flame in Greece with a spectacular mass formation in the shape of a torch last Friday. 2010 students from six educational institutions came together to form and illuminate this mass display at the celebration site at Merchant Loop. The six educational institutions are: Assumption English School, ITE East, Nanyang Polytechnic, Republic Polytechnic, Singapore Polytechnic and Temasek Polytechnic.

The illumination of the torch formation at 20:10hrs Singapore time also coincides with the lighting of the Olympic Flame in Greece on 23 July 2010.

Here’s a photo of the Samsung Human Torch that I took at the event.

Here is another photo of the Samsung Human Torch from another angle. (Stolen from the press release)

Oh, by the way, in case you are wondering how I took the first photo, let me say that I’m not at Liang Court or Novotel. In fact, you can actually see my position from the press release photo. Can you see me?

*Oldspice tone* I’m on a crane. Do do do doot doo do do dooot.

RIM recently announced an interesting application call BlackBerry Protect. BlackBerry Protect is a free service from RIM that allows BlackBerry smartphone customers to remotely backup, restore and locate their BlackBerry smartphone, from wherever they are via their destkop computer. Previously, there are several 3rd party applications on BlackBerry that does the same thing. I guess the developers are not going to be happy when they find out that BlackBerry is going to offer this service for free.

Well, the customers are going to be very happy. I don’t know about you guys, but I personally found quite a number of BlackBerry phones myself. Seems like BlackBerry phone users are more prone to losing their phone. So what are some of the features of the BlackBerry Protect?

Wipe Device: If you lost your phone, you can go to a desktop to activate this function. It will remote wipe all your data from your BlackBerry. Including MicroSD card. That’s great since most of the data are stored inside the MicroSD card.

Lock device: Lock your BlackBerry remotely so that nobody can access your phone. Good for those who don’t have the habit of locking their BlackBerry.

Display message: Set a message on your BlackBerry like your contact number so that the finder can contact you. Good for those who didn’t set their owner information. But personally, I feel that you should set your owner information.

Loud ringer: Here is a good feature. If you think your phone is nearby, just activate this feature and it will make your BlackBerry give out a loud ringer even if your phone is on silent mode. Or you can use this feature to scare the person who is stealing your phone.

Locate device: Not sure exactly how useful this feature is. It will pinpoint you the exact location of your BlackBerry phone. But we all know that GPS is not very accurate. And if the phone is at a crowded place, how are you going to find the person who took your phone?

Backup/Restore data from device: Schedule backup with BlackBerry server. And if you ever lose your BlackBerry phone or upgrade to another BlackBerry, simply do a data restore on your new phone.

And since this is BlackBerry, you can be assured that data security is one of their top priority. Data is never transmitted in clear over the air and encryption for storage of user data.

BlackBerry Protect is now available in limited beta. (Unfortunately, I don’t have the invite) It will be in open beta later this year. Can’t wait. I think this is a good application. In fact all mobile operating system should have this sort of program by default.

OK, I keep telling people that I won’t buy an iPad. But I don’t mind if someone gives me one. The iPad is more like a “want” than a “need”. I don’t necessary need it. To me, my iPhone is able to do most of the things.

Until the Flipboard came along.

Isn’t that cool?!?! A personal magazine with content that I want to see. And the KILLER feature is where it add contents that your friends share on Twitter and Facebook. This is so amazing. In fact, it is so good that it overwhelmed Flipboard’s servers. Currently, Flipboard is limiting the rate that they are accepting new Facebook and Twitter connections. But once they sort out the overwhelming issues, it’s going to be a MUST HAVE app on all iPad.

OK, this Flipboard is really making me want to own a iPad. And you know what’s the other best thing about Flipboard? It’s free!

Check out their interview with Building 43.

OK, I must control. Will not buy a iPad. Besides, it’s sold out in Singapore already. Yeap, most places sold out within a couple of hours on Friday morning. But if anyone want to give me an iPad, I would love to have a 16GB 3G + WIFI iPad. Thank you!

PS: I hate to say this but somehow I got this feeling that the Flipboard will not be the only reason why I would buy an iPad. But for now, it’s the only reason.

Just updated my iPhone 3G to iOS 4.0.1. One of the “improvement” is the reception bar.

I don’t know about you. But 1 bar is still 1 bar to me no matter how long it is.

On another note: Endure a bit longer. iPhone 4…. iPhone 4…. iPhone 4….

Have you ever wonder what happen around the world on a single day? Well, film makers Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald plans to find out. But it is impossible for them to document the world in a single day. That’s why they are getting the YouTube community to help. YES, this is going to be the world largest user generated feature film.

All you need to do is to get your camera ready on 24 July 2010 (Tomorrow). From 12:01am to 11:59pm (your local time), capture a glimpse of your life on camera and upload it to YouTube by 31 July.

But not all submission will be used (else the feature film will last several hundreds or even thousands of hours.) The final film will be made up of a selection of the most distinct and compelling videos submitted.

The film will premier at the Sundance Film Festival in early 2011 and uploaded on YouTube too. If your video get selected for the final film, you will be credited as a “co-director” in the credits that appear at the end of the film. Cool huh?

It’s official! 3G VOIP calls using Skype iPhone app will remain free. Woohoo!!!
(Your usual data charges still apply hor)

I was kinda worried when the previous version of Skype iPhone app (2.0) said that 3G calls will be free until end of Aug. I guess many people wrote in to Skype regarding this. So Skype had decided not to charge for 3G calls. Nice.

Well, actually this isn’t the biggest news. The biggest news is the new version of Skype iPhone app. Skype 2.0.1 now supports multi-tasking in iOS 4. Which means you can let Skype run in the background. Imagine receiving Skype call or IM while you are using other apps or your iPhone is locked. It’s like another phone line already. But this phone uses your data instead of your voice airtime.

Remember, multi-tasking only works on iPhone 3GS and above.