iPod Shuffle
3 new colors has been added to the iPod Shuffle namely the pink, green and blue. There is also a special edition polished stainless steel available only in the Apple Online Store. The iPod shuffle voice now tells you when your battery is full. 3rd party headphones with the Shuffle remote control is a go!

2GB is going for SGD$88.00, 4GB is going for SGD$118 and the special edition polished stainless steel iPod Shuffle is going for SGD$148 (4GB only).

Official Website: iPod Shuffle
Apple Singapore Store: iPod Shuffle

iPod Nano
The biggest change of all. Now iPod Nano has a built-in video camera, FM Radio and pedometer. It also sports a larger 2.2″ display together with microphone and speaker. Voice over is now supported as well. 8GB is going for SGD$228 and the 16GB is going for SGD$288.

Official Website: iPod Nano
Apple Singapore Store: iPod Nano

iPod Classic
The iPod Classic capacity has been bumped from 120GB to 160GB while staying at the same price SGD$388.

Official Website: iPod Classic
Apple Singapore Store: iPod Classic

iPod Touch
The 8GB iPod Touch has been dropped to SGD$308. 16GB has been phrase out in favor of a 32GB is for SGD$468 and 64GB for SGD$628. The new 32 and 64GB version has a faster processor, 50% faster. Just like the iPhone 3GS.

Official Website: iPod Touch
Apple Singapore Store: iPod Touch

On a side note, iTunes 9 has been released and iPhone OS Firmware 3.1 is available as of today.

Sony ICF-C1IPMK2
I have been eying on the Sony’s ICF-C1IPMK2 recently because it is quite affordable. The retail price is SGD$179 but challenger is selling it at SGD$159 with member discount. The ICF-C1IPMK2 is a iPod/iPhone Dock Clock Radio.

Sony ICF-C1IPMK2

Official Page: Sony Singapore: ICF-C1IPMK2
Review: iLounge: Sony ICF-C1iPMK2 Speaker Dock / Clock Radio for iPod + iPhone

Sony ICF-CL75iP
The recently announced Sony’s ICF-CL75iP made me think twice about getting the ICF-C1IPMK2 as the ICF-CL75iP has much better features and it is only USD$50 more expensive!

Sony ICF-CL75iP

Alarm clocks, digital photo frames, and iPod/iPhone docks are usually bland and simple. Only very recently have we seen style truly grace these products. However, when one of my contacts forwarded me information about the upcoming ICF-CL75iP, I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. This is probably the greatest looking fusion of all of the aforementioned devices that I’ve ever seen. This is the most advanced Dream Machine ever produced by Sony to date – it has a crisp 7 inch color WVGA (800 x 480) LCD, 1GB of built-in storage, and a retractable iPod/iPhone dock. What’s truly outstanding is that the photos on the screen can either be pulled from your iPod/iPhone, or loaded onto the unit via USB. You can also store and play music (mp3, WMA), and movies (MP4, Motion JPEG and AVI) on the device. And in true Billy Mays fashion, wait, there’s more – a FM/AM radio (with 39 total presets), and the option to either wake up via radio, iPod/iPhone, nature sounds (Sea Waves, Birds, Rain, Brook, Under the Sea), or through a 10 second voice recording.

It is retailing for USD$150 = SGD$216.

But for ICF-C1IPMK2, it is retailing for USD$99 (SGD$142) in the US, but in Singapore, it is retailing for SGD$179. So it is about SGD$30 for tax (I am assuming) so I think we can see the ICF-CL75iP retailing at SGD$249 and above.

Source: Sony’s Upcoming ICF-CL75iP Is An Alarm Clock, Digital Frame, And Dock For Your iPod/iPhone

I have been addicted to Apple’s Push Notification Service ever since I bought Prowl. There are endless possibilities on what you can do with Push Notifications.

Apple’s Push Notification Announcement

The Apple Push Notification Service is a mobile service created by Apple Inc. that was released with iPhone OS 3.0 on the 17th June 2009. It uses push technology through a constantly-open IP connection to forward notifications from the servers of third party applications to the iPhone or iPod Touch; such notifications may include badges, sounds or custom text alerts.

Apple first announced the service on 9 June 2008 with a slated release for that September; however, as stated by Scott Forstall at the iPhone 3.0 preview event on 17th March 2009, the rollout was rolled back in September after a decision to restructure the APNS for scalability purposes due to the allegedly “overwhelming” response to the announcement of the APNS. At both events, Forstall stated that push notifications were a better means to maintain battery life than background processes (which are used for pull technology) as far as receiving notifications are concerned.

APNS is using XMPP/Jabber, particularly the PubSub extension.

Wikipedia: Apple Push Notification Service

For email, there are PushMail and GPush to ensure you get a notification seconds after you received an email.

For twitter, there are SimplyTweet and Boxcar to notify you when you get a mention or a direct message in Twitter.

For instant messaging, there are BeejiveIM and IM+ to ensure you never miss an instant message.

For reminders, there is NotifyMe to notify you of things to do

For bills payment, there is BillMinder to ensure you will not miss your bill payment.

The list is not comprehensive, there are much more iPhone apps that make use of Push Notification. Mashable also has a post on it, 14 iPhone Apps With Push Notification for Productivity.

For web developers like me, I love Prowl, because there is an API for you to use and ready made classes for
Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Java and Lasso. Do note that the IP addresses are limited to 1000 API calls per hour which is better than Twitter’s 150 API calls.

With Prowl, you can customized your own Push Notifications. For me, I have my this web server’s cron setup to check my Twitter account for new mentions and direct messages every 5 minutes and if there are any, it will notify Prowl using the API and Prowl will sent a Push Notification to my iPhone.

If anybody post a comment in this blog, Prowl will also notify me as I have hooked it into WordPress. Next I am thinking of using my backup server’s cron to ping this site every 1 hour, and if there is any downtime, it will also sent a Push Notification to my iPhone. As mentioned earlier, there are endless possibilities on what you can do with Push Notifications using Prowl + Webserver + Cron.

Before I start this tutorial, I would like to give full credits to crimsontwo from xSellize forums and joshua.menke from cocoaforge. I merely improve on crimsontwo’s work.

In the thread, Gmail + push on iPhone w/ Prowl on xSellize forums, crimsontwo gave instructions on how to run the Prowl python script on your iphone. The downside to it is that if your iPhone connection change from EDGE to 3G or 3G to Wifi or any vice versa, the script will be disconnected from Gmail. To solve this problem, he recommends you to upload the script to your own web server instead.

You need to have SSH access to your web server as well as Python installed in your web server which is not covered in this tutorial.

So here we go:

1. Get Prowl from App Store for USD$2.99
2. Register your Prowl account at http://prowl.weks.net/register.php
3. Once registered, click on Settings Tab
4. Under API key, click on Generate API Key Button and note copy down your generated API Key
5. Download the required files in a zip, called, Gmail With Push On iPhone Using Prowl
6. Using WinZip, extract the zip file which you have downloaded from Step 5
7. You should see a folder called gmail_and_prowl
8. Open the file main.py using NotePad or WordPad
9. You should see these lines on line 11 to 13:
   

   prowl_apikey = “your_prowl_api_key”
   IMAP_USERNAME = “your_gmail_username”
   IMAP_PASSWORD = “your_gmail_password”

10. Replace the text your_prowl_api_key, your_gmail_username and your_gmail_password accordingly and save it
11. Using your FTP, upload the folder gmail_and_prowl to your home directory in your webserver
12. Login using SSH and browse to the path where you uploaded gmail_and_prowl, for example, /home/username/gmail_and_prowl/
13. Type this command:

    nohup python main.py > /dev/null 2>&1 &

14. The PID of the process which is executing the script will be displayed. You may want to know that number down, just in case you need to kill the process.
15. You can now log out from the SSH and send a test email to your Gmail account

Singtel will be launching the new iPhone 3GS on Friday, 10th July 2009. Hopefully it will NOT be during office hour.

Received this SMS From Singtel

IPHONE: You have a date next Friday 10 July with your new iPhone 3GS – keep it free! We will email you early next week with launch event details, prices and upgrade options. Have a good weekend and see u next Friday! It’s going to be huge!

Looks like the launch of Singtel iPhone 3GS is getting nearer, got this in my mailbox yesterday:

Click to view the full teaser email

Here is what it says:

Hi Lester,

Thank you very much for your interest in the iPhone3GS!

I know you are waiting for details on pricing and the launch event. Don’t worry, as you have registered, you will be among the first to know.

Expect an email from me with details of our great launch offers. Keep an eye on your inbox to stay ahead of the game.

The iPhone 3GS lets you do it even faster than before. Launch and switch between applications quickly. Shoot, edit and share video right on your phone. Make a call or play a song using just your voice. And discover many more features that make iPhone 3GS the best iPhone yet.

Plus this device also downloads data much quicker at 7.2 Mbps using SingTel’s unrivalled 3G network. With all its remarkable features – the wait will certainly be worth it.

If you have friends who want to be ahead of the pack they can register at www.singtel.com/reg

Sorry to tease you; I will be back with more: soon.

With best regards,

Wong Soon Nam
Vice President – Consumer Marketing

You can register your interest with Singtel for iPhone 3GS at https://www.singtelshop.com/iPhone3GS/.

Not in any particular order and it is sorted by price.

1. TweetDeck – Free
2. Facebook – Free
3. WordPress – Free
4. Skype – Free
5. Currency – Free
6. iGV – Free
7. SG Buses – Free
8. Wikipanion – Free
9. SG 4D – Free
10. Carpark@SG – Free
11. Tap Tap Revenge – Free
12. BeejiveIM – $9.99
13. FTP On The Go – $6.99
14. Byline – $4.99
15. Bejeweled 2 – $2.99
16. Web Tools – $1.99
17. SG ERP – $1.99
18. Bytes – $0.99
19. TVGuide@SG – $0.99
20. A Level – $0.99

Apple announces iPhone OS 3.0, the iPhone OS that was supposed to be in iPhone in the first place.

Here are some of the features we can expect in iPhone OS 3.0:

• In-App Purchase
• Peer to peer connectivity
• Custom apps that talk directly to that hardware
• Turn by turn navigation
• Push notification
• Cut, copy, and paste
• Landscape mode for most core apps
• MMS
• Voice Memos
• CalDAV calendar and .ics subscription support
• Spotlight
• Note Sync
• Auto-fill
• YouTube accounts
• Stereo Bluetooth via A2DP
• WiFi autologin
• Tethering support

I think lots of paid jailbreak apps like SwirlyMMS and biteSMS might have to developed new apps. Say good bye to SwirlyMMS, biteSMS and QuickGold!

The iPhone OS 3.0 update will be available for free for iPhone and iPhone 3G users. MMS and Stereo Bluetooth will not be available for iPhone users due to hardware differences. For iPod Touch and iPod Touch 2nd Generation users, you will have to fork out USD$9.95 for it.

Links

• Apple: iPhone OS 3.0 Preview
• Gizmodo Live Blog
• Engadget: Live from Apple’s iPhone OS 3.0 preview event

Last Wednesday, Apple Store (Singapore) had a special one-day shopping event and are offering discounts in their online store. The discounts for Apple products is quite pathetic, imagine only SGD$20 off for iPod Nano only. If you are intending to buy it long ago, SGD$20 is definitely better than nothing but it will not attract you to buy. However the discounts for 3rd party products/software are quite good. I bought the Belkin Auto Charger For iPod And iPhone for SGD$30 (including delivery). The usual price is SGD$37. It is about 19% discount. Bought it on Wednesday and it got delivered to me on Friday.

Outer Box

Outer Box – Opened

Belkin Auto Charger – Box

Belkin Auto Charger – Contents

Belkin Auto Charger – Car Charger Head

And yes, IT WORKS on iPhone 3G.

Sugih’s Wedding

Went to Jakarta, Indonesia over the weekend to attend a Sugih’s wedding, 1 day to be precise. My Valuair flight is on the 9th January 2009 at 1:35pm and the returning flight is on the 10th January 2009 at 3:20pm.

His wedding took place on the 9th February at 7pm at Hotel Mulia Senayan and it was a 5 stars diamond hotel which translate to 6 stars in Singapore. It was grand. We stayed at Somerset Service Apartment with 3 room which is around the area as there are 3 groups of us. Pei Jun & boyfriend, Meiyi and myself.

I kinda like weddings in Indonesia, they start on time at 7pm and end by 9.30pm, chop chop!

The next day Sugih brought us around town and show us the biggest shopping center, Grand Indonesia, in Southeast Asia. It takes about 30 minutes to cover 1 level without going into any shops! Unfortunately, due to our rush flight, we just briefly walked around.

Seems to me that Sugih is doing very well, driving a Mercedes CL55 AMG at the age of 24 while I am still studying!

• Sugih Wedding Party – Part 1
• Sugih Wedding Party – Part 2
• Sugih Wedding Party – Part 3

Creative EP-630i Stereo Headset

On the way back, I got myself a Creative EP-630i Stereo Headset for my iPhone 3G at the duty free shop for SGD$73. The retail price is SGD$79. I was always skeptical about 3rd party headset on iPhone as I am afraid that the controls will not work on the music playback, but after checking it out in Hardware Zone’s forums, the control does works. Press the answer button 1 time to stop the song and 2 times to skip to the next track.

Let me repeat, Creative EP-630i Stereo Headset controls DOES WORKS on Music Playback as well.

Creative EP-630i Stereo Headset – Box

Creative EP-630i Stereo Headset – Contents

Creative EP-630i Stereo Headset – Closeup

Official Site: Creative EP-630i Stereo Headset