I was there last year at the Singtel iPhone 3G Launch queuing up for the iPhone 3G as a normal consumer. This year I was also there, but with a media pass. I was there pretty early at about 1.30pm because I have to go to Funan to run some errands. The media event started at about 3.30pm. We are brought around the Comcenter by Yuen Kuan Moon, the EVP of Consumer from Singtel. He explains to us the various part of the queue structure and how the customers will move about when queuing. Apart from that, Singtel announced a new service called Mio TV on Mobile. Customers can get to stream live tv stream from Channel 8, Channel News Asia, Bloomberg and a few others. It is not an iPhone App, but rather the streaming is done in Safari itself. It is pretty impressive as the quality is watchable and it doesn’t lag.
According to Kuan Moon, this year the response was much better than last year. He did not give an exact figure but he says in thousands. Last year the launch of iPhone 3G is basically register of interest and user still have to queue up. But this year, Singtel did a pre-order and require the customers to make a deposit of S$50 before queuing. There is also a separate queue for walk-in customers which closes at about 9pm due to the overwhelming response on the pre-order queue.
I took a day off and went to the LG Press Conference at Communica Asia 2009 which takes place yesterday at the Singapore Expo. The event name was called “World Premiere of LG’s Newest Feature Packed Smartphone”. 3 phones were mentioned during the press conference. The LG GD900 Crystal, LG GM730 and the LG Viewty Smart (LG GC900).
LG App Store
LG also announces their own LG Application store which will be opened on the 14th July 2009. It will have about 1,400 apps at launch time out of which about 100 of them are free apps. It will have local applications as well as LG dedicated applications. At lunch time it will only support Windows Mobiles app, if I am not wrong Java and Android apps will be supported eventually.
Video Games Live Singapore will take place on the 19th June 2009 (this Friday) at the Singapore Indoor Stadium at 8.30pm. There is a pre-show event happening right before the event at 6.30pm. It will be a 2 hour long concert. Ticket are priced at S$55, S$70, S$85 and S$115 and you can get them from SISTIC
What is Video Games Live? Video Games Live – the biggest and most popular video game concert in the world debuts in Singapore!
This is a concert event put on by the video game industry to help encourage and support the culture and art that video games have become. Video Games Live (VGL) bridges a gap for entertainment by exposing new generations of music lovers and fans to the symphonic orchestral experience while also providing a completely new and unique experience for families and/or non-gamers. The show is heralded and enjoyed by the entire family. It’s the power & emotion of a symphony orchestra mixed with the excitement and energy of a rock concert and the technology and interactivity of a video game all completely synchronized to amazing cutting edge video screen visuals, state-of-the-art lighting and special on-stage interactive segments with the audience.
I was invited to the Singtel AMPed event today which is held at Mandarin Oriental. Singtel AMPed is a music service similar to Nokia Comes with Music except that it is not tied down to any phones. It is a music service that you can enjoy regardless if you owned a Nokia, Samsung or a Sony Ericsson mobile phone. It is a free service for you if you are currently on 3G Flexi plans or you have the Broadband on Mobile (200MB) as a value added service.
Here are some of the key features taken from the press release:
Went for the Nokia N97 Blogger Preview at Nokia Singapore office located at Alexandra Technopark. The Nokia N97 will be the next Nokia flagship device. It felt solid when I got my hands on it. There will be 2 colors for it. The black as well as the pearl white. There are a lot of interesting applications/widgets that you can place on the home screen such as Facebook, Stocks, Weather, etc. Gone are those days of those boring Active Standby screen which exists all the way till the N96. You can have up to 5 widgets on the home screen which you can arrange in any order you like. A neat feature which not many people may know is there if you swipe to the left or right of the home screen, all your widgets will be hidden to protect your privacy. Swipe again to get them back.
The sensitivity of the screen is just average due to the technology used. If I am not wrong, the N97 is using a resistive screen to cater for a wider audience with many different methods of input instead of a capacitive screen and hence scrolling or “flickering” is not as smooth as iPhone. That is the only complaint I have. In terms of responsiveness, I felt that it is more responsive than the iPhone. Typing on the mini QWERTY keyboard is quite smooth for me as the keys are not clustered together.
Introduction
The new Acer Aspire Timeline series mark the beginning of a new era in mobile computing, where users stay connected and enjoy entertainment with their notebooks for a longer time. With the new Aspire Timeline series, Acer reached a delicate equilibrium between computer lightness and battery life, creating a series of featherweight notebooks that give you an entire day of computing on a single charge.
Long lasting battery life for all day computing Acer based the new Aspire Timeline notebooks on a simple yet revolutionary idea: a series of ultra thin and light notebooks which are more efficient, reducing energy consumption to the minimum for maximum usage time. The result is a notebook as light as 1.6kg, and with more than eight hours battery life, so that important tasks will not be interrupted by a loss of
power.
In addition, with the Acer Smart Power key, battery life can be further extended through advanced settings. Press the Smart Power key to boost power saving capabilities and extend battery life, thus expanding the time of computing freedom to more than 8 hours.
I was invited to a Intel/Dell Swarm event yesterday at Geek Terminal. Dell Swarm is a very nice idea and the idea was came out by Dell Singapore and hence Singapore is the first country to be launching it on 5th May 2009 (tentatively). Dell business model has always been unique and most polytechnics and universities around the world always use Dell business model and supply chain as case study for the students. Dell Swarm brought a whole new meaning in buying things online.
When we all want to buy Dell products, the first thing that comes to our mind will be, Dell Singapore Website. You can also email or call to make your Dell purchases. This is a 1 to 1 buying directly from Dell. What if you want to gather more of your friends to buy together in bulk to enjoy greater discounts? That is Dell Swarm for you. Dell Swam allows you and your friends (up to 15 people) to buy Dell products in a Swarm together and enjoy the bulk discount. Each person is allowed to buy up to 3 units of any Dell products. You can share the Swarm via social networking sites like Facebook and ask you friends to join the buying spree. Each swarm will last for 72 hours or when the people in the swarm reaches 15.
As mentioned in my previous post, Nokia Messaging makes mobile email easy and mobilizes consumer email across a range of Nokia S60 devices. Nokia Messaging enables users to quickly set up, access, and use their email on their Nokia devices through a service that is optimized for mobile email.
Today, there was a blogger event showcasing Nokia Messaging on Nokia Eseries phones such as the E71, E63, E66 and the E75. Setting up an email has never been easier, just need two things, your email address and your email password and Nokia Messaging will automatically try to determine your IMAP settings (default is IMAP and not POP3) based on your email address. If you are using Hotmail or Yahoo Mail, you are able to use the IMAP services on Nokia Messaging even though you are not Hotmail/Yahoo premium paying customers. Do note that you are not connecting to the mail severs straight but you are going through Nokia servers and then Nokia servers will query the mail servers on your behalf. Similar to how BlackBerry works. You are allowed up to 10 email accounts (non-corporate) on the Nokia Messaging.
I was invited to the Singtel Blogger Race on the SingTel F1 Simulators which current location is at SingTel Pickering Operations Complex. It will be over at Suntec City next week if I am not wrong. I also got to put on the F1 race suit and after wearing it, it was literally an inbuilt sauna due to the fire resistant material! After taking pictures with it, I immediately took it off. No wonder those F1 drivers can lose a lot of weight!
Got to play with the SingTel F1 simulators, it was developed by a London company. I must say it is pretty realistic especially the crashing part. I did pretty bad for the score, took 3 minutes and 22 seconds to complete a lap. The winner was 2 minutes and 36 seconds and it was by a girl! Even the runner up also was a girl! Guys took the 3rd and 4th place!
I was at the Tampines 1 blogger mall tour and meet together session together with Li Xiang. The meeting time was 2pm, but we are slightly late a little. I apologized for that. We met at level 6 which is at the management office. Upon reaching level 5, we realized that there is no way up to level 6 as the lift button and escalator to level 6 was disabled. The only way up is from service stairs.
On the first day, an estimated 111,000 people visited Tampines 1 and on second day it rose to 143,000. All shopping malls are equipped with a human traffic counter at the top of all glass door entrances. I didnât know about it actually. If you happen to note it next time, it is actually a little black box often mistaken as a sensor.The tour started from level 5 all the way to basement 1. Due to time constraint, we only visited certain stores.
