Kelantan

I have just received my KKM placement of the year: Kelantan.

Hope to update after I get to Kelantan. Some people may cry because they got Kelantan. In fact, the grumpy uncle HA who handled my body check also got softened when he heard that I am going to Kelantan. swt. Not very sure why. But I definitely look forward to going to serve in the Malay heartland for different experiences.

Hope to see you soon.

Windows Live Skydrive 2010 & Why a PC user should have one

After facing fierce competitions from especially Apple's Mac OS X, Microsoft launched several features a few years ago to make up for Windows' weaknesses. Windows Live Essentials was born then. Most of these apps were launched as counterparts to Apple's iLife suite, which comes with any Mac purchased. Some of the apps include Windows Live Messenger (iChat), Windows Live Photo Gallery (iPhoto), Windows Live Mail (Apple Mail), and Windows Live Movie Maker (iMovie). However, there is one thing in the package which has no free counterpart in Mac, and it is the Skydrive.



Skydrive is a free storage provided by Microsoft, giving a user up to 25GB of cloud storage. Each file upload, however, is limited to 50mb, meaning each individual file you upload should not exceed 50mb at the moment. 50mb is actually a comfortable size for backups of documents, musics, and pictures, because these files rarely even reach 50mb in size. Therefore, it is a great choice of online backup.

You can also use skydrive to store important documents that you want to access anywhere. For example, an important presentation, an important document which you wish to look and edit when you're not in front of your PC. From my experience Skydrive has little downtime, meaning it should be there most of the time when you need it. You can also make files private, away from those prying eyes, make files available to friends only, or simply public for everyone.



Picture sharing is also available on Skydrive. Most Malaysians use Facebook instead of Microsoft's MySpace for social networking, but the quality of pictures in Facebook is plain horrible. To say it really, it is meant for just browsing, more like a preview. And the most important thing is that most pictures without people usually don't get uploaded to Facebook, simply because there're no people in it (note: Social Networking). With the massive amount of storage in Skydrive, you can easily upload original sized pictures to Skydrive, and later share it with friends of your choice or just make it public. Viewers can even download files as .zip archive.

Massive uploading is also very easy now, thanks to Siverlight. Just use any browser to go to skydrive and upload files, you will be able to drag and drop files into the box provided in the page, with Silverlight installed in your PC or Mac.


That said, there are also quite a few weaknesses in it too. For instance, user cannot upload folder to Skydrive; they must select files. Folder management in Skydrive is also highly uncomfortable, and it hasn't been changed since its inception. Viewing Skydrive on mobile is also a PITA, as it gets unresponsive sometimes (Tried on a Nokia Symbian and iPhone before). However, it is a very useful place for online backups of your documents and files which you wish to access anywhere with Internet.

Life @ 12/6/10

It has been busy for me.

Lots of things were done since a month ago, and although I still get rest, tiredness still set in quickly.

World Cup fever is going on, but don't expect me to catch any action unless Germany, Spain, England and Brazil are playing or 16 team onwards LOL.

The iPhone 4 has also been launched a few days back, featuring a big leap for iPhone, although not very much if compared to the competition. Of course I must say the Apple A4, 960x640 screen, internet speed and design are all very great, but the single LED flash is bound to suck, and FaceTime, if only available via WiFi & iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 only in Malaysia, this means almost nobody is going to use it. However it is, it is still iPhone, means the focus is on the phone as a mobile computer. In this field the iPhone is truly great.


Lets await the battle between Nokia N8 (If they don't fail it), HTC EVO and the iPhone 4G. This surely is a very interesting summer.

"Statistics"

A recent dispute in statistics between a federal minister and the nation's Treasury has again reminded us on the importance and potency of statistics.

People may still remember another set of disputed statistics between a research institute and a federal agency causing an economics researcher to resign, a few years back. The moral of these stories is that statistics can always be misused and read differently. When people quote statistics, they should quote results from reliable sources, not just "according to statistics" or "according to poll". God knows any liar can create a poll or statistics in split second.

The dispute between the Treasury and the federal minister may go beyond statistics deep into politics, but whatever the reason is, both their 'statistics' methods and results should be evaluated further because we deserve to know the true amount of money involved.

Nokia N86’s v30 firmware

Nokia has released v30 firmware for the N86 device. I installed it and unfortunately it seems buggier than V21. T_T

 

Some of the problems I experienced were:

1. Laggy camera: the display on camera lags from time to time, even during video capture. Howevere there seem to be no effects on the actual recording though.

 

2. Dropped calls: I experienced dropped calls which has never happened before.

 

3. Random restarts: The phone now restarts very suddenly, especially during web-browsing T_T this totally sucks.

 

The firmware also claimed bugfixed email client, though I didn’t see any improvements in its speed.

 

Come on Nokia, you gotta do better than this.

湖岸记

雨后湖畔凉风转 明月相伴千杯还

忽闻琵琶哀怨声 伊人亭内叹沧桑

 

把酒欲询伊人感 只顾琵琶不复旁

如此相见在天涯 仅诉心音勿有他

 

天籁音间恨愁茫 心有所托情更长

明日嫁作他人娘 非所好也非所想

 

自古称羡戏鸳鸯 比翼连理人皆唱

不如湖畔千杯乱 笑尽人生多少难！

For the egocentric ones~

If you have a great interest in self-worshipping, you can try this website and make yourself the Hero of Sweden.

 

For self-worshipping purposes, I used my Avatarised picture which you can see in the movie above (click link for larger version). Looks great huh?

Firmware update 21.006 and free Ovi Maps for Nokia N86 now

Good news for all N86 users lately, as a minor firmware update was released a few days ago and now: The much anticipated Ovi Maps with free driving navigation! Go to your Software Update app to download (approx 8mb download) it now!

 

 

Feels like 37 degrees currently… that’s killing T_T

Symbian^3 UI

More details for the next generation UI for Symbian…called Symbian^3.

 

Apparently, Nokia has ‘taken’ a lot of good points from other UIs and improved on their own advantages. Of course copying isn’t exactly a nice thing to do…but if you’re losing out and copying is the only way, then it should be. Whatever it is, I think the single feature which I’m most interested in will be the graphical multitasking which is “not a trick”(Quote: video). It gives me an AeroPeek feel which I think will definitely make multitasking so awesome that you won’t want to miss doing it at all! I mean, look at iPhone OS.

Log 4/3/10

Few days of integrated seminars have passed. After today’s seminar, I guess everyone has a reason to be wary of their classmates. Hehe.

 

Today I read about Ovi Mail having combined its address book with Ovi contacts. For unknowing people, Ovi is a set of services provided by Nokia to almost all Nokia users, maybe except 1208 and the likes. I was first exposed to this Ovi thing after I got my N86. Ovi Mail came as part of the free Ovi services to compete with the other smartphone market players, I believe.

 

I reminded myself of the number of times I have switched my mailboxes. Switching mailbox is never an easy thing. I used to have a Yahoo Mail account (Yahoo Mail was a big thing back then, compared to its petty competitor Hotmail, which I never like at all, but was forced to use when I started an MSN messenger account.), then changed to a second Yahoo Mail, then added a third Yahoo Mail together with the second one, then hotmail (MSN!~), then 163 (Chinese) mail, finally gmail when it was in its early beta stage. Of course, gmail remained until now.

 

Now that Google is on the verge of ruling the virtual world, I thought of leaving it by jumping to Ovi mail. Very ironic huh?

 

Of course it is always very good to see Nokia trying to protect its smartphone market that it once ruled with customer services. The pressure of free market. It even provides OTA sync of your details with Ovi server, which I think is very great.

 

But I guess I wont be switching to Ovi Mail yet huh? Gmail works perfect on Nokia Messaging anyway. I still write blog on blogspot (Google owned), read on Google Reader, and use Google search instead of Bing or Yahoo (which again something I have never liked to use).

 

Whatever it is, good job Nokia, and hope you continue to provide more conveniences and innovations to your users!

Log 3/3/10

最近这几天终于又何多月不见的友人们重聚，可惜时间未允，尚未与所有人叙谈。

这几天里，大家都在分享过去数月的事情，算是共同学习（共同三八）的一种吧。

这才知道其实到处都发生了很多趣怪之事。三八当中又叹有笑。

又有谁能预知未来的日子里会发生什么事？也许朋友也会改变了。还不如趁现在把小小心结给忘记，过得快乐一点。以警戒及不信任之心对待所有身边的人，只会让自己老得更快。把一切事情看成一面倒对自己不利，只会让自己更加忧郁，没有信心面对接下来的挑战。

有时候看的比较简单，反而会快乐。

iPhone coming to DiGi!

Finally iPhone is now available to a second telco in Malaysia. Too bad my interest in iPhone is now replaced with iPod touch/iPad…and my money with N86.

 

Let’s see how Digi, who has a long record challenging the two taikos of Malaysian telco arena with all kinds of low prices, is planning to outsell Maxis. Hehe…interesting war ahead. I doubt if Digi has enough 3G coverage though.

My dirty iPod Touch's invisible shield

After almost a year of using, the invisible shield seemed to have the ability to accumulate dirt, causing the entire shield to look so yellow. Finally i cant bear the sight of my yellowish iPod and tore it away.

You can see that the yellowish colour on the shield is so ever evident. Finally my iPod looks like steel again..^^

Plants vs. Zombies for iPhone/iPod Touch

This gotta be one of the more fun games I’ve played in a while! Well, indeed, considering I haven’t played any iPhone games in the past 3 months.

Plants vs. Zombies ($2.99) is a port from the Windows version of the game. Just like many games else, playing Windows games on the iPhone/iPod Touch sometimes give you even better experience and excitement, because it’s now touch screen! Price is just right for me so no hesitation necessary ^^

 

Recommended if you like the Windows version of it for different experiences! ^^

Tweetdeck: Twitter+Facebook+Linkedin client

I’ve recently discovered a great application for users to track their twitter and facebook updates. It’s tweetdeck.

Tweetdeck uses Adobe AIR technology. It auto-updates your twitter and facebook account status every few minutes and notifies you when there are new updates. It’s useful for people who have multiple social networking accounts and  doesn’t like going to each and every webpage on their own.

 

Generally, I found the app very convenient and nice to use after a few days. The only down side to this is the amount of RAM it eats. It starts with 100mb+ and can easily reach 200mb. It’s not exactly a concern for me (I have 4gb), but it may not be quite suitable on older computers.

 

Again, do try if you have the luxury of large RAM and facebook and twitter accounts. Follow my twitter too if you wish @kyle8c.

 

Will do updates when I’ve evaluated the other similar applications.

Tiger Woods Apologizes

Symbian^3 Preview at MWC 2010

The two most exciting change in the mobile world this year are Symbian and Windows Mobile. Preview of Symbian^3, the next generation Symbian touchscreen OS is as below:

I think the whole concept is good to begin with, it maintains the life of the OS while modifying the entire user interface to make it much more usable. While Symbian^4 will be following introduction of Symbian^3 shortly, we still have reasons to be awed by Nokia’s latest innovations in its flagship OS.

 

I’d have waited for Symbian^3 devices if I hadn’t bought a new phone. LOL.

Log @ 18/2/10

It has been a while since I last posted anything here.

As what my last post here suggested, I went for clinical attachment in Hospital Melaka . The whole thing just finished right before Lunar New Year, so kinda lucky for me. While I have subscribed to a wireless broadband provider, it didn’t work very well from my location in Melaka, so sort of wasted too. Its a pity because it worked very well in TI. I even got 2.++mbps from speedtest.net in TI.

In the mean time, I also tried blogging at tumblr, but it seemed to have not worked out well so far, so I’m back here at blogger.com for now.

Anyway, I have to be prepared to return to school on 1st of March later. Still lots of work and some articles to churn out before that. I hope I can do everything before 28th this month, which is like 9 days away.

I also look forward to updating this blog with much more stuff than it used to have. =)

Lastly, happy Lunar New Year and welcome the year of Golden Tiger according to Chinese zodiac.

谨賀新年！恭喜發財！虎年大吉！