My Songs of the Year 2011

These are the three songs that left the best impression on me this year:

李佳微 - 煎熬

She is the winner of a Taiwanese idol talent show.
She shows she can go high in terms of note in this song.
The music video is a controversial one with captured more than a million hits on YouTube.

---

胡夏 - 那些年

Again, a winner of a singing talent show, he got to sing the theme song of this year big chinese movie hit, 那些年,我们一起追的女孩.
He has a clean and soothing voice.

---

A-Lin - 无路可退

She got a strong, mid-low voice that need no trending auto-tune to excel.

---

My iPhone / iPad MiniUSB Connector

Recently, Apple released a MicroUSB connector for iOS devices. With that, you can charge and sync your iPhone/iPad/iTouches using MicroUSB cable.
It's still not available in Singapore yet.

Days ago, I stumbled upon this similar connector, but for MiniUSB. Bought it straight away!
It works well using my portable harddisk's MiniUSB cable!



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad -

Icon Shortcuts on iPhone 4S without Jailbreak

For many, including me, one of the main reasons for jail breaking the iPhone is to install the non-Apple-approved hack "SBSettings" which allows fast toggle to some of the OS's functions such as Bluetooth and WIFI, etc.



As mentioned, this requires the iPhone to be jailbroken.
Currently, there's no jailbreak utility for the iPhone 4S an iPad 2 yet.
Therefore, installing SBSettings is never possible on them.

All is not lost! iOS actually comes with support for URL forwarding function.
E.g. Typing the following URL on your Safari will redirect you to the Bluetooth setting screen directly:
prefs:root=General&path=Bluetooth

We'll just need to assign this action to a launch-able homescreen icon to make it handy. It may not be as direct as a SBSetting Bluetooth toggle, but at least it's a close alternative without jailbreak.

You can use a free app called "Channels" to assign these URLs to launchable icons. However, these icons are launchable from the Channels app itself, not on the homescreen. Anyway, you can see it as a consolidation of the shortcuts in a "folder".




Personally, I use the Bluetooth shortcut a lot to turn on and off the Bluetooth on my iPhone 4S when I use it for my A2DP Bluetooth earphones and Creative A2DP speaker.

The followings are some of the built-in URLs in iOS 5:
About: prefs:root=General&path=About
Accessibility: prefs:root=General&path=ACCESSIBILITY
Airplane Mode On: prefs:root=AIRPLANE_MODE
Auto-Lock: prefs:root=General&path=AUTOLOCK
Brightness: prefs:root=Brightness
Bluetooth: prefs:root=General&path=Bluetooth
Date & Time: prefs:root=General&path=DATE_AND_TIME
FaceTime: prefs:root=FACETIME
General: prefs:root=General
Keyboard: prefs:root=General&path=Keyboard
iCloud: prefs:root=CASTLE
iCloud Storage & Backup: prefs:root=CASTLE&path=STORAGE_AND_BACKUP
International: prefs:root=General&path=INTERNATIONAL
Location Services: prefs:root=LOCATION_SERVICES
Music: prefs: root=MUSIC
Music Equalizer: prefs:root=MUSIC&path=EQ
Music Volume Limit: prefs:root=MUSIC&path=VolumeLimit
Network: prefs: root=General&path=Network
Nike + iPod: prefs:root=NIKE_PLUS_IPOD
Notes: prefs:root=NOTES
Notification: prefs:root=NOTIFICATIONS_ID
Phone: prefs:root=Phone
Photos: prefs:root=Photos
Profile: prefs:root=General&path=ManagedConfigurationList
Reset: prefs:root=General&path=Reset
Safari: prefs:root=Safari
Siri: prefs:root=General&path=Assistant
Sounds: prefs:root=Sounds
Software Update: prefs:root=General&path=SOFTWARE_UPDATE_LINK
Store: prefs:root=STORE
Twitter: prefs:root=TWITTER
Usage: prefs:root=General&path=USAGE
VPN: prefs:root=General&path=Network/VPN
Wallpaper: prefs:root=Wallpaper
Wi-Fi: prefs:root=WIFI



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How I Use iOS Gesture for iPad

With iOS 5 for iPad, it comes with a handy gesture system.
You can use four or five fingers to swipe up while in home screen to bring up the multitasking app bar and swipe left and right to go to next/previous app that was launched earlier on.

Here's one practical example of how I use the gesture on my iPad during my eBook reading session.

I was going to read one my my gadget magazines which has pricing in Indian currency.

I launched my XE Currency iPad app before I fired up eBook reader.





In the magazine, I came across the pricing of a Blackberry Bold 9900. The currency stated is in Indian currency.

Without pressing the home button, I swiped left using four fingers, the XE Currency app returned instantly.





I keyed in the pricing in the India Rupees box, and I got the Singapore dollars equivalent instantly.

Satisfied, I used four fingers and swiped right to bring me back to my last eBook reading location.

This is the kind of great user experience that I can't have in Android tablets!

Neat!

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The Box in the Cloud with iOS

The hottest Tech news yesterday must be the offering of free 50GB storage for box.net iPhone/iPad users.


I guess that's a competitive move by box.net to compete with iCloud.

So, now you happily dash to the App Store to download the official Box.Net app only to find out that there's no way to upload file using the app. Only download is supported.



Well, all is not lost.

I've been a Box.net user for more than a year now, and I've never use the official app to do uploading and downloading of files.
Here's how and what I do to upload and download files.

Method 1: Uploading using email attachment
For every folder created in box.net, a designated email address is created.
Any attachment like jpg, doc files attached to an email sent to this email address will be uploaded to the corresponding box.net folder! Ingenious!
However, note that this is potentially unsecured as you don't need any login to use this method.

To find out this designated email address, just visit box.net in your safari app on your iPhone or iPad.
Click on your folder of interest, and then click the Options drop-down on the upper right corner. (see the diagram below).



Next click on the "Upload by email". The designated email address will be shown:


This will be the email address to email to for your attachment upload.

Method 2: Using an app with Box.Net Integration
A better way, which is my preferred way is to use a file/folder management app with Box.net integration.
I'm using the excellent Good Reader app.


Once connected to your Box.net account, all the folders in your Box account will be displayed in Good Reader.
From there, you can download file, create folder, upload file from/to your 50GB storage!
One catch here: as iOS only allow app to access the Photo Library and the Documents(invisible to user) subfolder in the app folder itself, the files to be uploaded can only be picked from this folder. To put in files in this folder, you can use the PC iTunes file transfer or "Open In Good Reader" shortcut in other apps that supports the "Open In" shortcut.

Method 3: Buy an Android device, which supports file upload
This is the option I least recommend!
I wouldn't want to sacrifice a better user experience iOS for this feature.

There you have it!
A whopping 50GB cloud storage at your disposal!

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Bluetooth 4.0 on iPhone 4S

I wonder why Apple did not emphasize more on the Bluetooth 4.0 used in the iPhone 4S.
It's the first smartphone to implement that!


If the specs are to be believed, Bluetooth 4.0 not only better its earlier version in terms of range (50m vs 20m), the most significant feature is the extremely short "setup time" like pairing and searching.
Bluetooth 4.0 has a setup time approximately 3ms vs Bluetooth 2.0's 6 seconds.

Now, this fast setup time is even faster than NFC's (Near Field Communication) 0.1s!

This may open a lot of nice features using Bluetooth.
Can't wait to see them!

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iPhone Upgrade vs Samsung Upgrade

What makes upgrading from iPhone 4 to iPhone 4S less special than from Samsung Galaxy S2 to Samsung Nexus Prime?

I prefer to think it the other way round.

This is based on my personal usage of smartphone.
For me, iPhone 4S provides a lot more wanted features over iPhone 4 compared to that of Samsung Nexus Prime over Samsung Galaxy S2.

First, screen size.
The Nexus Prime has a bigger screen size at 4.65".
Do I need that much screen estate?
I'm currently using the 4.3" screen size Galaxy S2.
Yes, I would love that kind of bigger screen. However, I prefer to have a "palm-size" friendly phone which I can message without awkwardness with one hand. That I'm struggling with the 4.3". 4.65" is really beyond extreme.
For this, I would go for iPhone for the screen size.





Second, software:
I don't see any killer apps mentioned in the Nexus Prime that you cannot have in Galaxy S2.
I do see and impressed with the Siri voice recognition and control capability of the iPhone 4S that will not be in iPhone 4. And this may be what I need and will be using. I'm seeing this very useful when I drive on the road. Currently, I have make use of the stop at road junction red light to do a quick SMS texting.



Yes, I would sell my current Galaxy S2 for the iPhone 4S come 28th October 2011 when it comes to Singapore.


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Thoughts on Apple Device's Innovations

So, there seems a lot of suing around by big companies like Apple, Samsung, etc.


That leads to one to think of innovations, creativities, etc of the device.

Now, while the original Apple iPhone brought us new and highly intuitive handphone usage, a few of its ideas seems to me rather familiar...

Before the introduction of iPhone in 2007, I've been using a long string of Palm Treo handphone models, such as the Palm Treo 600, 650, 680 and Centro. Also not to forget those pre-smartphone PDAs like Palm M-100, T3, T5, TX, Lifedrive which I've owned before.

Here are 3 of the familiar functions that were implemented on the Palm devices before the 2007 iPhone 2G:

1) Ringer Switch
Simple idea, but great usability! This is one feature that is available on all Palm Treo smartphone models.



2) Threaded SMS
This is one feature that brought me to buy those Palm Treos. Even "heavy-weight" smartphones like Windows Mobile did not have threaded SMS back then.




3) Screen Rotation
I first saw a screen rotation feature on the Palm T3 PDA. There was no accelerometer back then though. You need to tap on a button to rotate the screen to landscape and vice versa. Following that, this feature starts appearing on Windows Mobile phones.
Now, that is innovation!



Sadly, due to extremely poor marketing of Palm Inc, Palm declined.

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My Top 3 Mandarin Songs of the Week

1. 李佳薇 - 煎熬
Strong and powerful voice.




2. 胡夏 - 那些年
Clean and "Boy-next-door" voice.





3. 郁可唯 / 林凡 - 听你说
Cheerful and clean voices there.




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We've Got The Smurfs

So, the Smurfs figurines come to MacDonalds'. Pestered by the kids, we bought two meals and got the first two last week.

This week, they introduce two new figures, one of which is Smurfette, my kids' favourite!

So, we just bought two more meals and got these two. The kids will be overjoyed!


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Now The iPad Can Run Flash Contents and Videos !!

One feature that is always being requested by users of iOS devices is Flash support. However till date, iOS still does not support Flash natively.

Now, things change for the better with the availability a few web browsers that support Flash.

There are at least 3 third party browsers now in the Apple AppStore that support Flash Content:
1) iSwifter
2) Puffin Web Browser
3) Skyfire

Both iSwifter and Puffin Web Browser supports both Flash Interactive contents and videos while Skyfire only support Flash Video.

I'm taking the following Flash Interactive Content-based website, "www.singtelshop.com" as an example.

Here's how it looks like when the URL is run in my iPad's built-in Safari Browser:



I'm stucked at the first screen using Safari Brower.

Here's how it looks when run in Puffin Web Browser:



Yes!! The all-so-familiar Flash content of SingtelShop shows! It's also as interactive as it's on desktop browser.
I would say it's even smoother than on my Galaxy Tab which supports Flash natively!

Well, I do not know if these browser (Puffin or iSwifter) did any conversion prior to serving the contents to the user. But it sure runs like native Flash content, if it's actually not native.

Price-wise, Puffin is not free and I don't see any "lite" version.
However there's a free lite version for iSwifter which runs the Flash contents as smoothly as Puffin.

Note that no Jailbreak is needed to run these browsers.

Now, I wonder why this is not being widely made known to iOS users.

Another reason to get the iPad over Android Tablet.

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Reasons to Upgrade From iPad 1 to iPad 2 - Video

There are many who told me that there are no reasons enough to upgrade my iPad 1 to iPad 2.
They feel that without a Retina Diaplay, the rest are too trivial.

I beg to differ and went on to sell off my iPad 1 and get the second gen. No regret since.
First off, video watching is one of my main uses of iPad.
The current iOS, as with the previous versions only support hardware video acceleration for mp4 format. In fact the built in Video app only support mp4 format.

Not long ago, Apple open up its app store to third party video player apps. These apps support video formats other than mp4, e.g mkv, avi, rmvb, etc. However it can only use software decoders to decode these formats. When these formats are played on my previous iPad 1, higher bit-rate videos tend to go sluggish intermittently.



I ran the same bit-rate video of avi format on my iPad 2 and hey, it plays rather smoothly!

Watch this space for more reasons to upgrade ....

Google Social Networking Service

Google launches a Facebook-competing service today, called Google+, which introduces services like Circles, Hang Out, and Huddle.



It's definitely refreshing to see a big player competitor coming in to compete with the ever-growing Facebook.
Not that Facebook is bad. But maybe it still could not handle the huge amount of user traffic accessing its site that some services become unstable or faulty. For example, the failed login that I'm still getting since a few months back.

Let's hope Google can score a hit with this Google+.

Now, if only I can get an invitation to try it out now.

My Anticipated iOS 5 Features - Part 4 - Gaming Controller API

One of the usages for my iPhone is like many others, gaming.
And my favourite kind of game has always been soccer gaming.
You have to control the 3D player's movement by the left hand "directional" buttons and right hand "shoot, pass" button.





As the iPhone has no physical buttons like those on the NDS or PSP, controlling by rubbing your fingers over the capacitive invisible buttons can be a pain, and it blocks the images on the screen at times.

I was thrilled when this iControlPad hardware gaming controller for iPhone was announced sometime back. However there's no news for its release to date.





This iControlPad would be any iPhone gamers' dream to own. It's easily seen that quality games on iOS devices are apparent.

However, the iControlPad still does not address full compatibility for all iOS games, as I would think that it uses its own API / codes to interact the game with its hardware buttons. That is, only games that are written using its API can utilise this piece of hardware.

Gaming is a huge market on Apple Appstore. Apple should address this and come out in the upcoming iOS 5, a standard API for game developers to use to develop their games to utilise this standard-based hardware buttons.

This will surely give the PSP a run for its money!

Read also:
My Anticipated iOS 5 Features - Part 3 - Standby Screen Clock
My Anticipated iOS 5 Features - Part 2 - Beaming
My Anticipated iOS 5 Features - Part 1 - USB Mass Storage



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My Anticipated iOS 5 Features - Part 3 - Standby Screen Clock

No, I'm not the only one around that don't wear a watch. When I'm away from my computer, I will rely on my handphone for the time. It is my watch.
I don't remember when I last wear a watch.

In pre-touchscreen handphone era, there's usually this clock display that appear every time you turn off the handphone screen. To view the time, you don't have to turn the set on. The time is there 24/7!

Since the advent of touchscreen handphone, the Clock Display suddenly disappears for unknown reasons! The ONLY touchscreen phone that I've used that sport a standby screen clock is the Palm Treo Pro. (It's still has the best Windows Mobile OS implementations, although the OS itself sucks big time!)



If Palm is able to put in on a touchscreen phone, I don't see why other manufacturers can't.

This standby screen clock is so handy and useful that I really think it should go in iOS 5.

Read also:
My Anticipated iOS 5 Features - Part 2 - "Beaming"
My Anticipated iOS 5 Features - Part 1 - USB Mass Storage

My Anticipated iOS 5 Features - Part 2 - "Beaming"

What is "Beaming"?
Long before iPhone got introduced in 2007 by Apple, PDA dominates the gadgets market. One of the neat features of Palm OS PDA is allowing the sending of a contact to another Palm OS PDA by just pressing and hold on to the "Contacts" hard button. No configuration needed, just press and hold for half a second.


As an owner of multiple iOS devices (iPhone 4 and iPad), I currently find it a pain to transfer files and URLs from my iPhone 4 to my iPad and vice versa. I normally resort to using a "cloud" based solution like Dropbox to exchange my files between my iDevices.
However, there's a problem here when there's no internet connection for my iPad. I'm having a WIFI-only iPad.

So, what I'm hoping for in iOS 5 is to have Apple adopting the NFC (Near Field Communication) technology to allow exchange data, files, URLs, etc between iOS devices. This is particular useful in Singapore where majority of the smartphone users are using the iPhone.

So, why not using Bluetooth? Why NFC?
Bluetooth connection still needs a considerable time to establish the link between the 2 devices. NFC needs just 0.1s compared to Bluetooth's 6s.

A major disadvantage of NFC is that the data transfer is about 5 times slower than the Bluetooth transfer rate. But if the uses are just limited to URLs, contact infos or small picture file exchange, the data transfer rate of 424kbit/s for the NFC is really fast enough.

Read also:
My Anticipated iOS 5 Features - USB Mass Storage

My Anticipated iOS 5 Features - USB Mass Storage

I'm going to start off a series of topics on the upcoming iOS 5 features which I very much anticipate.

First off, "USB Mass Storage".

Now, the closest competitor, Android OS is able to mount its file system(SD Card) as a standard "USB Mass Storage" device all along.

Even at the current version 4.2.1 of iOS, Apple is still not opening up this very much needed feature.


I take it that Apple is not going to compromise system instability by opening up filesystem access.

I very much hope that in iOS 5, Apple at least dedicate a single directory, say "/var/media/massstorage" and has its API allowing applications to have access to this particular directory.

Then, allow "USB Mass Storage" capability which points the root to this directory, so that users can copy/read files using the usual USB plug in.

In other words, do not restrict file transfer to just PC iTunes!

Reverse Parking - Head In or Butt In

Most of the car park lots in Singapore, and probably most countries are "Reverse Parking" type.

So, why is Reverse Parking called "Reverse Parking"? Why not "Forward Parking"?

Majority of Singaporean car drivers will "reverse" in (i.e. butt in first) their car when parking in Reverse Parking Lot. I'm one of them.

Now, I wonder why there are still drivers insisting in going "head in".

The problem comes when you are driving out of the car park lot.
You have to give way to traffic when driving out of the lot.
So now, do you prefer to "reverse out" or "drive straight out"?
Reversing out of the car park and giving way to traffic is definitely a pain and accident prone.

On the other hand, traffic have to give way to you when you are doing your parking. So, why not leaving the difficult part of "Reverse" to parking in, and not driving out?

iOS File System Restriction

Whenever Apple releases a new version of its iOS firmware, I will be hoping that they open up more low-level API to the developers.

Even simple and non-destructive API call to read/write to the ringtones file directory is not available. The iOS API only allows the app to write to it's own subdirectories only.


Now, Android OS users have been able to simply copy or download any .mp3 to a designated file directory on the SD card and the OS will be able to pick it up and set as ringtone.

For iOS, without jailbreaking, the only way you can add a new ringtone is via iTunes syncing.

I don't see any potential compromise to system instability by opening up the access of the ringtone directory to developers. As I've jailbroken my iPhone 4, I do know that the ringtone directory is at "/library/ringtones". I can just copy and .m4r music files to this folders and I can use any of them and set it as my ringtone.

There are now numerous "Ringtone Maker" apps in the App Store now.
However, if you read the instructions of all these apps, they will typically mention that the generated .m4r ringtone file can only be copied out using iTunes File Transfer. Thereafter, you will copy this copied out .m4r file to the iTunes Ringtone menu item and sync.

If only Apple allows the writing to the /library/Ringtones directory, the above tedious steps won't be necessary.

Let's see if Apple come to their senses in iOS 4.3.

Odd Chinese New Year Characters Explained

So here we are. One week away from Chinese New Year (CNY) on the 3rd February 2011!

CNY food and decorations are now crazily being sold all over the country.

Two of the decorations are these:









First, why is the character, "福" shown upside down here?
The character actually means good fortune. And upside down in Mandarin sounds like "coming to you".
So, an upside down 福 means "Good fortune will come to you".

The second picture shows a chinese character which is not in the dictionary.
In fact, it's 4 chinese characters joined together to form one gigantic character.
This gigantic character consists of the 4 characters, 招财进宝 in traditional Chinese characters. It means "Wealth comes to you".

Happy CNY to all!

Singapore Identity - Neighbourhood Coffeshop

Everyone I know knows that I'm a coffee lover.
One of my favourite places to have coffee is at the neighbourhood coffeeshop. Or "kopi tiam" as we are calling it in Hokkien. No, it's not called a Food Court as so many have called it. I hate Food Court.






The uncle or coffee boy that serve the coffee will greet you with familiar Singaporean Hokkien accent. He will remember your usual order of kopi.

Now, with everywhere employing Chinese Nationals from China to work in coffeeshop, our normal sounds like "kopi", "kopi o", "kopi siew dai", etc has suddenly become so unfamiliar.

The worst is some coffeeshop is converting to Food Court Style where they don't serve the coffee to you anymore. You have to order it at the counter.

Yes, the Chinese from China are mostly polite and do their stuff well.
But, we are losing our Singapore Identity in this area, as well as my morning coffee enjoyment.

Sad.

Thoughts on Car Accidents in Singapore

So, I was driving as usual to work as one of the many early birds.
Many of us came out early in the hope of avoiding paying the ERP (Electronic Road Pricing) when it starts when rush hour in that area begins.

It would be a usual "free entrance" for me as I would have gone through the ERP gantry before it starts charging.

But alas, it was not as expected today. I drive on 4 expressways every morning to work: PIE -> KPE -> ECP -> CTE

This day, I encountered an accident on PIE, KPE and ECP!
3 car accidents on the same morning at the same time. Obviously I got charged unwillingly at the ERP gantry!


And I wonder why car accidents happen so frequently in the past months. I encountered car accidents like once a week for the past one month or two.

I'm guessing one cause of it is the increase in the number of cars in recent months (before the authority decided to reduce the COE quota).

Let me put it this way:

More cars on the road ->
congestion during peak hours ->
increased ERP charges and lengthened operating hours at the ERP gantries ->
drivers rushing to beat the ERP gantries before they start charging ->
more accident-prone



In my opinion, increasing ERP rates and lengthen the operating time is not killing the root cause for car accidents and congestion. Reducing COE quota is a good one, and I applaud that.

However imagine this:
Reducing COE quota ->
Less people owning cars ->
More congestion on public transport!

My conclusion and opinion:
Ultimately, reducing COE is not a perfect solution. Slow down the increase in population is a good solution. No, I'm not saying reducing the birth rate. Birth rate should still increase. You know what I mean....

My Music Through the Past 3 Decades

So here we are, starting a new decade. The 2010s!
I'm old and lucky enough to have enjoyed through the last 3 decades as "young people".

Technology and music has gone through and changed a lot throughout these 3 decades. Ask someone my age which decade brings the best in terms of music memories and enjoyment. I'm quite certain majority will vote for the 80s or early 90s.

The 80s:
The main media for music is the cassette tapes. No internet, no MP3s, no downloading. All songs are stored in bought in cassette tapes and listened on a cassette player.


Yes, it was clumsy and slow. You couldn't skip to next song in half a second like MP3 could.
Here's the joy:
As the songs don't come easy (as in downloading MP3 in the 2010s), I treasured every single song in the cassette.
I could watch the cassette geared circular hub spinning as the music played. I could watch the numbered countered increasing gracefully as the music played.
I read the lyrics in that was printed on the cassette album cover and sang along with the song.
I took note of who wrote the song melody and who wrote the song lyrics.
As there wasn't any "online" means of transferring music, my classmates and friends get together face to face to discuss, chat and share our music experience.
What a joy that was.

Here's my all-time favourite album of the 80s:



I bought the cassette in 1988 even before he got famous in the East.
Michael Jackson's "Bad" album comes in second.

The 90s:
The CD (stands for Compact Discs, for those who don't know) comes along and become the defacto music format. The cassette format slowly got obsoleted.
I enjoyed the crystal clear music and ease of navigating the songs.
Experience is still as good as the cassette. Only complain was that it's much bulkier to bring out the portable CD player than the cassette Walkman.
Madonna rules for this period.



The 2000s:
Things began to get less personal. Especially the late 2000s where songs become digital. They are no longer "solid".
I don't have physical album cover lyrics to read.
I don't sing along with the song while reading the lyrics.
I don't meet up with friends face to face to discuss and chat music.
Songs are played "digitally" and "silently" in my mobile device. (in this case, my iPhone)
The previous song got played and forgot.
It's quantity but less quality now.
It's a sad situation.