The Hunt for the Best Portable Tablet Writer

Today, 14th July 2013, Microsoft slashes its ill-fated Surface RT tablet by as much as 30% (US$150) for the 16GB model.

This news is of utmost interest to me.  I've been hunting for the past weeks on a good bluetooth keyboard casing for my iPad 3rd Gen.

I've bought and tried this one as shown below.



I ditched it eventually due to its non-attached design, making it very clumsy to use.

I may not type alot on the iPad, but when I really need to type, e.g. for emailing or blogging, I would wish a hardware keyboard is there.

Then comes Microsoft Surface RT.  It looks sleek.  It is sleek.
With the "Touch Keyboard" or "Type Keyboard" attached, it's a perfect dream mobile writer for me.





I know I have to get it.  But with a price tag of Singapore Dollars $668 for the 16GB model and not including the keyboard, it's never a sound deal to make.  I'll wait.

The big news came 2 days ago when I read that Microsoft is slashing its RT price by US$150.  To convert to Singapore dollars, that's around S$180, thus making the 16GB model pricing at around S$480!

The new price has not been announced for Singapore market yet.  But at S$480, I will make the dash for it!

Can't wait!

iOS 7 - Are Their New Features New?

I've been reading posts about the new features in iOS 7 are either existing or old features of Android.
But not all are true.

There are some "new" features in iOS 7 that cannot be seen upfront.
For instance, as claimed in the keynote, Craig said, "true multitasking with great battery life performance".
If this holds true, it's something "new" over Android, in my opinion.

My last 2 Android phones (S2 and HTC G14) battery life was so bad that it's one of the reasons I dumped Android.

I still prefer the current iOS 6 pseudo-multitasking functionality. I don't really need true multitasking at the expense of battery life.

My First Foray into C# Programming Territory

1 week ago, I started my first shot at a C# programming project.
I come from a Java programming background, but due to work involvement, I got to play with C# programming language.

So, on the 28th May 2013, I released an "alpha" version of this "hobby" project of mine to Sourceforge.net:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/jovialnotepad/



Today, it has been promoted to "beta" version 0.3, and I plan to strip the "beta" tag this weekend.

This morning, I've got a nice email in my gmail inbox from Softpedia Editorial Team.
They have put up my program to Softpedia software site!

It's at the following site:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-tools/Text-editors/Jovial-Notepad.shtml

However, it's a version outdated from my Sourceforge.net site.

My MP3 Sound Quality

I just can't go back to 128kbps coded mp3.
192kbps is a good compromise between quality and file size.
With my above-average earphones, it really makes a difference in terms of sound quality.

If only my iPhone comes with 1 TB space....

Macro Lens Photography

I came across this "Macro + Wide Angle" lens for mobile phones few weeks ago and bought it to have some fun with macro photography.

The one I bought is this "clip-on" type that can be used by simply clipping it over the edge of the phone with the lens aligned to the phone's lens.

Today I've taken some close-up pictures with the macro lens and I will show them beside their respective original photo taken without the lens.

There's also the Wide-Angle lens that comes with the package and I touch on that at a later time.

These pictures were taken indoor at night under florescent lighting, which explains the poor photo quality.
But still, the macro effect is apparent.