Every Thursday night is Bingo Night at my local dive bar. The prize for hitting five in a row? Free drink tickets. And a good round can mean endless photo ops for me and my crew. As excited as I was to start capturing the, uh, memories, I was a little disappointed by this camera's bulk. At just over 6 ounces and 1.4 inches thick, there's no squeezing it into a back pocket. But 8-megapixel resolution, combined with a sharp 5X optical zoom, guaranteed that every celebratory shot of Jameson was captured. Reliving the hilarity the morning (or afternoon) after was a snap. I just hooked the cam to my computer via the included USB cable and transferred the images with the push of a button. Next Thursday, I'll probably opt to leave this beefy cam at home, but I'll cherish those intoxicating images forever. -- Jenna Wortham
[RATING: 7/10] [RETAIL: $200] [ kodak.com ]

Last week have been a near hell week for me, as I had to run about between my operations offices, factories and clients in preparation of the Single District Single Industry (Satu Daerah Satu Industry) where everyone from the whole Malaysia gather about in Ayer Keroh Melaka and display and show off their products and goods at the MITC Expo Hall.

First off, the organiser done a good job but less to be said of their contractors and staff alike. Power lines and connections are not up, NO WiFi for us in the whole hall, and poor Wireless Cellular Broadband connectivity be it Celcom or Maxis alike. Signage were wrong, with the stickers up at the wrong booths.

And that we could only move in using the back loading bay doors about after dark. Ouch! Wiring was still messy. Never mind.

But then, the convention had under estimated the number of participants in the hall. Catered for just over 300 people, regional district offices booked just for about 400 odd people and the MITC Ancasa Hotel could only cater for less than half of that. Some are placed all over, like the Kings hotel and making thinsg even worse was the weekend, with Singaporeans flocking Malacca during the school holiday.

So, what happens next is a standard norm. 4 or even 7 people cramped and camped into a single double bed hotel room. No extra mattress or pillows, many had to make do with the carpeted floors. ME? I was ready. Darn right ready for this as it’s a standard for Malaysian expos, as it’s how the arrangements were during MIHAS or even others.

What is the after effect? Well, think of it as when I got too pissed off and woke up in the Guard Room or the Police Lock up cells. Hard flooring and full of mites. YES! Mites and Cockroaches flock the place.

Silly, and thus I got a nasty ache in my ear and a nasty bite on the ear lobes. Must be a mite I thought and so the antiseptic don’t seem to work. One reason is….dust mites don’t bite… Cockroaches does.

So, remind me to find my own accommodation ahead of time. And avoid any expos outside my own working area. At least I could sleep in the factory storeroom or something like that.

The Nokia E63 is the cheaper brother to the more elegant E71. Slightly thicker with more playful colors of blue and “Space Marine” red, the E63 boasts a similar form factor sans the secondary camera, HSDPA. It also comes with a lower resolution 2MP camera as compared to the E71’s 3.2MP camera. Truthfully, this is not a bad deal if you’ve always wanted to own an E71 but could not spare the extra cash. The phone is obviously targeted to compete with the Palm Centro which caters to a more young and hip market that desires much for a QWERTY keyboard.

One thing that the E63 has that the E71 doesn’t — a 3.5mm audio output! The E71 only has a 2.5mm which means you’d have to find a third party adapter to plug in your regular headphones.

* S60 3rd Edition FP1
* WiFi, 3G (no HSDPA?)
* Quad band GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
* Dual band WCDMA, 3 models: E63-1 900/2100 MHz, E63-2 850/1900 MHz, E63-3 850/2100 MHz
* Dimensions: 113 x 59 x 13 mm Weight: 126 g Volume: 87 cc
* 2 megapixel camera
* 2.36″ QVGA (240×320 pixel) display
* 3.5mm stereo AV socket
* Micro-USB connector
* 110 MB internal memory plus microSD socket (up to 8GB)
* FM radio with RDS
* 1500mAh battery

[photo from PhilMUG]

Share This

Filed under: Laptops, Tablet PCs

The Monitor's circulation has fallen from a peak of 223,000 in 1970 to about 50,000 now, while its online traffic has soared. The newspaper gets about 5 million page-views per month, compared with about 4 million five years ago and 1 million a decade ago.

Citi Investment Research analyst Catriona Fallon wrote Monday that she expects newspapers' revenue from classified, national and retail advertising to continue falling through 2009. And, in the context of initiating coverage of three major newspaper publishers -- Gannett Co., The New York Times Co. and The McClatchy Co. -- she said online revenue is years away from offsetting declines in print.

Today Google has launched Gmail Themes; this new feature allows users to customize the appearance of their Webmail application with a range of new looks. Google is all set to roll out this new feature over the next few days.

Gmail Themes is a departure for Google, as they have not been known for offering anything with color and style. Google are also adding smiley?s to their Gmail service, in the hope of adding a bit of fun to their service.

Google are going all out to offer users a new Gmail experience, and are even willing to get rid of their Gmail logo on some of the new skins. I wonder how many new skins there are to choose from, and if you can edit them in any way?

Source

Ina Fried / Beyond Binary:
Ballmer: ‘We are done’ with Yahoo acquisition idea  —  Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer threw his daily bucket of cold water on the notion that the software maker will return with a new bid for all of Yahoo.  —  “We are done with all acquisition discussions with Yahoo,” Ballmer said …

"Since I got my HTC Mogul from Sprint last spring, I had been syncing with two PCs, one at home and one at work. Life was good - I was where I was supposed to be on time, and remembering everyone's birthday and anniversary. "

Then the problem began. She upgraded her Mogul to Windows Mobile 6.1 and was no longer able to sync with two PCs. Instead, ActiveSync throws back error 86000107. It works fine with the first PC, but not the second. Microsoft Connect has a more detailed thread about this issue. I don't use ActiveSync (I'm on Vista now with WMDC) and I don't sync with two PCs, so I've not seen this issue. In the Connect thread, the resolution is given as it being an OEM issue that needs to be fixed.

If you use ActiveSync and sync with two PCs, have you seen this issue after upgrading to WM6.1? I am wondering if this affects all 6.1 devices or just a few.

Filed under: Gaming

Good news for HTC Touch Pro hopefuls! A week after popping up with Bell, the QWERTY-enabled handset is now officially available with Telus.

The Touch Pro showed up on the Telus website in the last 24 hours for $299.99 on a 3-year contract, $549.99 on a 2-year contract, $599.99 for a single year, and $649.99 contract-free.

It?s obviously more expensive than what Bell is offering, but if you fancy Telus as a provider, than the heftier price tag of the Touch Pro shouldn?t be much of an issue for you. At least you now have options as to where to get your Pro on.

Share This

This is a post from Cell Phones Etc. entitled:
Telus offers up HTC Touch Pro for $299.99 (3-yr contract) | Add your Comments

Gaming

Science and Technology

"Adobe’s Flash Player is on 98 percent of all desktop computers, but it is still struggling to make the jump to mobile phones. If you want Flash on a mobile device, right now you have to settle for a compromised version: Flash Lite. But Adobe is committed to bring the full Flash Player experience to mobile phones, as evidenced by its Open Screen Project. On Monday, at its Adobe MAX developer conference, it will demonstrate Flash Player 10 running on a Windows Mobile phone. (However, Flash won’t actually ship on Windows Mobile until late next year)."

Adobe MAX has come and gone and during that time Adobe has announced that would release Flash technology to the Windows Mobile platform and even demonstrated versions of Flash running on Windows Mobile and Google Android. It is really interesting to see Flash running on Google's Android platform as these handsets are virtually brand spanking new. It is amazing to see how quickly big name companies such as Adobe are jumping on consumer smartphone bandwagon since the release of the Apple iPhone and Google Android platforms. Sometimes I wish Microsoft could inspire that kind of innovation and excitement in the mobile industry. It is an incredibly exciting time to be a smartphone user, no matter which device or operating system is in your pocket. However I am still annoyed that it has taking this long for Adobe to get around to bringing Flash to our handsets.

I wanted to mention that I am feeling at home in the whole territory of EU and I don’t feel “foreigner” anywhere inside of EU - whether it is Finland or Spain. So next week in Barcelona I will feel at home very much so.

In practice it means that I could move and live permanently in any place inside of EU, but I lived already in Italy - similarly warm country as Spain - so Spain is too warm for me, and thus not an option for me.

But who knows, I never say never. Which reminds me: I must plan/book my visit in Ireland next month…

¡Café mexicano! El operador Movistar lanza mañana la red 3,5 G en México.

Si bien es cierto es la tercera operadora en ofrecer 3G en la nación azteca, promote ser más rápida que la red 3G de Telcel, porque cuentan con HSDPA y estarà disponible en 8 ciudades tras una inversión por 125 millones de euros erogados por la compañía española en este año.

A principio de año América Móvil anunció un despliegue masivo de su red 3G en sus operadoras de América Latina, Telefónica recogió el guante y se propone a dar pelea. Movistar canta jaque en los cuarteles generales de la empresa del Sr. Carlos Slim, seguro que ellos no pueden hacer lo mismo con ellos en Madrid.