Web Wednesday v.30 @ Roxie – 6 November 2009 – “Ma Yin Jeo 2.0 – Secrets of Running a Successful Online Presidential Campaign” with Charles Chuang

FRIDAY 6th November at a NEW VENUE, Roxie (formerly, the saucy strip club “Goodfellas”), Ground Floor, No 24-30 Ice House Street, Central (just down the street from The Fringe Club and the F.C.C.).

The topic is “Ma Yin Jeo 2.0 – Secrets of Running a Successful Online Presidential Campaign” with Charles Chuang, Taiwanese Internet entrepreneur and open source social enterprise activist.

The night kicks off at 6:30pm and ends around 9:30pm, there will be an entrance fee of HK$100, unless you’re a bona-fide student, in which case it’s HK$50. This includes one complimentary drink. All other drinks are at Happy Hour prices. 10% of entrance fees to Habitat for Humanity’s work in China: http://www.habitatchina.org/e/default_home.asp

Source : Web Wednesday Hong Kong

CNET Asia Community Blog Entry – My Take on the International Version of Kindle

My new entry over at CNET Asia Community Blog is up. This week’s entry, “CNET Asia Community Blog Entry – My Take on the International Version of Kindle”.  Click here for the full read.

US$20 Rebate for International Kindle

Is it because of the pressure from Barnes & Noble’s Nook, priced at US$259? or is it because of the unfairness of the extra US$20 for the international version of the Kindle? well, anyway, the latest news is there’s a rebate for us international users….a US$20 REBATE….woot.

Will post up a review of the Kindle in a day or two, but so far, loving it and the fast 3G modem for downloading books.

Hello,

Good news! Due to strong customer demand for our newest Kindle with U.S. and international wireless, we are consolidating our family of 6″ Kindles. As part of this consolidation, we are lowering the price of the Kindle you just purchased from $279 down to $259. You don’t need to do anything to get the lower price–we are automatically issuing you a $20 refund. This refund should be processed in the next few days and will appear as a credit on your next billing statement.

We’ll also send you a follow-up e-mail to confirm the refund once it has been completed.

We hope you enjoy your new Kindle. Please send us your feedback at: Kindle-feedback@amazon.com

Sincerely,

The Kindle Team

Nigel Barker Endorses SONY A900

Source – Nigel Barker.tv

CNET Asia Community Blog Entry – Amazon Kindle Finally Available Outside Continental US

My new entry over at CNET Asia Community Blog is up. This week’s entry, “Amazon Kindle Finally Available Outside Continental US”. Click here for the full read.

Web Wednesday v.29 @ Volar – 7 October 2009 – LUMINA

This month’s feature – an interview with Hong Kong’s very own Jennifer Thym, the director and writer of the most talked-about web series, Lumina.

LUMINA is free to view on their website (http://www.luminaseries.com) and their YouTube Channel (http://www.youtube.com/luminaseries) and is now being distributed on KoldCast.tv (http://www.koldcast.tv/).

The night kicks off at 6:30pm and ends around 9:30pm, there will be an entrance fee of HK$100, unless you’re a bona-fide student, in which case it’s HK$50. This includes one complimentary drink. All other drinks are at Happy Hour prices. 10% of the receipt will go to Oxfam’s relief work in Philipines and Vietnam in the wake of Typhoon Ketsana: http://is.gd/3OBCG.

Venue: Volar, Basement, 38-44 D’Aguilar Street, Lan Kwai Fong, Central.

Source : Web Wednesday Hong Kong

Video Preview – Microsoft Courier

Coming from a tablet user for the past 10+ years, I can tell you that this Microsoft Courier idea, if it works, would surely be one of the hottest thing to come but given Microsoft’s past track record, especially with their half heart support for OneNote and other Tablet devices and associated softwares…… I don’t know.  I surely hope it will be different this time around. Guess only time will tell.

Source – Gizmodo via myblogiphone

Now This Is A Fast Card – SanDisk Extreme Pro

Extracted from my CNET Asia Blog Article of the same name.

Last week, I was asked to test drive the all new SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash Card, thanks to the guys at TEXT100 HKG (great PR firm in Hong Kong). As an amateur photographer, by no means would I pass on checking out how fast this new memory card claims, that being 90MB/sec.

So how fast is this card… according to SanDisk -

• its reading and writing performance are up to 90MB/sex (600x)
• UDMA 6 enabled (works in all UDMA mode)
• Power core controller & enhanced super-parallel processing esp invented by SanDisk to increase the card’s performance level

Well, I put it up for some home-made testing of mine to check it out. I conducted a few read and write tests and I used the older generation SanDisk Extreme IV and the SanDisk Extreme FireWire Reader to benchmark the results.

For each full frame pic I take on my Sony A900, the size of the RAW file is around 37.6MB. I switched the shooting mode to burst mode and took 10 pictures in a roll. The average writing speed after 10 trials are as follow -

SanDisk Extreme IV 16GB – 11.9 sec

SanDisk Extreme Pro 16GB – 9.4 sec

Not bad for writing speed. In fact, this new Extreme Pro is whopping fast. Given the price and the storage size (64GB being the highest), it is the ultimate dream card when it comes to taking large picture file size and large video files.

Next up I tried out the read and writing time in copying 342 picture files (11.9GB) to and from my computer and the results are as follow -

SanDisk Extreme IV 16GB

• writing to card – 13 minutes 6 seconds
• reading from card and copying to PC – 7 minutes 16 seconds

SanDisk Extreme Pro 16GB

• writing to card – 12 minutes 48 seconds
• reading from card and copying to PC – 8 minutes 14 seconds

Looking at the read and write tests results, one might ask shouldn’t the more expensive Extreme Pro be a lot faster than the old Extreme IV? The answer is yes, the faster Extreme Pro do read and write faster but in order to see the results, it does depends on what kind of card reader you are using. SanDisk can roll out even more faster cards but they do need a fast reader as well. The 45MB/s FireWire Reader from SanDisk surely cannot catch up anymore.

SanDisk, hope you dig this.

One of my reader, David Golden, sent me an email pointing out the the card performance is most likely optimized for high performance burst mode as your statistics indicate.  The sustained write performance (copying 12 GB of data to the card) is not nearly as important. Thanks David for your input.

CNET Asia Community Blog Entry – Hiding your iPhone Pics

My new entry over at CNET Asia Community Blog is up. This week’s entry, “Hiding your iPhone Pics”. Click here for the full read.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.5 Update Released

New in Lightroom 2.5

The goal of this release is to address bugs that were introduced in previous releases of Lightroom 2 and provide additional camera raw support. A comprehensive list of issues fixed in this release is included below:

Lightroom 2 Bugs – Fixed

• Lightroom 2.4 on Windows continued to display the import dialog when a memory card was detected regardless of the preference setting “Show import dialog when a memory card is detected.”
• Lightroom 2.5 includes a correction to the demosaic algorithms for Bayer sensor cameras with unequal green response.

Newly Supported Cameras:

• Nikon D300s
• Nikon D3000
• Olympus E-P1
• Panasonic DMC-FZ35
• Panasonic DMC-GF1

Get your update here.

Source – Adobe

BarCamp Hong Kong 2009 Videos are Up

Videos on the talks at BarCamp Hong Kong is up, go to this blip TV link to check it out.

Canon Photo Marathon – 18 October 2009 – Register Now

Click pic for more information, registration start at noon tomorrow, hurry up, only 300 slots.

BarCamp HK and Twestival HK both on September 12, 2009

Extracted from my CNET Community Blog under the same title, link here.

Mark your calendar, BarCamp Hong Kong and Testival Hong Kong 2009 is back.

For this year’s BarCamp, the date is set for September 12, 2009, at Turner International Asia Pacific, 30/F, Oxford House, Taikoo Place, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong, from 9.30am to 5pm. Better yet, there will be a after-event drink function at East End Brewery, 23-27 Tong Chong Street, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong.

According to the organizers, it is expecting over 300 people at the full-day event, hosted at Oxford House in Taikoo Place, on the conference floor of Turner International Asia Pacific, owner of Cartoon Networks and CNN News. The venue features five large conference rooms, two lounge areas, a coffee room and a bar. Food, drinks and free Wi-Fi will be provided.

Presentations can be on any topic you like as long as it is about the Internet and people are willing to listen. You are free to speak in Cantonese, Putonghua or English. Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.

For more information, check out the BarCamp Hong Kong 2009’s homepage at http://barcamp.hk/ or join its FaceBook group at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?gid=6146785447&ref=ts.

On the same night, the No. 1 Twitterer In Hong Kong, Jay Oatway, will be organizing the second Twestival.

On September 12, the Twitter community worldwide is again going to work for charities, this time focusing on their own home towns.

In February, Hong Kong participated with 180+ cities worldwide for the first-ever Global Twitter Fundraiser. They had 67 people turn up that night, and they raised enough money worldwide to give clean water to more than 16,000 desperate people. It is bigger the second time around!

Tweet your friends and family now @twestivalHK.

http://hongkong.twestival.com

For ticketing information, go to http://www.amiando.com/TwestivalHK.html

Source: BarCamp Hong Kong, Twestival

CNET Asia Community Blog Entry – Apple iTunes Finally Let You Sync Music Between Computers – yay or nay?

My new entry over at CNET Asia Community Blog is up. This week’s entry, “Apple iTunes Finally Let You Sync Music Between Computers – yay or nay?”. Click here for the full read.