CNET Asia Community Blog Entry – The Hit-and-Misses of Oxford’s Word of the Year 2009

My new entry over at CNET Asia Community Blog is up. This week’s entry, “The Hit-and-Misses of Oxford’s Word of the Year 2009″. Click here for the full read.

Should Bloggers Have to Reveal Ties With Brands

Click image for full size

In this issue of Media, I have a chance to share views together with three others on whether bloggers have to reveal their ties with brands, click here for full read.

Source – Media

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

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.

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.

Web Wednesday v.28 @ Volar – 2 September 2009

This month’s feature – an interview with Hong Kong’s leading Twitter Star, Jay Oatway, the face behind @jayoatway, @portension, @chargedmobi, and lead organiser of Twestival Hong Kong (@twestivalhk) and meet some unusual local proponents of Twitter, the microblogging phenomenon that in the past 12 months has grown from 2 million to 40 million users!

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 a children’s charity.

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

You can sign up here: http://is.gd/yBxr

Source : Web Wednesday Hong Kong

Woot, 1,000,000 True Hits

Woot, hit a major milestone here with 1,000,000 true hits.  Thank you all for the support in the past years.  WOOT!

CNET Asia Community Blog Entry – Most Graphic Public Service Announcement Video Ever Made – Texting While Driving

My new entry over at CNET Asia Community Blog is up. This week’s entry, “Most Graphic Public Service Announcement Video Ever Made – Texting While Driving”. Click here for the full read.

CNET Asia Community Blog Entry – SLOW Internet Speed Across Asia

My new entry over at CNET Asia Community Blog is up. This week’s entry, “SLOW Internet Speed Across Asia”. Click here for the full read.

Excerpt from the post -

“According to Telecom Asia, “Monday’s quake, which measured 6.5 on the Richter scale, has severely restricted access to foreign websites from Hong Kong and mainland China for much of the past two days.

In a poll on the sina.com website late yesterday afternoon, 46.2% said they could not access any foreign websites and another 37.0% said the bandwidth speeds were “very slow”. Popular apps and websites like MSN and Yahoo were unavailable for much of the period, users complained.

China’s biggest fixed-line carrier, China Telecom said it had experienced “a series of breaks” in subsea capacity off Taiwan. By noon Tuesday it had recovered to 60% of lost capacity. It was working with other international operators and expected to have 75% restored by today or Thursday.”

First 2 Forward Round 3 is Tonight – 19 August 2009

First 2 Forward is…

Two top creative directors. Five rounds of competition. One event that reveals the freshest, funniest, and freakin’ coolest stuff from around the Web.

Join us the third Wednesday of every month to find out who’s got the hottest links in Hong Kong. Round 3 is tonight.

Venue: Privé, 60 Wyndham Street, Central
Doors open: 8:00pm, Show starts 9:00pm.
FREE entry with your name card.

Endy Fung
ECD, Razorfish
vs.
Alan Kan
Creative Partner, Kitchen DigitalFirst 2

Forward is a spin-off event of Web Wednesday, the No. 1 community for Asian Digerati. (http://www.webwednesday.asia)

First 2 Forward就是由城中兩位出色的創意總監，進行五個回合的激戰，誓要以最快速度，將網上最千奇百怪、搞鬼惹笑、怪誕瘋狂的網上資料公諸同好！

比賽將於每個月的第三個星期三舉行，想知道哪一位參加者能夠找到最多網上人氣連結？立即參加就可以！

First 2 Forward是由亞洲首屈一指的數碼媒體組織Web Wednesday策動，想知更多關於這個組織的資料，請即登入http://www.webwednesday.asia