This just in from Adobe, seems like they finally got the Flickr integration working with their beta version of Photoshop Express. This was quick considering they just announced the new features last week, for the press release on 8 May from Adobe, click here.
[26 March] My iPod been running out of juice a lot lately as I’ve been watching quite a bit of video podcast on it and it really drains the battery fast. That was pretty frustrating until my sister got me the PowerMonkey mobile charger from PowerTraveller on her way back from San Francisco (at the airport). This charger comes with -
1 x PowerMonkey Unit
1 x Universal Mains adaptor
Adaptor for Nokia and Mini Nokia, Motorola V66, Samsung E900, Siemens C25 and Sony Ericsson wide connector
1 x Mini USB for Motorola Razr V series, Blackberry and Bluetooth headsets
1 x Direct iPod adaptor
1 x USB smart phones, PDA and other devices
1 x Connector for Sony PSP and most digital cameras
1 x Black travel pouch
The capacity of the PowerMonkey is 2200mAh, although less than the Tekkeon myPower Go MP1500 I have, the included iPod connector sure comes in handy (never order the iPod connector from Tekkeon). Another great thing about the charger is that it could hold its charge without leakage for up to 6 months. The PowerMonkey is available on ExpanSys, link here.
[Updated: 3 April] Turned out that the iPhone/iPod charger that came with the PowerMonkey did not work with my iPod Touch. Sent a email to the manufacturer (info@powertraveller.com) last week and they replied that Apple had recently changed their charging connections and because of that, a new connector tip with a new chip was developed and they promised to send me one for free.
Finally got the new tip today and Voila, it works. Just in time for my Singapore trip in 2 weeks. Read more »
Press Release from Microsoft below, link to full article here.
LAS VEGAS— April 1, 2008 —Windows Mobile is improving smartphones to better meet people’s rapidly expanding work and personal needs, Microsoft Corp. today announced. At CTIA Wireless 2008, the company unveiled the newest version of Internet Explorer Mobile, which adds desktop-grade Web browsing to Windows Mobile phones. In addition, Microsoft announced Windows Mobile 6.1, an update for its Windows Mobile software that includes new time-saving features, easier phone navigation and management, and increased security safeguards.
“People want a single phone that’s flexible enough to meet their needs throughout their day, whether it’s connecting to work or your everyday life,” said Robbie Bach, president of the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft. “The innovations we’ve added to our Windows Mobile software ultimately make it easier to manage your world.”
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| Robbie Bach, President of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division, delivers the keynote address at CTIA Wireless 2008, Las Vegas, April 1, 2008. |
| Click for high-res version. |
“Microsoft is taking the necessary steps to broaden its consumer appeal while also addressing the complex mobile needs of the enterprise,” said Ben Bajarin, analyst with Creative Strategies. “Internet Explorer Mobile and Windows Mobile 6.1 demonstrate Microsoft’s ability to harness its technologies to bring tangible innovations and benefits to customers and partners.”
Updated Internet Explorer Mobile Brings the Quality of Desktop Web Browsing to Phones
The new version of Internet Explorer Mobile adds the ability to easily view full-screen Web pages and multimedia on the Web with a smartphone. By taking advantage of Internet Explorer 6 technologies and supporting established and upcoming industry standards such as H.264, Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, the updated Internet Explorer Mobile gives people a rich mobile Internet experience. The update will be available to mobile phone partners in the third quarter of 2008, with the first Windows Mobile phones using the new version expected to be available by the end of 2008.
Windows Mobile Update Drives Simpler Experience
Windows Mobile 6.1 features several key updates based on customer feedback, including the capability to make the most critical information readily available at a glance, quicker phone setup, and enhanced features adapted for the small screen. In addition, if coupled with System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 or Exchange Server 2007 SP1, Windows Mobile 6.1 provides the best experience for IT professionals to manage mobile phones for businesses.
Windows Mobile 6.1 will help people get more from their phones by bringing updates to what they care about most. With Windows Mobile 6.1 users will be able to accomplish the following:
Source - Microsoft PressPass
Want to be the among the first to colonize Mars? if so, you should join Project Virgle (Virgin + Google). Well, this ain’t another April Fool’s joke but sure looks like one until I finished the whole video from Richard Branson. For more information on joining Project Virgle as a Virgile Pioneer, visit http://www.google.com/virgle.
For now, enjoy the video and see you on north side of Kasei Valles!
“Sorry, but the page you’re looking for doesn’t actually exist. Why? Well, because…we didn’t have time to build it. Because we didn’t think that particular page was all that important. Because this is just an early version of the Virgle site and lots more pages will be coming down the pike as the project –
— oh, all right. Fine. April Fool’s. Ha, ha, ha. It isn’t real. There. Are you happy? Does it please you to drag us out of our lovely little fantasy world, to crush all our hopes and dreams? Is that really what you need to hear? Fine, you’ve heard it. Virgle isn’t real.
Yet.” extracted from Virgle FAQ page
Source - projectvirgle
My new entry over at CNET Asia Community Blog is up. This week’s entry, “Earth Day 2008 @ Cyberport, Hong Kong”. Click here for the read.
Who: YOU! Everyone around the world
What: http://www.earthhour.org/
When: March 29, 2008, 8pm your local time
Where: In your own home and/or workplace
Why: To create AWARENESS about energy consumption
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PLEASE READ THE INFORMATION BELOW BEFORE ASKING WHERE THIS EVENT IS TAKING PLACE.
This happens in your home or your workplace at 8pm (your local time) on March 29th WHEREVER YOU ARE IN THE WORLD by simply turning off your lights, your TV, your dishwasher, your heating or a/c. You don’t have to be in Toronto (they won’t let me not put something in that spot) or a major city to participate.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On March 29th, 2008 at 8pm local time Earth Hour will commence ALL AROUND THE WORLD.
Created to take a stand against the greatest threat our planet has ever faced, Earth Hour uses the simple action of turning off the lights for one hour to deliver a POWERFUL MESSAGE about the need for action on global warming.
Be part of making Earth Hour 2008 a huge, global success by telling your friends and family. Remember, every single light makes a statement and makes a difference.
Last year, on 31 March 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney (Australia) businesses turned off their lights for one hour – Earth Hour. This massive collective effort reduced Sydney’s energy consumption by 10.2% for one hour, which is the equivalent effect of taking 48,616 cars off the road for a year.
++Pledge your support for Earth Hour and find out more about the lights-out campaign at earthhour.org, the official website. http://www.earthhour.org, http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=8240986531
Searchme is a new search engine that shows you the search results as a stack of pages you can flip through. Searchme’s engine delivers results as a browsable stack of “pages” — pictures of actual web pages that users can check out before visiting them. Searchme also suggests categories to users as they type in search terms, providing shortcuts to the best results.
I love this cover flow look-alike search engine. If you want to try out the beta, go sign up at http://www.searchme.com/.
Following is the excerpt from the organiser, John Batten, on the Hong Kong ArtWalk homepage -
“Now in its eighth year, ArtWalk is Hong Kong’s biggest charity art event. The ArtWalk benefiting charity for 2008 is, as last year, the Society for Community Organization (SOCO) - who received a donation of HK$539,000 raised from tickets sold from ArtWalk 2007.
This year, 55 galleries (an increase from last year’s 50 and 41 in 2006) will open their doors between 5 pm to 12 midnight on Wednesday, 12 March 2008 and you can view an array of art in galleries in the SOHO, Wan Chai, Sheung Wan, Central, Aberdeen, Causeway Bay, Tai Koo Shing and Happy Valley areas of Hong Kong Island – a free shuttle bus is available to transport participants between Central, Wan Chai, Wong Chuk Hang and Aberdeen.
This year, we have organised ArtWalk Extra featuring additional displays of art, artistic ideas and resources that you can also see while walking from gallery to gallery: sculpture, small-scale installation, video, street banners and impromptu sound performances can be viewed on the street as you walk on Artwalk.
ArtWalk is simple: after buying an ArtWalk ticket and receiving your comprehensive ArtWalk brochure and map and entry badge you can - on ArtWalk night - start at any of the galleries at any time, and then take any route you wish in any order to visit (or re-visit) galleries. Free wine, beer and water will be served by each of the participating galleries as well as ‘finger food’ provided by our sponsoring restaurants.
This website gives you full information about the event and how to purchase tickets - go to our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page for a quick summary about ArtWalk.
Please join us for a unique night of art, food and spontaneous camaraderie!”
For more information, please visit their site at http://www.hongkongartwalk.com
What is FriendFeed, well, it’s basically a RSS feed aggregator which tracks what your friend are up to by compiling their RSS, diggs and status messages across different platforms. The idea is pretty nifty and the company is founded by a bunch of ex-Googlers. It is in beta testing right now and if you are interested, hop over to their website at http://friendfeed.com to sign up.
The following is an excerpt from their site -
“With FriendFeed, you list the people you want to keep in touch with. They let us know what services they use (e.g., Flickr or Facebook or Picasa Web Albums), and you get a personalized feed of what they are up to. So, if your friend favorites a video on YouTube, you get a link and a thumbnail of the video in your feed. And if your friend likes a news story on Digg, you get a link in your feed. You don’t need to install anything to use FriendFeed — our crawling technology automatically picks up all the stuff you do on the web sites you already use with no additional effort on your part.
FriendFeed makes all the sites you already use a little more social, letting your friends discover the stuff you discover, comment on it, and share it.
You can use FriendFeed on FriendFeed.com, or if you already use Facebook, you can add our Facebook application to connect your Facebook profile to all the other products you use around the web. You can also view your FriendFeed in your iGoogle homepage or read it in a feed reader. If you make your FriendFeed publicly visible (kind of like a blog that writes itself), you can embed your FriendFeed in your home page or blog.
FriendFeed is currently in private beta testing so we can get feedback and bug reports from early adopters. We will be opening up the service to everyone in the next month or so based on their feedback. If you want to be a FriendFeed beta tester, sign up on our waiting list, and we will give you an account as soon as we have the capacity.”
Pics on the next generation TouchFLO leaked on the::unwired. Seems like HTC Insider have the cab file posted. Install at your own risk, no news on whether it is legit or whether it is workable or not.
Source - the::unwired
Congratulations to the guys over at Dream Cortex (www.dreamcortex.com) for winning the Digital Entertainment Merit Award for Best Digital Animation TV Series at the Hong Kong ICT Awards 2007. Their computer generated animated series, “The Adventures of Hello Kitty & Friends” was produced in partnership with Sanrio Digital (Hong Kong) (www.sanriodigital.com).
The Hong Kong ICT Awards (www.hkictawards.hk) is a collaborative effort among industry organizations, ICT professional bodies, academia and the Government to select and honor the territory’s finest accomplishments in Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The Best Digital Entertainment Award recognizes the best works produced in the Hong Kong digital entertainment industry.
‘The Adventures of Hello Kitty & Friends’ is licensed by Sanrio Digital (Hong Kong), who shares the award with Dream Cortex. This is the first Sanrio television production made in Hong Kong, and the first Sanrio series made entirely in CGI (Computer Generated Imaging). The series follows the adventures of well-known Sanrio characters including Hello Kitty, Dear Daniel, My Melody, Keroppi, Badtz Maru, Pochacco, and many others. Co-directed by Dream Cortex Creative Leader Philip Lau and Emmy Award nominee Matthew Swanson, ‘The Adventures of Hello Kitty & Friends’ is humorous and entertaining, but also rich in ethical and educational values.
For more information, please see the press release at www.dreamcortex.com.
Now this is a true geeky gadget for those who need to work on the move from Connect A Desk. For more information, visit their website here. The price tag for it, US$34.95, a bit hefty. Here’s the demo video for it. Due to the poor video quality, press play and then press the pause button to play the video.
video source posted with vodpod
Web Wednesday V8.0 will be held at the Lotus Restaurant & Cocktail Lounge 
on 37-43 Pottinger Street, Central Hong Kong. The event will kick of at 6:30 p.m. with a sofa session interview at 7pm and continue until your throat runs dry!
Guest speaker for the sofa session interview will Mr. P.K. Chan, CEO of Team and Concepts Limited, a local Hong Kong software development house that has developed an award-winning online spreadsheet service, called “EditGrid”, found at www.editgrid.com.
This Web 2.0 collaborative tool was launched in April 2006 and has already generated 50,000+ users worldwide. Remarkably, one of their financial spreadsheet creators has generated 1 million views!
You can read their blog posting here:
http://blog.editgrid.com/archives/345
EditGrid is a Winner of the Red Herring 100 Asia 2007 Awards
http://blog.editgrid.com/archives/314
And one of the five finalists of the Crunchies Best Enterprise Start-up, alongside 37 signals and zoho!
http://blog.editgrid.com/archives/386
The sofa session interview will focus on how to launch, fund and grow a start-up enterprise out of Hong Kong.
For more information in Web Wednesday Hong Kong, please visit their site at http://www.webwednesday.hk/
