Blog Posts by Raymond Lau

The madness that is COMEX 2011 begins! For those who don't know the drill: 1) there will be thousands who will be flocking to Suntec City; 2) you will be jostling with everyone else for space; 3) you'll be wondering what direction to head in the vast convention area.  Here's the Official Tech Talk Survival Guide for you bargain hunters, especially handy for those who are new to these mega IT shows. Read on!

Avoid driving

Thinking of cruising over to Suntec City in your car? Forget about it: traffic in the city is already heavy as it is, and it'll only get worse with COMEX-goers. With the opening of the Circle Line, getting to Suntec via public transport is easier than ever. In addition, some companies offer shuttle services to and from the venue. Dell, for instance, is providing official branded buses from Sengkang, Clementi, Tampines, and Woodlands.

Think about what you want to buy beforehand

The show floors are going to be very crowded, which makes window shopping virtually

By Alfred Siew

Techgoondu-logo

OPlay-Mini1

The hype surrounding Internet or smart TVs these days begs the question: why would you want to check your Facebook on your TV with an awkward remote control rather than your touch-screen phone?

Apparently, TV makers think differently. From Samsung to Sony, they have been cranking out smart TVs as the next big thing for the living room, and well, now you too can get your old TV on this "next gen" goodness when you plug in an Asus O!Play Mini Plus set-top box cum video streamer.

Never mind if you can't pronounce its name. This petite gizmo not only streams all sorts of video formats from your PC to your TV, but it also acts as a conduit for "smart" e-services that your neighbour's spanking new TV offers.

Want to catch up on your holiday pictures on Flickr or Picasa? The Asus gizmo connects your TV to the Net to view the images. Want to watch some blurry online videos? Log on to YouTube as well as Mediafly.

There's also support for Dailymotion videos as well

melonmeter

iPhone only —

Would you trust an app to select your fruit? (We mean the edible kind.)

Melon lovers can sink their teeth into a new iPhone app called the Melon Meter, which claims that it can help you choose the perfect melon by detecting its ripeness.

According to the app description, the developers spent more than 2 years on research and development to come up with this juicy tool. I like to think they spent two years carting off baskets of watermelons from the supermarket to experiment on in a lab littered with watermelon rinds.

How does it work? Apparently, every watermelon has a unique "decay signature" which is the sound it emits when knocked. The app analyses that signature and tells you whether the melon is ready. Simply hold up your iPhone's microphone to the watermelon, and as instructed, to "knock on the watermelon with consistent pressure and rhythm until prompted to stop". Then, you wait for the app to give you the results of the analysis.

melonmeter2

In other words, instead of

If you're somewhat fed up with the bare-bones functionality of the Safari web browser on your iPhone, an alternative called Dolphin Browser has just made its way into the App Store. Dolphin has been a popular browser on Android for a while now, providing more powerful features than the stock browser app, and its iOS counterpart looks to be a solid replacement for your mobile browsing needs.

For one, you won't have to wait till iOS 5 to get your hands on tabbed browsing, as Dolphin brings real tabbed browsing to your iPhone. But that's the least of Dolphin's features.

dolphin-speeddial

Tap on the gesture icon at the bottom to customise and apply gestures which you can use to navigate without typing or digging through bookmarks. For example, drawing a "V" brings you to the bottom of a webpage.

When you launch the browser, a page called Speed Dial lets you access your favourite sites with one tap. From any page, swipe all the way to the left to open your list of bookmarks, which can be organised in

The Presidential Elections day is almost upon us, and the candidates are on fire trying to garner as much support as they can. But have you ever wondered what these people were like before they were thrust into the limelight?

Well, that question can be answered for at least one presidential candidate. Tan Kin Lian has been active in cyberspace for a while now, and his YouTube channel has a bunch of videos which are undeniably fun to watch.

First up, our Presidential hopeful shows us an optical illusion where the bottom-most cup of instant noodles will always appear the biggest. What happens when you move that up to the top? Bam! It instantly becomes the smallest to our eyes.

As the Head of State, we depend on our President to be the guiding light for our country. In the event of an actual blackout, we know we can depend on Tan Kin Lian to help us with his trusty rechargeable torchlight.

We need a President who can think out of the box, and Tan Kin Lian certainly shows that he can do

by Chan Chi-Loong

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Cook a pot of curry day may have ended, but the viral meme is still going strong.

It has definitely weighed more heavily on Singaporean minds than our upcoming presidential elections this coming Saturday 27th August, if social media — such as Facebook Likes and YouTube views — is any indication.

Originally organized as a fun way to spread the "message of tolerance" in Singapore's multi-racial culture, the cooking protest on Facebook has gone viral globally, with global newswires like Reutersand Bloomberg covering the story.

It all started when a migrant Chinese family complained about the smell of curry and pressured their Indian neighbours to stop cooking it. When this story came out in our mainstream press two weeks ago, Singaporeans came up with creative ways to sing about, yes, curry.

Here are some of the best parodies and original songs on YouTube on this issue that will make you smile.

May you always enjoy and share your curry with others!

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Get the

By Chan Chi-Loong

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Help Sparky the dog reunite with his long lost love.

No, not by choosing a mate from a dog breeder, but through following his story on TV, playing games on your mobile phone, and finding hints on Facebook.

It's a virtual love story that StarHub, who is running Singapore's first interactive commercial, hopes will create lots of brand publicity for them. The commercial was unveiled on the big screen at a media preview held at GV Vivocity cinemas today.

The catch is that it doesn't only play out on TV, YouTube or the cinema screen, but also on mobile phones and computers through interactive gaming — the first time it is done here locally. It's not exactly a full-blown alternate reality game (ARG), but it contains some elements of it.

Sparky_starhub_interactive_commercial

How it is works is that viewers first download StarHub's free Hub IT! app for iPhones and Androids. Whenever StarHub's "Love Tail" advertisement runs, they simply fire up the app, and point their phone's camera at the screen.

The