Blog Posts by Xavier Lur

iPhone's voice assistant app swears at 12-year-old boy. (Screengrab from YouTube)

Apple's voice assistant app Siri gave the parents of 12-year-old Briton Charlie Le Quesne a shock after it blurted out obscenities when the boy asked how many people there were in the world.

Charlie picked up a demo handset of the iPhone 4S at a Tesco store in the UK, and asked Siri: "How many people are there in the world?". The personal assistant app, which uses a natural language user interface to answer questions, said in response: "I'm not sure what you said there, Shut The F**k Up, You Ugly T***."

Charlie's horrified mum Kim told The Sun: "The phone was a demo version and was low enough on the shelf for Charlie to have a go with it. He asked it a simple question and we couldn't believe the filth it came out with.

"I thought I must be hearing things. So we asked again and the same four-letter stuff blared out."

It seems pranksters had tampered with the phone's settings, and added the foul-mouthed tirade as the name of the owner. Siri would read it out regardless of the question,

Samsung launches a series of new smartphones and tablets. The Galaxy Tab 7.7 (Photo by Xavier Lur)

Samsung on Wednesday unveiled new smartphone and tablet devices soon to be available in Singapore, among which include the much-awaited Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone and the Galaxy Tab 7.7 tablet.

Galaxy Nexus ($948 without line contract, Feb 2012)

Labelled as the "world's first smartphone running on the latest Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich", the Galaxy Nexus sports a sleek 8.94mm thick body and features a massive 4.65-inch HD Super AMOLED display at 720p resolution. Weighing just 135g, it has a computing power of a 1.2GHz dual core processor.

The new Ice Cream Sandwich mobile operating system introduces innovations such as Face Unlock, which uses facial recognition to unlock the phone. Using NFC technology, Android Beam allows the sharing of web pages, apps, and YouTube videos with friends by simply tapping the phones together.

Unlike the one rolled out in the U.S, the Galaxy Nexus that is made available for the Singapore market is not LTE-enabled, though two out of three telcos here

Proposed underground Science City at Kent Ridge. (Artist’s impression courtesy of JTC Corporation)

UPDATED (at 3:20pm 5 January to attribute David Tan's quote to CNA, and URA's referral to Singapore City Gallery data)

Within the next few decades, will Singaporeans work and live in an underground city teeming with activity? That seems likely in land-strapped Singapore, according to experts.

And the government, too, is seriously considering adding the development of subterranean or underground space to its conventional methods of building high-rise residential buildings and reclaiming land on its coastal areas to overcome land constraints.

Such efforts could be seen in the underground space masterplan, which is expected to be released this year by the Ministry of National Development (MND). The high-level Economic Strategies Committee has also named underground space as a "strategic resource".

Existing subterranean projects like the Jurong Rock Caverns and the Underground Ammunition Facility (UAF) are quintessential examples of how Singapore overcomes its land constraints by tapping

Robert Dahlberg has skipped bail and has no plans to return to Singapore to face charges. (AFP File Photo)

A 34-year-old New Zealander has skipped bail and his family says he has no plans to return to Singapore to face charges.

Robert Dahlberg was allegedly to be involved in a drunken attack on two taxi drivers and two passengers at Suntec City in April last year.

He and two other foreign nationals, an Australian and a Briton, were charged in court in July this year for causing grievous bodily harm.

Dahlberg allegedly caused hurt to businessman Laurence Wong Seong, 38, by swinging his fist rashly, and pushing another man, Paul Louis Liew Kai Ming, 26, causing him to hit his face against a pillar. This resulted in the man sustaining a nose bleed, forehead gash and fracture of the nasal bone.

Briton Robert Springall, 24, allegedly used a taxi without the driver's consent and crashed it. He was also said to have pushed the 57-year-old taxi driver's chest.

Separately, Australian Nathan Miller, 35, supposedly punched another cabby in the face and jumped onto the taxi's bonnet.

The judge granted

SingTel users will be able to enjoy fast 4G services in the near future. (Yahoo! file photo)

SingTel on Tuesday announced the launch of their commercial Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile broadband, which is touted as the successor to the current 3G networks.

It allows customers to surf webpages and stream high-definition videos at theoretical speeds of up to 75Mbps, about three times faster than the current 21Mbps speeds on 3G networks. As for typical speeds, the 4G network can hit up to 12Mbps. The new LTE technology is also reportedly able to handle more users.

This is believed to be the first LTE service in Singapore to be made available for consumer and business customers. In June this year, M1 launched a 4G service based on the LTE technology, but it is only made available for corporate users.

Yuen Kuan Moon, SingTel's executive vice president of digital consumer, said, "Our LTE service will deliver consistent speeds and performance to allow customers to go beyond web surfing and enjoy a wider range of bandwidth-intensive multimedia content on the move like never before."

Will using QR codes to shop catch on? (Photo courtesy of Xavier Lur)

Want to do some quick on-the-go Christmas shopping of your favorite roast turkey or honey baked ham, as you wait for your friends at the train station foyer? You can do so now without having to step into a shop, queue, send a text message or make a phone call.

In collaboration with Singapore's leading supermarket chain Cold Storage, SMRT on Wednesday launched the company's first quick-response (QR) code shopping wall, which allows train commuters to do some snappy shopping with their mobile phones while passing through stations on their way to, or from, work.

Available at Bugis and Boon Lay stations from today, these specially-designed posters feature Cold Storage's popular Christmas goodies like roast turkey, honey baked ham, champagne bone-in ham, and baby back ribs.

Simply whip out your mobile phone, scan at the QR code with it, and the product will automatically land in your online shopping cart. Users can use a QR code reader like the i-nigma app, which can be downloaded from the

Grace Fu, Senior Minister of State for Information, Communication and the Arts, cites the government's efforts to engage citizens online. (Photo courtesy of Xavier Lur)

In today's digital age, citizen engagement online has become a paramount issue, and the Singapore government over the years has been trying to forge closer relationships and enhance collaboration between the government and citizens.

Speaking on Friday at the GovCamp forum organised by Microsoft Singapore, Grace Fu, Senior Minister of State for Information, Communication and the Arts, said that the government is working hard to reach out to citizens online.

She cited the establishment of the REACH online feedback channel, which allows citizens to air their views and make suggestions on public policies and national issues, and its expansion online with the set up of Twitter and Facebook accounts to engage citizens. Facebook has even been used to hold discussions with the public.

Ideas coming from the public

James Kang, assistant chief executive of the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), thinks that Singapore's new generation is demanding more -- to be involved, to be engaged, and to

A young woman draws flak from Internet users after boasting about slapping her mother. (AFP file photo)

By Xavier Lur

A 14-year-old Secondary 2 girl from Singapore has caused a massive uproar online for what many deem as "atrocious and attention-seeking behaviour".

Unhappy with her mom's incessant nagging, Adelyn (not her real name) apparently resorted to physical abuse by slapping her mom twice, and boasted about her actions on Facebook, coupled with vulgarities.

Within hours, it soon went viral on the Internet, particularly on Twitter. She was trending worldwide on the micro-blogging platform Tuesday night, and is currently one of the top Twitter trends in Singapore.

The incident garnered both encouraging and rude responses, though many were skewed towards the negative spectrum. Some even claimed that netizens should "stop pursuing the matter" and "give her a break".

A Singapore-based entertainer by the name Dee Kosh tweeted, "Dear Adelyn, you made this a public thing -- now we demand a public apology to your mom, yes a video of you on your knees -- saying sorry."

In an interview with