So Concepts Computer is having another trade-in offer at the moment: get an Acer Aspire One Happy for only B$398. I always love this trade-in offer as it gives people a chance to get rid of their old non-working computers and get discount in return. If you can’t get the trade-in offer, it is still going for B$468 under their Anniversary Special Deal.
I have some notebooks that meet this requirement and am willing to give them to anybody who wants to take advantage of this good offer. Anybody interested leave a comment / email me (tim _AT_ thewheatfield.org) / tweet me @thewheat and we’ll be in touch.
Bring any of your existing notebook or netbook (any brand, working or otherwise*) from now till 31 May 2011, you’re entitled to have Aspire One for $398 only.
*Terms & Conditions apply:-
Old Notebook or Netbook can be in working or non-working condition but all main components inlucding motherboard, HDD, processor, RAM, battery pack, power adapter etc… must be present. We reserver the right to reject any products deemed incomplete. Thank you
P.S. I also have desktops that can be used for the other trade-ins that don’t require laptops. Check Concepts website or visit their store to find out the latest trade-in deals
Trying to get on the tablet bandwagon, Acer introduced 3 tablets: the W500, A500 and A100. The W500, which has recently been available in Brunei, runs Windows 7 while the other 2 (more interesting tablets) are Android tablets. Sadly with the iPad around, the W500 will undoubtedly get compared to it but honestly it should be compared more to a netbook if anything else. The W500 has netbook specifications and runs a full version of Windows 7 and thus is a different category of a tablet / slate when compared to the iPad. It seems you can even play play Half-Life 2 on the W500 thanks to the AMD (i.e. ATI) GPU.
Specifications of the Acer Iconia Tab W500
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit
AMD C-Series processor C-50
AMD Radeon HD 6250 Graphics,
10.1″ HD 1280 x 800 (WXGA) resolution
Acer CrystalBrite™ LED-backlit TFT LCD with integrated multi-touch screen
2GB of DDR3
32GB Solid state drive
Fast Ethernet
Bluetooth 3.0+HS
802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi
Dual Acer Crystal Eye webcams with 1280 x 1024 resolution
36 Wh 3260 mAh 3-cell Li-polymer battery Estimated battery life: up to 6 hours
2-in-1 card reader (SD, MMC)
Two USB 2.0 ports
HDMI port with HDCP
G-Sensor
0.97 kg (2.14 lbs.) with 3-cell battery pack
275 (W) x 190 (D) x 15.95 (H) mm
1-Year International Traveller Warranty
Based on the prices from Concepts the Iconia Tab W500 is B$778 while the Acer netbook (Intel: D255 / AMD: AO522) is B$498: that is a price difference of B$280, which is pretty reasonable as you get a few things with the W500 that you don’t get on a regular netbook are:
a higher resolution screen 12800×800 vs a typical netbook resolution of 1024×600
dual webcams
a touch screen
a 32GB SSD
the flexibility of using the device as a notebook/netbook or a slate device
You can actually modify a netbook to have a touch screen but you would need to buy and install it yourself which would void your warranty and hopefully you will be able to put everything back together nicely after installation. A 32GB SSD will set you back over B$100 and a touch screen for will also cost US$74 (~B$90) adding up to a minimum of B$200. A high resolution screen and dual webcams can’t really be added to a regular netbook and certainly a netbook won’t have the slate form factor where the screen detaches from the keyboard, so topping up an extra B$80 and you get a fully functioning polished device as opposed to try customizing a netbook into a solid state touchscreen device.
There are some issues with the device itself being that Windows 7 may not be ideal for use with a touchscreen so it may not provide an ideal experience but I guess this is up to user preference and use case: try it out and see if it works for you and what you want to do with the device. Secondly, the SSD is only 32GB meaning after installation of the operating system and any applications needed, there may not be much space left for anything else. An SSD is not meant to be cheap however, it’s mean to be fast and is more robust than regular hard disk drives so this means you can use this device when on the move in a car or train without having to worry about the hard drive getting scratched/damaged if you were to hit a bump. The W500 also probably has a lower battery life compared to a regular netbook but if the added functionality of having a touchscreen slate computer experience is something appealing or useful for you, this could be a viable and affordable option.
So today was the launch of the iPad 2 in Brunei and @mfirdaus and I managed to do a bit of live streaming coverage. I got there just before 9am and noticed that there already was a queue of about 10 people but soon after that when the AV staff arrived on the scene they put up a proper queue with queue posts and a with a nice little sign.
I asked the AV staff on hand about how many units they have, and was told “alot” and not to worry. But sadly about 15 minutes after that @JustCinful went in to get hers, but was told that there were no more 3G models in stock and could only pre-order. She was about 50th in the queue, so there weren’t that many people before her. I honestly wish AV gave a specific number of units rather than a vague terms like “a lot”.
Above is a Photosynth panoramic image at 10:08am after the first batch of 20 went in.
At about 3:30pm after recording a uploading the video and did some other recording, I went to AV and they still had Wi-Fi models in stock. Final prices are below and contact AV on Facebook, Twitter (@ave_brunei) or call them at +673 223 7650 (Kiulap) / +673 245 6436 (Mall)
The first version of Ubuntu for this year has been released. It is dubbed Natty Narwhal or for easier date reference 11.04. Check out the release naming scheme on the Wiki that includes the history of this naming convention. But in all seriousness the main new change is that they have changed to the Unity as the desktop environment instead of Gnome. This brings a refreshed look to this Linux distribution as well as providing added functionality. Check out OMG! Ubuntu’s guide to Natty Narwhal and Ubuntu’s own “What’s New” page.
Summary for UI changes as well as naming convention:
Unity: a new desktop environment which could be described as the desktop / user interface that the user sees when they log in. It is comprised of the Launcher, the Dash and the Panel
The Launcher: This seems more like OS X’s dock than WIndows task bar. You can launch applications from from it and open windows should shown in the launcher
The Dash: similar to the Window’s Start button (or now the Windows button), this will allow you to look through and launch any application installed
The Panel: situated at the top of the screen, this acts as a global menu bar just like OS X, but also integrates with other applications through the indicator area (similar to Windows’ notification area)
Go try it out and download it now. You don’t even have to install it, just burn it to a CD or install it to a USB drive and boot straight from it to see how your hardware handles it. For the computer enthusiast there is no reason not to give Ubuntu a try and delve into the world of Linux.
I believe I’ve stumbled upon the iPad 2 pricing for tomorrow’s launch. Cash price is matches as Singapore’s prices.
** hint: check the Facebook link for iPad 1 and improvise ;-) **
**update: yup prices are confirmed correct**
The Health Promotion Centre is currently holding a Health Promotion Campaign that started last week. As you can see below from the schedule that have sent out this week is vaccination week and according to their Facebook page there will be a “Healthy Cooking Demo” by RBC and Serikandi at 9am and 230pm on Friday. It is free and a first come first serve basis.
As a takeaway from this campaign, I hope this sets an example for other departments/organizer to invite bloggers and also to organize events during non-working hours for people with regular day jobs to attend. Perhaps also a full program with times for each program so it will be easier for people just to pop by if they are free. Perhaps I’m being too idealistic but if they want participate, and not just newspaper coverage, it needs to be done after office hours. I commend the Health Promotion Board for being proactive in inviting bloggers and also being active on their Facebook and Twitter pages: other organizations should take some tips from them
P.S. I would like to thank Shahiran (or @TalkingAloudBru as he is known online) for formally inviting to Bruneian bloggers (myself included) to participate in the 3 week program. Sadly last week was a very busy week as I was involved with some Easter preparations on top of a regular 8-5 day job. Hope to check out a few of their things events / exhibitions soon.
After hearing word of the iPad 2 launch in Singapore on the 29th while doing Tech Talk Coffee Shop tonight, I was surprised to see that AV Electronics, the premium Apple reseller in Brunei is also having their launch on Friday 29th at 10am at both their Kiulap and Mall stores. Singapore prices are listed below and I would think Brunei prices will be slightly higher, perhaps B$50 to B$150 higher, but kudos to AV Electronics for getting it the same day as Singapore. From the Facebook page AVE mentioned that they have “around 100 different SKU of accessories” but the iPad 2 dock won’t make it in time for the launch.
So after the ‘failure’ in Part 1 the next step was to roll my own solution. I’ve been listening to the TWiT.tv network since Leo Laporte started it many years back and I noticed that they were running an Icecast server at TWiT.am that streams their audio. Perfect, a great place to start off so do a simple search for icecast on my Ubuntu box which gave the following results.
Went ahead and installed icecast2 and ices2 and after Google searching and fussing about I managed to get Icecast running and went on to configuring ices2. It took me some time to understand that Icecast streaming involves 2 components: the Icecast server (which is the machine people connect to in order to listen) and a source client which connects to the server and provides the audio source to the server to be streamed out. Started off with the typical playlist configuration as I did not have a radio at hand. Managed to get OGG streaming to work but then tried it on my sister’s iPad and was reminded that Apple doesn’t really like OGG and would probably only work with an MP3 or AAC stream. So I started fussing around with MP3 files and only to find out that ices2 didn’t support MP3 streaming (I tend to skip over things in my brain’s weird attempt to speed read and thus glossed over this fact: it’s even stated in the screenshot above that it is for “Ogg Vorbis streaming”). Oh well. Then for a reason I thought that I’d try a solution on Windows (I think I blame my possible ADDnes).
It was during this adventure in WIndows Icecast server setup that I discovered ezStream via the Icecast forum’s “Common Source Client List” and was able to configure MP3 re-enconding. The problem I ran here was that I could not hook the line-in input from my phone acting as a radio. I switched back to Linux and managed to get ezStream working but did not find a way to get it to stream from the line-in audio port as perhaps my Linux / gstreamer fu is not good enough yet. In a stroke of luck (or proper research and reading) I finally found darkice which solved my Linux streaming (for those who don’t like the command line there is darksnow that provides a good GUI interface for the darkice source client).
On yet another whim, I decided to tried setting up an Icecast server in OSX (I think it’s one of those ‘because-I-can’ syndromes, that I tried doing this). I managed to get Icecast running easily thanks to MacPorts using a simple “sudo port install icecast2” but getting a source client was a bit more troublesome. I started with trying darkice due to my success using it in Linux. The problem? It required JACK audio connection kit which I could not get working in OS X. I have to say that JACK documentation seems severely lacking and I’m still left wondering how to use it. There is an OS X implementation of JACK called Jack OS X. I tried to understand how it works and how to use it using this YouTube video embedded below (turn on close captions, CC, for English subtitles) but new interfaces did not show up when starting applications so still no dice.
There was also a darkice Mac OS X branch build that I got the source (svn checkout http://darkice.googlecode.com/svn/darkice/branches/darkice-macosx darkice-macosx) for, but it seems that I do not have the necessary tools to compile it . So finally I found LadioCast which was the same saviour for OS X as darkice was for Linux. So I managed to get a Linux and OS X implementation running and there goes @mfirdaus managing to get it all working on his N900 with some gstreamer magic of “gst-launch pulsesrc ! audioconvert ! lame quality=9 ! shout2send mount=/listen.mp3 port=8000 password=password ip=127.0.0.1”.
Now while the reception on the N900 wasn’t fantastic, it is a great self-contained solution: no external radio or external monitor / keyboard to for configuration. So right now we have 3 implementations but still no proper Windows stand alone solution. I know there is Winamp with a shoutcast plugin, but I’m not sure how to pipe audio from a line-in port into Winamp.
So as I tinker and try to get a proper Windows configuration, I have set up an Icecast server at whose playlist can be accessed at http://bit.ly/pilihan. This URL should work for all platforms (tested with iOS, Android and VLC). You can just click the link and open the m3u file in the default player. This is my own server so may not be up all the time if there is some weird configuration issue / power outage, but hope it helps those who want to listen when they don’t have a radio at hand or for those overseas. Trying to get MFN to get a hold of the IT people at RTB to see if they can implement this on their own servers, but in the meantime self-hosting
So it’s been just over 2.5 months since posted the specifications of the SMARTER eVCS. I did manage to show them a working demo in January but February and March were busy months and did not manage to spend as much time as I wanted on this project. Had to learn some Android development and so far have managed to load images stored on the SD card as well as ability to traverse directories (which corresponds to selecting a picture in the demo). Also finally managed to add some more functionality in terms of voice feedback to the web system and demo’d the new update last Friday.
Tonight I should be meeting up with Alex, one of the teachers, with SMARTER to compile the necessary photos/images/voice clips so that there can be a complete working demo with proper cases for Farid (the son of SMARTER’s president Malai Hj Abdullah bin Hj Malai Othman). I’m still wondering if this is going to be a long term kind of project or are there any other non-profit organizations looking for help with any systems they require? I would love to help them out and also work with volunteers on implementing these projects. I did talk to Zulfadly of Anak.IT and mentioned it on the Anak.IT Facebook group but more volunteers are always welcome.
Do play around with the online working demo. Any feedback is appreciated. Do not that the current version (not updated online yet) has the ability to change profile picture and some general tweaks. Hope to update the online version soon.
To-Do (Near Future)
Export feature to compile the necessary files to be transferred to SD card of Android app
Android app that is self-contained (requires no pairing with desktop/web system aside from easy generation of file structure)
Improve Flash voice performance
To-Do (Further Future)
Record audio straight from the browser
Customize straight from Android app
P.S. HTML 5 audio is a pain as not all browsers support the same format. Had to resort to Flash to play audio but this gives a performance hit. The initial Flash media player I was using to play MP3 did not autoplay in Chrome so had to use a different Flash player which seems much slower. But this is a rant / post for another day =)
The Wheat Field 