So I just came back from Australia and I found out that B-Mobile was selling the Huawei U8230 at TechXpo 2010 for only BND$299 [Source Borneo Bulletin (Friday 5th November via Website)]. See the full specifications at GSM Arena. The phone was announced in June of 2009 so it is a relatively old hardware platform but at the $299 price point it is very competitively priced. It runs Android 2.1 and uses the same processor is the old HTC Hero so expect it to perform similarly.
Older processor and may not run more modern games smoothly
Not a lot of memory (192MB RAM and 256MB ROM)
RAM is required for multi-tasking so expect to close applications
ROM is used to store applications and since this is not Android 2.2
Possibly no official 2.2 (Froyo) update
I gave B-Mobile a call to see if they have any of the units on display to play around with but alas all the units are sold out and they are waiting for a new batch to come. Not surprising that it is sold out being so cheap and offering so much with Android. I applaud B-Mobile for pushing Android at such an affordable price and, in my phone call with them, they said that it is unlocked too. The phone is not a spectacularly fantastic phone but a solid mid-range phone with great potential with Android. The fact that it is Google certified with the Android Market for downloading applications makes it even more compelling. I would highly recommend this to people wanting to get an affordable smartphone as Android is a currently well supported platform and thus has many up-to-date applications unlike Nokia’s S60.
PS. Anybody in Brunei bought this? I would love to have a hands on.
The idea for Movember was sparked in 2003 over a few beers in Melbourne, Australia. The guys behind it joked about 80’s fashion and decided it was time to bring the moustache back. In order to justify their Mos (Australian slang for moustache), they used their new looks to raise money for prostate cancer research… never dreaming that facial hair would ultimately lead to a global movement that would get men talking about a taboo subject – their health.
A Mo Bro starts Movember – the month formerly known as November – clean shaven, and grows a moustache all month long, garnering support from friends and family in the form of donations. What’s more, a Mo Bro is a walking billboard for the cause as his new look opens the door for him to talk about cancers affecting men – making the moustache a symbol, much like the pink ribbon is for breast cancer. Each Movember culminates in a Gala Partè in major cities around the globe where Mo Bros dress up to match their Mo, channeling the likes of Tom Selleck, Gandhi and Ron Burgandy, vying for the ultimate accolade: Man of Movember.
While growing a Mo is left to the guys, Mo Sistas (women who support their guys) form an important part of Movember by recruiting Mo Bros, helping to raise funds and attending Movember events.
I first heard about Movember last year on PaulDotCom Security Weekly and realizing that it is November once again, I thought I’d give it a go. I know it’s a bit late and I didn’t manage to follow the rules completely (shaving on the 1st of November, think I shaved on the 2nd and forgot to take a photo) but I guess it’s the thought that counts. Taking into account that my dad died of cancer brings this closer to home for me.
I’ve created Team Brunei for anybody willing to join me / donate to the cause.
I’ve joined under Movember Australia as I’m here at the moment and it’s raising funds for the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue (the national depression initiative), however you are free to pick a which foundation/organization to support as listed below (source), though I’m not sure if you can still join my team if you register under a different website.
Movember Australia – The Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue: the national depression initiative
While stumbling onto the Nokia N8 together with the C7 today (okay this post is almost 2 weeks late due to the fact that I’ve helped my wife relocate to Australia) at Incomm HQ, it got me thinking about the future of phones and computers and got me all that more interested in the Nokia N8. The N8 is B$768 and the C7 is B$638. If you order online through the Incomm website the N8 is just B$730 (thanks GeekInWhite). My interest in the N8 is not just because it is Nokia’s flagship model at the moment, but just the functionality it brings and the possibilities of having a computer in your pocket.
First and foremost the Nokia N8 is a multi-touch capable smartphone with a 12 megapixel camera and Xenon flash. The N8 itself has stand out features that are not really found on any other phone. The camera, which is a focus on many reviews, has proper colour representation (vs the iPhone 4 that does post processing on photos to make them look more colourful) and while also taking relatively good low light shots (thanks to the large image sensor which is even bigger than some digital cameras). Some photo comparisons: DeviceMagazine, Symbian World, Into Mobile, It also shoots 720p video at 25 fps and has a built in video editor and image editor for photos too.
The device is capable to play back 720p content with Dolby Digital Plus Surround Sound via the HDMI out making it a multi-media centre device.There was even mass movie screening of the Prince of Persia on the N8 itself. When connected to an HDMI output the display will be mirrored on both the screen of the N8 as well as the output device (e.g. an HD display). This has possibilities to showcase gaming on the N8 by letting spectators watch exactly what the player sees. However for a regular user, this means it can be connected to a bigger screen and even act as a desktop computer (more on this later).
The N8 also has USB host with USB on-the-go support. This means that you can connect a regular USB drive to it (with the necessary connector cable: micro USB on the N8 to a full USB connector) and transfer files to and from it. What’s more is that you can even attach a keyboard and mouse to the device to make it a productivity device. Most video’s I’ve seen, show mouse and keyboard connected via Bluetooth so I am not sure if you can attach a USB hub and connect all keyboard, mouse and USB drive to the device all at once. However once keyboard and mouse via Bluetooth you will have a setup similar to a real computer as shown in the video below, with a (micro) USB port to be connected to a USB drive to transfer data.
Now the scenario of using the N8 as a full productivity device will also depend on software support: meaning to say that it needs to have applications to allow users to use this is a productivity tool. Software that will let users create and edit documents on the go would be great. According to the specifications the N8 has the feature of “Editing of key office documents” making this possible and what’s more is that with the HDMI output, you can even do presentations powered from your phone (caveat: seems that you need to pay for a ‘pro’ version to edit documents). Productivity is also enabled via the real multi-tasking abilities of the N8 (as opposed to ‘faux’ multi-tasking of the iPhone). Applications run in the background enabling switching from a browser (to search for something) and jumping straight back into your document / tweet that you were composing.
Note that the N8 also uses readily available standards: from micro USB (for data transfer and even charging), to micro HDMI, to a 3.5mm standard jack, a regular micro SD card and a normal sized SIM card. Using these readily available standards, makes it even more interoperatible with your existing devices / cables (as opposed to proprietary connectors like the iPod or even Galaxy Tab).
There are also a couple of technologies that could be built into the phone that I have not heard been mentioned like printing and Bluetooth transfer file transfer/file system browsing support. However I will base this on existing Nokia S60 devices such as the Nokia E71 that I originally typed this post on. The Nokia E71 has abilities to print direct to printers (via Bluetooth / infrared) and allows browsing the filesystem from a host device such as a PC or Mac. What I love about Bluetooth file transfer and filesystem browsing is that you can quickly and easily copy data from the phone wirelessly. Also with HP technology that is getting into printing from the web (i.e. Emailing documents from the phone to the printer to print), it will make things all so much the easier.
I know the device isn’t perfect: for instance in portrait mode you can only type in as a virtual numeric keypad and no QWERTY keyboard. Swype may change that. Also when typing in text, the entire screen is taken up by the text box where you type meaning that if you forget what you’re doing you will have to close or confirm the text input before seeing what you were filling in and going back into the text input screen. I think it was Daniel at Tech65 that mentioned that it seems like a separate application in the way it works and does seem a bit cumbersome especially having to press cancel/back or confirm before continuing.
There is no touch to focus on the device though is something a firmware update could fix but that being said it still at this moment in time does not have it. Also the video recording has no auto-focus and only records at 25 fps. A hack has been demonstrated to enable both but yet again it is not available to all N8 users.
S^3 is also an newly released OS meaning that there are not a lot of applications currently running on it. If application developers do not support it, then users will be at a huge loss compared to iOS or Android users. S^3 can also be considered a convoluted/complicated OS. S60 users would be more accustomed to it but users who like simplicity make be taken a back.
However I think the biggest problem with the N8 is the web browser (TechRadar, Engadget, All About Symbian). I think all Nokia S60 phone users will know that the standard web browser isn’t fantastic and while the browser on S^3 is an improvement, from reviews I’ve read, the browsers still has quite a bit to go to catch up to Safari on iOS and Android browsers. It does play Flash Lite 4.0 which is a nice touch but nothing to write home about.
The N8 software needs real tweaking to make things more usable for the user and for it to make the product really great. But all in all the prospect of the functionality of the N8 makes things one step closer to having a computer in your pocket. Oh yeah it is also a phone with mobile broadband capabilities.
Able to output to a display? Check
Able to connect keyboard and mouse for productivity? Check
Able to copy files to and from USB drives? Check
Able to print to printers? (Probably) Check
What else more do you need from a computer?
Not sure why it took me so long to re-share this but here it is. These are my notes that I made back in the day. I studied them (and I think even made some of the images) from my Casio Cassiopeia E-11. I hope to share this and build upon it and possibly make something like MIT Open Courseware but for Brunei. While the notes may not be fully up-to-date, I believe there are still useful. These are very concise notes and are only meant to be the core information needed for studying in exams. For further understanding and examples I suggest that you search online =)
So during my travels I found out about prepaid broadband SIM cards that let you have unlimited mobile broadband (e.g. 3G) while on the go. The ones that I’ve used are fromM1 (Singapore) and Digi (Malaysia). I stumbled upon this poster advertising Zoom! (bmobile’s mobile broadband) while visiting Telbru. This is a perfect opportunity for people to test Zoom! to see how well it works in their area: remember it is a shared Internet connection so it can be slow if the area is saturated. Speed also depends on the modem you are using.
Amount
Days of Unlimited Usage
$4
1 day
$8
3 days
$20
9 days
$35
18 days
Note: Just realised my titled was wrong. I forgot to put the word ‘Unlimited’. This is important as DST Go! and bmobile Zoom! already have prepaid options but they are not unlimited. This new unlimited option is a great option for tourist who are here for a short period of time and need not worry about the amount of data they use.
It seems that TelBru will be upgrading their infrastructure from the 7th to 31st of October. There will be possible disruptions of Internet connectivity and lets all hope that this will bring a better Internet experience for all eSpeed and Zoom! users. For further information or queries contact their customer care centre at 111.
As my wife is looking for accommodation in Australia she showed me an ad that seemed a bit too good to be true: rent was much lower than any other accommodation within the area (suspicion #1). The person insisted that they not go through the real estate website but to email them directly (suspicion #2). On emailing the person in charge the following email was received:
Hello,
First of all I want to thank you for your reply. I really appreciate you took the time to answer me. I am the owner of the apartment located 500/408 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, Vic 3000. It is still available for rent for $190 p/w including utilities for as long as you need. The apartment is in the best conditions, it is newly furnished and equipped with all the dependencies. I bought the apartment in 2007 and I lived there with my pet until last month when I received a promotion and needed to move to Padova / Italy.
In the apartment you will find a dishwasher, a refrigerator, a freezer, a washing machine, a dryer, an iron, , an oven, a toaster, a coffee maker, vacuum cleaner, a big screen TV, cable TV with the basic access, ADSL internet and Wi-Fi access. Also the apartment is near the public transportation, a shopping mall, a gym, and other facilities. There are no problems if you have any pets, as long as you clean up after them. The apartment has a parking space for one car. I have spent a great amount of money refurnishing the apartment and my request is that you treat it like it was your own. I am not interested to make a lot of money from the rent as I am interested to find a tenant that will take good care of the property until my return(minimum lease period, 3 months).
My contract here in Italy expires in October 2013.
Because I had to move to Italy so soon I didn’t had the time to find a trustworthy agent, I had to take the apartment keys with me. I had a real bad experience with the renting agents from the area with my previous home. I can’t come to show you the apartment and I don’t have any friends in the area to send the keys. I found an alternate solution in order to close the transaction safe for the both of us, it is an international delivery solution called Express Metrix (I will pay for a 2 days delivery),they will provide assistance in handling the payment and delivery of the Keys and Lease Agreement.With this procedure you will be able to check the apartment before I receive the payment.
This is probably a bogus escrow scam and I hope this will help inform people of these scams and to be wary of dealings with people online. While it seems to be Australian focused, a friend mentioned that there is a similar thing in Canada and probably in other countries as well. It’s sad to see people to resort to such tactics but we all need to be vigilant.
So I have decided to jump onto the Tumblr scene. Well not exactly. I thought it would be good as a bookmarking service and more for sharing other people’s content. This will still be the main blog of my own content but if you want to see what I find cool / interesting or just something I want to share you can follow me at http://stream.thewheatfield.org
So when I found out I was getting married (or rather when I put my work aside to actually prepare for the wedding) I wanted something different: be it invites, presentation or something to add some spunk to it. By default it would be streamed live over the Internet and recorded for keep sake. But I wanted more
Idea numero uno came to me after Easter service. The image in my mind was the Portal logo. It started off with just changing the portal into a heart. Then I thought the logo should have 2 characters and have it to be the bride and groom. So after messing around with the GIMP I came up with this quick draft.
From Portal:
to this:
For those unfamiliar with the “this is a triumph” bit of the logo please refer to the following YouTube video below of Still Alive sung by Jonathan Coulton
After more tweaking and some designing I was amazed to find a pretty decent logo as I’m no designer. And even better, when I imported it into Inkscape and converted it to a vector image it turned out very nice. So now I have a vector image of my wedding logo. I hope Valve will be ok with me using it =)
To add to my delight my friend commented that it was a good take on ‘falling into love’ which was a totally unintended, but very welcome, consequence =)
In following posts I will outline how to make an normal image into vector graphic and the benefits of vector graphics
So I’ve been using Joikuspot to tether my bmobile Zoom! wirelessly to my MacBook Pro running OS X and I noticed some weird hiccups and glitches that show some sort of corruption of the data bits I’m receiving from the Internet. The 4 main issues are
Corrupted Webpages: that will show HTML markup in the middle or end of the page or even load gibberish
Corrupted Images: the image will not fully load and reloading will not solve it (forgot to try clearing the cache though, I used Opera Turbo instead)
Corrupted downloads: downloading the same file multiple times gives different md5sum hashes. Downloading directly from the phone seemed to get the file properly (so perhaps this rules out bmobile’s Zoom! as part of the problem)
Interrupted videos streams: YouTube shows that it has loaded the whole video (after seeing the red progress ‘bar’ load fully) but in the middle of the video it just stops (this is different from truncated video streams where if you monitor the red progress bar it will jump from the middle to the end abruptly when loading the file)
Marul seems to have no issues for his Joikuspot so could it be OS X? Or could it just be an unreliable Internet connection from bmobile? Whatever is the cause of a combination of causes it does get annoying and wonder if there are ways to detect what’s going on and solve this strange problem of mine.
The Wheat Field 
