You are here: Home

Let’s build a smarter planet.

April 4, 2010 By View Comments

Have you ever wondered “why the traffic lights on my side of the road, red and the lights on the other 2 sides with no cars at all, green? Jam over here, wei.”

How about the time when the transit authority had to shut down all trains due to some technical problem. You only found out after schlepping down to the station and you wonder why the transit authority couldn’t find some way to tell commuters ahead of time. So many electronic billboards around the city. Can’t they interrupt the commercial messages to deliver a public service announcement?

Whatever you have come across in your daily lives, I’m sure you have wondered if there could be a better, easier or smarter way to do things. I  wondered why Brazilian wax can’t be painless. The answer could be laughing gas but lugging a tank around isn’t my idea of fun. Well, what about a laughing gas inhaler?

If I spend more time thinking and let my imagination go wild my laughing gas inhaler might actually have real commercial and medical use. Imagine how much more control flight attendants will have if they could administer this gaseous substance to hysterical passengers in a crashing plane. It would also give real meaning to die laughing. It could be a morphine substitute to convalescing patients or a temporary relief for the stressed out Japanese businessmen prone to leaping off tall buildings. It might even be a standard issue to all postal workers.

We also have real problems. Ones that affect all life on earth. Climate change, depletion of our natural resources, food shortage, access to clean water, epic-scale disasters, pandemics etc. There are many questions and many possibilities.

In a recent blogger event hosted by IBM, we were asked this exact question “what pains you and what do you think could be done to make things better?” IBM challenges us to start thinking because this is the start towards a smarter planet and a smarter Malaysia. Resist the urge to complain.. oh alright, go ahead and release the steam first. Need a laughing gas inhaler?

For more info or if you have an idea, big or small, IBM wants to hear it and if they can do anything about it, they will. Let’s build a smarter planet, start here. They are on Facebook and Twitter too.

And by the way, laughter is proven not to be the best medicine in a recent article from Discovery News. Read it from the Discovery News app which is available for free from the App Store. Loads of interesting stuff. Discovery channel videos can also be found on YouTube. Way to go Discovery!

Filed Under: Business, Eco Tagged With: , ,

In your wifi stealing your passwordz.

March 16, 2010 By View Comments

While you’re innocently checking your email at Starbucks, someone could be stealing the password to your email account with a wifi sniffer. David Hall, Consumer Product Marketing Manager, Symantec Asia Pacific, explained and demonstrated how our identity and personal information could be stolen in just four minutes online. Shocking.

David went on to tell us about phishing – the 419 scam and the Nigerian Prince scam, fake codecs, keygens, malvertisements, those horrible horrible pop up windows telling us our computer may be infected, better click on the button and run a scan now (which starts installing a virus instead of scanning for one now). I”ve learned to recognize most of them but what I haven’t seen before was SEO poison.

Within two hours after the Haiti earthquake, the digital terrorists have embedded viruses into pages that are SEO optimized to appear on the first page of your search. Norton found 19 out of 20 sites to be poisoned (that’s almost the entire first page of your search result) and David showed us a video from their lab tracking poisoned links on search pages after the Haiti earthquake, Tiger Woods scandal and a few other newsy events. Two to four hours is how fast these cyber criminals take to hit search pages to get their victim’s personal information. Thankfully, Norton has a free service online to help you check if a site is safe by copying and pasting that URL into Norton Safe Web to verify http://safeweb.norton.com.

Why are they after our info? Information is money. Credit card details are worth $0.90 each and email information is worth $10 each. Or you can be the guy that writes the program that pops up the evil window. He makes US$19K a week, more than the President of the United States.

So change your email password now and make sure to change it frequently. You know the drill, at least 6 characters long, one capital letter, one number and one symbol. Then you wonder, how the hell am I going to remember all the new passwords every time? Never mind, got an app for that. But how to come up with all these passwords? I too struggle with what password to use every time I had to change my password. David gave an example of how he comes up with them. He picks a song then uses the first word on the first line of that song as a password, the next time he changes it, he’ll go to the first word on the second line and so on. You can pick a poem too if you like.

We had an interesting time talking with David and I’ll just sum it up:

  1. Most of the world’s viruses comes from the US followed by East Europe. Haha and we thought it was China (death penalty there perhaps).
  2. Most popular platform – Windows (no surprize there), second is Apple (whose owners don’t believe there are Apple viruses at all) and third is linux (whose owners are aware of viruses but don’t believe it’ll hit them at all).
  3. Viruses hitting mobile devices – Symbian (Nokia) is the most popular platform. Wait, there are mobile viruses? Apparently so. There is one that clearly invades someone’s privacy and it is marketed as an app called “Cheating Spouse”. If you have this installed into someone’s phone, you can see what number the phone has called even after the number is cleared by the owner, etc.
  4. Viruses can also be stuffed into USBs that you buy from the shop. So scan every storage devices from now on.

Finally, we got down to Norton Antivirus. First, my personal experience. I’ve used Norton a long long time ago and stopped because it got so heavy. When it was scanning, everything just slows down to a halt. AVG was new and I switched to AVG and it also became sluggish after awhile. I moved on to Kaspersky then McAfee then Avast.

What’s with all these antivirus software starting out great then slowly suck the juice out of your processor as time goes on? I’ve learned never to buy an antivirus license for more than a year because the virus definition piles up and slows everything down.

Now why would I want to get back to Norton? I guess Symantec read my mind because here comes the benchmark reports from Dennis Technology Labs placing Norton 360 version 4.0 at the top first or second place in the fastest loading time, scanning speed and accuracy rate. They are managing virus definition files better and Norton 360 launched in September 2009 includes a reputation-based technology that crowd source from millions of users in their community to fight web-based threats.

Anyways I have been testing out Norton 360 version 4.0 antivirus for a week now and it is working very well. The UI has improved a lot from what I remember and I like how Safe Web is built in to show me what links on a search page is safe to click on. It also comes with performance improvement features such as PC Tuneup to diagnose, cleanup and optimize the PC. I ran all these first before doing a deep file scan. I have to say it’s fast, really fast. The new Norton Antivirus is worth a try if you’re not using it already. Let’s hope the performance lasts.

Where to get it:
Norton 360 v 4.0 has just been released in stores across Malaysia. You can also get it online at symantec.com. It supports Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. Suggested retail price is RM229 for the standard edition for three PC license and RM119 for one PC license. It also comes with 2GB of online storage space. These are for one year only. The premium edition is RM279 and comes with 25GB of online storage. (Cloud storage is becoming a popular bundling feature, it’s just like PA insurance hey). If you just want to try before you buy, Symantec online lets you try Norton’s full standard version free for one month.

Filed Under: Apps, Reviews, Tech Tagged With: ,

Targus, Cat-approved.

March 9, 2010 By View Comments

I was recently given a laptop bag courtesy of Targus from their latest Spruce EcoSmart(tm) range. I was delighted with the gift. My first laptop bag was a Targus too – years ago.

I checked on the Targus website and they do have some pretty nice feminine designs but the bags in the new range were all masculine models. No market for feminine designs? I wonder. Are women not concerned about the bags they carry their laptops in? I asked on twitter and Eevon responded, “the bags either make us (women) look like a messenger or a turtle.” LOL. I do have “turtle” bags and I agree that they will destroy any business image we try to maintain.

Anyways, I had an upcoming trip overseas and I chose one with a simple top-load design to take with me. Actually, I chose the one that looked least masculine. Function-wise, it passes. My laptop and all the other gadgets came home safely. It went through getting tossed around in the overhead compartment and kicked under the seat on a plane. The ergonomically designed strap padding was very comfortable. I have no idea what material was used to make it but it felt like shock absorbers which was great. This is important because a lousy strap padding can make a bag feel twice as heavy. The bag’s material is  soft to the touch and the inside is well padded. So cushy that when I laid it on the floor, my cat hopped on and went to sleep.

Targus didn’t disappoint in quality but maybe one day we will see more stylish and feminine looking bags in various colours other than black.

Hear it from the ladies, do any of you wish there were more feminine laptop bag designs? Example here: http://goo.gl/SKvw (Targus for her).

Filed Under: Eco, Marketing Tagged With: ,

How to get Kindle books for your iPhone, iPod Touch or PC

March 1, 2010 By

Want to get Kindle books on your iPhone/iPod Touch or PC? Here’s a hack, ok, call it a tip. This is not illegal, you still have to pay for the book. It’s just a way around the restrictions Amazon has in place to stop non-residents of the US from buying Kindle books. Let’s get to it.

What you need:
1. A PC (not on Mac yet) or an Apple iPhone/iPod Touch.
2. A credit card
3. An Amazon account. If you don’t have one, register for one. Some Amazon shopping experience will help too. Now who hasn’t shopped at Amazon.com these days?
4. A US address

1. INSTALL THE KINDLE READER SOFTWARE/APP

Installing for the PC:
Download and install the Kindle for PC software.

Installing for the iPhone/iPod Touch:
This is a little trickier. You can only download the Kindle for iPhone app from the US app store. Don’t mess with the account you have right now. Set up another app store account with a different email, a US address and don’t enter your credit card info.

If your app store is in the Malaysian app store, you can easily change that by clicking on the Malaysian flag icon at the bottom right and change it to “United States”.

Now, download Kindle for iPhone app and sync. You shouldn’t lose your information. Once you see the app on your phone, you can log out of the US app store and login to your usual one.

2. Set up your Amazon account to go shopping.

First, use your credit card to buy a gift card that you will send to yourself. The books I buy usually cost around $10-15 so I bought a $50 gift card which should get me 3-4 Kindle books. Don’t log out yet, wait for email. Once the email with the gift card claim code arrives, click on “Start shopping”. This will credit the amount into your Amazon account.

Remain logged in. Go into your account and remove all credit card information. This is what’s making Amazon stop you from getting into the Kindle store. Also change the region or country of origin to the US. If you’re asked to enter a US address, you can use the one above.

Now you’re all set. Click on “Kindle Store” and go shopping.

3. When you’re ready to buy.

Click on “Buy now with 1-click” and tell Amazon where you want the book sent – to your iPhone/iPod Touch or to your PC.

It will come with instructions on how to retrieve the book from the app on your PC / iPhone / iPod Touch.

Enjoy!

BTW, you can leave your second App Store account alone, it may come in handy in the future. I use mine to download other apps that are not available to Malaysians just so I can drool at what I can’t have.

Filed Under: Apps, Eco, Tech Tagged With: , , , ,

Foursquare for businesses

January 28, 2010 By View Comments

Since my last article on Foursquare vs. Gowalla, I’ve been seeing more folks get on Foursquare.

I think that’s great, we could finally have a crowd big enough for mayor deals to make sense to businesses.

If you run a business, Foursquare for businesses is worth looking into. It’s a great way to get the word out and reward your loyal customers. You may not know this but here’s how folks are talking about you. They are using Foursquare to tell their friends and leaving tips on what’s great or bad at your place. Their friends most likely share the same interest or sentiments which makes their word of mouth highly effective.

Look at the conversations I’ve had over some Foursquare post to my Facebook profile.

Now think what a little reward can do. People who have been thinking about you might actually want to make a trip there. Your loyal Mayor might become your biggest fan and sing your praises. Wouldn’t that be awesome? As a customer, I find this so much more fun than being a fan of a business on Facebook. Some businesses still love to serve me spam – information with no customer benefits. Do I really care what garage band will be playing this Friday? Why don’t they give me good reasons to visit or buy more? Like watch the football game here and whatever you’re drinking, get a second one for free when your favorite football team strikes a goal. Now who wouldn’t like that?

null

I’m waiting (anxiously) to see who in KL will be first to do this. Location based social networking is good for business.

If you are now wondering what this foursquare thing is all about, here’s the pitch. More info at http://foursquare.com/businesses/

View more presentations from 6S Marketing.

I wish Foursquare has a directory of businesses with mayor deals by country so that I can seek them out and aim for mayor.

Filed Under: Apps, Marketing Tagged With:

A Twitter Up-’Rais’ing?

January 20, 2010 By View Comments

Laugh now. Laugh while you can because the Minister of Information, Communications, Culture and Arts will ban Twitter and Facebook tomorrow. Soon, say goodbye to tv, radio and newspapers also. Mobile phones might go too. These are all western inventions – very bad.

All of you who tweeted with the #yorais hashtag will be sent to prison (including those innocently asking “what is #yorais ah?”) and put on the receiving end of hard labour and a few strokes of the cane, one stroke for each tweet. That will teach you to drag Rais’ reputation through the twitter mud.

Wonder if the PM is in on it or is he having a word with Rais about thinking before talking.

One can only wonder if they had a chat or what in the world possessed Rais Yatim to make a statement like this. In any case, welcome to Malaysia. Hope your stay is a pleasant one. If you need room service, please send a smoke signal.

Filed Under: Humor Tagged With: , , , ,

Foursquare vs. Gowalla *ding-ding-ding-ding*

January 9, 2010 By View Comments

I like Gowalla but Foursquare seems to be doing more to engage me. First, Flickr integration with machine tagging, then superuser status and now Layar – the Augmented Reality app. I’m tired of updating both Gowalla and Foursquare every time. Can one win me over soon? Let’s see what both has got to offer.

I’ll admit, I haven’t been a big fan of Foursquare.

I used to like Foursquare until I found out how easy it was to game the system and check-in to places without having to be there physically. In less than an hour I could get 300+ points to put me on top of the leaderboard. The game turned me off instantly.

Another thing that turned me off Foursquare was how long it took to check-in or create a new place as compared to Gowalla which picks up your location automatically so you don’t need to enter the venue’s address. People don’t always give a friend the address to a restaurant, we say it’s behind KLCC or between this place and that place. Who remembers the address anyways. So you take more time creating places in Foursquare than in Gowalla. Foursquare is also quite new in KL so a LOT of places are not on the map.

Talking about map – here’s another problem I have with Foursquare. Even with the address entered, the map can go wrong – placing  the pin in an area you haven’t even heard of or a place you’ll never go to like in the middle of a lake. Unlike Gowalla, you cannot edit the map at all in Foursquare which is really frustrating. I thought the Superuser status would let me fix the map but I still couldn’t do it. Gee, how hard is it to implement this feature? What I can do as a Level 1 Superuser is limited to merging duplicates and closing rubbish venues like “I hate my boss”.

Duplicate venues was the other reason why I found Foursquare messed up. This is also another way to game the system, you can create 5 different Mid Valleys, spelling it slightly different, check-in to all 5 and get extra points to get you closer to the lead in the game. Some guys love that and would often proudly announce on twitter when they become a mayor and what new badges they got. Maybe some of them deserve it.

It’s actually not all bad, there are cool things about Foursquare like its community of people who take the time to leave tips that pop-up when you’re near a venue. The number of people who are doing this to help others however, are still very small. When I see a really useful tip pop up from someone in Foursquare, I always say a silent thank you to the person who left it. This is what makes Foursquare useful. I hope this community of tip contributors will grow.

flickr machine tag

The integration of Foursquare into other services is something I find very exciting. It is integrated into Flickr so you can add machine tags to pictures taken at venues listed in Foursquare. Folks looking at your flickr picture can click on it and be taken to the venue page to read your review/tip or get the address to visit the place themselves. The map can’t be trusted yet and I would also sometimes add “Don’t trust the map” into my Foursquare tips. Foursquare venues and tips are also integrated into Layar as an AR layer. When you pan your phone around you’ll see venues and tips popping into your screen which is pretty cool. I can see my own tips and other people’s tips on what’s interesting nearby. Again, please note that the location map in Foursquare cannot be trusted which means that the locations in Layar are also dodgy. The integration (idea) into other services that I use regularly is what’s making Foursquare engaging to me. So I am taking a second look and going to use it a bit more, together with Gowalla.

I’m not about to forget Gowalla yet but Foursquare is close to making me give it up. Foursquare just needs to improve the venue creation process and make the map editable, not just for superusers but for everyone.  The game is fun for awhile (pretend you’re not hacking it) so it’s nice but not important. Game-wise, I like Gowalla’s better because it’s harder to exploit. The idea of picking up items and leaving something behind for others to pick up is a nice touch. In Gowalla, when you create a spot, you can become a founder by dropping an item. But it also gets very frustrating when you have run out of items to drop, it is a total killjoy. I want to like Gowalla and I’ve given a lot of feedback but it seems to have fallen on deaf ears. I’m now hoping Foursquare can improve further and make it the one and only location based check-in game on my iPhone.

Add me:

On Foursquare: http://foursquare.com/user/thechannelc
On Gowalla: http://gowalla.com/users/thechannelc

9 out of 10 location maps of places I create in Foursquare are off. Here's one example.

Jan 10 Update: There was apparently a January 8 update at the Foursquare blog that I missed. The location finder has improved and I tested it with a location I created this evening and I left the address field empty just to see if the app can track down my GPS location. It did, yay. But it still won’t let me edit the map and fix all the previous venues that have their pins someplace other than where it should be. Give us editable maps, Foursquare.

Filed Under: Feature, Tech Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Stop restricting ebook sales.

December 31, 2009 By View Comments

Even though I don’t have a kindle, I have been reading ebooks since 2003. I get the pdf versions from ereader.com and back then I was reading them on a Palm V.  One of the first apps I installed on my new iPhone 3Gs recently was Barnes and Nobles ebook reader – for the fun of it. B&N’s weird, they won’t sell me the ebooks like Amazon but they won’t stop me from downloading the reader unlike Amazon.

I do know a way to download the Amazon reader and buy kindle books but it’s a tedious process. This regional restriction put in place by publishers is stupid. If physical books can be shipped anywhere by Amazon why can’t ebooks be sold as well? For the first time in Amazon’s history, they sold more ebooks than physical books this Christmas. Ebooks are the future. No, ebooks are here today.

Ebooks are great, they don’t take up anymore space on shelves in homes or at the bookstores. They don’t kill more trees. They don’t contribute to carbon footprint moving around from printer to distributor to retailers and finally to a reader. They cost less and save consumers more. They can meet consumer demands faster. They weigh nothing so you can carry a small library in your pocket. More copies of a book in digital form can be sold because it’s a personal copy once it’s purchased, I can’t really share an ebook as easily as I can a physical book. More sales, more money, everyone happy. No? The one bad thing I see with ebooks though is that I can’t get an author to autograph it. I’m sure someone somewhere is working on a solution where I can have a video of me kissing the author and a digital scribble with the words “Last night was amazing. Sign” attached to the ebook.

There are so many reasons why an ebook is better than a physical book and why regional restrictions need to be tossed out the window. Who’s with me?

Check out:  The Business Case for E-Readers.

Filed Under: Apps, Business, Feature, Tech

The Legend of Cristang

December 17, 2009 By View Comments

I had heard about Cristang from friends on Facebook and Twitter. “Cristang’s pork burgers are to die for” someone said. “For sure, one of the top three places for burgers in KL” said another. I decided to go taste for myself.

I went there after a meeting at 5pm and they were opening up for dinner time. Being first on the scene gave me the opportunity to chat with Yin – part-time restaurant manager and long-time assistant to Gerald, who owns the place. I told her I came to investigate claims of Cristang having the best pork burgers in town and we started talking. Not long after, Gerald came and we sat down, talking for two whole hours.

I told him I was surprized his name was Gerald and not Cris Tang. “I get that a lot and I’ve had people come in here telling me they are friends of Cris Tang and wants a discount on their bill.” He explained that “Cristang” is a slang that means ‘people of Christian faith’ and is commonly used by the Eurasian community of Portuguese descent to refer to each other.  Portuguese itself is not the correct term to refer to folks like Gerald because he’s not Portuguese and the food he serves isn’t anything you’ll find in Portugal. We’ll call it Portuguese anyways, to keep it short. So, it could be that our Malaysian Portuguese food is the country’s first fusion food if they win the Pie Tie and Pongteh ownership debate with the Nyonya’s (Malaysia assimilated Straits Chinese?).

IMG_0017

Gerald is full of wonderful stories. There’s a story behind the restaurant’s famous pork burger called P7 The Urban Legend. I asked how that name came about but first, all the burger names have a P and a number. What that means is the number of pork items in the burger. P1 means one pork item and that’s the pork patty and P2 has two pork items – patty + bacon etc. The P could also mean grilled cajun prawns, petai, chilli pork con carne and pineapple. P7 however, doesn’t have seven pork items but because P1-P6 were taken. The P7 only appeared on the menu a month and a half ago but they have been serving it for over five months like a beta test. It was so good that word got around and people were often heard asking for the P7 like an urban legend.

I figured most of the items on the menu are from recipes passed down through generations of portuguese in his family but the burgers were far from the usual Portuguese fare. “Most of my dishes are accidents in the kitchen” he said, “I love to cook and I’ve never been to chef school so I don’t know my limits and there are no rules to tell me what I can and cannot do with food.” He does have one personal rule though, after one of his dishes become famous, he won’t eat it anymore in case he jinx it. I think this trait is in a lot of artists or perfectionists or both. They always think their best work is yet to come so if he tasted his dish, he might fix something that’s not broken and end up breaking it instead. It’s not like programming, flavor is highly subjective.

Well I had a great time today tasting the legendary P7 and having a wonderful chat with Gerald. The P7 is indeed very delicious. The petai (a strong tasting bean) did not over-power the taste of the pork which was so juicy and tender, it melts in your mouth. I’m a fan of burgers again.

Cristang is at 8 Avenue, Jalan 8/1. Tel: +603.7956.7877. They are opened for lunch and dinner, 6 days a week and closed on Mondays. Highly recommended are of course the P7 Urban Legend Pork Burger, Bacon and Eggs Soup, Bacon Rib Ambila, Tenggiri with Soy Limang and Debal Chicken.

Follow Cristang on Twitter: @cristangrstrnt

Disclosure: I have not received any freebies for writing this article. The only privilege I got was Gerald’s time and the wonderful chat we had.

Filed Under: Business, Feature Tagged With: , , , ,
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »