The first Google Wave Hackathon for Google developers in Malaysia was held last Saturday at iTrain. Nazrul, Chief Thug of the Google Technology User Group in KL (GTUG KL) sat down with me and recounted the events of the week that almost led to a non-event. People had no Google Wave accounts up to 10am that morning. Thank gawd Google came through by 11am and everyone got down to business around noon.

If you’ve missed this one, you can look forward to the second hackathon which should be before Google’s public preview on September 30th. Follow @nazroll on twitter or join the GTUG KL facebook group for updates.

((((Videoblog))))

Niki organized a Poken meetup in Bangsar on Saturday. Of course, everyone came with their Pokens. Then I had a thought, since we got a bunch of geeks together, let’s see what other gadgets they have on them. So I went around the table with the Vado HD. Thank you everyone for sharing what you have.

If this was a group research, here’s my observation:

1. Everyone has at least 1 poken and 1 mobile phone.
2. Most popular phone is Nokia. Only one iPhone owner.
3. Almost everyone has a laptop (wifi ready) or a device that can connect to the internet.
4. And the one with the most gadgets is a girl.

Have I missed anything?

This video wasn’t encoded in HD, btw. My machine has gots no juice. I need a mac (you hear that Santa?).

The second Poken tweetup happened again at the same place (D’lish in Bangsar Village).

Found out I could play augmented reality games on my Nokia phone so I spent the whole afternoon playing an old (circa 2008) AR game called Tower of Defence. Graphics and gameplay is unsophisticated but the AR is very cool.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyWVH6jkDHg[/youtube]

Augmented Reality has been around for many years and is a technology that combines real-world and computer-generated data. The gaming industry was probably the first to exploit AR. Games have been developed using AR like the one above and many others. It’s a fascinating technology that is also useful in education and business. Brands like Ford and Topps have used AR in their marketing.  There are AR business cards too but the most impressive AR app I’ve seen so far is Layar for the Android phone:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b64_16K2e08[/youtube]

These are all old news but worth looking at again because we will see AR used more and more. Coming to the Apple iPhone 3Gs soon is:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH6r2tIaRXU[/youtube]

The Layar and AcrossAir’s AR app are not first of it’s kind. A Japanese company called Tonchidot first came out with this for the Sekai camera and demo’d a concept at the 2008 TechCrunch50 Conference (2009 update). What I find really cool about the Sekai camera is the crowd-sourced content. This app will debut on the Apple iPhone 3Gs after the next OS update in September (AR only works on the iPhone 3Gs). Take a look.:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgTwSXK_5dg[/youtube]

Apple does not have any AR apps at the moment and only just released the iPhone SDK 3.1 b3 with AR friendly API to developers.

For the latest updates on AR, follow @AugmentedAdvert on twitter.

More on AR:

Five Addictive Augmented Reality Gaming Apps Wired. July 28, 09

If you’ve ever been shy to ask a girl (or a guy) at a party for her phone number, you can now say ‘You’re hot, can I poken you.’ That’s one way the Poken can help you.  Wait, what the hey is a Poken?

The Poken is a little usb device with a very low powered rf-based technology to transmit and receive data. When it “touches” or “high 5″ or rather “high 4″ another Poken, it will send and pick up personal details like a person’s name, contact details and social media profiles. The info can’t be seen of course until it’s uploaded to a website which means the Poken is totally dependent on a person having access to the web. If you can read this, no problem for you.

How much information is shared with someone can be easily managed through the website at doyoupoken.com. The discrete option will send limited details and the normal option will send everything in your Poken profile. By pressing the button on the Poken twice before touching another Poken will switch it to discrete mode and ensures private info won’t be exchanged.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwyxsyEXD70[/youtube]

Some call it a business card replacement and some call it the offline social media tool. Whatever it is, it’s basically a quick way to collect personal information. At first glance, it looks like a toy for a kid. It might even remind you a bit of the tamagotchi. The bright side of this is, the technology won’t intimidate technophobes which do make up a large segment of our population. There are huge opportunities in this little thing. Keep the usb and the rf transmitter/receiver and this thing can take on any shape. It can be customized into the shape of a brand’s logo for example and become a badge that identifies a brand’s fan or another fun way to expose a brand to the fan’s network of friends.

Beyond social networking and branding, businesses can use it to collect customer information to send promotional emails and hopefully  encourage the customer to buy more. Imagine this, say you run a cafe. Every time someone visits your cafe and taps his  Poken with your cafe’s Poken at the counter, you’ll be able to collect his details along with details of his purchases. Over time, you can find out what his favorite drinks are, how often and what time of day he likes his beverages. This information can help you customize more effective promotions. Like, if you have a frequent customer incentive, you could reward him with his favorite drink free on his next visit. If he hasn’t tried your muffins, how about sending him a free trial Poken coupon (“delivered to his Poken already”) that he can redeem by tapping on your Poken?

Similar to the concept of Touch and Go, the Poken also has the potential to store currency like Poken dollars. Tap it at a retailer’s Poken and the value will be deducted from the Poken account on purchases. No need for cash. Dollars could be bought with real money or earned as a form of reward, again for being a loyal customer.

The Poken can also come in handy in  medical emergencies making information like blood type, allergies, existing medical conditions and emergency contact information available to paramedics. Talking about healthcare uses, wouldn’t it be fun to have a kid wear this in the pediatrics ward rather than a wristband?

What I’ve described above are just ideas of what may be possible with the Poken. The challenge is getting more people to carry one. It’s not cheap at the moment (suggested retail price is US$25 each) which means initial demand might have to come from the corporate sector. Any brands up to bringing Poken in in a big way? I’ll be your fan.

Background
Poken was born in Belgium and became a hit in Europe (re: TechCrunch’s interview with the Poken startup in July of 2008). Japan joined the craze in March this year and it is slowly spreading to the rest of Asia. The KL twitter community was introduced to it by Eric Yap at a tweetup yesterday. Eric, a Malaysian currently living in Japan is here looking for a business partner to launch the Poken. If you’re interested to know more or buy a Poken from Eric, he can be contacted on Twitter as @kenloo or by email beingyap@gmail.com.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BReCQOUnsYY[/youtube]

Related:
Poken apart and back again. See what’s under the hood as YK dismantles the Poken.

After accidentally recovering 30MB of free space on my Nokia N96′s phone memory, the phone started to work like new again. So I updated the n-gage app and downloaded Age of Empires III yesterday. Been wanting to play it since it came out couple of months back. I’m on mission #13 now, skill level veteran (a notch up from wimp level ‘Recruit’).

You have two game options: tackle missions or skirmishes. The missions are usually short and fast on smaller maps while the skirmishes throw you into the deep end where the battles are longer and the maps are bigger. Before going into combat, you will have to populate a small town and manage a crew of settlers who has to gather resources needed to build up your army. It’s SIM City-ish but it works well with the game play.

Graphics quality is awesome (for a small screen) with visual effects to match. I usually play with the music off to hear the sound effects which is not bad but not great, only a slight rush from bombs going off and clanging from the blade-on-blade fights. I still like the thumb-trembling sound effects from Resident Evil more, the zombie boss’ roar is still in my head.

Overall — great game! Very n-gaging. Lots of variety in the missions, challenging skirmishes and a community scoreboard to feed your gamer’s ego.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

I forgot to add that there is an Ngage arena where you can connect to and play with other players, live. This is the best part because you really don’t know what to expect from the other party.

From Metrobest

Then enjoy this:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2kVWLorLVE[/youtube]

Fastest growing segment of air travel are low cost carriers, here’s how they manage to offer fares half of what major carriers are charging. But is this all they can do? How about:

1. Even cheaper seats – in the baggage compartment below? No window view.
2. Bench seats – they seat more people.
3. Eliminate toilets in short-haul flights – make room for more seats.
4. Have the pilot double up as cabin crew when flight is in autopilot and as luggage handlers after the plane lands.
5. Drop cabin temperature and sell more blankets (make them thin), folks will have to buy 2 to stay warm.

I’m sure I’ll be able to come up with some more.

‘Spring Lotus’ is the name of a very exquisite and expensive Imperial Soup. Have you heard of ‘The Buddha Jumps Over The Wall’ soup? The ‘Buddha Jumps..’ is the economy version, spin-offed from Spring Lotus Soup. Spring Lotus Soup takes one week to prepare and only by licensed chef after 20 years of practice. Lately, there’s been a lot of bogus Spring Lotus Soup chefs who claim they possess the original recipe passed down 14 generations ago from a grandmother.

While I was making my way through New Zealand I  have to say Google Map rocks, mostly. The map failed in areas outside the cities due to a lack of 3G coverage especially in isolated areas or where there were mountains cutting off 3G signals. Good thing I wasn’t driving and needed to depend on a GPS device.

In areas where there were  3G signals, I’ve been having fun updating my location on Google Latitude so friends back home could see which city I was heading into so they could tell me not to miss the oysters in Invercargill or the sights and sounds of Queenstown. It was delayed crowdsourcing with the help of Google Latitude. And since I was traveling alone, it was good to keep friends and family informed in case I don’t reach a destination by the time I said I would. Haven’t you heard of undead rabid sheeps in the deep south of New Zealand? lol. I was more worried the bus I was in might skid off the road coming down a mountain and should that happen, may 3G help us all.

If you have a phone with GPS and a data plan, download Google Maps for mobile from your phone at http://m.google.com/maps or http://maps.google.com.