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The Rahman Code

August 20, 2009 By View Comments

Apparently there’s this Rahman Code that guides the selection of Prime Ministers in Malaysia. Nah, it’s just a coincidence. Right? I asked my muslim friends including Amir himself and was met with “What, you haven’t heard of this before?” Well no, seriously, I haven’t. Amir by the way gave a brilliant presentation at the recent Pecha Kucha Night in KL.

Now I’m wondering if there are more “codes” running the country. Enjoy the video, celebrate our filmmakers while they’re still alive (that’s Amir) and long live Najib.

What is Pecha Kucha Night?
Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each – giving 6 minutes 40 seconds

Filed Under: Feature, Humor, video Tagged With: , , , ,

Google Wave Hackathon

August 18, 2009 By View Comments

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.

Filed Under: Apps, video

Gadget Envy

August 10, 2009 By View Comments

((((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?).

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

Poken Meetup #2

August 3, 2009 By View Comments

Tfirefoxpokenhe second Poken tweetup happened again at the same place (D’lish in Bangsar Village). This time we sat outside which was great. We had the outside all to ourselves and there was space to move around to poken peeps. There were familiar and new faces, people we know through twitter but never met irl. There were young and old too. Youngest being Eric’s son. His kids are Japanese and don’t speak a word of English. They speak the universal language of Poken – by holding up their pokens. When you see that, you know exactly what they want. The eldest girl also helped pimp my Poken with multi-colored blings. Was going to toss the fox earlier and carry a ninja instead but I think I’ll keep my sparkly fox now.

Filed Under: Events, video Tagged With: , ,

Augmented Reality is the new black.

July 26, 2009 By View Comments

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.

ar tower small

[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

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

If it ain’t Poken, go fix it.

July 24, 2009 By

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?

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.

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

Nokia n-gage Age of Empires III rocks.

July 22, 2009 By View Comments

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.

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: , , ,

How come cheap airlines are so cheap?

July 17, 2009 By View Comments

lcc

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.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: , , , ,

Spring Lotus Soup : The Inside Scoop

July 16, 2009 By View Comments

‘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. Don’t be fooled. No one can pass down a Spring Lotus Soup recipe and have it stay within the family. All chefs are killed when the emperor dies to serve him in the afterlife. Ah but then, the original recipe did survive. It was secretly documented by the imperial scribe who had frequent trysts with one of the emperor’s concubines in the Han Dynasty. Read on.

The benefits of Spring Lotus Soup are -

1. It allows one to show off one’s wealth to business associates, a popular practice among Chinese businessmen. The rare herbs costs more than a dozen magnums of the finest champagne and there are 50 varieties of rare herbs in Spring Lotus Soup. Chefs have to buy insurance to prepare this soup in case something goes wrong in the kitchen like if he mistook the ‘kei chi’ for the ‘kim chee’. It would be bankruptcy court instead of the Imperial Court Restaurant for him the next day. Many Spring Lotus Soup chefs have committed suicide over a Spring Lotus Soup gone wrong.

2. Spring Lotus Soup magnifies orgasms in women 100 times (spread over 5 screaming multiple Os). The concubines in the Han Dynasty swear by Spring Lotus Soup to get by the night. You must have read that the Emperors in the Han Dynasty were not well known for their looks or sexual prowess. For the concubine, it is not an easy job to ‘fake-it’ every night. One concubine quoted in a tragic Chinese tale “Spring Lotus Soup helped bring out the animal in me so I could see past the beast I was with.”

But one can easily be addicted to it as was told in another tragic tale of ‘The Hideous Concubine – The One With The Double Eyelids’. Back then, the concubines were abundant and the herbs were not, so the soup was rationed to only the concubine/s the Emperor would visit that evening.

concubine

Some concubines such as this most hideous one only got to see the Emperor once at most twice a year. She worked out a deal with the scribe (who was related to the chef) to steal the recipe so she could make it herself and to trade for jewels or favors with the other concubines in the imperial harem. The Emperor found out one day and ordered her death by Spring Lotus Soup. She ODed and died of exhaustion. Tragic indeed but not unpleasant at all.

Before her death, the recipe was smuggled out of the Imperial Concubines quarters to a distant relative. Thank heavens the lost recipe was discovered after the Cultural Revolution for the world to enjoy. But how do you know if the recipe is genuine? It can only be passed down from one male chef to another male chef (unrelated by blood) and because of the enormous burden on a family should things go awry, the cook has to remain unmarried for as long as he is a practicing Spring Lotus Soup chef, which is pretty much a lifetime.

You should all try it. Find a restaurant that serves Imperial Dishes (remember – not cheap) and ask for 1 bowl of Spring Lotus Soup, then ask for 10 spoons (if you are feasting with 10 friends). You must order 1 week in advance. In KL, I’ve only found Imperial Dishes served at the Shangrila Hotel. It’s to die for, trust me.

I also recommend:

Chinese Imperial Cuisines and Eating Secrets

The Healing Cuisine of China: 300 Recipes for Vibrant Health and Longevity (Paperback)

Chinese Natural Cures: Traditional Methods for Remedy and Prevention (Paperback)

Filed Under: Humor Tagged With: , , ,
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