Sales, Social and Tech

This is the sort of prank you can play with Apple's Siri on the iPhone. The Telegraph UK wrote  Charlie Le Quesne was trying out the iPhone 4S at a Tesco store in Coventry when it told him: "Shut the f*** up, you ugly t***. The boy had been using the phone's Siri system – which answers spoken questions – and had asked it: "How many people are there in the world? It seems someone used the ugly seven words as a name and that innocent question pop the name up. Tesco has send the bad-mouthed iPhone back to Apple for to wash the mouth piece with a little soap.

Samsung recently mocked those who were stuck in a long queue for the iPhones, but the last laugh is on Samsung Galaxy S phone and tab users. It seems Samsung Galaxy S phone and tab users will be stuck with the 2.2 Gingerbread or 2.3 Froyo Android version for many years to come, even when Google is set to launch the Ice-Cream Sandwich version anytime soon. Wrote Business Insider, " Samsung  won't be rolling out an update to  Ice Cream Sandwich , Google's latest mobile operating system, for the Galaxy S and  Galaxy Tab  tablet because the devices don't have enough memory to run both ICS and Samsung's custom TouchWiz skin." Read more:   http://www.businessinsider.com/samsung-says-no-ice-cream-sandwich-upgrade-for-galaxy-s-and-galaxy-tab-owners-2011-12#ixzz1hWK5EJDx Karma is a real bitch.

Tech blogs are now labelling Nokia's Lumia Mobile Phone as the " prostitute " phone because Lumia in Spanish means Prostituta.. A friend also commented that Nokia Asha range of mobile phone may not do well in Chinese speaking community. Asha in Hindu means Hope, but in Chinese, it sounds like   阿傻  where  傻  means silly or stupid.   阿傻  is also a slang for calling somebody silly. Can you imagine a telco salesperson asking a potential customer, "Hello, do you want to buy a   阿傻  mobile phone from Nokia?" Customer, "No.. I want is smartphone, not a  傻  phone."

The video below about how a 1 year old thinks a magazine is a broken iPad is spreading across social networks. The video also got me wondering if my son would be reading print in the next 20 years? I was only introduced to a computer when I was 12. I clearly remembered it as I was supposed to be studying for the Primary School Leaving Examinations but sneak in a few hours of California Games on the 386 PC. It was a huge PC and was running on five quarter inch floppy disk. 23 years later, my son’s first computing experience is the Apple iPad at the young age of two. My son didn’t need to learn how DOS work. All he needed to do was press a button and swipe  his finger across the screen to get to the program he wants. He enjoyed on demand video, via Youtube. Within a few weeks, he knew where to find the history button on the Youtube app to play videos he played a few minutes ago. When he grows up to be a PEMB, would he still be reading print?

While I was waiting for the train at Raffles Place MRT, I was surfing on Facebook via the iPhone. When the train arrived, I was still glued to Facebook on the iPhone. As I boarded the train and it moved into the tunnels, I entered a comment to a friend’s status update. Then it hit me. I am in the tunnel heading north and that would easily meant I was entering the 3G deadzone. But wait, I managed to enter a comment. Checked the status bar and Starhub 3G was at full bar. Singapore telcos were given a deadline " to provision 3G internet speeds on SMRT's existing underground network by end July 2011”. Starhub has not officially announced it but it seems that the telco is on track to meet the deadline.

I raised a Facebook question yesterday asking my friends and the entire Facebook universe if they would like link their credit cards to their NFC phone and make payments with that NFC phone. The link to the Facebook Question can be found at http://on.fb.me/frpCLA . 38% or 23 out of 59 voted “no” and would rather use their plastic credit cards to make payment. 29% voted “yes” as they would like mobile phone to do everything. 25% said they would link their credit cards to their NFC phone and pay with that phone, but still had security concerns. The remaining 4 said a flat no to doing it as they have security concerns. Interestingly, one said he has not heard of NFC phones. Another friend who participated in the recent NFC phone trial with Starhub and ezlink said he received a funny look from MacDonald service staff when he paid with his NFC phone. However, he did highlight that there were no updates after the trial from both Starhub and ezlink. As can be seen, that adoption to li...

DK, a ex contributor for Tech65.org, predicted that Near Field Communication (NFC) in mobile phones will see slow pick up in 2011 scratches only the surface of the whole NFC as a payment medium story. DK also failed to see the big picture of what Google intend to do with NFC in its Android phones. I will touch on that point later. Wrote DK , But despite having phones with NFC in the market, services like payments using NFC will not pick up in Singapore. It’s just like using EZ-Link to make purchase. Almost everyone have an EZ-Link card. But how often do you see someone using EZ-Link card to make purchase? Someone need to find a killer feature for NFC in Singapore. Payment just won’t make the cut. EZ-Link’s Achilles Heel is that the card is the only payment medium for taking public transport in Singapore. You can pay cash, but the cost of using cash on public transport is more expensive than if you were to use the EZ-Link card, plus you have to pay full fare when you change ...

Beware of what you buy in China. The big difference is the iPed runs on Android.

Since working with Aneace Haddad at Taggo, I have inculcated the three questions which Aneace has kept asking himself as an entrepreneur. Yes, we do throw ideas back and forth, but when the idea is on paper, we ask ourselves “So What, Who Cares and Why Me?" to the ideas. The next step is to ask if the feature or idea will be seen as a painkiller, vitamin or cocaine. No, we are not selling drugs, but rather a description to how the idea will be seen by potential client. Thus, a little exercise I did by putting the Google Chrome OS in the limelight and to see if the new OS will pass the test. So What? The Google Chrome OS came about in the era when the netbook was hot. The netbook started from the ideas of the One Laptop Per Child and Asus decided to make a low end commercially available version with a Linux OS. As we know the Linux OS wasn’t that well received so Asus moved to Windows XP Home. Windows Vista would have made netbooks a slow moving brick. So netbooks jumped ...

The next time you see only of the three broadband players saying they can provide good upload and download speeds, take it with a pinch of salt. Maybe a big tablespoon of salt. Speedtest.net recently made their data public and Singapore’s broadband scores not really admirable. When it comes to download speeds, Singapore is ranked 31 at 8.50 Mb/s after you take away results from schools and corporations. The Aland Islands, somewhere in Finland, even have better download speeds than us. They are ranked 11 with 16.48 Mb/s. However, what disappoints me is where Singapore is ranked with upload speeds. 52 at 1.12 Mb/s. No wonder I get uploads speeds of 20kbps with the Starhub Mobile Elite which promised in their ads up to 5Mbps of uploads speed. Singapore is being Laos, UGANDA, Kenya, Mongolia and not forgetting the Aland Islands. I feel that the Singapore ISPs need to re-think their broadband strategy to improve upload speeds rather than promising faster downloads. With th...

I have been using a netbook since going freelance. Most of the time, when I power up the netbook, I will be asked by those around to recommend a netbook for them. Here is one tip I usually give those who ask for it. Tip #1: Go for battery life The first netbook I used was the Dell Mini10 and the biggest problem was the short battery life. It promised 3 hours but when you really put it to real use, it could be less than 90 mins. This even so when you are using the Starhub Mobile Elite 21Mbps (You will be lucky to get 1Mbps) which draws a lot of power from the battery. So given the price is about the same across all netbooks with almost the same specs, go for one that gives you more value in terms of battery life. My 20-month old son has since destroyed the Dell Mini10 by sandwiching the TV’s remote control between the keyboard and LCD screen and pressing the top to test the durability of the LCD screen. The result: the LCD crystals burst! I have replaced the Dell Mini 10 ...

I have thank this tip to my operations manager who told me a few hours ago that it was possible to sort highlighted rows in Excel 2007. I went like “WOW”! Sorting highlighted was one of the biggest challenges for me when I was at Cisco Systems. I was repeatedly asked then on how to sort highlighted bars and found it was Microsoftly impossible to do so. As excel sheets were one of the Office tools that ruled Cisco Systems with the endless reporting, I felt that it was necessary to share this tip with you. Above is your standard excel table and rows. You notice that I highlighted row 4. Let’s say we want to move this highlighted bar to the top. Right click on the highlighted row and go to the “sort” option. Select “Put Selected Color on Top”. Viola! Your highlighted row is now at the top. Assume now that I have a few rows highlighted and I would have to sort by the highlighted blue bar. Highlight the selected table and Right click on the highlighted row and ...

As much as our local government pushes for eServices on the Internet, I found it better to make a short trip down to the immigration offices to get my questions answered in person. First of all, the customer hotline is so hot that you either get an engage tone on the first try or if you are lucky to get through, you might to wait up to an hour before you speak to a human. I wouldn’t want to stick my ear to the phone for that long. I usually try the other line but that’s the quality control hotline. What I got was some answers, but I wasn’t confident of it. In fact, what irk me was the judgmental remark the operator made about our decision to choose to bring my son into Singapore using a passport from the country up north instead of the Singapore one. Shouldn’t operators take a neutral position in their responses? If you send an email, it will take up to three working days for a reply. So I decided to make a stop at the immigration office on the way back from meeting a client. ...

We, the web2.0 generation, have to grateful for how the Internet has evolved to provide us with the various means of communications. We communicate via our blogs, our Facebook social network, via Twitter, via IM etc. We know how to use these tools to reach out to the world. These tools cost us almost nothing. But for the earlier generations, such web2.0 tools of communication sounds very foreign to them. Their known means of communications is only via the telephone phone and pay much for overseas IDD calls. Over these Lunar New Year, an incident at my in-laws place in Kuala Lumpur highlighted how we have taken for new communications tools for granted. One of my in-laws have a son, his wife and their child, living in Australia, while she lives in Malaysia . Her only means of communication with them is via phone and expensive IDD calls. For the last few months, she has heard of stories from other relatives who have visited her son in Australia have told her that her son has bee...

Take a look at the above Cisco ASR 1000 series router, sexy? Cisco Systems took the launch of the their Cisco ASR 100 series routers onto Web2.0 and many blog commentators have highlighted how this has made its routers sexy again. Wrote Lidija Davis of ReadWriteWeb , Cisco says they met their goal of increasing visibility and involving their audience by using the social Web, creating buzz and building a community at a negligible cost; a soft cost that involved time, resources, and creativity instead of budget. Given the state of the US economy right now, the social Web seems to be the smartest choice corporations (or individuals) can make if they want to create passion and excitement for their brand - at a soft cost. Write http://amaappendagy.blogspot.com/ The biggest lesson here is this: Routers aren't sexy. If Cisco can make a router exciting enough for social media, you too can utilize social media to create a buzz about. If you wanted a textbook guide,...