Year: 2008

A couple of weeks back, I was invited by Waggener Edstrom along a group of other bloggers at Brozeit for the launch of the HP TouchSmart, one of the latest range of Multimedia PC by Hewlett Packard.

Already there were a number of bloggers who have reached there when I arrived. It was a relatively packed night at Brozeit, considering that it was only a Tuesday night.

I saw a number of units around the area being covered with a purple cloth and Claudia cleverly decides to immediately sit next to one of them.

After a quick introduction by the organizers, comes the unveiling of the HP Touchsmart. At first glance, I thought that the PC looked very sleek with its shiny black look. It looked really nice indeed.

This is the front of the HP TouchSmart with its large 22 inch screen with a front webcam. Definitely useful for people (like me) who likes to do videochats.

This is the left side. What is nice that there in an inbuilt tv tuner as well as a tv out. I could connect my cable tv and watch cable with this.

And on the right side, there is a DVD burner along a card reader. It’s great that I would not need so much external devices unlike my current settings with my current pc setup. More on the specs here

Winston, one of the product manager did a quick demonstration which was really made it look quite impressive. Using his fingers, he pressed on the monitor to navigate and flip through different applications. Actually, I thought that it was really cool! It was like seeing an early version of Minority Report.

Pretty soon, it was our turn to play with the unit and boy did we have so much fun! I saw Nadnut scribbling on a notepad using her fingernails, Hisham trying to play 3D chess and I was facinated with Daniel – who looked very professional using the touch screen.

Smoothly he manoeuvred the navigation and even played with the applets in the tablet and made poor Peter have clock eyes like these!

Here is a quick video :

Bloggers having fun at the HP Touch from rinaz on Vimeo.

What do you think of the TouchSmart? Pretty cool right?

You have a chance win one!

Post in the comment box with what you think “What will your life be like with HP TouchSmart?” Comments with the most creative, innovative and interesting ideas has a higher chance of winning.

The contest ends at 0000hrs, 12th July so it gives you time to think for a really good comment! Apologies! Contest open for Singaporeans only *hugs*

Link :

• HP Touchsmart Specs

Links to other bloggers posts

Vantan | Precious | Daintyflair | Suyuen | Sheylara | Litford | Claudia | Nadnut | Hisham | Peter

It was a last minute decision. After wrestling with the “lazy virus”, I eventually went headed to Cafe Domus where the Social Media Breakfast 2 was held and I was glad that I finally went!

Cos I got to meet sexeh ladies like Christina and Priscilla

SMB is basically a get together where people can exchange ideas and interact over a meal. I enjoyed it as there were plentiful of interesting people there, and many of them were open to discussing about Social Media.

In both of the SMB that we attended, we were given a sheet of sticky tapes where where we were supposed to tag other people according to what we perceive them to be.

Plaktoz gets tagged

I thought that it was a great way to interact and get to know people. It also helped that the venue was smaller and cosier too – forcing everyone to interact with everyone else 🙂

Personally for me, I find social media a rather interesting subject. In simple terms, social media is basically a two way communication using web 2.0 – such as blogs, forums, networking sites, vlogs, Secondlife and loads more.

Two handsome, smart and charming men, Litford and Preetam

Social media isn’t really something new, in fact even celebrities are increasingly using them as an another avenue for them to win more supporters by publicly interacting with people.

Hence I was very nonplussed when Cart was amazed to see that even celebrities like Jessica Alba willingly uploading a video of herself on youtube. He seems even more impressed when told that a big probability that she will be paid according to the hits that she brought in.

Nicole and Mr Mindef

But coming back to the SMB, it was nice to meet new people as well as to listen to differing takes on Social Media.

One of them was Wanlyn (pictured here talking intently with me) who was quite perturbed of the social networking site, Facebook – She believes that although facebook was useful in organizing events, we should not be too attached to Facebook to the point that you forget your real life, to which, I agreed with her.

Rinaz and Claudia

I also met Hun Boon whom was a wary of e-learning upon learning that I am currently working with an e-learning company. It was through his personal observations as well as interactions that made him believe that the use of technology does not equate to a better learning. To him, aspects such as social human interaction was more important. I don’t quite agree with him, but I respect his point of view.

There was also Ridz who recently posted a very good article about cliques in the web community, we chatted a while together and both remarked at how we tend to meet the same people in events such as these and he remarked, ‘Are there more people who are interested in social media or is this as good as it gets?’ And we both pondered for the longest time.

For some reason Dominic and Juzzywuzzy‘s background don’t look like they are in Singapore

All in all, I rather enjoyed myself, as simple as the event was, it was really good to have an exchange of information over a topic that we were all interested in. I liked that.

Sweetheart Jayden drew this as my tag!

Thank you organizers for organizing this lovely event. Non surprisingly, I’m looking forward to the next tone 🙂

Links to other blog posts :

• Ladyironchef
• Sheylara
• Daphne Maia
• Miccheng

Last Thursday, a group of bloggers as well as tech-forumites, journalists and various media were invited by Gina of The Right Spin to the HTC Touch Diamond unveiling at the swanky Shangri La.

Before going to the event, in all honesty, I was quite nonplussed about the phone, seeing as to how homogeneous phones are becoming, with similar functions and even similar physical looks. How can this one be any different?

But the more I learn about the phone, the more enticing it is. The feature which I liked a lot was the graphical interface of the phone as compared to the current phones that we have now which are in 2D, the Touch Diamond has a 3D interface which makes it aesthetically simple to get to different functions.

Naturally as a heavy internet user, it was not so much as the camera function nor the mp3 player that impressed me, but I’d have to say that the internet function of the Touch Diamond was very impressive.

According John Wang, Chief Marketing Officer of HTC, the Touch Diamond uses HSDPA technology which makes internet connection 16 times faster than regular 3G. And it was visually apparent as watching a youtube video – it was very speedy. Unfortunately the demo version of the phones came out blank when I tried going to Vimeo as well as trying to view the video on my site, but it was explained that the phones will be updated to allow viewing of flash embedded videos.

A couple of other cool feature of the phone is how there is an autoflow function which would solve the problem of having to move the directional key countless of times. There was also a character optical reader where you take a picture of a namecard and it recognizes the character and store it into the address book. And the body was sturdy enough to withstand a drop without even a scratch mark to it.

This is a really sweet phone indeed.

At $1098 dollars, it might seem a little steep, but I think that its worth it considering the very spectacular functions of the phone.

Here is a quick video clip of the event :

Unveiling of the HTC Touch Diamond from rinaz on Vimeo

Have you used a HTC phone before? What do you think about it?

Links :

• HTC Touch Diamond Webpage
• Claudia’s Blog Post
• Hillary’s Blog Post
• Hardwarezone Review