I’m happy to announce that Marina’s Bloggariffic has won 2 awards in the ping.sg most entertaining post and also Waggener-Edstrom Post of the Year 2008.
Excellent! Two trophies, a customized engraved glass by Markchoon.com, a Border’s voucher, $200 shopping voucher at Takashimaya and a dinner for two with the good people of Waggener-Edstorm. Its like an advanced birthday present!
But in all honesty, I’m really very surprised and shocked and did not expect this win considering at all! All the while, I was yaay-ing at the other winners that when my name was announced, I was dumbfounded! In fact, I felt so flabbergasted that I dont even remember what I said last Saturday during the winning speech.
Regardless, I feel very blessed that there are people who enjoyed my postings and would heartily thank everyone that voted for me. Its because of you that I have the drive to be the give out my best in blogging. Thank you so much!
Without further adieu, here is the ping lipdub project video!
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. My first look upfront! 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. I see a webcam! Definitely useful for people (like me) who likes to do videochats via msn.
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!
And this is the right side, there is a DVD burner along a card reader. Its great that I would not need so much external devices unlike my current settings with my current pc setup. More on the specs here
It was when 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 Zen master Daniel - who looked very professional using the touch screen.
Smoothly he manouvered the navigation and even played with the applets in the tablet and made poor Peter have clock eyes like these!
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*
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ridz seems to have multiple personalities
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 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
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.
On Friday, the 18th April and for the first time ever, I was at a press conference thanks to the awesome Brian and Tania of Ogilyv for remembering how much I love Canon products. Many of the pictures and videos in this blog itself are captured with the Ixus and 350D.
It was a classy event from the start at the regal Asian Civilisations Museum, being ushered in by the smartly dressed security guard to going up the charmingly vintage staircase. And then being greeted by a bevvy of pretty ladies in red dresses.
Soon-after, I reached the hall where the event was held. There were already a number of people mingling around.
It was kind of a strange experience and somewhat daunting being surrounded by editors of credible magazines and newspapers. Whereas I was representing the bloggers. Nevertheless, I tried to be as sociable as I could be and just smiled at the people that I saw.
I spotted out Tania who was sitting down - she was very recognizable with her short spiky hair. Lynette, whom I met earlier, swooped in and introduced me to her.
Tania was friendly and really cool we chatted briefly till the emcee stood up on the platform and announced the start of the event.
It was glitzy! It started off with Mr Andrew Koh, the director of Canon Singapore explaining about the features of the new camcorders. AND THEN there were 5 extremely tall catwalk models strutting around with the different camcorders. They were so tall that I had to crane my neck trying to look at them.
But the cherry on top of the cake was when Andrew announced the ambassador for their camcorder was what made me nearly gasp out loud. It was Wong Li Lin! I was so floored to see her. In front of me was an acclaimed actress! I throughly enjoyed her performance in Leap Years.
Unfortunately, she slipped out of the event pretty quickly that I don’t think that anyone had a chance to interact with her.
At the end of the event, the guests were invited to try out the new camcorders. I had a ball of a time, having a hands on session with the 5 different camcorders - The HF 10, HF 100, FS 11, FS 10 and FS 100.
Personally, I thought that it was rather impressive. All five of the models were lightweight and small. I can seriously stuff all the five models in my handbag and run away with it but my sense of propriety and conscience says no :P
It took me about 15 mins of fiddling to get used to the interface but after that, it was relatively easy to use. It uses a mini joystick rather than a touch screen which would probably make it preferable for people who do not like to smudge their screens.
Having been used to working with camcorders using mini-DV tapes, I liked how it uses internal built in memory which makes it faster to transfer to the computer as well as to a SD-card directly. Cool beans!
And ultimately what was the best feature of the camera was the video and audio quality. I did a quick test and recorded on my SD card. It was so clear that you could see every pores on my face. Oh my!
Screenshot from video. No photoshop edit apart from resize and additional text
I’m amazed why many the other journalists did not grope the camera models as much. They were like just touching it, flipping it around and thats it. I guess that was great cos I had ALL the time to examine and grope the equipment in close detail. I was most excited.
Disclaimer : This is not a sponsored post nor am I obliged to blog by any parties.
Last week, I was invited to the launch of the new LG KS20 thanks to Sabrina as well as the PR Company, Fleishman-Hillard. After the successful bloggers meet with Phillips in December, I was definitely interested in attending this event to have first hand experience of LG’s new smart phone. Personally, I think that it is great that companies are opening up to bloggers. This allows regular people to have a feel of a product in real life situation.
I arrived at the Corduroy Cafe, relatively early. One of the first person that I recognized from the crowd was the beautiful Sheylara, whom I’ve respect for, for her artistic talents. We chatted over dinner and one by one, fellow bloggers streamed in - Claudia, slightly flustered due to the after-office rush hour madness aggravated by the drizzle, DK, who was celebrating his first day of freedom, and finally the ever charming Farinelli.
At long last, the event started. The emcee did a quick warm up and then a stoutly man started an introduction on the features of the KS20. It was a little hard for me to hear over the din. I did not remember him introducing himself and I kept wondering who he was and he ended his presentation rather abruptly, perhaps to let us have more time to try the phone out.
The emcee then introduced a bevy of LG models, one of them I recognized as Peggy Heng - another fellow blogger! Thats her in the middle. What a surprising encounter.
The LG models then went around the different tables and started to demonstrate and after which, let us have a hands on try out on the phone.
This is Nicole, one of the LG models on her demo rounds. For me, I think that she stood out from the pack with her friendly demeanor and her personality. Smilingly and without losing a nerve, she answered our questions. I’m not too sure about the other tables but ours were a tough audience!
“What is the functions?” “What kind of camera does it have?” “How much is the cost?” “What is the battery life?”
We shot like bullets.
I watched the phone being passed around and being played with, excitedly. Everyone seemed to hog the phone that without anything else to do, I started to video each person’s reaction. All of a sudden I had the phone in my hands and I started to fiddle with it. At first glance, it was a very beautiful phone and I loved how sleek it was. The functions looked clear cut, with large buttons that one can touch to get to the various functions.
But most importantly (to me that is) it can connect to wifi. Already I was envisioning how convenient it would be connecting to wireless@SG. And that was when the phone was snatched away from me! *Stares daggers at Nic* At that point, I retreated from having to fight over the phone.
Regardless, it was unanimous that we all found that it was a very attractive phone, personally for me however, as I only had first hand encounter with the phone for less than 15 minutes, it is very hard for me to give a proper review.
Here is a short video of our first impressions of the KS20 :
And that was when I finally noticed the other bloggers. One the sofa, I saw Jayden, Nadnut, Iz,Ice Angel and Princessa conglomerating together. I went over to have a quick chat with them. Jayden, whom I’ve met previously from the Phillips event went about his friendly, affable self while Ice Angel seemed a little shy. Princessa was very friendly though she was busy at the same time, flying here and there.
This was the first time for me, meeting Iz - a fellow competitor in the 2007 Weblog Awards. Cheekily, I asked him, “So how does it feel to get your ass kicked by me?” Momentarily he was flustered, but after a chat with him made me see that he was a cool and a passionate person. And Nadnut! If I thought she was adorable in her blog, she was even more adorable in real life! I could just squeeze her and eat her up!
At back of the room, was the lovely Estee, nearly hidden away by the small crowd around her. It was she who noticed and called me out first! Quickly she interrogated me about my upcoming wedding, about Cartcart, as well as Secondlife, where we first get to know each other. It was such a lively discussion that Farinelli and DK came over and we proceeded to debate about the metaverses.
Being a blogger, naturally I took out the camera to have a snapshot. Quickly I reviewed the pictures. I was in disappointment as thats when I was in realisation that I was surrounded by younger and more attractive people and I felt so inadequate.
I could probably photoshop myself to perfection but covering my face with a paper bag is much faster.
Me and the youthful bunch of Nadnut, Jayden, Sheylara and Ice Angel
Me with the very beautiful Estee
Me and the handsome geek Nicholas Aaron Khoo
Me with IZ, DK and Sabrina who is looking super hot here.
I felt fat and unattractive and I felt wierded out.
But that was when dear Farinelli sent me a picture he took of me and instantly I was cheered up.
Its one of those moments when I was relaxed and at ease and had a natural smile. I like this picture so much that instantly I changed my avatar on msn, facebook and vimeo. Hehehehe!
Recently, I saw this ad in the digital life newspaper :
I think they should consider running with this one :
Recently, I’ve been lusting over the iMovie. But I did not want to spend 2k to aquire a macbook solely to play with iMovie alone.
That was until I stumbled upon a website which hailed Adobe Premiere elements 4 to be THE window answer to iMovie. And at long last, I finally acquired a copy and man, it was heck loads of fun to play!
