Category: technology and virtual life

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 as this allows regular people to have a feel of a product in real life situation.

I arrived at 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! That’s 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 was 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 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.

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 I realised 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 cheered up.

It was 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.

Recently, I saw this ad in the digital life newspaper :

I think they should consider running with this one :

Sidenote : First she awarded me the Slackiest Latecomer award and now she awards me the Most Insane Award. Sheylara must really love me. 😛

Related links :

• Official LG Website
• A review of the LG KS20

Blog entries by fellow bloggers :

• DK
• Geekonomics
• Ice Angel
• Izreloaded
• Peggy
• Sheylara

I’m really loving vimeo heaps. I’ve never seen a better quality video streaming sharing site before.

When I started using youtube in late 2005, I thought that that was the bomb. Having used to have to download large video files and had to wait a long time to download the clips we wanted, youtube was rather revolutionary.

Thus the start of this year, when I got my 2GB SD card and my logitech webcam, I started to be an avid videoblogger. I’ve been pretty much satisfied wth youtube. So far I have over 60 video clips in there, which is not bad 🙂

So when Moby mentioned that he liked vimeo so much that he was going to abandon his youtube account, I just had to sign up just to see what it was like for myself. The first time I went there, the website was bonkers, I had problem uploading videos, couldnt edit my profile, and when I uploaded a video, I couldn’t view them!

I found out later that the site was undergoing some bugs and was relatively stable and decided to give them a try again.

Vimeo has a very cute uploading interface :

Vimeo even tells you how long it will take to convert your video :

But what really blew my mind was the quality of the video that was converted. Take a look at Malique who is eating his ice cream here in youtube:

Its pretty not bad right? But take a look at Malique in the same still in Vimeo

My gosh, its much sharper and clearer that I was just stunned. For a streaming video site, this is very impressive.

One of the things that I like about Vimeo is that unlike other sites, it has a forum that allows you to ask questions from the staff or the community directly. Vimeo doesn’t seem to be as active as youtube, judging from the amount of comments in the forum – which could be a good thing, as I had countless of juvenile comments from youtube.

One thing that I dont fancy about Vimeo though, is the length of time to take to upload it. Typically, a video of about 50 mb would take about 45 mins to an hour to be uploaded and ready to be viewed. But at the same time, it could be due to Starhub’s uploading speed (which is a huge pet peeve for Singaporean videobloggers like me)

Currently, Vimeo also has a weekly 500 mb limit which is relatively unheard of in a video sharing website. But on the flipside, it makes people think twice on uploading the videos that is really important to them.

Moreoever with the advanced settings, I could replace a video, without having to delete the erring video and start all over again. This feature, I really like. I can also pick from a generous 12 thumbnails from the movie stills so that I could prevent embarassing opening pictures like this :

To this :

Also, Vimeo has no embedded logos or ads on their clips, which I find very refreshing. Next year, Youtube is starting a 10 sec advertisment prior to the video, which I find very intrusive. I can’t wait to port all my videos in Vimeo, which coincidentally, you could download the original video format too!

I cant right now for the moment because I’ve used up all my 500 mb. Now I have to wait a while for the upload limit to be refreshed.

Links :

• My vimeo page
• My youtube page

Random sidenote : I really would like an Imac and a Canon Ixus 860, solely to make more videoblogs. But it’s so expensive.

Updated : Comiqs is no longer available, but why not give Bitstrips and Pixton a try?

If you like comic life, you will love comiqs

During the ping.sg tshirt launch, I had the fortune of meeting Jarius and Michael. They did a demo of comiqs.com which I was quite excited about.

Having played with Comic life in the middle of the year, I saw the similarities between these two programs. Using very little time, users are able to create comics like these :

But the additional nice feature about comiqs is that everything is done completely online, has a high resolution of 400 which is wonderful for printing, has multi-pages and multi-panels, can be embedded directly to blogs, integrates with online galleries like flickr and is completely free.

Jarius also tells me that Comiqs is being supported by The Singapore MDA, so you know it’s good. Unfortunately, Comiqs is currently in closed beta, but do sign up for an invitation for their beta and hope that these awesome guys starts their open beta soon 🙂

Watch a short clip of us playing with Comiqs

Congratulations to Tech65 on their 50th podcast! And here’s to many more to come 🙂

Click image for a larger version

Tech65 is a weekly based podcast which focuses on technology in a Singaporean point of view.

I knew about tech65 when NTT, introduced the podcast to me and asked me to have a listen. And at the first listen, I was impressed by how effortlessly natural they were bantering with each other. Even though I am not up to their level of technophilia, these guys are easy to listen to.

One of my favourite episodes was when the tech65 crew were live blogging at the launch of the new Creative Zen and they managed to aquire a unit to review.

When the tech65 invited listeners to a live recording in liew of of their 50th episode, I couldn’t help but to join in. I’ve always wanted to see the behind the scenes.

There, I met the hosts, Daniel, Jerrick, NTT, Farinelli and Kai Yi, as well as a couple of pingsters like Nicole, Mic, Brennan, Ridz, DK, Bernard and a couple of new faces like Christine and Hei Man.

I saw a camera being set up for the live video stream, NTT’s awesome H4 audio recorder and everyone else ready with their laptops maximizing the internet connection at Geek Terminal as they started their podcast.

Despite interruptions such as construction works all around the cafe, it was interesting to sit in and watch the recording live.

Here’s a behind the scenes clip :

watch in youtube

Congratulations again to 65bits! You’ve come a long way! 🙂

Links :

• 50th episode podcast
• Send your predictions of how tech will be in 2008

Blogs are evolving.

When I first subscribed to the internet in 1996, we recorded our thoughts with newsgroups. We used outlook express to search and subscribe for threads and to discuss with other people.

Later on, we learnt HTML to code for webpages like geocities and tripod (which was commonly used at the time). We used guestbooks or forums to communicate with others.

These online logs was refined to what we know as blogs, with one of the first sites to offer them being blog city and blogger. Archiving thoughts has become much easier. It not even mandatory to know HTML – just insert content and hit publish to update.

Now, blogs are evolving to include a more variety of media, such as podcasts, video blogs and even sketchcasts. These has been made easier, as compared to several years ago with the technology that we have now.

As much as I enjoy blogging, there are times when I just want to record my stream of consciousness. For me, blogging can be a tedious process with the editing of pictures and videos. There are times where I would like to record my thoughts as it is without having to think and plan what I would like to write.

This is where the microblog comes in. Microblogs are where you could record short burst of thoughts. The two microblogs that I use currently are tumblr and twitter. I found out about these services quite by chance and I started an account just for experimental purposes and I am surprised at how much I enjoy using them both.

Both of them function differently

Twitter is a convenient way to keep up with friends to see what they were doing in real time. And because one could set it to their mobile, one could send and receive messages as they were sent. Organizing events becomes so much easier when you can twitter it once, as compared to calling up a person one by one. Although tech guru, Kathy Sierra, does have a point in the dangers of twitter, its still a convenient tool nevertheless.

Twitter has been gaining popularity that even the TV show, CSI, has featured twitter in its series. Twitter has a lot of potential for mysteries. A while back, a victim’s murderer was found through his blog. I can imagine something similar for twitter.

For all the new functions, I still kind of miss the days when twitter used lolcats as an icon.

Tumbler on the other hand, can be compared to as a mini blog. It doesn’t send short messages to your friends, however, you could post short thoughts and other mediums that twitter cant do. Because Tumblr is not as serious as a regular blog, I feel that I have the freedom to post up any stream of consciousness I have, without the need to journalize it as I would do in my regular blog posts.

My tumblr page might not be impressive or even useful to anyone who stumble upon it, but I think that its a wonderful outlet of self expression. Especially now with the improvements done to tumblr, such as the search function as well as the pictorial archive, it is easier for me to look back and remember past experiences.

But as much as I like tumblr and twitter, I don’t think that it will be a replacement to blogs, but a convenient complement.

Links :

• Tumblr
• Twitter

Arzhou, Uzyn, Estee, me and DK trying to form the letters ping

Ping.sg is a Singaporean based blog aggregate where members will have a higher chance of having their blogs read by other members.

Somewhere in mid August, Uzyn asked Arzhou, DK, Daphne and me to join him in an interview for blogbuzz.tv – an online video channel for bloggers.

We met Estee who will be hosting, and then introduced to a Todd Murray, of Activechannel.tv who will be filming.

Here is a short clip of some behind the scenes footage, taken by Daphne! 😀

Links :

• Ping.sg – Singaporean Blog Aggregate
• Blog entry by Estee
• Blog entry by DK

Sidenote : My exams are almost over with only literature to go! 😀

Marina’s Bloggariffic is the winner for the 2007 Weblog Awards – Best Asian Blog! This is so surreal. YAY!

I can most definitely not have made it without the help and support of everyone whom voted, cartcart, my PR Managers, my wonderful blogger friends from ping.sg, my colleagues and especially from Hisyam whom has been unbelievably supportive of me since the beginning of the competition.

Rinaz and Hisyam on Racial Harmony Day

Of course, at the same time, there will be detractors that say that the weblog awards is nothing more but a popularity contest. And in a way, I do agree – but at the same time, I have to emphasize that I have put in time and effort to research, to showcase and share the experiences that I’ve gone through. Just read through the archives. To negate this fact is personal to me.

Not to say that the competitors are less worthy. Among the list, I think that both Terroir Byte and Webbed Feet are wonderful bloggers, each of them writes about their point of view in a fascinating and engaging fashion.

With that said, I agree with Footsteps in the mirror saying that this competition needs to have someone who has thick skin – I find myself psychologically trapped, deperately doing everything I humanly can to get votes – from mass posting in friendster, daily twitter messages, messaging everyone on msn to the point of some getting hostile by it, as well as approaching colleagues to have votes – trust me, it’s not as easy as it looks. We worked really hard.

Anyways as a closing thought, I really thank everyone who’s voted from the bottom of my heart, and gosh, I won passes to the Blogworld Expo in Las Vegas! I wish I could go! I would have liked to meet Matt Mullenweg, one of the developers of WordPress, as well as Kevin Aylward and Sean Gleeson from Weblogawards. Argh!

p.s. Yes, yes, I owe you guys 385 cups of coffee @ Geek Terminal. Lets set a date after my exams! 😀

I’m still on hiatus because of my examinations, but I just couldn’t contain myself! I’m most delighted to announce that Marina’s Bloggariffic is a finalist in the 2007 weblog awards! How exciting!

If you are new here, I’m Marina, nice to meet you! Do take a peek as an appetizer

• Singapore category
• Art and photography category
• Food Fascination category

I’m sure you’ll find something that you’ll like 🙂

Vote for me! – You could vote once every 24 hours till the 8th November, 2007, 2200hrs GMT or 6 am Singapore time 🙂

p.s Thanks Malique, Uzyn, Daphne, Hisham, DK, Adrian, Sha and Farinelli – my new PR Managers 😀