The OS war between Apple IOS and Google Android has been raging from the get go.  And whilst so far Apple is still in the lead for global market share of mobile OS platform across devices, Google is gaining share every day.  As a matter of fact, if we count Smartphone devices only, Android based mobile phones have been topping the platform chart for a few months already.

Height256.7 mm241.2 mmThe Tab is slightly taller, naturally because it has a bigger screen Depth8.6 mm8.8 mmThe Tab is actually thinner

For more info, check out the YouTube page here and the Facebook page here.

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Viral video by ebuzzing

If you are following my Twitter stream for the past few months you might’ve noticed that I’ve been sharing a lot of photos which I took with my iPhone 4 using a certain iPhone App.  To be honest it’s like finding again my old passion on Photography which I used to be crazy about.  My first SLR was a Canon EOS 5 with vario lens 28 – 80.  I still have it, but it’s been gathering dust in my attic (shame on me, I know).  But somehow, since Digital cameras started to replace film camera, I got lazier.  Until recently.  iPhone 4 has been rekindling my love with Photography, and I am starting to re-learn what I knew before, as well as learning new techniques, especially in regards to Digital Photography.  Very exciting!

Today I found a nice video tutorial from the folks at Canon, about Lenses (Digital Lenses in particular).  This video tutorial explains about some basics on Lenses Lore :)

Things like:

• Digital Camera Sensor, and the difference with the Film Camera.
• Focal Length, and what are the effects of the variety of the Focal Length to our Photo.
• Lenses Speed.
• Zoom and Prime Lenses, and what are the differences between them.
• Depth of Field!

It’s a very short and basic tutorial but at the same time it covers almost all the important things about how Photographic Lenses work, what are their types, and how these effect our photos.  Enjoy!

What do you do if you have £40,000 in your pocket? Well you can’t buy a house, that’s for sure :) Not in London anyway, not even a tiny flat :( But I’m pretty damn sure that we could do many many things with £40,000. Especially when it’s so close to Christmas!

Ok, I tell you what I would do with £40,000! For a start, I would pay ALL my debt – loans, credit-cards, those 10 quids I owed my mate – ALL of them, and start my life clean again :)

And then with those taken care of …. let’s move on to some Geeky stuff!

Here is my list of ‘some’ of the items that would be in my Geek Shopping List, if I have about £40,000 to spare:

Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition 980X 3.33GHz

NVidia GTX 580 Graphic Cards (2 of course so I can do some SLI Wizardy)

Western Digital 2TB Hard Drive 7200RPM 64MB Cache (5 of them for a total 10TB behemoth)

500GB 3.5″ SATAII Solid State Drive (For a lightning fast OS)

Darkfield Laser Tracking Logitech MX Mouse (Love this mice)

Logitech G19 Gaming Keyboard

Samsung 55 Inch 3D LED TV 1080p HD Ready Freeview HD

Denon AVR2311 AV Receiver (3D Ready)

Star Wars Super Deluxe AT-AT – 2 Feet Tall, with Sound Effects and a Speeder Bike inside! (This is Special!)

Champagne Hot Air Ballon Flight For Two – Yes, after I wiped off my drool over those stuff above, and after all the Euphoria has subsided, it’s time to take a break and spend a bit of *time* with you loved one :)  I am going to take my wife, who has been so patiently waiting on the side-line, for a romantic picnic in the sky :)

Those are MY LIST!  Tell me yours?

What about the £40K then?  Well, you need to thank PayPal for that, obviously when you win of course :)  What do you need to do?  Just buy anything online using PayPal (you need to be a PayPal member), and you will be automatically entered into the *weekly* draw.  This promotion will end at midnight the 5th of December 2010 (terms and condition apply).

You don’t have much time.  Hurry Up :)

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If you have been reading or watching the media (old and new), or just by being aware of your local surroundings, you probably would’ve felt that the human kind have been exhausting the Earth’s natural resources to the brink of extinction.  Not only that, we also have been polluting our habitat to the point of near destruction.  Maybe these catastrophes won’t come today, or in the next decade of two, but let’s face it, this planet is slowly but surely dying.  Unless we act today to prevent this, of course.  And on this basis, I suppose, the Open Planet Ideas idea was conceived.
The Open Planet Ideas is a place where you can collaborate to identify environmental issues and find ways to tackle them as a community.   This action was created by Sony in collaboration with WWF.
The basic premise, as a matter of fact, is not exactly looking for new ideas on creating environmentally friendly product, but rather to find new ways to leverage the existing technologies to solve these problems.  It’s a challenge to share inspiring, innovative and imaginative ideas on how we can make a better use of our already scarce natural resources.  Or on how we can actively change people behaviour and encourage more sustainable lifestyles.
The sharing part is the most important thing here, because unlike other actions, this searching of ideas, this brainstorming is done collaboratively, together, you – me and the whole world (well, the ones that have access to the internet anyway).
Everybody can contribute and is encourage to share their idea, others may show their support to any of these idea or comment on it, or even build yet another idea on top of an existing ones.

So, how does it work?
First of all, go and register yourself at the Open Planet Ideas website.  The collaboration process consist of several stages.  The first stage was the Inspiration stage where we could identify issues and find uses of technology that might help in solving these issues.  From these collective findings, then a panel of expert will sift through them and categorize them into popular themes.
The second stage is the Concept stage. This the stage where we can start sharing our ideas to tackle the above issues (grouped in several themes) using today’s technologies.  To give a start, Sony has provided a Technological Showcase, which comprises of some of Sony’s technology that we might be able to use as inspiration upon which we could build our solutions/ideas.
The best concepts will then move on the next stage, the Evaluation stage, where they will be rated and judged by the community and by the Expert Panel.
The last stage is where the final ideas get to turn into Proof of Concept or even Prototypes. Sony itself  will help this stage by investing in engineering and R&D resource to develop the idea but will not commercialise or make any profit out of it.  Instead the results will be released to the public domain and can be used by other parties for environmental good.

The stage one, Inspiration, had already completed now, Open Planet Ideas had shifted through 335 ideas and categorized them in 6 different themes.  The challenge now is to find solution to these environmental problems using technology that exists today.

On the last count, there are already 175 Concepts that have been submitted.  As described above, there are 6 Themes that you can use as reference.  These 6 themes are as follows:

1. Changing Behaviour
2. Cleaner By Design
3. More With Less
4. Make It Real
5. Waste Not
6. Recycling Revisited

Also as described above, Sony has provided some of its technologies that can be used as building blocks to create more ideas.

Open Planet Ideas Technology Showcase from Open Planet Ideas on Vimeo.

These Sony technologies are as follows:

• Wireless Microphone
• GPS
• Presence Sensing
• P2P Software
• Sweep Panorama
• PSP Go
• Remote Video Monitoring
• Dye Sensitized Solar Cell
• Felica

Even just by reading each page of the above technologies, my brain has already working trying to mix and match together to see if I could create something that might be useful.  I’m sure you are having the same sensation :)

To whet your appetite even more though, take a look of some concepts that I picked below that I thought pretty cool:

• A network of real-time wireless micro weather stations for micro-climate monitoring.
• Wise use of electricity using presence sense technology.
• Solar powered laptop battery recharger.
• Loyalty Card for Green Attitude.
• ICS – Intelligent Car Share.
• Measuring daily footprints.

Introducing ‘Smart Online Groceries’

So what is MY idea?  I’m glad you ask :)

Let me ask you .. How much time you spend every month doing your regular groceries shopping? Do you usually go to your local store by foot, by public transport, or by car? Have we ever thought about how much petrol we spent, how much time we wasted and how much carbon footprint we contribute to the environment just by doing our shopping? What if there is a way to do shopping in an easier, simple and more effective way, and also help to save the environment at the same time?

I won’t give you the answer here, you just have to read it at the Open Planet Ideas concepting site.  But I think this idea will catch on sooner than later.

Obviously you can also start to share your own idea, or if you haven’t got one, you can always participate in commenting or applauding (liking in Facebook speak) any of the existing ideas.
It is interesting to see Sony and WWF are using crowdsourcing, a social tool, to solve what fundamentally is a social problem.  As proven successfully by Wikipedia, provided with the freedom, place and means, the ‘hive minds’ can do wonderful things.
I am applauding (no pun intended) the effort that the Open Planet Ideas has made, and hope that this collaboration will bring a tangible and practical fruit that can be used by the mass and ultimately to save our planet.
Special note for Sony, I hope that they will stay true to their promise, especially in the part where they commit their resources into the realisation of these ideas.

So, go wild with your imagination, and do not hesitate to share your idea.  You never know what it might take you.
Join the challenge!

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As you sit there on you comfy chair, catching up with your email, updating your Facebook status, reading your favorite blogs, watching your YouTube playlist and tweeting all of these; have you ever wonder what your life would be like without this machine in front of you, have you ever wondered as a matter of fact how this machine, this computer, had first come to our life?

Well, if you haven’t already known, let me introduce you to the guy who started this all.  His name is Charles Babbage.  Charles, an English bloke, who was born on 1791 (died on 1871), sometimes regarded as the ‘Father of Computing‘.  He is a Mathematician and Mechanical Engineer, whose design was thought to be the origin of the concept of the modern programmable computer.

The Difference Engine – The first calculator

Charles’s first design was called the Difference Engine.  It was, in simplicity, the first automatic computing engine, a.k.a calculator, albeit a mechanical one. In the 1800′s, mathematical tables, such as Logarithms , were used extensively.  These tables were calculated ‘manually‘ by people who were called ‘computer‘, meaning ‘one who computes‘ :) Charles, witnessing the high error-rate of this manual process, set of to work on eliminate these errors by replacing these ‘computers‘ with a ‘mechanical‘ machine that was capable of doing these calculations automatically.  Charles managed to built some parts of a prototype for this Difference Engine and although he didn’t manage to finish it, some of these parts (pictured below) still survive and can be seen at the London Science Museum.  If this first Difference Engine had had been completed, it would had been consist of around 25000 parts, weighted 15 tons and been 2.4 metres tall!

In 1985, the London Science Museum began the construction of the Difference Engine no. 2.  This version of Difference Engine was built true to Charles’ original design, using historically accurate materials and to within historically accurate tolerances.  The construction finished in 1991 – 153 year after the original design – the working machine performed its first calculation at the London Science Museum returning results to 31 digits, more than the average modern pocket calculator.
The new machine composes of 8000 parts, weighs 5 tons, and measures 2.1m high, 3.4m long and 0.5m wide.  The associated printing mechanism was also built and completed 9 years later, in 2000.
Another identical machine was also built by a technology millionaire Nathan Myhrvold, which was completed in March 2008 and is on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, USA.

The Analytical Engine – The design of a general-purpose computer

During the time when Charles was working on his attempt to build the Difference Engine, he thought up of an idea of a much more general purpose computing engine, which he then called the Analytical Engine.  The design of this engine had a very similar resemblance to the design of a modern computer.  In short, it had an input, a store (memory), an arithmetical unit (CPU) and a printer (output).  All of these components were supposed to be mechanical and ran on Steam Engine to power it :)
I don’t want to go to much into the detail design here, but if you understand how modern computer works (or you want to know how it really works), check out this Wikipedia entry on Analytical Engine, and I can assure you you will be amazed to learn that Charles was basically designing the a prototype of a computer, 100 years before the birth of the Digital Computing initiated by the Turing Machine in 1937.  It’s mind-blowing!
Unfortunately, the design was never even built.  Charles was practically spending the rest of his life tinkering with the design, ever-optimising it all that time, until he died in 1871.  Although you can see a ‘trial model‘ of a part of the Analytical Engine being displayed at the Science Museum London (pictured below).

Remembering Charles Babbage

This Monday, 18th of October it’s the 139th Anniversary of Charles Babbage death.  And to commemorate this, I would encourage you to read all information about him and his works.  If you live in London, or happen to be there, I urge you to visit the London Science Museum and admire these machines with your own eyes.  Of course you can also alternatively visit the Computer History Museum in California.

Personally I have known about Computer since I was young, had studied Software Engineering, and have been working in IT for half of my adult life.  My heart is filled with gratitude towards Babbage for his amazing vision, way beyond his time, that one way or another has shaped the world we are living in today.

While working on this design on the Analytical Machine, Charles wrote that “Another age must be the judge” of his inventions.  That Age is here, and now.  It’s our Age.

Resources:
Charles Babbage at the Wikipedia
Charles Babbage at the London Science Museum
Charles Babbage at the Computer History Museum
Charles Babbage Institute
The 100 Leap Year – an article by John Graham-Cumming at jgc.org (Thanks for the inspiration John!)

Since the first day I’ve got Windows 7 installed on my machine, everyday I learn something new.  Sometimes though, I also learn that things that I used to be able to do, with Windows XP or Vista, don’t work in Windows 7 anymore.  More often than not this is due to incompatibility, which usually prompts me to scramble to the Internet to find an alternative solution.

One of this thing that I used to do a lot, is having the convenient to open the Command Window by just right-clicking a folder in Explorer.  This functionality will open the Command Window and will set the path of the command prompt to the path of the folder I am right-clicking on.  It’s a major time-saving for people who use command prompt a lot.  You can of course open the Command Window from the start menu and navigate to the intended path yourself, but this process is tedious and if want to go to a folder several layers deep, it starts to become a hindrance.

This functionality didn’t come as default though, you need to download one of the component of what’s called Microsoft Power Toys.  It’s a collection of small tools created by Microsoft, and one of this tool is the ‘Open Command Window Here’ context menu integration.

Guess what?  It doesn’t work in Windows 7 :)  Which really annoyed me at first.  But after a few search in Google I found the answer.  It turns out that Microsoft has included this functionality in Windows 7 itself!  That’s excellent!  The only thing is, the functionality is not immediately becoming apparent in day to day usage of the system, since a normal right-clicking on a folder in Explorer doesn’t show this functionality.

Here is what you need to do to access this tool:

To show the ‘Open Command Window Here’ context menu in Windows Explorer you need to do ‘Shift + Right-Click’ :)  And you will see the option among other context menu items.  Thanks Microsoft! Sometimes you do make people’s life easier :)

You’ve seen Twitter Fail-Whale?  Despite the fact that it compels me to break my screen every time I see this thing, I can’t help but admire the cute whale graphic :)

Predictably, since the first fail-whale being spotted, other social-media sites starting to use similar graphic to give information to their customer about the ‘condition’ of their service.

Today I got one from Hootsuite :) I call it Fail Owl :)

Have you been waiting for Microsoft latest attempt to the Smartphone arena? Are you excited for the new Windows Phone 7? Eager to see if it’s going to give a good fight against the mighty iPhone IOS and Android?

Well today is the day, in a short while Microsoft and AT&T will hold a joint Press Conference to discuss the latest development on the Windows Phone 7.  Steve Balmer from Microsoft and Ralph De La Vega from AT&T will deliver the event.

According to Mashable, we will see some handset from manufacturers such as Samsung, LG and HTC.

You can watch it live here!

Back in June I wrote about the new MiFi from Three, and the fact that, kudos to Three, it has turned bads into goods.  I have now, for a couple of weeks, been trying out this new MiFi, and I am ready to share my experience with you all.  Let me say first though, in short, there have been indeed big improvements on this one since the first MiFi was unveiled back in February.

What’s In The Box

Let’s start with the box and what comes in it.  Obviously we have the MiFi itself, a mains charger, and 2 USB cables, one long one for the charger and the shorter one presumably for connecting the device to a computer.  And then there is the usual setup guide manual, but if I were you I would check the Cards.  This is something that Three has been doing with some of its signature devices, such as the the INQ, where they create nicely designed user guide cards, in place of the usual-boring manual.  These cards prove to be more attractive than the normal booklet that people seem to be more encouraged to read them.  The new MiFi comes also with one of these packs.  Last but not least is the most important information of all, i.e. the SSID name and the WiFi password.  This information, previously came in a tiny piece of sticker – easily displaced, now come in a small card that is easier to carry around.  All in all the box offers everything we need to start using the MiFi on the get go.

The Hardware

The first MiFi, while functional, it was hopelessly unusable.  It had so many button you had never remembered which one to to press first.  It had more LED than a traffic light, you had never remembered which one means what.  Battery life sucked, and you couldn’t even use it while you’re charging it.  It’s just useless.

I can tell you now that all of these problem are gone with the new MiFi :)

There is only, count … one button … yes one button to rule them all!  And not just that, gone were the myriad LEDs, they are all replaced by a smart LCD screen.  This new LCD screen shows, clearly,  many essential information, like signal strength, WiFi connection, internet connection, battery status, network speed and data used.

Battery life is now considerably longer, and you can use it will it’s charging!

By the way, as you see from the pictures, the unit’s body looks much sleeker than its predecessor, with its black front and gun-metal back.  It also feels sturdier compare to the previous model.

The Dashboard

In the first model of 3 MiFi, the only way you can get to administer the unit is via a clunky dashboard software, which you need to install into your PC.  Note the PC part, which means that if you have a Mac, you are out of luck!  Even if you had a Windows PC and managed to install it, it’s still unusable.  It reminds you of how unusable the hardware counterparts are (buttons, lights).

The new MiFi has a browser based dashboard, which means any device with a sufficiently modern browser can access the admin software and manage the whole thing from there.  You can even access it from your mobile device.

The improvement doesn’t stop there.  The new dashboard now include more advance and security settings, not found in the first one.  Now you can get more control of your MiFi down to the nitty-gritty.

What about Connection?

A mobile internet modem, can only function so far as the 3G connection is available.  Without signal reception, it’s just unusable.  And this problem is down to the network, in this case Three.  When I tried the first one, the signal was very patchy in London.  Since then though, Three has done many improvements on its infrastructure, from replacing their tower’s modem, to sharing towers with T-Mobile.  All in all, customers ‘should’ feel the difference, although since I’m not exactly Three customer, I can only speak to what I’ve experienced in a short while that I had the MiFi.

I did conduct a few speedtest, courtesy of our friend at speedtest.net.  In reality the result from these tests vary, depending on when you do it.  I can say that during my tests, I could get download speed of more than 2 Mb/s.  Whilst the upload speed were hovering 1 Mb/s mark.  This, while can be considered slow compare to the average ASDSL/Cable connection, it’s good enough from me to wathc YouTube videos, or catching-up with BBC iPlayer, even iPhone 4 Facetime.

So far, MiFi is getting no real competition in the Wireless Mobile Broadband area in the UK, so if you need a Mobile WiFi solution, MiFi is all you’ve got.  The first one was a disappointment, but this new one has managed to fix almost all the complaint that the user experienced.  And as I said before too, if you own an iPad or and iPod Touch.  This thing is a perfect companion.

Last words, I like the improvements, but the most important thing is that, these improvements were actually coming from complaints that users experienced.  Three has been listening to these opinions, and acted on it, which is quite rare among companies.

[Latest Updated]

Well, I just been told that the Online trading will indeed continue to be supported this weekend :)

If you have been waiting to get the iPhone 4 on the Three network, congratulations! Today is the day! Today Three has announced the sale of the iPhone 4 in the UK nationwide in Three stores and online.

As you’ve probably known, unlike other UK networks, although Three announced their pricing plan on time, they didn’t manage to sell the iPhone 4 on the launch date (as I’ve predicted).

But if you are one of the people who have been holding off buying iPhone 4 because of Three, rejoice! Because the wait is over :) And it would be worthwhile too, because as I mentioned before, Three has the cheapest plans (along with Vodafone but with more minutes and texts and lower cost of initial handset price) of all plans from the 4 networks that carry iPhone 4.

Now, I’ve been told that as per today’s sale date, you can only get the Black – 32GB – iPhone 4. The white iPhone 4, as you know, is not even out yet, and as for the availability of the 16GB iPhone 4, I will let you know when I know it.
A quick test at the Online Three Store confirm this. When I chose the 16GB iPhone 4, there is no ‘Buy this deal‘ button available like the 32GB has. Instead you will get a ‘poorly-worded’ message saying something about ‘White iPhone 4 is currently unavailable …‘?!

Breaking down of what Three is offering, basically you have 4 choices of plan. All plans are for 24-month contract and each will carry 5000 Texts, 5000 Three to Three Minutes and 1GB of Internet allowance. The difference will be in the number of cross-network minutes and the handset up-front cost, which are the followings:

1. Internet Texter 500: 500 minutes with up-front cost £189 and £30 monthly payment.
2. Internet Texter 900: 900 minutes with up-front cost £189 and £35 monthly payment.
3. The One Plan #1: 2000 minutes with £149 up-front cost and £40 monthly payment.
4. The One Plan #2: 2000 minutes with £89 up-front cost and £45 monthly payment.

If you look at the comparison spreadsheet I have, you will see that the tariff number 1, i.e. the Internet Texter 500, is the cheapest of all plans from all network, in term of Total Cost of Acquisition, which will be £909 for 24-month contract. Second only to the Vodafone £25 monthly contract, but with more minutes/texts and lower up-front cost.

If you still haven’t got the iPhone 4, and is still waiting to get one, Three is offering the best plan that you can get today. Provided that you don’t mind to be locked in a 24-month contract and really want the 32GB iPhone 4 (which to be honest, with all the HD video you are going to take, you will want all the space you need).