It has also been a good time to “sharpen the axe”. I’ve spent time to set up (and test) my personal productivity system (Toodledo and Google Calendar), my knowledge management systems (Google Reader, Twitter and Evernote). I’ve also set up and configured my Macbook, iPhone and iPad- to work with the systems. I’ve also been able to go through my finances, plan for the future. Hopefully, investing time in this “personal infrastructure” will enable me to handle more work in the future.

The iPad has been a new addition to my life, after saving up for most of the year. One of the things it does is encourage you to read books, something I had not done for a long time (I usually just surf around the web). I’ve been reading “Making Ideas Happen“, a book which targets people who have many ideas but hardly ever execute any of them (i.e. me). It’s a really good book, and I’d highly recommend it if you fit the description above.

Work starts next week, and I’m thankful I had some “down time” to reflect and recharge myself. Can’t wait to get back to the grind again- here we go

There’s been a fascinating conference that I’ve been following for the past couple of days- the Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington D.C. It’s a really interesting topic- especially for those in the government. Singapore’s civil service is pretty efficient (compared to what I’ve seen overseas), but there is always immense potential for improvement- particularly when it comes to the adoption of technology.

I’ve been on-off interested in this subject for quite a bit of time- great blogs that covers this topic is GovFresh, and Gov 2.0 Radio. There’s been a flurry of recent activity on the topic as well, with Obama’s OpenGov initiative sparking a lot of applications built on government data. Conferences such as Gov 2.0 LA (for Los Angeles), and the Gov 2.0 Expo have brought a lot of renewed interest to the subject. I’ll blog about some key ideas from these conferences after my exams, which end next week.

iLink@Aljunied: Feedback

I wrote earlier on open helpdesks and idea aggregators and how they could help the government. This is already starting to happen in Singapore- iLink@Aljunied (what a name!?) is somewhat of a open helpdesk, for Aljunied GRC, and you can find a really good review of it at e27. It should be interesting times- I’m working on something in this field, and will write about it soon.

Anyhow, with the World Cup coming up I’ve turned back to my first love of soccer. Inter Milan finally managed to win the Champs League, testament to the phenomenon of the teams I support only winning when I stop caring about them. I had been crazy about them when I was 14 (started a  “Singapore Inter Milan Fan Club” on Community Zero then, which grew to… 6 members), but stopped caring about them beyond the check-football365-once-a-month.

It’s nice to know that some of the teams I support are capable of winning. Now, just for the Browns to win the Superbowl, and Ipswich the Premier League. Anyhow, this is a great ad from Nike (it’s not the one which, you know, everyone has been sending around).

I can’t help but feel that the “no-eating-or-drinking-is-allowed” law is being taken a bit too far here- fining a lady $30 seems really extreme- and if I may say- completely ridiculous.

I don’t blame the station manager, who is only doing his job. It, however, is a manifestation of an greater underlying philosophy in Singapore- the “slippery slope”. It is succinctly put in the video: “[if we allow you to eat a sweet], then everyone will also start doing that, then where are you going to [draw the line]?” The fear of the slippery slope has often resulted in policymakers going for the most extreme rule possible.

Is going for the extreme rule a sign of prudence, safeguarding society from its ills? Or is it just lazy policymaking, an excuse to not put in the hard work to find out where the metaphorical “slope” has its “plateaus”- middle grounds where rules can give people more breathing space, yet still safeguard society. I’m not sure, and I’d like to find out someday.

PS: You can also read about this incident here and here.

Here are some of the most notable ones out there- I’ll write up the ones I think are the best, but have also listed the other options out there. Please leave a comment if I’m missing a good option out.

Accelerometer-based Bio-alarm clocks

Lexware’s Sleep Cycle

The first app which started it all, it has become one of the best selling apps on the app marketplace. Simple feature: it allows you to set a time, and then wakes you up in a 30 minute window when your body is naturally in the most wakeful phase- thus reducing grogginess. Also produces pretty cool sleep graphs from the movement data over the course of your sleep. Most importantly, it is well coded- it doesn’t crash in the middle of the night, and is reliable.

My main gripe with it (which motivates this blog post) is that it doesn’t include a snooze button (very important for me!). Also, it doesn’t fully harness its analytic abilities- it only allows you to mail out an image of the graph. Being able to export the movement data, and correlate it with other factors/study it over time would be very useful- a void many other apps are trying to do.

SmoothAlarm Pro ($4.99)

Somewhat like a Sleep Cycle Pro- it uses the accelerometer to track your sleep movements, but also includes a whole bevy of other features: a sleep diary, a snooze button, a ambient music player to help you fall asleep, the ability to pick a song from iTunes to use as an alarm. Most interesting: you can snooze with your voice (say “STOP!”), and you can track the weather and moon phases, to see how it affects your sleep.

Great idea and feature set- however most users complain it is buggy, often draining their battery or crashing in the middle of the night. Definitely a thumbs down, but great potential.

Absalt EasyWakeup Pro ($14.99)

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It senses the best time to wake you up based on you sleep movements, sensed by the iPhone’s accelerometer. It allows you to snooze, and also pick the tune you use from both a preset list of sounds, as well as from your iPhone library- both features lacking in Lexware’s Sleep Cycle. Additional features: add annotations for each night’s sleep, and record awakening moods.

Notable mentions: Siesta Smart Alarm ($1.99), Smart Alarm ($0.99),

Microphone-based Bio-Alarm clocks

HappyWakeUp

($4.99) This app is pretty much like Sleep Cycle, but uses the iPhone’s microphone to pick up movement/sound data. It is especially good for people who snore or cough, but is especially bad for people who sleep pretty silently, but move a lot. From user reviews, it doesn’t seem to work as well as the movement based alarm clocks covered earlier.

Sleep Analyzers

Proactive Sleep Alarm Clock

($1.99) Not your usual alarm clock, it uses behavioral tools to improve sleep, and get feedback on sleep quality. It’s best innovation is a stimulating game that measures morning grogginess- pretty useful in measuring sleep quality. Also, it has a very useful sleep diary which tracks average bedtime, average sleep time, and compares it to your score in the stimulating game. It lacks a bio-alarm clock, though, making it difficult to get any concrete sleep quality data.

Sleep Analyzer

($1.99) This app uses the microphone to track disruptions to your sleep- whether due to coughing or sneezing. It records sound that exceed a decibel threshold, and allows you to play over those disruptions to identify recurring disturbances throughout the night. It makes it easier for a doctor to analyze, or to tailor one’s sleep environment. It lacking an alarm clock makes it useless for me; however on a multi-tasking jailbroken iPhone it might be useful when run in the background with an alarm clock.

Via Techcrunch, an article on the top 10 DIY iPad cases. I really liked this one, which puts an iPad literally into a book. Not only does it give it a sense of familiarity, it also does a pretty good job of protecting it. Only drawback is that you’ve got to take it out to charge it.

I’m thinking of getting an iPad, so it’s time to do some smart budgeting and saving…

Thus please excuse the random “no thumbnail” and “please put image here” that you will see all over this blog- I hope to be done by next week.

On another note, I will be creating a wiki-notes platform on eidus.sg to put up all my notes that I’ve taken in class throughout my JC and Stanford career. Stay tuned for that in a couple of weeks.

Dear Singapore Citizens,

Bukit Batok Grassroots Organisation (GRO) is organising a Water Festival specially to welcome the New Year in Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos.

The funds used to host the event are likely to come from the mega $10-million dollar Community Integration Fund unveiled by the Ministry of Community, Youth and Sports (MCYS) last year to make the foreigners feel accepted and happy in Singapore.

I hope that those who are not supportive of the government wasting taxpayers’ money on foreigners to turn up in BLACK on that day.

I must admit that xenophobia (anti-foreignism) is possibly one of the easiest impulses to give in to. When I was back in Singapore during the summer, it was difficult not to feel that way, trying to squeeze onto an MRT train after work. Yet as a foreigner in America I can see why, to an extent, foreigners are necessary. The riches of Silicon Valley were as much built by Americans as by the scores of immigrants.

The same is beginning to be so for Singapore- when I visited the incubators in NUS last year, I found that more than 2/3 of the entrepreneurs were foreigners. Arguably, they will be the key creators on jobs in the future, as Singapore moves toward a start-up/innovation driven economy. Of course, the crucial question is always how much (and what type of) immigration is the right amount of immigration (has there been too much?)- and the debate should rightly focus on that.

Yet this event scares me. In their effort to make their point to policymakers (which is not wrong), they choose a method of doing so (gatecrashing the event) that might unknowingly/knowingly seek to intimidate foreigners. Worse, the only ones who would care about such a message are ironically the ones Singapore needs the most (the highly skilled entrepreneurs with lots of other options), even though we hate to admit it. The lower-skilled ones with few other options will not care at all whether or not you like them- and will come anyway.

Let’s not do things that way. I’m in no position to say this- I am a 20 year old who took a government scholarship 2 years ago. I have never lost out on a job to a foreigner, nor been retrenched because of one. Yet the little learning I’ve done has taught me to look a bit further into the future than the mere present, and think about the issues beyond the emotion. And I’ll put this out there, just in case my voice makes a little bit of difference.

PS: Had this idea while I was typing- that everyone on that day wear black (organizers, foreigners included)… see how that works?

Update: There’s now a counter-gatecrash group, which you can find here. Not sure whether its legitimate, though… (the founder only has 5 friends…?)

A lighthearted comic resume

The infographics set this resume, from Michael Anderson, apart

Note: spotted a Malaysian, Indonesian and I think a Singaporean in there. Who says we aren’t creative?

Via the Straits Times Forum, comes an interesting suggestion: to free up golf courses for other uses. An excerpt:

Yet, in contrast, to date we have built 22 golf courses, most of which are 18-holed oases to cater to a sport whose following is a mere 2 per cent of all regular sports participants, according to the Singapore Sports Council’s National Sports Participation Survey in 2005.

An interesting suggestion, though I wonder why there are so many in the first place. Perhaps they are “filler uses” for newly reclaimed land, which might not be able to handle high stress loads. They probably also play a huge role in the business community, which probably doesn’t fall under the “2 per cent of all regular sports participants”.

Nevertheless there’s definitely some merit in the question “are there too many?” in a small island state- and a water scarce one at that, especially when golf courses are known as notorious water-hoggers (something I gleaned from my Earth Systems class).