SwirlyMMS 1.2 for iPhone fw 2.1 is out. I downloaded the demo license and tested it. Works well. So my two main complaints of iPhone, which were lack of forwarding in SMS and lack of MMS, are now resolved. And I'm a happy iPhone user! The performance of iPhone after firmware 2.1 is generally improved. So far I had not experienced dropped calls. Reception of 3G signal is more consistent too. Other users reported improved battery life. But I didn't feel it. My phone usage is quite high and a fully-charged battery will last me till about 4pm. My charger is at home and I only have a car charger. Need to get another charger for the office.

Btw the settings for SwirlyMMS for Singtel users are

(under Settings>General>Network>Cellular Data Network)

APN: e-ideas

Username: 65ideas

Password: 65ideas

(under Swirlymms settings)

MMSC: mms.singtel.com:10021/mmsc

Proxy: 165.021.042.084:8080

Leave the APN settings blanks. Works for me.

My iPhone for now looks like this

to reply. I called Singtel up to tell them that I have the receipt to show that I did sign up for the BBoM 1000 VAS plan. It was clearly printed there on the piece of paper! I offered to fax it to the lady I spoke to. But she said no need, they should have the record on their side.

Well.. obviously not. else I wouldn't be fuming over the bill I got! duh!

She said they'd check and call me back.

My guess is Singtel has hired a bunch of temp staff for the great iPhone launch over that 22 Aug weekend. The girl who attended to me is quite young and I noticed, wasn't too familiar with the BBoM plans available. Chances were she did not enter the info correctly into the system. I won't blame her. I blame Singtel for not training their staff adequately.

I can't imagine anyone buying an iPhone without signing on a BBoM plan. But the many aunties, uncles & the non-technically-inclined might not be aware that iPhone data usage is forever running. If it doesn't detect WiFi, the BBoM kicks in. If they have a voice plan without any BBoM plan, it becomes Pay-on-Demand, so a 300MB data transfer is gonna cost S$1,200.00!

Back to my situation, I got a call from another lady in the afternoon. She asked me whether I signed up for the BBoM plan over the internet. And for the 3rd time, I told her no... I signed up at the same time I collected my iPhone, at Comcentre, which is where the HQ of $ingtel is!!

She sounded very formal and then went on to say they would refer my case to their whatever department to investigate and will inform me of the outcome and their decision in due course.

I was rather perplexed and asked her why do I even have to wait since I have the printed receipt to show that I did in fact sign up for the plan. I'm not interested who or what went wrong in their computer system whatsoever! They can go do their internal investigation. It's none of my concern. Just waive my bill!

It was then when she sound surprised.

*sigh*

I did a search on the internet too see how widespread the billing problem is. Guess what? Optus, a subsidiary of $ingtel in Australia, got the same excessive data charge complaints too!

that our own dear Singtel screwed up the bills again & again. I don't even want to bring up past grievances. Too long to write..

Just this latest one about my bill after I started using iPhone.

After checking with Anthony, I decided to sign up Broadband on Mobile 1000 as a Value-Added-Service. It's about another S$23 per month which has a 50GB quota. And I'll have peace of mind too since I won't have to monitor my usage. 50GB is much more than what I need since I'm not a very heavy "on-the-move" user and I have WiFi at home & at work.
But I remember there was that Singtel Mobile Broadband dispute in local news last November. A Mr. Zhou YL was asked to pay S$12,000.00 for 3GB excess data usage, which amount was later reduced to S$6000.00 after discount. Subsequently, Singtel introduced a plan to cap to S$299.00 for excess usage.
So I was still rather apprehensive and have been monitoring the data usage of my new toy. As of yesterday, which is about 20 days of usage, my network data transfer is about 11.8MB sent and 352MB received. No sweat! Well within the 50GB quota.
BUT yesterday I received my Singtel bill. It listed,

Broadband on Mobile Data Usage 26 Aug to 08 Sep 08 - 279540kB - S$1255.07
!!!

Becos of the cap, a S$956.07 was discounted. But I still need to pay S$299.00!!! WTF!!!

I called Singtel hotline immediately. Well the hotline must be really hot cos I was on hold for 20 mins and still didn't get to speak with any Singtel staff. I had to rush for a meeting so my colleague helped. She called me later saying that Singtel has no record that I sign up for the Mobile 1000 plan. WTF!!!!
Luckily I didn't throw away my receipt. I have it here! It says 1st month FREE too since there was a promotion. Grrrrhhh... I'm not alone.. quite a number of complaints at HardwareZone.

A warning to all Singtel iPhone Users,
Keep your receipts! You'll need it!

I did it! I pwned my iPhone!

Anthony sms-ed me early this morning.. Pwnage & Quickpwn for Mac is out at Sleepers.net! His advice was to use Quickpwn which is the easier of the 2. (actually his exact words were "Pwnage would be too difficult for" me.. heehee)

Anyway I downloaded both. Also downloaded a backup of iPhone 2.1 firmware, just in case. Quickpwn was easy. It did everythingfor me. Becareful though. There's a prompt asking whether you want to replace logo etc.. press No or else you'll see a Pineapple logo instead of Apple logo when you startup your iPhone. Had to re-pwn mine to restore the Apple logo.

I had a little boo-boo.. there's one part where i need to turn on & off the iPhone. It goes something like this.

Power down -> (screen countdown to 5 sec) press Home & Power at the same time. Hold for 10 secs with the help of the screen countdown -> at the 10th sec, release Power button only and continue to hold Home button for another 10 sec.

What I did what was released both Home & Power and then press Home again. Wrong. Took me 3~4 tries before I released what I did wrong. hehee.. too early on a Sunday morning.. my mind still half asleep lah.

Once successfully pwned, Cydia and Installer icons appeared on the iPhone. From what I've read. Cydia is more stable. I tried to install some of the apps such as biteSMS, Winterboard etc but I kept getting a "source not found" error. And then 1/2 hr later, suddenly I could install them. Guess Cydia was still being updated.

The 1st app I installed was biteSMS. It looked very much like the original iPhone's SMS but with the forwarding capability. Just sweep your finger across the message you want to forward and the option to forward or delete will appear.

But then after installing biteSMS, I realised all the apps I downloaded from AppStore couldn't run. Found out there is still some incompatibility between biteSMS & firmware 2.1. So no choice, had to uninstall it first and hope for an update soon. The developer did say most likely they'll fix the bug by end of Monday, which is tomorrow local time. Looking forward to it.

The apps available through Cydia are fantastic! I can now customise the look of my iPhone through Winterboard themes. Can also do video-recording using Cycorder and download Youtube videos into the phone using MxTube. I'm only brushing the tip of the ice-berg here.

Still waiting for iPhone 2.1. But installed iTunes 8 last night since the update of iPhone 2.1 will be done through iTunes 8, or so I've read.

Anyway Apple promised a whole new experience of browsing music. Well.. i wouldn't call browsing via album artwork new and on top of that, Genius playlist is not available for Sg users. So not much difference between iTunes 7 and 8 where I'm concerned.
But there's this silly thing in iTunes 8 that irks me. If the songs are imported from the same CD, with the same artist and the same album title, then it's only logical they belong to the same album. So I'm rather annoyed to see 12 out of 13 songs represented by 1 album icon and and one lone song from the CD represented by another same album icon. Happened to a number of my albums. Was too tired last night to find out why. Will check again tonight.

Been using the iPhone for the last 2 weeks. Getting used to it. It's not too bad after a while. Found some useful and fun apps too. I like the bubble-sms although the lack of forwarding & multiple recipient still irritates me. Why Apple? Why?

I'm waiting for the dev team to come out with the update Pwnage for iPhone 2.1. I'm jailbreaking it just so I can use biteSMS.

Finally things quiet down somewhat at the office. Managed to clear some of the backlogs. Was able to take a few hours off last Friday to watch WALL.E with my family. Re-started my gym schedule. I even have the luxury of time to have breakfasts with Gabriel after my gym sessions. Wat a relief!

Saturday, as usual, spent almost the whole day at United Sq. Had a jamming session with Firuz and 2 boys. But there no singer and no 1st guitar playing, so I had some difficulty. Keep losing my count after a while. heehee.. sorry lah.. still green lah! Drum exam is in November. That's less than 2 months. So I better start practising for it.

Had dinner at Youtei Sushi Restuarant. The one at United Sq. closed down and the staff was reassigned to the outlets at Marina Sq and Forum Galleria. Rachel & I were such regulars at the old United Sq outlet that we became friends with the waitresses and managers. So it was not just dinner but also to visit them too.

And after dinner, I went to Vino Vino to meet D. She & Akie bought me a bag. So sweet of them! Had a nice time chatting with D. Akie wasn't feeling too good, might have caught a chill. According to him carrying a brolly wouldn't look cool. Luth didn't look too well either.  Said he slept only 3 hours the night before.  But they still had to continue entertaining the patrons. Poor chaps.  Noticed Rafi, Zul and Ros yawning away earlier on too.  This was their 1st week of fasting so i guess they're still adjusting to it.

On Sunday I made orange sorbet. It was quite easy .. 300ml of freshly hand-squeezed orange juice, 30~40g of sugar depending on sweetness of the orange, 15g of Granfruttosa, and 1 tbsp orange zest. That's it! Simple yet delightful! I could use a juicer for the orange but I choose to hand-squeeze them cos the fibrous part will leave a bit of bitterness.  Rachel, the family fussbudget, loved it.

I was quite tired the rest of Sunday since I slept at 2 am. But I still had 3 baby showers to attend. Gu's, Anthony's and Leon's. Jeff passed me a gift for Leon and I almost gave it to Anthony by mistake.  I saw Anthony's iPhone.  He 'jailbroke' it and it looked totally cool!  I'm so tempted to try it myself.  Gotten the websites from him.  But I'm waiting for the release of iPhone 2.1.  Supposed to be today together with iTunes 8.  Let's see what improvements have been made.. and then I'll jailbreak my iPhone too!

I was finally able to download the iPhone applications! Earlier I kept getting an error message that said I could only download applications from S'pore's iTunes store. But I did register at the S'pore iTunes store and my address, phones everything are Singapore based. So I ought to be able to download. But I just couldn't!

I tried calling Singtel's iPhone hotline 1626.. must be really hot.. coz it took me almost 10 mins before I finally get to talk to an operator. But she wasn't able to help and kept putting me on hold while she consulted her colleagues. Finally I still couldn't solve it.

It was Anthony who suggested I download using the computer from iTunes first, then sync to the iPhone. I tried it last night and it worked! Finally!

So after sync-ing the iPhone, I'm now able to download directly using the iPhone. Weird. As long as it works.

So last night I was busy downloading and I found this very interesting application "Midomi". It's a music search utility with 4 ways of searching. Sing, Say, Grab or Type. With Sing, you just have to hum a few bars and it actually find the song together with links to iTunes & YouTube. I tested it. Sang a bit of I'm Yours, and it recognised the song! No more wondering what song was that on the radio. Use Grab, hold the iPhone to the radio and it identifies the song! Had so much fun with it.

I got my iPhone on Sunday. But it had been sitting in its box for 2 full days. Took it out only yesterday. Perhaps age is really catching up coz I'm no longer excited about new gadgets the way I used to be. But then again I was so busy and been sooo tired for the last 2 days. Perhaps I wasn't in the mood?

So how do I like my iPhone? Mixed feelings.

I paid about $200 for it when I extended my Singtel contract so it's affordable. And I didn't even need to trade in my old phone. Setting up was easy. My email accounts were set up very quickly and I was able to download emails whether I'm connected to WiFi or using the mobile broadband.

I sync it to my Macbook and transferred about 400 songs over. 16GB is more than adequate to hold the songs I want. Photos, Contacts, Calender events etc were sync without any problem. Watching Youtube, videos are exactly what you would expect of a Apple product. So on the whole it's pretty cool.

So what's my gripe? I'm a stylus person. I've been using stylus since Palm III days. And when I'm too lazy to pull out the stylus, I would scribble with my finger nail (screen protected of course!) .

But for the iPhone, text entry is via a touchscreen keypad. And I'm so totally not used to it. I keep tapping the wrong letter. On top of that the phone automatically made word suggestions, so a "thks" was corrected to become "this" and was sent out before I could re-correct it. Anthony said this couldn't be turned off.. unless I crack my phone. I've briefly looked at the procedure to crack the phone. I went brain-dead after a few lines (been happening quitr often becos my sleep-deprived brain couldn't function properly). So I'll leave that till next week when things normalise a little.

Anyway a simple sms took me quite a while to send out. This is so going to take some getting use to.
The iPhone looks delicate compared to my D810. I haven't bought a casing yet so right now I'm still using my D810. I have bought a multi-SIM card system. And I could switch between phones easily. So for day-to-day site visits think I'll keep to D810.

Received an email from Singtel. iPhone has arrived. It'll be launched midnite 22 August 08. This is the part that I get confused. midnite 22 August refers to today midnite or tomorrow midnite? Anyway I'm not one of those whose die die must be the first person to get one. Already reserved one to be collected on Sunday.

The price plans announced by Singtel as follows,


If you are keeping to your current mobile plans,


But you would probably want to get the Mobile Broadband on Demand with the mobile plans


The iFlexi plans don't seem really worth it with only 1~3 GB data bundle.  If I'm going to surf or watch Youtube on the iPhone, 1~3GB won't be enough.

Was discussing with Anthony, who is also getting the phone, about the plans.  He has done his homework. I too lazy.  So easier to call him for a summary.  

I'm currently using the iTwo Plus, I will be able to get the 16GB iPhone at $208.  Then I'll add the Broadband 1000 package which will set me back by another $22+.  I could trade-in my Dopod 810.  Should be able to fetch $200~250 for that.   But I haven't really decided yet.  I might keep the D810.  

I bought my Nokia N80 last December but recently it started showing some problems. It was unbearably laggy (spelled corretly?). It would hang & I had to remove the battery in order to reboot it cos the power switch wouldn't work. But it's probably my fault cos I dropped it so many times.

N80's battery life is hopeless. Barely last me a day. And the thing that annoys me most is the slider. I would hang up on the other party when I accidentally slide the upper section just a bit. Keying in appointments was a pain. I gave up trying to enter using the numberic pad. Instead, I type my appointments into Outlook on my PC and then sync the data to my phone. The calculater is also tedious to use, not to mention its limited functions. N80 has WiFi. But the screen is too tiny, so I hardly surf or check emails using it.

N80 is okay for a phone but what I need is a PDA phone. iPhone won't reach Asia till next year. But I couldn't wait any longer. So after spending 2 weeks checking reviews & forums users' feedback etc, I decided to get Dopod D810.

I had it for about a week & must say that I'm quite happy with it. Had installed a number of applications, including GPS Mapking, CE Star. I'm not good with Hanyu Pinyin hence CE Star's chinese character recogition function is very useful for me when I write my emails or SMS. I'm using Opera Mobile and it's much better than IE. I'm writing this blog entry on my D810 in the comfort of my bed. And at the same time, I'm Skype-chatting with a friend stationed in Taiwan.

My regrets? I should have gotten a pocketpc phone earlier.

Use firewire to connect your external hard disks if you want to stream from those. I recently bought a USB-only hard disk. The streaming was very slow and video keep stalling as the AppleTV struggled to stream the data.

Had to re-transfer all my MP4s to the firewire hard disk.

I have tried the latest Handbrake software using the iPod presets. The resulting video is alright. So there's no need (unless you have a lot of time and storage space) to convert seperate MP4s for iPod and ATV.

Was catching up on shows I missed. Watched 5 episodes of Desperate Housewives in one sitting. Love the idea of ATV. There's no need to burn DVDs or VCDs, just streamed and watched directly from the computer. Great for those who already has plenty of stored videos.

I have transferred our family photos into ATV's hard disk. The slide-shows with the random transitions, ken-burns effects & background music are great for occasions when relatives & friends come to visit.

Wonder what's happening at Blogger. Had quite a number of problems since I "upgraded" to this Google blogger. Typed an entire page and only the heading appeared. Sheesh..

Anyway. I've hooked up the ATV, sycn-ed it with my eMac and streamed the rest of my videos from my powerbook. ATV comes with an in-built 40GB hard disk which is way inadequate. I mean nowadays storage is quite cheap. So Apple could have included a, say, 120GB hard disk. I did a search and as expected, there're already quite a lot of sites explaining how to hack the ATV. A few even managed to modify the ATV so that it could play other video formats. I don't want to void the warranty just yet. So I'll not open up the ATV for the time being. Luckily streaming was smooth and fast. I did shift my hardware around to ensure full bar in the internet connection. Btw I used wireless even though wire-internet is recommended. So far I have no problem.

I watched Heroes episode 20, CSI NY episode 22, and Casino Royale on Sunday. That's about 4 hours of AppleTV. The Heroes and CSI NY were converted from AVI to ATV compatible H.264 format using ViddyUp. Quality was quite alright when viewed on LCD TV. Better than VCD but not DVD quality. Slight pixelisation and color banding were still detectable. Bottom-line is, if you want DVD quality.. don't get ATV. It's not there yet.

Casino Royale was converted using iPod settings. So quality was not as good those converted with ATV settings. Hence for reasonably good viewing quality through ATV, I'll need to re-convert all my videos using ATV settings. However iPod can't read mp4 files converted using ATV settings. Which means that if I want to have a copy on my iPod I need to do another seperate conversion. That means serious storage capacity because I would have 3 video formats (including AVI format) for every video I own.

My husband wondered what's all the fuss about and prefers to pop a DVD into the player. I told him I'm a big Apple Fan. So guess what I'm saving up for next?

We got our TV back yesterday. Finally I get to try out the Apple TV!

Hooking up the device was easy. Actually it took me longer to find the HDMI port on my TV. It was silly. All the audio & video ports are on the right side of my LCD TV but for some reason, only the HDMI is located on the left side. And for a moment I thought I made a mistake and that my TV doesn't have HDMI.

Anyway. Setup was a breeze. After I switched on the power I saw some flickering on TV and numbers 720 dpi and 1081 dpi keep appearing on the screen. So I guess the Apple TV was trying to configure the resolution.

The language manual appeared shortly after that. Upon choosing the language, Apple TV started searching for WiFi networks. I selected my network, entered the password and a 5 digit code appeared on the TV.

I went over to my Mac and ran iTunes. iTunes detected the Apple TV and added it under the devices section. I entered the same 5 digit code and name the device. And that's it! iTunes & Apple TV are paired.

The next thing I've got to do is to re-organise my iTunes library.

TV not fixed yet. *sigh*

Anyway I finally unboxed the Apple TV last night. First thing I noticed. No cable. I don't think a HDMI cable or component cable is that expensive. Could have just thrown either one in. And I was sure I asked the sales guy at the Apple retail store and he said cables included. Could have saved me a trip. Now I got to go Sim Lim to get a cable. Maybe I should check the internet and see what else I need to get. Not going to keep running to the store.

I bought the AppleTV on Tuesday. I couldn't wait to try it out but my hubby went on a business trip and took my powerbook along. No worries, I still have my old eMac to test on.

I connected my video hard disk to the eMac but somehow the eMac couldn't detect the hard disk. Not sure why. My eMac is still running on ver 10.2 so that might be the problem.

Nevermind I could still run iTunes to see if the appleTV works. But the iTunes in the eMac was ver 6 which didn't have the AppleTV option. I tried to download the newer iTunes but the latest version was for OS 10.3.9 or later so it wouldn't run on my 10.2 OS. Shit! Called Ghost the next day to get a copy of OSX 10.4.

I could test the AppleTv using my notebook. But I didn't have MacDrive so my notebook couldn't read my Mac-formatted hard disk.

But Ghost was busy and couldn't pass me the copy till weekend. *Sigh* No choice but to wait till Saturday when my hubby comes home with my powerbook. Saturday came and I reclaimed my powerbook. But Saturday was a real busy day so I thought I would leave it till Sunday.

Guess what happened on Sunday?

My TV broke down! WTF! The TV is only 10 month old! If this isn't worthy of a Arrgghh moment, I don't know what else is. 6 days after I bought the AppleTV, it's still in the shrink-wrap box. Now gotta hunt for the warranty card to get the TV fix first....

Well.. not that i've decided to get it... yet. But i like to be prepared. Thanks to Darth, I went through the DVD-to-iPod process. It's quite easy. But you probably want to do a bit of trial & error to find a suitable compromise between quality & time. Basically you'll need 2 softwares - MacTheRipper & Handbrake.

My first attempt. To rip Monty Pathon's Holy Grail, video duration is about 1.5 hr.

Step 1 : MacTheRipper

(this took me about 30 mins and used up about 5GB of disk space)

Step 2 : Handbrake

(It'll probably be a good time to go to bed, do some shopping or something. It's a long wait.)

When encoding is completed, you can delete the VIDEO_TS folder. Handbrake 0.7 How-To has a nice tutorial if you want more info.

I set my average bitrate to 500kbps, size to 423x240 and chose the 2-pass encoding. A 2-pass encoding gives better quality but it'll double the time required. So with my above settings, it took almost 9 hrs to complete the entire process. The resulting file is about 375MB. The quality is fantastic. But I'm not sure I want to leave my computer on for such a long time just to produce a movie to transfer to a iPod.

I'm testing with other settings right now. Think I'll forget about the 2-pass thing. And since I don't have an iPod, i'll try to transfer to my cell phone instead. But 375MB is way too large. Let's see what i can do about that.

I downloaded Google Earth a couple of weeks ago. Played around with it for a while. It was quite fun and I didn't really give it much further thought until I read this Sunday's papers. The authorities are worried about terrorists threats and how the information from Google Earth and other similar map software might be used by terrorists. With the recent bombings, I don't think they are being paranoid.

The article sort of prompted me to take a closer look at our country's map in Google Earth. I could see our international airport, oil refineries at Jurong Island, shipping ports at Pasir Panjang... whoa! seems like all important landmarks are there. Hmmm... I wonder what will the authorities be doing about this. Block out critical locations perhaps?

But I also realised that the satelite photos are not that recent, probably taken at least a year ago. Works at Marina Bay has already started more than a year but that wasn't reflected in the photos.

I tried to search for my home. I found it. And guess what? There's a big, white, fluffy cloud covering at the exact spot where my block is! See the picture I attached here? It just directly underneath that cloud at the center of the pic! hahaha!

Btw today is "Use-your-honk-wisely Day" (honk? heehee). Our radio station DJs are doing their part for public service. They come out with a new tagline every morning... we had "Look-out-for-other-road-users Day", "Keep-a-safe-distance Day", "If-u-drink-don't-drive Day". We do need that constant daily reminders.

I'm having so much fun with the Nokia 6680. Still trying to customise the settings. Merc sent me a MacOS theme and this is how it looks like on my cell-phone. Pretty isn't it?

Bought a silicon skin cover for the phone. Protects it really well but the down side is, the phone becomes slightly bulky.

I realise too how popular ipod can get. I'm using this music player called OggPlay and it has a ipod skin. It was so funny because with the silicon cover and the ipod skin of the music player, my cell phone now looks kinda like a ipod. I mean.... just look at the screen capture I took of my cell phone!

Have copied a number of games and was also trying to convert some of my Snoopy DVDs into the phone. This should keep my kids entertained when the need arises. Downloaded the required software last night. But by the time I'm done.. it's time for CSI!!

Every Wednesday at 10pm - CSI:Miami (Season 3), 11pm- CSI (rerun Season 4). And if I miss those, I can watch the encore on Sunday. AXN-ASIA called it their CSI: Sunday Supreme. At 9pm it's CSI , at 10pm it's CSI:M and at 11pm it's rerun of season 1 CSI:NY. I missed quite a lot of NY so will definitely be watching the reruns.

My husband wondered why I'm so into CSIs since the forensic methods in the shows seemed rather far-fetched at times. Well... I'm aware of that. But I'm not just watching for the science of it. I mean if I want real science, I'll be watching Discovery Channel. Right?

Ooh.. a storm is brewing outside my window now. The weather has been quite lousy lately. There were a lot of thunderstorms in the afternoons. Which is weird cos it shouldn't be so wet at this time of the year. The weather is going crazy.

Since the nights have been so bad lately, I have not done much brisk walking for quite a while. Weight update 22 Sep 05 : 6.00am : 58.5kg Hmm.. I managed to knock off 1kg. Not much. But at least something. But I really ought to get rid of that choco-bar in my fridge.

I got my Nokia 6680 last Thursday and I like it! The positions of the phone's functions are what I'm familiar and comfortable with and it is a definite relief after my frustrations with the Sony-Ericsson's design. The design of the phone is simple yet business-like. And I prefer this to some of the fancier and colorful ones. Using chrome-plated plastic on the sides and the main buttons adds to the look but those are finger-print magnets! Had to wipe them off all the time. It's a bit bigger than my old phones but I can live with that.

I'm still new to Symbian OS this being my first smartphone. Merc sent me a couple of links to Symbian application forums which I visited right away. I've downloaded some of the applications but yet to explore them.

I did my first video call with Merc after my 3G SIM card was activated last Friday. It was really fun! The VGA camera is located at the top right corner of the phone. In order for him to see my entire face, I have to hold the phone at about a foot away. But I wasn't using the earphones then. And the few times when I couldn't hear him, I automatically placed the phone against my ear. Guess he had a good look at my eardrum. *LOL*

There's another 1.3MP camera located at the back of the phone, protected by a sliding panel. The camera can be activated just by sliding the panel down, even though the keypad is locked. Found that out after I accidentally taken a few pictures of my pocket contents. I've tried the camera. The quality of the photos isn't too bad for outdoor shots. But there is noticeable pixelisation and noise for indoor or low-light shots. Overall quality is quite decent with the tiny flash, although not as good as a dedicated digital camera. But the advantage of having a camera with me all the time ensures that I can capture those "Kodak" moments. Pictures taken with Nokia 6680.
This is my godson, Ian.
And this a pic of my two kids with Ian's dad.

I downloaded the N90 music player and its layout is very similar to an ipod's. I'm rather impressed with it's sound quality. But the bundled 64MB MMC is way too small. I soon ran out of space after installing all my applications. And on Merc's recommendation, I've upgraded to a 512MB card.

Too bad there isn't a FM radio. I notice that quite a number of cell phones do not have the radio and I find that rather strange. I mean it's not too expensive to add in a radio function, is it? It ought to be a default feature.

I haven't tried the movie player or the email functions yet. Actually I haven't tried many of the functions yet. Think I'll have plenty of fun going through those.

One feature that I like in particular is the mute + sms. If I decide not to take a call, I can silence the ringing by pressing the upper right button. Immediately, the same button becomes a "Send Message". And when I press it, a sms with the message "I'll call you later" (or whatever u want to say) and the caller as the receipient is automatically created. Now that is one really useful function for me!

Verdict? Go get one! Now!

The ipod nano is creating quite a stir here. My goodness! The black version so unbelivably sexy! It's got that drool factor, man! If only I hadn't bought the shuffle. I dare not go near any Apple Centre now. It's just too tempting. And God knows how impulsive I can get where gadgets are concerned.

I've already maxed out my expenditure for this month. I ordered the Nokia 6680 and also bought tickets to Eric Johnson's Live in Concert. Eric Johnson will be here for a 1-night-only performance on 22 Sep. I really love his Cliffs of Dover so no way I'm going to miss his concert. My hubby and my brother are fairly good guitarists and they will be going too. My brother is really crazy about guitars. I helped him shift into his new home recently and I counted 13 guitars!

As for the cell phone.. I really have enough of my current Sony-Ericsson k508i. I just can't get used to it. I was using Nokia6610i for a while and was perfectly happy with it. But I dropped it in a cab and never managed to recover it. So after reading some of the reviews, I decided to give k508i a try. After 3 months, I have enough. I'm getting rid of it and switching back to Nokia. And since Singtel announced that video call rates will be charged the same rate as voice calls, I decided to get a 3G phone. I got a good trade-in price for the k508i so that helps to offset the cost a little.

The few things about k508i that really bugged me are...I keep deleting stored names accidentally when all I wanted was to end the call. And the speakerphone is so difficult to access. It's so silly! I mean it takes only 1 press of a button to erase a stored phone number but 5 clicks to activate the speakerphone? WTF? And what's with the noisy camera 'shutter' sound? I can't lower it's volume or mute it at all. And the navigator is so sensitive that I keep activating all sorts of functions by mistake.

I just received a call from the cell phone shop. My new cell phone has arrived. So I'll be collecting it tomorrow. Yeah!

Feeling rather sleepy now. Been up late the last few nights to work on a video project. Finally completed it last night. But had to miss CSI:Miami. There's a repeat this Sunday but again I won't be able to catch it because I took on a wedding video job for this coming Sunday. I did say I'm putting my video service on hold. But decided to take up this particular job since it was referred by an old client. Anyway with my recent purchases I think I better get some extra income.

A few blog sites got hacked into recently. One of them, Xiaxue, had her 3 years' worth of blog entries and 3000 emails in her gmail account totally wiped off. The hacker even left nasty entries on her blogsite. While I'm no fan of xiaxue, this is not something i'll wish upon her.

So fellow bloggers, please remember backup your stuff and make sure you change your passwords every now & then.

After listening to darth, arethusa, fizzy fish's radioshows, I became rather curious about this internet radio broadcast thing. Did some search last night and came upon this neat software called Nicecast.

It sounded easy enough so I downloaded the demo. Went through the basic steps and hey! within minutes I was broadcasting! Songs were playing from another home PC sharing the same LAN! Tried the VoiceOver effect and I could hear me voice too. It was totally cool!

I was more than happy to pay for it and received my registration code this morning.

This time I went through the manual in closer detail.

Step 1 : Test with QT player on powerbook - Working. Next!

Step 2 : Test with a separate PC running on the same LAN - Working. Next!

Step 3 : Test via internet - Nothing (I knew it couldn't be that simple).

Ran the Server Checker and received an error message. The manual said I had to do a port mapping/fowarding from my router (oh no! wtf was that?). I searched the website's forum pages and apparently I was supposed to configure my router so that it would allow traffic for port 8000. I found the Port Forwarding thingy in my router's settings but I didn't know how to configure it. It took me a couple of hours of trial & error and testing and finally I got a green light from the Server Checker. I immediately called a friend and had him test my internet IP.

YYEEESSSS!!

US$40 and a quick 3.3MB download to be on air. It can't get any easier than that! (well.. except for that port fowarding thing.. but it's due to my lack of router knowledge.)

1 yr and 4 months to be exact. I've got like 2 PCs, a eMac and a laptop at home but only one PC has access to the internet. I've always wanted to create a wireless network at home so I bought a Netgear ADSL modem + some wireless network cards in Dec 2003. I have no idea where and how to start. In fact I wasn't even sure I bought the correct stuff. So I had a friend to come over to help. No use asking Hubby. He's zero in computers.

Merc came a few weeks later to setup for me but wasn't successful. Said he would make another trip to sort it out. But I knew he was busy preparing for his new house, wedding etc. so didn't really want to bug him too much. Tried it myself but I just couldn't log into the internet. Anyway soon after, I got so busy with family and work, that I had put it aside.

Recently I happened to be chatting with a site engineer and he told me how easy it was. I decided to give it another try. He gave me step-by-step-idiot-proof instructions on the mobile while I fiddled around with the settings. Got a stiff neck after the long period of clamping my mobile between my shoulder and neck. But it was worth it.

Last evening I bought a Airport extreme card, checked the Apple site for instructions, installed the card and within 5 minutes the eMac was setup. It was a breeze with the Mac. Ha! I'm finally wireless!! All computers have access to the internet.

Erm.. now how do I share files?

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog. But, as a result, all the old comments left by visitors have gone missing... Oh dear.

Was explaining to Gu just now (who has no experience in HTML etc.) how to add links in his blog. After that I decided to surf for calender scripts and I found a simple and easy to use one at phil ringnalda dot com .

Now everything I want on my blog is done up. Perhaps later I'll add a booklist. I have the habit of doing some light-reading every night before I sleep. Currently I'm re-reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in anticipation of the launch of 6th installment of the HP series, The Half-Blood Prince. Need to refresh my memory.

I wonder who's the Half-Blood Prince? J.K. Rowling has already confirmed it's neither Harry or Voldemort. Can't be Malfoy. He's pure-blood. Can't be Neville too. He's also a pure-blood. There's Dean. But his role has been quite small so far. And it seems unlikely that he will suddenly get thrown into the limelight. I have a feeling it's Hagrid since his dad is a muggle and his mom a gaint.

Anyway, too lazy to surf for discussions on this (and I'm sure there's a lot of those out there too!), I'll just wait and see. Hmm... I wonder when the book will be released.

I've been thinking of getting a MP3 player for a long while. I was trying to decide between Apple's iPod and Creative's Zen Micro. Zen Micro has a FM radio which is about the only plus point for consideration.

So I went to a local shop to look at both players. I can tell you, man. The moment I touched the iPod I didn't want to put it down. I really love the sleek and uncluttered look of iPod. In comparison, the Zen Micro feels rather plasticky.

I decided to get the U2 Edition instead of the white one. The Cool-Factor is a perfect 10! I just got it charged and I can't wait to get home to transfer all my songs to it. I'm using iTunes and that, IMHO, is the best music software. Its database recognises all my Japanese & Canto albums and iTunes is able to display the song titles in the correct Japanese and Chinese characters, instead of little square boxes.

Of course I'll have to forgo the FM function. But with 5000 songs at my finger tips, I guess I could do without it. The irony is that, just this morning, the Morning Express boys were discussing whether we support/buy local brand names & products. I do! I've nothing against getting local products. But in this case, sorry Mr. Sim Wong Hoo, the iPod is simply irresistable!