Singapore

Well, I'm finally here in Sinagpore and after half a day, I have to say, that I'm already tired of the shopping.

Did you ever think to yourself that the MacDonalds filet-o-fish just wasn't fishy enough? Well now you cen enjoy the sensation of the double filet-o-fish.

Credit card sized phone

Samsung have just released the SCH-V870 mobile phone in Korea. It has the same footprint as a credit card, but is 8.9mm think and a meager 81grams. Its design stylings look pretty understated, but the physical dimensions are very impressive. It packs 80Mb internal memory, MP3 player, memory slot and a 1.3MP camera in its tiny frame.

FT Robot

Up till now, most bipedal robots that have been created have been either “male” or genderless, but this sleek miniature robot is in the female form. Called FT (Female Type) she stands 35cm tall and weighs a mere 800g, with 23 servos’ and 2 gyros’ to sustain stability and movement. This marvel in robotics can even walk like a fashion model. The Robo Garage team at Kyoto University took 13 months and 7 million yen to develop the FT. Although I like the new FT, I think my personal favourite is still the Chroino.

I knew playing World of Warcraft was good for my career

Now heres a thought, World of Warcraft as a qualification on your resume? This article goes on to explain why online gaming in a virtual environment allows players to gain “accidental” experience in things like problem solving, leadership, teamwork, conflict resolution, etc. Something that savvy employers may look to as a differentiator when scouring piles of resumes. Although I don’t fully subscribe to the idea yet, who knows how mainstream it will become. I like that a senior engineering operations director at Yahoo! uses the analogy of questing in WoW to describe some of the challenges at work.

Bloodroc, level 60 Tauren Druid in World of Warcraft.

Online Gaming in China

Heres an interesting editorial from BBC News about the online gaming industry in China. It mainly centres around online addiction and they finger World of Warcraft as one of the main culprits. In response the Chinese government have made game developers introduce a fatigue feature to limit the number of effective playable hours to deter excessive gaming. I also had no idea that in China they have an internet addiction centre to help folks who have succumbed to their gaming fix.

It's a Boy!

A huge congratulations go out to Neil and Jolanda as we welcome Jesper Jay. He was born at 2.53am Saturday morning (8/4/2006) and weighing in at a healthy 3.6kg. Both mother and son are doing well as they prepare to return home. Now I just hope I can get to Wellington sometime to see him.

Question Block Prank

Anyone who has ever played any of the Mario Brothers titles will be familiar with the Mario Question Blocks. Well, 6 teenage high school girls aged 16 -17 went and created 17 of these question blocks and placed them around town last week in the name of street art. This caused havoc with local law enforcement authorities in Ravenna, Ohio, who had deployed the county sheriffs department, Bomb squad and the Hazardous Materials unit to respond to these mysterious packages. There was talk of the girls facing criminal charges, but thankfully common sense prevailed and it was announced yesterday that they will only need to offer apology letters to the various law enforcement agencies. I guess in the US homeland security era, nothing is innocent anymore.

Star Wars kid settles

Remember The Star Wars kid video? The one with the crazy kid wielding the Darth Maul style light sabre at his school. Well, he's settled out of court after he had begun proceedings to sue the 3 classmates who released the video for $160,000 for his grief and torment at school as a result. Apparently it was to be the first case of cyber-bullying. In a way I kinda feel for the guy, buy it's pretty hard not to shake your head and say "wtf" where you thinking when you decided to tape yourself. All that aside, it's still pretty funny, specially since there are countless recreations and edit of it, people have even added the light sabre glow for him.

Go! Sudoku

Well today I bought Go! Sudoku for the PSP. It was only $29.95 at Harvey Norman. Definitely a bargain, I probably wouldn’t have bought it for the 60 bucks I've seen it going for at other places. I've spent all of an hour trying it out (managed to solve the first 3 puzzles so far) and I do see myself playing this for a while. Its the same thing you get in the daily newspaper, a straight forward puzzle game that’s good clean fun.

Gamers Robbed

Gamers robbed in internet cafe raid.

This internet cafe is somewhere that I have actually frequented, to play starcraft (one of the all time greatest ever games). I haven't been there for a year or so, but I do know the place and find it hard to imagine something like this taking place there. Apparently it happened at around 4am and the bandits armed with crowbar and knife, got away with $500 from the till and wallets and phones from the gamers.

Apple Boot Camp

Apple have announced a public beta for Boot Camp. Boot Camp will allow you Intel based Mac to run windows XP natively and legitimately, without the need for hacking the OS. This technology will eventually be incorporated into the next major OSX release. This could be just the thing that may convince me to splash out on an Apple Mac again. My last experience with owning a Mac, was a horrible and one that I'm in no hurry to repeat.

E-Series WALKMAN Flash

Sony are relseasing a new USB Flash memory audio player, its like an iPod shuffle, except its got a single line OLED screen so you actually know what's playing. A real plus is the battery life, upto 28hrs and a 3 minute charge will get you 3 hours of play time. With 6 very attractive colours to choose from and a built in FM tuner, things look quite promising. They weigh in at just 25g and come in 512MB, 1GB and 2GB. Unfortunately Sony have stuck with the ATRAC format only, so I won't be getting one.

Format

I've been playing around with the template, trying to get the old ipjunkie look back. Its going to take some tinkering, but we made some progress today. I hope to get things in place before I leave for Singapore in just over a weeks time.

Launch

Welcome,
Its been a while since I posted anything once I decommissioned ipjunkie.net, but as we build up to the biggest event of the year, WorldCup Germany 2006, I feel the urge to start again. All the usual stuff will be back, technology, gaming, IT industry news and various opinions, as well as WorldCup updates.

Here we go!
Enjoy ;)