All posts by The Artist

Technology

Apple iPad Launched In China

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The Apple iPad landed on Chinese shores this morning, where only the wifi model is sold. According to reports, the 3G model will come later. I seriously cannot understand why Apple has to make life difficult for everyone and not bundle wifi and 3G in one same model. People in the East mostly are subscribed to 3G because our cities are not as well connected by wifi as in the West.

However, many of our homes do have wifi and this means that when we are at home, we will be using wifi and when we are out and about, we will connect to the internet by 3G. See, we need only ONE device. Sure you can say that wifi model is cheaper but if you only have ONE model that offers both connectivity, people wouldn’t be able to compare prices, right?

Although many Chinese braved the rain to get get their hands on the first iPads to land in China, it feels quite dumb of them. Why would they want an iPad, a wifi model at that, NOW, then the new model is coming out in a few months’ time? And you know this model lacks so many standard features, namely flash support and a camera!

Computing & Internet

Facebook is Top Online Destination in August

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According to comScore, Facebook was the top online destination among web users in August, spending a good part of online time on Facebook, beating Google. Of course, we all know that Google is what we use to search and then get out of the site by clicking a link whilst Facebook is a content provider BUT from what I understand, traffic for Gmail and YouTube was taken into consideration as well.

Facebook is a social networking website and although there are only so many status messages to post, so many photos to upload and videos to share, the magnet that makes people stick to Facebook is actually the social games.

EVen so, social game developers are not able to survive on their own without a social platform, and this is evident when Zynga bows to the pressure from Facebook by joining the Facebook Credit bandwagon and in the process, giving 30% share of each transaction to Facebook. I estimate the average number of social games that Facebook users play actively is three and we definitely do not want to log into three separate websites just to play these games, do we?

General

Online Traffic School

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If you have been following my blog, you would know that I have started to drive again after not driving for the past 15 years or so. I recently bought a car, you see, and I have to rebuild my confidence on the road and in handling a vehicle. I am extremely rusty and my dad doesn’t allow me to drive alone.

Before I purchased this car, I told myself that I would like to enroll in a driving school for a refresher’s course not only in driving but also in traffic rules. However, I was quite shocked that going back to driving school is very expensive these days! It’s at least double what I paid when I sat for my driving test 15 years ago!

This morning, I came across this court approved online San Diego Traffic School that allow drivers who have been slapped with a traffic ticket or citation to take a quiz in traffic safety rules online. The best thing is that drivers can take the final part of the quiz over and over again until they score 80% and above and at no extra charge too. The certificate will be mailed out.

Taking such a traffic safety course will remove traffic tickets from a driver’s traffic record, reducing demerit points and lowering auto insurance premiums.

*** This post has been sponsored.

Computing & Internet

Gmail Priority Inbox

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Although I have known of Gmail Priority Inbox since the day it was released, I didn’t think I would need it since I don’t receive that many email daily per inbox. That means my mail is pretty well spread out.

Even though I don’t need it and will not be using it, just for fun, I clicked on the link at the top of my Gmail to “read” about Priority Inbox and I was greeted with this very cute video. I remember going to the link at the first instance but there was no video yet. I’m so glad that I went and have a look again this time. It’s presented in a very refreshing way!

Enjoy!

Finances

Preserving Wealth With Bullion

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A friend told me that with the volatility of currencies, she is not feeling secure with her savings. Besides the usual savings and checking accounts, she also has foreign currency accounts but at the rate that our currency is strengthening, she would soon be losing money!

She said that she is currently waiting for an opportunity to close one of her her FOREX accounts and then buy bullion with whatever she could salvage. I don’t know who advised her to go into FOREX but she said that despite her situation now, she did enjoy some bumper months earlier. Now it’s time to bail out and look for something more stable.

I’m sure we all have read about how bullion is one of the safest ways to preserve wealth. If I have the means, I would definitely explore bullion investment as well.

Computing & Internet

Google Instant Search

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Google made a slight enhancement to its search service yesterday, calling it Google Instant. While Google claims that it makes searching for the web a lot faster, there are people who like it and there are people who don’t.

Now, I am not someone who doesn’t adapt well to changes but I think that many times, with Google Instant, it actually makes me spend more time going to the RIGHT topic that I wanted to search for in the beginning.

Google, as you type your keyword, will start coming up with all sorts of suggestions and if you are a fast reader, even though some of the suggestions that come up are not what you were looking for, you would be curious enough to read those web pages with eye-catching headlines.

Anyway, that’s not the irritating part. The irritating part to me, is when you click on the next page. Why does Google blur out the page? Does it make the page load quicker or what?

Technology

Google Voice in Gmail Hits 10 Million Calls In Week One

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Google has announced in a blog post that there were ten million calls made in the first week of the launch of Google Voice in Gmail. The first day saw one million calls made. Currently, Google Voice in Gmail allows users to make voice calls to USA and Canada for free. Although I haven’t seen anywhere written how many minutes users have in their account, I don’t think that users have unlimited call credits. From my own account, I see that I only have 10 cents. I didn’t even bother to install the app.

Making phone calls PC-to PC is not something new but what I would like to see is a more reliable, free, mobile-to-mobile call service much like Skype and Fring but my own experiences tell me that these services are not that reliable and most of the time, it’s like talking to a robot on the other end.

On another note, Google Voice in Gmail makes me wonder what happened to Google Talk’s VoIP service. I have never used it before but I do wonder why someone would want to log into their Gmail account from the browser to make a call when they could close a window and make calls via a desktop application if only Google would expand the feature to not only voice with our Gmail contacts.