It’s the first day of the Lunar New Year. Happy New Year to all the people from cultures that celebrate this traditional festival! And to all Chinese around the world, Happy Chinese New Year!
财神爷 wishes all a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous Chinese New Year! Taken with an HTC 8X Windows Phone 8 smartphone. Text added in Photoshop CS6.
I was having breakfast at the neighbourhood coffee shop last Sunday morning when I noticed the tiny figurine in the photo sitting in the middle of the table.
Afterwards, I left him where I met him – to let the next patron mull over the presence of such an esteemed dignitary in the local neighbourhood.
Since this is the Chinese New Year period, I suppose it’s Cai Shen Ye – the God of Fortune in the traditional Chinese pantheon.
Was this merely a handphone charm inadvertently left behind by another patron, or is the popular deity paying a visit to the mortal world?
At any rate, I lost no time in snapping a candid shot with my own handphone.
We were walking through this neighbourhood street mall on Chinese New Year’s Eve morning. Shops were teeming with people doing last minute shopping for the Reunion Dinner that night.
Having a sleep-in past noon on a Saturday. Right in the midst of the hullabaloo of Chinese New Year’s Eve shopping all around it. Taken with an HTC 8X Windows Phone 8 smartphone.
In the midst of all that hullabaloo, this kitty was sleeping most indulgently on the doorstep of one of these shops.
The launch event will be held simultaneously in London and New York – and is widely believed to be for the launch of the M7 (also possibly to be named HTC One).
Invitations have been sent out for the HTC launch event in London and New York.
Stay tuned to the webcast URL which I’ll be posting here so you can follow it live.
Today is the Safer Internet Day, a global campaign that promotes for everyone a healthier Internet. Started in 2004, this year marks the 10th anniversary of the annual campaign that is held on the second day of the second week of February since 2004.
Effendy Ibrahim, Norton Internet Safety Advocate and Director for Asia, Norton by Symantec, has provided a list of top 10 tips for parents and caregivers for ensuring young people remain protected online. Click to view/download enlarged PDF version.
Safer Internet Day is organised by Insafe and co-founded by the European Union, in order to encourage safer and more responsible use of online technologies and services.
It’s the Lunar New Year period and Chinatowns all over the world are abuzz with decorations and festival sales in anticipation of Chinese New Year.
This couple reads “Welcoming the new spring and happiness” to the right, and “Prosperity through Harmony” to the left. I snapped this picture with the Sony Xperia Ion Android smartphone.
I was walking in Chinatown Singapore and came across this corridor outside the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple that brightly decorated with these floral wreaths and Chinese well-wishing couplets.
Samsung has launched the compact version of its flagship smartphone GALAXY S III in Singapore.
The 4-inch compact Android 4.1.2 (Jelly Bean) smartphone will be available in Pebble Blue and Marble White from tomorrow, 2 February 2013 (Saturday) at S$568 (without contract).
The GALAXY S III mini will be available in Pebble Blue and Marble White from 2 February 2013 at S$568 (without contract).
The GALAXY S III mini sports a 4-inch Super AMOLED display (480 x 800), 5-megapixel camera that records movies at 720p@25fps, 8GB internal memory (microSD slot for up to 32GB ext memory), and a 1,500mAh battery.
Running on a 1 GHz Dual-Core processor, the compact smartphone features Samsung’s “Smart Stay” and “S Voice” features.
“Smart Stay” recognizes how the phone is being used – the front camera identifies the eyes and maintains a bright display for continued viewing – as long as the user is eyeballing the screen.
“S Voice” is the natural language user interface, to listen and respond to words, allowing information search and basic device-user communication through voice commands.
Below are the specifications for the GALAXY S III mini I8190N.
Research In Motion (RIM) President & CEO – Thorsten Heins – launched the new QNX-based BlackBerry 10 operating system and unveils the full-touchscreen Z10 and physical keyboard-equipped Q10 smartphones.
RIM is also renaming itself as BlackBerry from today.
Shareholders’ response to the launch inside. All images in this article were screen-grabbed from webcast of the event.
The first manifestation of the new BlackBerry 10 – the full-touchscreen Z10 (left) and physical keyboard-equipped Q10 (right).
The basic premise of the new “BlackBerry experience” is about extending connectivity to everything around users – connecting the phone to the car, sound system, healthcare system etc.
Availability of Z10
Jan 31: UK
Feb 5: Canada (C$149)
Feb 10: UAE
Feb 21?: Singapore
March: USA (pre-orders without pricing from today)
* Q10 may be 1 month behind.
Three overarching innovations to enable this are the BlackBerry Hub, Peek and Flow.
Hub is akin to the People Hub of Microsoft Windows Phone operating system and consolidates all people related and social network information and updates in one place.
Apple is increasing the maximum memory of the iPad with Retina Display to 128GB (from the current max. of 64GB).
The 128 GB versions of the iPad with Wi-Fi (SG$1,048) and iPad with Wi-Fi+Cellular (SG$1,218) will be available from 5 February 2013. Prices include GST.
Apple increases the memory of the iPad with Retina Display to 128GB (from the current max. of 64GB). This photo is from Apple’s website.
Microsoft has released prices for Windows 8 after 31 January 2013 – when the current promotional prices expire.
The new prices are much higher, so if you’re planning on upgrading to Windows 8 – get it before the end of this month.
An auspicious 88 days for Windows 8. Click to enlarge.
88 days have passed since the global launch of Windows 8, with 60 million licenses sold, (as of 8 January).
Top eight Windows 8 apps developed locally. All of them are free apps.
Advanced English Dictionary
DBS
MerlionWords
Parts of a Computer
SG Deal
SingAdventure
The Straits Times
WeGo Travel
Since the opening of the Windows Store the number of apps has quadrupled and globally Microsoft recently passed the 100 million app download mark – just two months after general availability.
In Asia-Pacific, the number of locally-developed apps is currently being added to at a rate of 50 per day and the developer community itself has swelled by 82% since the October launch.
In Singapore, more than 4,000 developers have been trained to develop apps for Windows 8 since launch.
Below are the prices for the various upgrade editions for Windows 8 from 1 February 2013.
The HTC Butterfly will be available in Singapore in Fervour Red and Glamour White starting 26 January at M1 and StarHub. Recommended retail price: S$928.
HTC Butterfly will hit the shelves in Singapore from this Saturday (26 Jaunuary) for S$928.
The HTC Butterfly will be the first smartphone to have a full HD 1080p display, with a 5-inch screen that boasts a high pixel density of 440 pixels per inch.
HTC Butterfly
OS
Android (Jelly Bean) with HTC Sense 4+
Screen
5″ super LCD 3
Resolution
1980 x 1080 Full HD
Battery
2,020 mAh, built-in
Processor
Qualcomm S4 Pro 1.5GHz, Quad-core, 2GB RAM
Camera
Rear: 8 MP
Front: 2.1 MP
Video
1080p HD
Memory
Int: 16 GB
Ext: 32 GB microSD
Size /mm
143 x 70.5 x 9.08
Weight
140 g
Price
S$928
It is powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, featuring a quad-core 1.5 GHz CPU, high-performance GPU and a full 2GB of RAM to enable the seamless use of multiple apps simultaneously.
The smartphone is run on Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) and HTC Sense 4+, including Google Now.
The HTC Butterfly has a 2,020 mAh battery and power saving software and an expandable SD card slot in addition to 25GB of free Dropbox cloud storage (two years free).
The 8-megapixel rear-camera has an f/2.0 28mm wide-angle lens, 5-level automatic flash, backside illuminated sensor (BSI), and superfast autofocus.
HTC VideoPic allows you to capture video and still images at the same time. (more…)
