Facebook recently unveiled it’s new re-design to all it’s users, called Facebook Timeline, where it takes over the traditional profile based design and replace it with a brand new interface with heavy emphasis of time and well, not to mention age, many users would take time to understand the re-design and there’s a foreseeable backlash of users that would object against it.

However, this is certainly the right step of presenting users with useful and detailed information, as its now presented in a life profile, allowing any individual to learn more about one’s life. (And not whatsoever that’s recent).

I believe this is a response to Google+, extending the circles concept further with it’s wealth of information collected over the years, with a strong emphasis of history.

This is Facebook’s Brand New Re-designed profile (The photo was taken from one of my recent Toastmasters’ competition)

Immediately beside your titles are tiles / tabs, which you can easily update, add applications (which will be made available during launch) to include in your profile and it shows you interesting services and contents which you are linked to, for example, like Spotify (it will pull up your musical tastes)

But just for this example, I’ve included Tetris Battle in one of my featured applications, seems cool, don’t you think so?

Well, unless there’s further privacy concerns.

As you scroll down, you’ll no longer see lines of excel sheet sized status updates and photos, its more like a magazine styled design with a timeline at the centre, allowing you to navigate through your virtual life, and learning all about your past with dates at the side.

You can easily add a status, photo, place or any one of the diversified categorised, such as Work and Education, Family & Relationships, Living, Health & Wellness and Milestones & Experiences.

And yeah, you get this feature too in the timeline profile itself, at the sharing box located right below your personal information. And yes, you get access to the diversified categories!

As you scroll down through the timeline, it will show you a month by month summary on all the events you had RSVPed and Friends you had made, so it’s easy to consolidate and have a one glance view on what you had done.

Through the new Facebook Timeline, I get to scroll through all my old and long met friends and probably see when I added them, since its heavily focused based on time (the past and present), the content are modified in such a way where time becomes the content of wealth.

And if you didn’t notice, as you scroll down, you’ll get to see a large personal bar which you can share and add information about yourself automatically straight from the bar on top.

Scrolling through the timeline is like reading your own personal life magazine, it is fully customised based on what you’ve input to Facebook over the years, its a breeze to see what you had done, accomplished and experienced in both good and bad ways over your usage period in Facebook, and for some, it starts when they are born.

Some extra privacy details about sharing information in your timeline profile before I jump into the important Facebook applications, as usual, you could delete / hide the post from the timeline. And now, for those stuff and moments you are proud of, you can always feature them in the timeline.

And yes, not forgetting the Info tab, which you can learn more about the person in the profile that you are currently viewing. It’s now so much neater, cleaner and provides you with only information that you need. Nothing else.

Now, lets go through some of the crucial Facebook apps, one of them is Friends, it shows your friends in tiles, with their display pictures at the side. Looks like Windows Phone 7 tiles, it’s easy to comprehend, and instead of putting friends in alphabetical order, it shows friends that you always talk to. Some personalization algorithm there, I believe.

The photos application look similar to the friends app above, it shows you all the photos that you’ve recently added and Facebook still employs their same old tactics, more images will load when your scroll down (so there’s nothing to show other than this feature right now)

Using your check-ins, Facebook will now show you a map representation on the places you’ve been and classify it accordingly with the tabs located at the bottom, the places are also really interactive. For example, after clicking on one of the shiny dots, which represents the number of check ins:

Now moving onto Facebook Likes:

I wouldn’t say that Facebook had really invested time onto changing the Likes section, as it looks similar to the older Facebook profile under the info tab, but the interface looks cleaner and simple.

Facebook also provides an activity log, or a stuff that you’ve done over the past few years. Nothing in much detail, doesn’t need much explanation, what you see is .. what you get!

Alright, I believe that I had managed to cover some of the most essential features about Facebook Timeline, hit me up at @thejeremygoh if you’ve any more questions.

PS: After scrolling all the way down in my timeline, Facebook is seriously asking me to add my baby photo (Are you sure about that Facebook, this timeline is even thicker than my graduation yearbooks combined!)

J.

P/PS: If you’ve not got your timeline, you are probably not a developer, which you can easily sign up and do it here, which should look something like this:

STEP 1)
Lets start off downloading the template to input all your contacts information.
Click here to download the Google Contacts Importing Template.

STEP 2)
Once all the hard-mining work is done and all the data entry is completed.
Save your spreadsheet.
Go over to www.gmail.com and click on contacts.

STEP 3)
Click on more actions and click on import.

STEP 4)
Choose your file location on where your data gold is at.
Make sure that you always choose to create your newfound contacts in a new group, so just in case when there’s an error with your contacts (may it be arrangement or something like that), you can delete the entire group of contacts and reimport so it will not be mixed with the old and clean contacts.
All your groups are located at the left navigation bar of “My Contacts” so if you could see, I have some groups called “ICA09AmbPool” and “NP ICT IT04″ and the brackets inside corresponds to the number of contacts there are inside the group.

Once the import is done, you can click on the new found group on the left navigation bar and over the next few minutes; if you own an Android phone and your Google account is tied to it, you will see your new found contacts.

Leave a comment and send a twitter message to me (@jeremy89632) if you bump into any problems!

J.

• There are growth dividends, which every Singaporean will receive $100 to $800 and an additional $100 for NSMAN / NSFs.
• A special Workfare bonus, which workers will receive more workfare payment.
• An increased continuing Education & Training (CET) subsidies, which will help workers to continue learning while they work, for a better life.
• Income tax rebates up to 20% will be given and a permanent reduction in personal income tax for all middle-income taxpayers.
• CPF savings will be enhanced by raising the employer CPF contribution rate from 0.5% to 16% from September 2011.
• All Singaporeans above 45 will receive a medisave top up up to $700 which is dependent on a variety of factors; Age, income level and annual value of residence.

Household Benefits

• All HDB households will receive a $235 to $360 in rebates for utilities bills and a 3 months conservancy charges rebate.
• There’s also a removal for Radio / Television Licence fees which amount to $137/year.
• A special CPF housing grant – up to $2250 / month to buy their first flat and low income families will receive a $20k grant.

Enhanced Bursaries

• Students in the low and middle income group will receive more money to study.
• Students in the Primary and Secondary group will receive a $130 Edusave top up.
• A Child Development credit, either $300 or $400 / child for age six and below is given – to help for all the payment matters for raising a kid.
• Schools will receive more money to help the needy students.
• Public assistance will be raised for those who can’t work.
• Kindergarden Financial Assistance Scheme will be extended to help families who earns up to $3.5k with the cost of preschool and childcare.
• The Ministry of Education Financial Assistance Scheme will be extended to students in Special education schools to help cope with schooling costs.

And of course, there’s also other benefits you will get.

So this is some of the examples of the benefits you will get.

So yeah, thats pretty much the long awaited and promised Budget 2011 in Singapore.

Singapore Decides 2011 – Elections is coming.

But of course, there’s always another opinion regarding the budget 2011, for it being “giving you $1 today, and taking back $2 tomorrow”, but whatever it is stay happy and be well blessed.

Jeremy.

The following is the pricing for Quiznos in Singapore, which was a simple snapshot of their pricing chart.

As you can see, the prices are pretty reasonable.

Although the lunch hours is pretty crazy and you would wait up to about 20 to 30 minutes for a meal, it is due to the limited space. Other than that, it is good.


Many sides were given such as Peppercncinis, Pickles and stuff like that. I don’t have a good memory for stuff that I seldom eat
But I did gave a try!

If you love sauces (like me), you wont regret eating this, it is good and some examples include Mustard, Horseradish and the other one which I couldn’t remember about.

This is just a few assortment of what we ate on the toppings.

This is the Terriyaki Chicken sub.

(This is the footlong)
This is what I ate, which is the Terriyaki Chicken Sub, I would say that this sub is actually quite unique, due to the terriyaki sauce. From what I see, it was just chunks of breast meat with Terriyaki sauce.

This more interesting sub, and definitely one of our office favouries is this Zesty Steak sub, it taste amazing, the meat is tender and they don’t shrimp on the quality and the quantity. The sauce is far better than the Teriyaki Chicken.


As this is worth tasting, this is far better than what I ate on the top. Like seriously, this taste so good.
If you add $2.70 to your meal, you could get a small drink and chips OR a cookie (Which is pretty big) OR in total, just get a cup of soup (Which you don’t get the drink and the cookie nor chips)

The chocolate chip cookie is actually really big, bigger than my palm, an estimate is putting 2 credit cards side by side.
This is really interesting, isn’t it.

Alright, thats pretty much it.
If you have any cool subs you would like to recommend, pass it on @jeremy89632

J.

PS: It seems like there’s too much blog posts in relation to food. Will cut on it

Alright, lets move on to this promotion that Burger King had, I have to say that I am almost out of breath when I saw the devastating queue, it was so long that it took up more than half an hour of my lunch time just for queuing up. (One coupon is only valid for one physical person only)

You probably might think this is no big deal, by looking at this single photo, you should probably look at the photo below from the other angle.

That must be something crazy, right.

Alright, so after that long queue, no one actually cares about waiting for good food, isn’t it.

That’s the packaging for the burger, its looks kinda fine right.

Inside the burger contains some lettuce, the flame grilled patty, tomatoes and mayo.

Which would than look something like this!

Anyway, in my point, this is fairly interesting, leveraging on social media technologies which is crowd sourced to bring your product out to consumers.

I got the additional whopper and fries anyway, I skipped breakfast, so a heavy brunch.

Many people have questions about the newer iPad release, some might even doubt their purchase as many expected more from this release, some people realized that the new product fall short of their expectations. So let me clarify my take of this whole new iPad vs iPad 2 (1.5) saga.
So don’t start thinking that the iPad 2 is just another iPad 1S [Remember iPhone 3G to 3GS?]

Let me take all this new features and ergonomics inspiration as a first generation iPad user to justify for the product purchase.

1) It’s an add on.
True enough, the iPad do not have the capacity to do all things crazy and digital. No matter how Apple tries to add as much capacity on the iPad (like adding Garageband and iMovie), such as the range of apps and products, it still could not take over the entire Macbook / iMac – Mac OS X line of products. And of course, it couldn’t run Flash, which many competitors use that as a selling advantage.

2) It’s a convenient-product
This is a tablet computer (sort of), and many people expected a lot from something which is so portable and thin (Are you serious?). Bulk Vs Computing Power. Like what the old saying goes, one will rise above the other. Do you know that the new iPad 2 is thinner than the iPhone 4?
As compared to the original iPad, do you know that the iPad 2 is now lighter and thinner?

3) What are you expecting?
It’s just a tablet, In my point of view, Apple would never come out with brand new technologies in an instant, if the competition could not live up to the hype. Have you heard of any compiling tablets after the iPad? Okay probably, the Galaxy Tab which is totally reskinned by Samsung and not a native Android UI? The Motorola Xoom? Something which is still not being released to the public yet, with its traumatising pricing? (The specifications of the product makes up for it though, but who needs something that can process so much on an Android?) but in my view, there isn’t a real competitor! Although tons of tablets were released, not one managed to hit it’s sales target as strong as the iPad. And not to mention that some tablets from other manufacturers is actually slow and buggy as hell.

4) Do I totally need this features?

Camera?

Yes, iPad 2 comes with a camera. And yes, don’t most laptops do as well? ( Although I am pretty happy that Apple included Photobooth, which is a type of Neoprint and on the fly image effects and editing application). However, the camera they used is the same as the iPod Touch (4th Gen), which is totally not cutting it. The camera in the rear supports 720P HD video recording is a strong standpoint for the camera, however the image capture is terrible and some of the photos which came out of it is really pixelated and do not capture the essence of the image with washed out colours. At the same note, the camera in the front of the device is only VGA quality, if you remember, it is the same quality as my old Motorola Razr V3 phone. On the other hand, the front camera is only needed for FaceTime, unless you want your friends to see every detail (Including your pimples), you don’t really need a good camera for that. (FaceTime is a video chatting technology by Apple, and since all your video conversations will pass through Apple’s servers, they will not provide HD video calls as it will slow down their servers and increase load)
The camera is not visible, and taking videos on the iPad might need some time for people to get used to.
Final Say: The FaceTime idea is not too compiling as there’s no iOS messenger or a system to find friends who are using an iOS device which contains a camera. On the other hand, the FaceTime idea is not very compelling as it only runs only through Wifi. (Lets not talk about Cydia hacks)

Do I need the faster performance on the iPad?
Probably, I notice that Apple tried to shrimp on the RAM (Which is a component which temporary memory is stored) by providing only 256MB which caused many applications to crash and run out of memory really fast. Especially when they are intensive games or applications that involve heavy processing power. So their answer to that is an Apple A5 chip, which is better than the previous A4 chip as it’s duo core and have double the processing power. However, Apple did not announce and release the specifications for the iPad’s 2 RAM.
From what I understand from other sources, Apple’s point of lowering the RAM is for developers to write better and ‘cleaner’ code for the Operating System to run. The processing power on the iPad is significantly bumped up, but the RAM is still crucial on the device which Apple is keeping quiet about.
Final Say: Unconcluded, despite the better processing power of the device, the RAM is not justified, yet. (Until we see those iFixIt photos!)

Battery Life.
I believe it’s a signature for Apple products, increase all the features and keep the batteries strong and steady is something which Apple took pride in since day one. I currently own an iPad and their claimed 10 hours of battery life not only hits its target and even went further, I have been getting close to 2 to 3 days worth of usage, which is really constant and amazing. Other phones, especially those running on the Android platform, do have quite an issue with the battery usage due to many factors such as multitask and options like that.
Final Say: Leave Apple running in it’s hamster wheel on the power management! It’s doing a good job!

iPad Smart Cover.

In short, its an accessory, but it gets so much attention because it’s made by Apple and the design is in it’s essence. So the quick idea is there’s this cloth you put on the iPad and the device will sleep, you take the cloth out, the device will turn itself back on again.
Final Say: This is actually another sub product of a product for users to purchase, consider all options before you intend to get one.

HDMI output (High Definition Video output to Televisions or Display outlets).

Yes, its important, and once you know that it’s important. Apple would charge you for an optional accessory to go with it, because not everyone use this feature. So it will cost you about another $50 to get the cable to route the video out. However, one feature you get is Video Mirroring, which is finally resolved as its a really big issue on the first generation of the iPad as many people thought that they are able to broadcast any content they see on the iPad to the big screen. However, seldom knew that it will only work for certain supported applications, such as the video app and Apple’s iWork suite, Keynote (Powerpoint), Pages and Numbers.
Some Android tablets have a HDMI port out of the box, but to keep the product slim and the profit higher, a HDMI cable is being sold, but not everyone would need it anyway. Definitely my grandma won’t!
Final Say: You don’t need to be concerned if you are a regular user. If you are a business user, the HDMI cable come with a charging port while you are doing presentations, so it’s quite a trade off even for the price you are paying.

Gyroscope and features like that.

I understand that the strong factor for the iPad is about applications. If you do not have apps, you can probably forget about getting the iPad. Which is why Apple emphasizes a lot on Application development and API usage, which is to utilize all aspects of the hardware that the device have, while maintaining the game in it’s field. Gyroscope is a technology which could be really hard to implement as it is have to do with gravity, and adding so many features into a game could delay development and increase pricing due to the R&D involved. So many games developers actually do not use the gyroscope technology yet, which is quite disappointing as it is such a huge potential. However, the compass is a genius when you are walking around the town area with Google Maps and the accelerometer is a no brainer, almost all the functions rely on it, including changing the device orientations and stuff like that.
Final Say: As compared to the first iPad, a new gyroscope is added, might not be useful, yet.

5) Why I am still a little disappointed.

(I am on the road and this happens, Now do you see the whole big issue)
Many people say the Wifi version of the iPad is a poor man’s device. Although that’s quite true, but they should have added more features to the product. As compared to the 3G iPad, the Wifi iPad do not include GPS and 3G. I mean 3G is definitely justifiable as its a mobile technology which would definitely cost more. But GPS? I mean, it will be awesome if I am able to use the iPad as a GPS unit while driving instead of my phone, with its miniature screen size and a small squeaky speaker. And there’s so many GPS applications on the app store such as Sygic Aura, Tomtom, among many other GPS Navigations applications. Most of the maps is downloaded and use offline anyway. On top of that, many hoped that there will be newer display technologies, such as the Retina Display for the iPad, but given the jump in cost price if that happens, they might hold it off for another product release. Some were hoping that there will an SD card slot for importing music and images, high capacity (apart from their 16GB, 32GB and 64GB), a smaller version of the iPad (Probably something of the size like Galaxy Tab) or many people simply label it as a iPad Mini or Nano and finally the crappy mono speakers, which they really need a bump to stereo speakers this time round. But again, is that really needed? (A bump would be good, nevertheless)
Final Say: If you want to get an iPad, look for one with 3G, even though the price point is slightly steeper and since most telco’s provide a free data card (Mobile broadband) all you need is a MicroSIM cutter or a new MicroSIM from your Telco. If you are not willing to spend, just go with iPad (first generation), most users do not need the new features, we have our mobile phones for them, or more specifically the iPhones and the Androids.

6) Why I am pleased.
Pricing point, no change in pricing at all, in fact Apple has lowered the price point for the first generation of iPad by $200 and for the refurbished about $300 SGD. So if you want one, it’s good to get it first and help Apple to clear their inventory.
The battery life is rated at 10 hours, despite all the new astonishing features being added to the iPad 2, the battery life is still the same as the first generation iPad.

The lovely iOS 4.3 is an update to their slightly dated iOS 4.2
Which I appreciate Apple for not charging for the update for the entire line of Apple iPad, there is some tactful new features such as AirPlay, which is an over the air streaming protocol between Apple products. Probably one of the most worthy update is to the Safari web browser on the iPad with the new Nitro Javascript engine which claims to load pages twice as fast as it’s previous Safari browser on iOS 4.2. Other annoying features fixed is the preference for the iPad Side Switch, iTunes Home Sharing extended to the iOS device and a slightly improved mail client.
Final Say: iOS 4.3 is just a fix for some of the annoying bugs that iOS 4.2 face, luckily they added the better javascript engine which many would really benefit from it. The price drop for the older generation iPad is what I call as a lady killer. Yeah, go for it!

7) Upgrade?
Many sources have mentioned that existing iPad owners should not upgrade to the iPad 2 as its improvements is not exactly really huge. Trading in your iPad at the current moment is not a variable option as the resale value has already dropped. Do you need the newer features, is it really necessary? If not, stick with it, if yes, consider your budget and all your options that the new iPad got to really offer.
Final Say: Think twice if you want to upgrade your existing iPad to the newer iPad 2.

Price Point?
New users on a budget constrain should probably look into the refurbished section of the Apple site for the first generation iPad (It changes from time to time, so stocks and quantity is limited) or wait for the upcoming weeks to get your newer iPad. As always, if you order your iPad through Apple’s online store, you will get a free engraving and shipping! (But your iPad casing would probably cover off the engraving like what my colleague have said and it would decrease trade in value, unless you use Apple’s new smart cover case)
Final Say: The first generation iPad fits within most budgets (You could get one for as little as $450 SGD, if you get the time right), if not just settle for the second one. (If you find a budget surplus that is)

–
All comments and opinions expressed are solely of Jeremy Goh.
Questions, Opinions and Thinktanks?
Leave your comment below or tweet me @jeremy89632

All Image credits: Apple Inc

There are the white / clear version (Which you are looking at), the glossy matt black finish and the clear pink version (Only available through the Valentine’s Day package).

This is the first look for the MEElectronics M6 Earphones.

J.

Some statistics shown here is really amazing, yet really accurate. Companies must stay competitive in order to keep their rank in the social network arena.

J.

But again to wrap it up, its the quality that you are paying for, if you just want a quick snack for a low budget, you might have to look for it somewhere else.

J.

Starting right now, do check out my site and I hoped you enjoy it as much as I do while creating the site.

Cheers!
Jeremy Goh.