Jeremy Goh's Weblog » Tech

First Look: New Facebook Timeline / Profile Design

Jeremy Goh — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 15:49:40 +0000

Update: (My new Timeline profile)

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!)

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:

In the UFO: ShowNearby!

Jeremy Goh — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 04:25:05 +0000

Today, I will be announcing that I am working with one of the most talented Location Based Services companies in Singapore – ShowNearby and it will definitely be a really fun and interesting experience for me. I am working on Social Media / Product and Marketing for the firm and it will definitely be fun; especially it’s a company that deals with mobile applications, which is something people use everyday and it’s such an ‘in’ thing right now.

I don’t really have much photos to put up on what I usually do, but I am sure there’s something interesting that I can share with you!

Our app is on all 3 platforms; iOS, Android and Blackberry and guess what? I took this photos! Definitely together with another colleague which previously work at Mediacorp! She edited some of this pretty pics too!

My simple desk with a monitor which shows metrics and feedback from netizens. Feedback is always taken very seriously.

An interesting room – basically a shooting room for taking videos and many other media related stuff for ShowNearby online and offline assets. There’s many devices around and it’s great to shoot interesting content and upload it up to the company’s media channels.

Basically all of our workspace (for now); interesting place, where everyone had left their desks.

This is a photo of us working super hard after staying overnight (We even brought our own sleeping bags) in the office following a product launch. Super tiring!

Fun around the office happens to; playing many of the punching bags and soccer balls in the office.

Love some de-stress and late night boxing action in office; yeah! Our ladies have the power! And I am not kidding, the punching bag almost broke into half!

A peek into the difference between the older ShowNearby and the recently updated application – fairly interesting. On the top is our poster for the ShowNearby app!

Just a shot of where people are leaving work for a long weekend!

Just a quick sneak peek, and that’s pretty much it, enjoy your weekends! For more check out: Fun @ ShowNearby

Enjoy your weekends!

Review: Powerskin for HTC Desire HD

Jeremy Goh — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 06:08:03 +0000

Today I will be reviewing a ergonomically designed phone case which comes with charging capabilities, such products have been long been in the market and across the last few years, with the emerging devices; most of such cases is only for a few niche and popular products like iPhone and it rarely comes to other unsaturated devices like to those powering Android, as there are many different models and specifications to fit.

I will be reviewing the Powerskin which I had received via USPS this week and it claims to be able to charge my Desire HD up to 2 times. I will unbox the product and will provide you with interesting statistics about this add-on.

This image shows the back of the box.

On the front of the Powerskin case, there is a flap which you could open to reveal the product itself. That’s some information about it .. and probably you are awaiting to see the product itself ..

Yes, the product’s packaging is simple and straight to the point, there’s a hole so you can touch the product’s interior before buying it.

After taking out the exterior packaging, I will now unveil what is in the internals of the package.

The package comes with a super simple quick start guide, a small “Thank you for buying” card, a MicroUSB cable, and of course the product itself. However, it does not come with an AC adapter, so that is up to the user to purchase.
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Now onto the device itself, it does not come with wireless charging capabilities, you definitely have to plug in a charging cable to your phone, which you can see in this picture:

And let me tell you frankly, all it really do is just acting like another wall socket on your phone, its basically a charging stone that powers the device in times of emergency. Once the USB of the phone is hooked up with the Powerskin, you can use the given MicroUSB cable (which is an open standard for the most recent Android devices) to charge both the phone and Powerskin itself; however, you can’t synchronize your data on the computer nor access your SD Card contents on the computer itself when your phone / Powerskin is charging.

The MicroUSB port for charging both the Powerskin and/or the phone is on the side, so its not that intrusive while talking on the phone, although it can be quite awkward (to hold the phone) and I would tend to keep conversations the point when I speak on the phone with the Powerskin while its charging. Do you also notice another thing? How thick the thing is ..
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Sometimes it can be really thick. The image shows a Powerskin in comparison to Apple’s iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad charging port. The Powerskin is pretty thick, However the weight compensates for it, and its quite light actually.

Operating this device is quite simple, its documentation is really basic, probably 6 images on the instruction manual itself? The LED indicators will tell you the battery’s internal charge and basically that is pretty much it, and a simple button below the indicators to turn on/off the Powerskin when you don’t need to use it. Although the Powerskin will be pretty smart, when you plug in your phone to the port on the Powerskin, it will detect the phone and charge it directly. And once you are done, plug it out, the Powerskin will stop charging. You have to remember to de-activate the Powerskin once your phone is charged full, I don’t remember it being able to cut off by itself automatically.
During my own internal review for the last few days, I would dare say the Powerskin had charged my device fully (0 to 100) about once and did provide slightly more juice (about 20 more percent?) before it died on me. So that’s about twice the power, it depends on how you look at it; the marketing is quite vague.
I would recommend it to you if have the budget for this product (Do keep a lookout for discount codes), as the price could be quite steep. However, the design is cool, fresh, interesting and definitely an eye-opener for accessories on Android devices.
Nevertheless, there are always other products available in the market which can do it for a cheaper rate, but it requires you to carry a separate brick which will not be too convenient anyway.
I believe XPAL/Tennrich, the parent company for the Powerskin product will be coming out with a battery replacement programme, where once the Powerskin internal batteries start to degrade, they would offer a replacement for a slight fee.

MEElectronics (MEElec) HT-21 Portable Headphone Review

Jeremy Goh — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 14:40:00 +0000

Today, I am going to take for you a spin for one of the top selling Meelec products. Lets take a spin with this headphones and I will let you know the results of it. Our review today will be the HT-21 from Meelec, it will cost about USD $40 (or about $60 SGD) MSRP from their MEElectronics website.

The packaging is quite interesting, the compact design keeps the headset in place and it doesn’t get damaged by vibration (the holding plague contains a headphone grid locking mechanism), its well protected and the see through plastic allows the headphones to be seen.

After burning in the headphones, you could tell that the HT-21 headphones could handle bass pretty well. Despite these minor flaws, the HT-21 offered good clarity, detail, and sound stage. I could hear bits that made the music I love, that I have never heard before with my other headphones I tried. Instruments all so separated carefully and clearly, it almost feels like a high end product worth more than $100.

I am using the headphones as I type this review, it’s really comfortable the headphones do not put too much or too little pressure. One thing i really like, is that the wire, even though not Monster-designed, the wire is hard to tangle so its a joy to just pick up and use. The extendable headband has a simple design, it allows you to self-adjust it according to your preference and its quite durable, as the metal plates are also actually reinforced by the plastic frame. Microphonics wise, the wires do not affect the sound quality, noise cancellation is really good I have my friend playing songs from his laptop no less than one metre from me and I can detect almost no sound leakage on my headphones.

In conclusion, the sound quality is excellent for such a price mark. The lows are really good, although it lacks a little bit of detail as it sometimes get too overpowering at times. However, the mids is really decent, I really enjoy the fact of hearing the entire music spectrum clearly and its a joy to have that in my headphones. The highs is sub-par, but its still audible although it can be quite sharp. If you are going into high end premium audio, you should probably take a look at my review of the highly sought of the Meelec A151 Balance Armature In Ear Earphones or the M-Series (which can be found on their Meelec site) if you want a bass-packed earphone instead.

Overall, with a carrying kit which I almost forgot to mention in the review, its a worthy buy for such a price mark for such a great sound.

Review: MEElec (MEElectronics) A151 Balanced Armature In-Ear Earphone

Jeremy Goh — Sat, 21 May 2011 18:25:09 +0000

My package for the MEElec earphones just arrived, I am going to unwrap it and show you whats in it and explain to you more in detail in terms of sound quality and design.
The Meelec earphones can be bought from www.meelec.com and some authorized online and in store retailers. The estimated selling price should be around 75USD.

The MEElec A151 box seems to be quite solid with no visible signs of damage and the courier for the box seems to be neatly packed.

The front and back packaging for the Meelec Earphones.

The headphones when taken out from the Meelec box, the usual hard and tough clamshell case that Meelec provides for its headphones which is really useful and I have tons of them. (It can not only store headphones + small stuff like pins and clips)

The A151 is an over the ear design, I find it a really comfortable fit with no obvious sign of flaw. The cable is doubletwisted and it is tough and durable like all the other Meelec products I reviewed. Although you might experience a learning curve on how to wear the earphones properly over the ears (it should not look like 2 midget ears coming from your ears), which you would clearly learn it through time.

The earphones have its own unique design and there’s a good thing about it, the earbuds seems to stick really well to the earphones. Which is clearly engineered to fit and sound well.

The package comes with a tons of buds, the Meelec earphones and the hardshell case.

Yes, this is the tons of buds I am talking about, clearly enough for a whole family of ears and for about every size and depth.

Probably this is what you are waiting for, the sound quality review. First impressions, really good audio quality. Clarity is what I am looking for in this earphones with no bass thats covering the mids and the treble is clean with no screeching sounds to the ears. In fact the audio is so clear that I begin to hear sounds that I do not hear in other earphones, the fine detail of the music is just astonishing at times. The bass is good and audible, but not too heavy and overpowering (just nice for the music) – which do not give the ‘BANG’ in what bassheads look for. The soundstage is very wide, as a matter of fact, the instrument seperation is very distinct and clear to my ears and I could sort them out even though it is just earphones. The highs performed better than average (across the line of Meelec and >$100 earphones) and to wrap it all up, the precision audio, wide soundstage and the solid build quality you get from the earphones far exceeds the price you are paying for.
Nevertheless, bass-heads who are not interested in sound quality in terms of clarity should look at other “M” series in Meelec products.

Drop me a tweet @jeremy89632 and tell me what you think about it!

Importing Contacts into Gmail / Google Contacts (Template + How to), Works for iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, Phone 7, Symbian, Blackberry and more

Jeremy Goh — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 11:58:33 +0000

Hello guys, assuming if you are using an Android phone, you probably want to import your contacts into your phone through Google Contacts, as Google had provided a strong and subtle platform to transfer contacts over the air.
Even if you don’t use an Android phone, but oftenly use a GMAIL account, it is a good idea to import all your contacts into the cloud (for retention purposes) or if you have about 30 to 40 party friends crashing at your place, and you need their names and numbers to import to the database; this tutorial will help you out easily and safely.
Or if you are using other platforms, such as Apple iPhone / Windows Mobile / Windows Phone 7 or any phones that there’s an Microsoft Exchange protocol, you could use Google Sync to backup and manage your contacts.
The excel sheet is taken from Google’s database, so credits to them for that.

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!

Review: Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse

Jeremy Goh — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 04:42:36 +0000

Today we are going to take a spin of the new Microsoft Arc Touch mouse which retails about SGD $85 or about 43 british pounds. This product has a really ergonomic design, however when it comes to consumer products, it all boils down to the usability and simplicity. Will this ultra portable mous be good for an average consumer? Lets find out.
The packaging is a simple flip open package which reveals the mouse inside.

When the package flips open, you could see the mouse, just in case if you in the store and you wish to see the mouse before actually buying it – so you could fit your hand against the mouse.
Due to my nature of the getting the product for review, I actually did not do that. Anyway, my hands are pretty big, any mouse (except the small mini ones that comes with Thinkpad laptops) will kinda fit my palm.

Once you get the safety seal out, you would need to slide the mouse of the package. Which you will see the mouse being wrapped with a layer of plastic (Picture above) I would say the packaging is pretty tough, it’s really unlikely you will face a broken mouse.

The mouse contains many instructional manuals which you refer to. And of course it is those same old instructions you see in any other consumer electronic product. (There’s far too many papers)
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Alright, after we got all the packaging sorted out, now its time for the real product.

It looks pretty and nice and the design is smooth. Microsoft took out the scrollball and replace it with a touch sensitive scroll strip which you could scroll up and down by flicking the strip and touching the strip twice activates the scrollball-click action. Below the touch sensitive strip is a small LED battery indicator (It runs on 2 triple A batteries) and there is of course the right click and left click buttons. There’s no other special buttons. Its clean and easy to use, but the touch sensitive scroll strip instead of the scroll ball needs some getting used to, the learning curve is not exactly too hard.

At the back of the device, there’s a proprietary Microsoft Bluetrack sensor.

The sensor supposely is able to allow more precise movements of the mouse, which can be easily noticeble as it gets more sensitive when moved.
There’s also a small compartment which you could open to place your batteries at (Again, 2 triple A’s batteries) and a magnetic surface which houses the mouse receiver for use on a laptop or desktop. (The magnetic surface to house the receiver might not be a very good idea as it could be easily lost as the receiver is too small and the magnetic surface to house the receiver is just inadequate protection, it might be better if it came with a small holder that houses the receiver on the mouse. Especially if you put the mouse in the pocket, any other objects in the pocket could easily remove the USB receiver)
It would be better for Microsoft to incorporate Bluetooth to the mouth since most of the big players are doing that, and for such a steep price for a mouse, who still use such a receiver?
Most computers comes with bluetooth technology and the primary target audience for the mouse is working professionals or people always on the move, which their laptop might not have many USB ports to spare due to the compact nature of their laptop.
The mouse is currently in off mode, to turn the mouse on, all you need to do is to bend the mouse, which should look something like this:

After bending the mouse. It looks and feel really good, when holding the mouse, you will not feel the uncertainty of a loose grip and it fits most hands really well.

The thin profile of the mouse can be visible from the side of the device. It is so think and could fit any pocket.

The USB receiver on my Thinkpad, the receiver is almost insignificant and do not pose any design flaw. (Non of my friends to begin with even know that I had a receiver that is plugged into my computer)

FINAL SAY:
The Arc Touch is a really good ultraportable mouse which is good for travelling and time critical missions. The build quality is reasonable strong and the grip is firm. The replacement of a touch senstive strip instead of a trackball might be a learning curve for some, however the haptic feedback / vibration feedback on the strip is a plus. The battery life and consumption is excellent, which could last about 7 to 8 months on 2 triple A’s batteries. The Microsoft Bluetrack technology really aids to the precision of the mouse. The left and right clicking keys on the mouse may feel a little hard to press. The mouse also lack of other special keys such as Forward and Back. The miniature USB receiver is a plus, however magnetic holder for the USB receiver is not practical to some point. (Thats why I always leave the USB receiver on my laptop and take it out only if necessary)
The pricing is a little steep for such a product and you may want to view your choices carefully especially if you have a tight budget.

Redfox Wizpad In-depth Review

Jeremy Goh — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 09:30:30 +0000

Today we are taking a look at one of this cheaper tablets which hover about SGD $900 for 60GB Solid-State Drive (Flash Drive) space. And what you are getting for this tablet is something which we will be looking into today – yes, I bought the tablet and there’s something advantages / disadvantages which I will highlight out to you.

The tablet comes with a few accessories, a quick starter guide, a disk with an AC adapter. Something lacking in the tablet is just a casing.

Alright, moving onto the front design, it has 3 physical keys, a power, home and back button, coupled with LED indicator lights.

The device also comes with a notebook lock, a sim card slot, firewire, 2 USB ports, a line in microphone jack and a earphones / speaker output jack.

On the other end of the device, there’s a reset key and a ventillation vent, which could heat up after sometime of use – so beware.

It is powered by an Intel ATOM processor and the speaker is located behind, something which I am not particularly fancy of, due to the sound being blocked by the object that your tablet is resting on.
In our tests, this device is able to last about 3 hours on Windows Vista and slightly more in Android. You do have to remember, this is almost a computer / netbook, given the variety of ports and peraphells it provides.

Now over to the software part, when you first boot up the device, you are given 2 choices. Yes, either Android or Windows 7. For the sake of this review, we are going to start off with Android first.

The issue with this version of Android to start off with is, it comes with Android 1.6, or Donut. So at the time of this writing, Android 2.3 Gingerbread is already in the works, and Android 2.4 Ice Cream has been rumoured to release at the end of this year. So again, a software update is crucial for this device, and probably the Redfox CD is able to help in that.
Furthermore, the Android software which was provided is not re-skinned and re-touched on, its good to a certain extent, but hey, there’s a lot of blank spaces they need to fix. Let me show you some examples.

No change in the Android interface, except everything looks bigger and more spacious, which is pretty much it.

This is the camera application, which is usable, but it should take advantage of the screen estate.

The keyboard is heavily stretched and it is obviously too big to use at the moment. – Yes, it produces quite a few precision errors while typing.

Android built in Settings application.
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So, Android is probably not a very good idea to add into the tablet. I mean, at least now they have Android 3.0 Honeycomb, which fully supports tablets. And that would be an added plus as it takes advantage of the entire screen. Rather than making it bigger and stretching it.
Moving onto the next part, the Windows 7 OS, which is expected to be way better for Android.

The login screen immediately pops up a virtual keyboard. As Microsoft Windows platform comes with tablet support out of the box.

The Microsoft Windows platform is actually pretty good, I managed to get to the web and all the other components really fast and easy.

The computer revealed that it is running a 1.6GHZ ATOM processor with 2GB of RAM.

The virtual keyboard as provided by the Microsoft OS can be quite irritating at times as it doesn’t automatically cover the entire keyboard and the keys are so small and furthermore we don’t need some keys such as Printscreen to be there all the time.

The output of the device is just average, the speakers is not really loud, but average for the normal meetings – so it’s not your type for Party Rocking in the club.

Using the device in a portrait mode gives a little problem as the the horizontal screen’s real estate is not big enough, however it is still usable. Except that it looks slightly narrow.

The keyboard in the portrait seems to be pretty decent, and its really interesting and good.

Since it’s a tablet, drawing and writing words on it is a breeze and there’s no obvious problems and flaws there, if you dont want to type on their virtual keyboard, that is.

The device retails at a decently high price, but given the Solid State drive, the price point is understandable. The device should probably work on the Android UI and keep Windows 7 as it’s main operating system. The battery life is not remarkable and could be improved, about 3 hours plus of usage, slightly lesser than a netbook. Given the device’s price point, it should need a closer review especially with upcoming tablets in the market such as the Viewsonic ViewPad.
Overall, the device provides an average user’s day to day needs with an entire Windows OS without lugging the weight.

Windows Updates is still a must though

Nintendo 3DS Full In Depth Review

Jeremy Goh — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 13:11:37 +0000

Oh hang on, what’s that? Is that a normal DS? No?
It isn’t! It is a Nintendo 3DS and I would like to thank Lewis for being the 47th in Singapore (in line) to get one from the main outlet which he contributed to this review, pretty good huh!
The Nintendo 3DS is announced during E3 2010 (A gaming trade show) and it’s the 3rd installment from the DS line which includes the same old DS and the DS lite. Its predecessors include the Game Boy line which includes Game Boy Advanced, Colour, Light and SP.

To start off, this is a totally new DS, the same form factor is still there, but the screen is actually full 3D, yes 3D with no glasses! They managed to work out the 3D on this screen and its pretty good. Again, to get into the ‘sweet spot’ of 3D you must be in that 20 degree tilt range from the screen.
Let us start off with the hardware review!
It has the same 2 screens in the front, the bottom screen is a resistive touchscreen (thus the stylus) and the upper screen is just a full 3D display.

This is the back of the 3DS, its nice.

Beside the 3D screen, there is a 3D toggle switch which some might want to turn off the 3D if they don’t want to.

The bottom screen is a touch screen, you may notice that the user interface is redone to a certain extent, and it is much more snappy and looks prettier, I will touch on the user interface later.

At the bottom of the 3DS, there’s a power and charging indicator along with some output jack.

The 3DS actually comes with 2 cameras which you can take 3D photos to view on the 3D screen, and if you are wondering whether this is actually true, I have some proof for you, see this!

A 3DS taking a 3D photo in play. (I purposely use wires to show the 3D effect on the screen) – The resolution is actually quite low, and not your “HD” type of quality.

At the right side of the 3DS, there is a wireless toggle switch and a indicator.

On the left side of the 3DS, There is a joystick, a 4 way d-pad, a volume rocker and a SD card slot.

At the back of the 3DS (from left), there’s a charging port, cartridge slot (who still use that? go digital!), a stylus slow and a infrared port.
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Okay, now let me go into details of the 3DS user interface.

It supports the Augmented Reality technology, which is basically images which is printed in 2D which the 3DS would decipher and turn it into 3D.

It contains Download Play, which for example, if you want to play a game with your friend, but your friend do not have the game, your 3DS would send the game over to your friend so he could play it temporarily with you.

It also have the 3DS sound app, which I think it is like the Garageband for Nintendo. You can edit and create sounds on the 3DS.

This is Mii maker, which you could create your own avatar and your own character on the Nintendo 3DS, which in turn you can play it in your game. Well, it is those kind of self identity kind of thing.

Talking about partial multi-tasking you can now bring applications to the background and suspend them and open a new application. So this is a brand new feature.

The Nintendo 3DS has a really interesting and holistic interface which you can switch between a few designs.

The internet browser on the 3DS is not ready, what a disappointment for an essential gaming device to not have a browser polished.

See the 3D awesomeness.
To wrap up, the 3D factor is definitely there, forget about the large viewing angle as the technology is not flawless. The battery life was said to be really bad, probably due to the heavy rendering in the graphics chip in the 3DS, using a stylus is really 1985, like seriously. The internet browser is a basic element in almost all modern entertainment machines, it is not really ~~polished~~ there. And pricing is a little heavy as compared to the other modern gaming portables. However, it is definitely a milestone for a gaming device to have 3D inside. The online features have to be worked on and the social gaming aspect have to be better and the lineup of new games on the device has to be a little stronger to entice gamers to be on it’s newer 3DS.
The cover on the 3DS attract fingerprints and the speaker is a little soft.

Overall, the product has room for improvement. However, as a rule of thumb, do your research on all the other competitors products before purchasing any gaming device.

Opinion: Why the iPad 2 is actually iPad 1.5 or 1S

Jeremy Goh — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 08:50:45 +0000

If you have not heard of the iPad 2, you must be probably living under the rock, but technologies constantly involve in the technology world and to give you a simple background, Apple just announced their second generation of the iPad, the iPad 2. Among some of the new features include a new camera (Front and rear), a dual core processor (Faster performance), Gyroscope and Smart Covers (Which is a simple and innovative add on accessory).

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)

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All comments and opinions expressed are solely of Jeremy Goh.
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All Image credits: Apple Inc