Techgoondu has got a new home

We never thought we’d move out this fast, but better early than later.. and so, may we welcome you to Techgoondu.com

That’s the new site that we’ll be updating from now on, so please update your bookmarks and RSS feeds, as we won’t be updating you on the latest gizmos and stuff here.

Sorry for not running all these meta refresh stuff, or cross-linking domains… just figured it’s easier coz this site is rather young (less than a month old), and easier to migrate like that.

Thanks and remember – techgoondu.com is the new place.

Backup yer vinyl records

Here’s the latest in bit-perfect, lossless music encoding: vinyl-to-plastic audio backup.

Now, being a vinyl record nut, I was naturally excited but also aghast to find this backup-yer-vinyl-record tip in blogoshere. Excited because, well, it is a pretty cool notion. Aghast because I can just see all those out-of-print vinyl records being damaged by the gooey silicon stuff. And I am also not so sure about having my delicate record cartridge glide on the finished plastic replica.

Assuming it works, I can just imagine all the nasty crackles and pops from the replica. Anyone tried?

Samsung Omnia vs HTC Touch Diamond – fight!

As the hype from the 3G iPhone rests a little, the spotlight has now been trained on two “iPhone killers” these past two weeks – the Samsung Omnia and HTC’s Touch Diamond, which went on sale lately.

The Omnia, which went on shelves last weekend, costs almost identical to the Touch, about $500 to $600 with a no-frills two-year plan (check prices at singtelshop.com, m1shop.com.sg, and starhub.com).

If you add that $100 incentive voucher from, say StarHub Hubbing, or M1 loyalty vouchers, and throw in a trade-in phone for $200, that’s a brand new full-featured phone for under $300. Good deal!

So, how do the two stack up? Early looks suggest:

Round 1: UI
Winner: A tie. Both have touch-sensitive screens. Samsung have haptics, which means you know when you press on a button on-screen. HTC, meanwhile has its prettier TouchFlo 3D, which really wows the socks off people.

Round 2: Looks
Winner: HTC, for a really pocketable size, and the better-looking finish. Samsung’s not bad too, but it looks too much like an iPhone.

Round 3: Specs
Winner: Samsung, for having handy GPS (and the superior Agis maps), and a whopping 16GB of memory. That’s enough for my 13GB – and growing – bunch of MP3s! If the HTC has more than its 4GB of memory built in, it might just tip the scales in its favour.

Round 4: Screen
Winner: It’s a tie again. I really prefer the sharpness of HTC’s excellent VGA screen. For old geeks, you’ll remember that VGA (640×480 pixels) is the resolution we used to have on our old 14-inch CRT monitors. Now we have it on a small screen, that’s why it’s super fine! Why is it a tie then? Simply because the Samsung screen is bigger – it makes pictures and particularly 16×9 videos much more watchable.

Early verdict: It’s tie, but it’s not because I don’t want to stick my neck out. I thought I was sold on the HTC Touch Diamond, after I got less-than-enthusiastic with the Samsung demo at CommunicAsia. But today, over lunch, the Samsung folks passed some of us in the media retail sets of the Omnia, and they seemed to zip along a little faster on the UI, making me think about that 16GB onboard again.

If you have to buy one of these phones this weekend, here’s my suggestion: Get the HTC if you use it more as a phone and less as a multimedia powerhouse (coz it is more pocketable for the weekend and not everyone needs 16GB of memory). Get the Omnia if you want all-out multimedia on the go (if you like everything in one gizmo).

Otherwise, look out for the review in Digital Life next Tuesday. No, it’s not a smart ploy to get you to read ST, but simply because I haven’t fully reviewed the phones yet to form a better verdict!

Please port my number to pfingo

In this week’s Digital Life, I ran a story about how VOIP services like pfingo, Skype and mediaring are now moving to the mobile phone. The value proposition is simple – you can pay two to four cents per minute to make calls from your mobile phone in Singapore to any mobile or landline number here. Compared to the 15 cents per minute we are paying, it’s pretty amazing.

The stumbling block used to be the high cost of data charges because you are essentially logging into the 3G/3.5G mobile Internet (which works out to be about 40-50 cents per minute – that’s because the bit rate is about 16kbps so when you talk for a minute that means you will be using like 16 x 60 divided by 8 which gives you 120 KB. Since the rate is about .35 cents per KB of data, you end up paying 40-50 cents per minute of VOIP talk time.

But now, with unlimited 3G plans going for like $19 and StarHub bundling their 3G and cable broadband together, mobile data access is now affordable.

I have been using pfingo a lot recently, which gives me a prefix-3 number for free. So I can call from my mobile using pfingo, and the experience is just like making a normal mobile call. Instead of pressing the green call button I press options then Internet call. I can even open my normal phone book and do the same thing to call a contact. No fuss like Skype where you have to crack your head to import contacts over.

Iam paying like $100 to $120 per month to my mobile operator for my phone bill. With these VOIP mobile services I can seriously cut my phone bill. The problem is I think you can’t port your mobile number to a VOIP mobile service. When that happens, you can be sure I will make the switch.

Need for “fuller” number portability?

As a letter writer in the ST Forum mentioned today, full number portability in Singapore does not mean you can switch from a post-paid to a pre-paid plan when you switch cellphone operators, and still keep your number.

It was pointed out that, number port exercises elsewhere, like in Hong Kong, allow for this to happen.

It’s interesting where this goes. Though the number of people switching from post-paid to pre-paid may not be as big (most pre-paid customers don’t really care to retain their numbers – they are more interested in call rates), you’d ask why this was not worked into the whole exercise.

Is it a technical problem or more based on what telcos think the market needs?

Expect IDA to come back with a reply, and hopefully, the portability could be extended to people switching from post-paid to pre-paid as well.

For now, one workaround, though a little troublesome, would be to switch from post-paid to pre-paid within the same telco, then later jump onto a new telco by doing a pre-paid to pre-paid port.

UPDATE: my suggested workaround doesn’t work, coz telcos do not even port post-paid to pre-paid lines. thanks for pointing it out, gabriel.

Go, Singapore game developers!

Scrawl Studio’s Bunny Bounty, a game for bunny lovers – not!

Can Singapore be a buzzing computer game developer city? I was at a Media Development Authority’s (MDA) news conference yesterday, which announced a $500,000 carrot as well as a mentorship programme by game companies such as Ubisoft, to entice local game developers and I found myself quite taken by the demos presented by three MDA-funded local teams.

Nabi Studios’ Toribash – a martial arts bash.

I am no hardcore gamer (well, my only gaming credential is that I jab furiously at my Nintendo DS on my short MRT commute each morning), so I can’t say if those games are cutting edge in their domains. But local startups Azukisoft’s The Journal, Scrawl Studios’ Bunny Bounty and Nabi Studios’ Toribash and Glitchracer look pretty good yesterday and I can’t help but be inspired by the spark shown by our young developers.

We definitely got talent here, and here’s wishing more will step up to try to grab some of those MDA funds that are on tap and create a buzzing game developing community here.

HDTV rocks

Serious couch potatoes got a big boost last week, when news emerged that HD5 is finally going to be shown on StarHub’s cable TV service.

What’s the big deal with one more free-to-air HD channel? Well, finally StarHub users won’t need to get another Draco or other free-to-air HD boxes. And I’m glad I didn’t buy a Samsung F8 LCD TV with an HD tuner built in.

More importantly, one of the biggest hurdles has been taken out for HDTV here. A disagreement between MediaCorp and StarHub had prevented MediaCorp’s HD channels from being shown on StarHub.

It was said that both parties were squabbling over a small carriage fee, but in reality, they both disagreed in principle – a principle that has made it really inconvenient for viewers and may have slowed down HD takeup in Singapore.

So, it is a big step forward for HD fans here that HD5 will come to StarHub next month (July). Credit this time goes to the Government, which has a hand in brokering this deal – the news was announced by the Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, Dr Lee Boon Yang, at the opening of the imbX trade show last week.

The news couldn’t have come at a better than for new owners of HD TV sets – like me. I had bought the bargain of the show at the PC Show – a Samsung Full HD 40-inch LCD for $1,699 – 2 weeks ago. Since then, I’ve swapped out my StarHub box for an HD box ($48 one-time fee, plus one-year contact), bought an Xbox 360 and finally last Saturday, an Onkyo SR606 AV amp.

Everything is hooked up on HDMI – one wire from source to the amp, and the amp basically takes care of everything because it has audio switching. You don’t need to run separate audio/video cables… everything now runs perfectly to the amp, which outputs the video to the Samsung N8 screen and my Quad 11L speakers.

When I tuned to StarHub’s Ch301 and 302 for NatGeo and Discovery HD, you can imagine the joy. Never has TV looked as sharp, nor audio sounded so good on TV. And I’m not even going into Blu-ray yet.

My own experience vindicates what I have always thought – with HD, you don’t want to go back once you have seen it yourself.

People are already buying up HD-ready and Full HD screens every other week, and if you turn up at Harvey Norman now, you’d be hard-pressed to buy a non-HD screen. So people are buying up HD screens fast – we may have reached an inflection point for HD screen takeup.

But what we need now is for broadcasters to move faster to bring in the content – it’s already there in the US now (so there’s no excuse), and even HD cameras are getting very cheap (available to consumers now), so there’s no reason why we cant’ have more content.

Bringing HD5 on StarHub is a great deal, coz it will bring at least some “regular” content, like CSI, on HD. Now comes the waiting game for more new channels. I think people have been patient  so far, now the ball is in the broadcasters’ court.

(info on HDTV for newbies here)

HTC Touch Diamond sold out everywhere

It’s the latest sign that the “touch-screen” fad is heating up to fever pitch, thanks in much to the iPhone hype.

HTC’s excellent Touch Diamond, said to be the best “iPhone killer” of the lot, is sold out everywhere, including many telco shops.

Last Friday, the Plaza Singapura shop at StarHub was sold out (customer service officer said there was a queue of 80 people who have pre-ordered it). Then over the weekend, when the ads came out again, the phone was sold out everywhere soon enough too!

The M1 e-shop didn’t have it (even when I tried to renew my contract and was ready to click “submit”). StarHub certainly didn’t have it in many of its shops, and I’m wondering if finally SingTel does have some stock (given that it’s bet so much on the iPhone instead).

Is the iPhone really going to sway people in this number port game? With its delay here (SingTel won’t get the first batch of July 11 3G iPhones), it looks like people are probably busy signing up on contracts with the HTC phone instead.

A mini price war seems to have appeared between StarHub and M1 too. At the PC Show, the phone was snapped up for under $500. This week, StarHub has it under $400 (for medium and high plans).

And I am still undecided which one to go – M1 or StarHub. It will depend on who has stock for the HTC Touch Diamond. This is one gizmo which has most of the nifty “touch” stuff on the iPhone – without the annoying hoopla.

Qwerty chic!

Just got to fiddle with the new E71 (the one on the right), which was launched at Nokia’s own show on CommAsia week. From a 30-minute hands-on take today at the office, this shiny metal-clad GPS smartphone might just be my favourite from Nokia. It’s thin! Definitely pocketable. Secondly – and this will be a big draw for IM junkies and poor long-sighted souls like me – the qwerty keyboard feels shiok. Until touch-screen keyboard becomes haptic (as in it delivers some kinda force feedback when you jab at the keys), only real keyboards will do for me. Then again, touch-screen phones might still win over the I-wanna-feel-my-keyboard camp. This phone should be in Singapore soon, perhaps next month.

Touch-screen phones galore

Late post here for CommAsia, as you’d expect the stories with ST have been coming thick and fast, and there’s little time to update this little blog (interesting note to newspapers trying to do both online and print).

But this year’s gizmo turnout is not bad at all, starting with Samsung showing of its recently launched Omnia i900 at a show preview on Monday. Though some of the journalists were not enamoured at first with some of the problems (you can still see Windows hidden underneath the nice surface), eventually some of us were quite impressed after playing with it.

The key was the large 3.2-inch screen, which is comparable to the much-hyped iPhone. Also, this baby has a whoping 16GB of memory for all your songs (I personaly got about 13GB). No big deal, you say? There’s also a 5MP camera (Apple’s only has 2MP).

 The touch craze extends to other phone makers as well. For example, LG’s Secret, launched here, also features a nice little touchpad of sorts below the screen. It’s well-made and pretty, like all of LG’s phones of late, and will surely sell well among the ladies.

But one of the sleeper hits at this show is surely Garmin’s nuvifone. Made by the experts of GPS or satellite navigation for the layman, this touch-phone is first a GPS device then a phone. Its screen is a nice 3.5 inches – similar to the iPhone.

Better yet, it has support for Google maps, and what may be the future killer app on phones – navigation. It’s not just finding your way around, like with the N95s now. In future, when all the mashups are put up on Google’s maps, you can even message your friend where to meet, and he or she can find it on a map and get directed there by his/her phone.

Sounds cool? This is just the beginning… am sure Google has more when it brings its Android fully out on phones later this year. That’s when we may see not just the Net and phones converging (as we’ve said with 3G in the past), but with navigation as well.