Month: July 2009

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Movie Review: Overheard《竊聽風雲》

Poster

My Rating: 3Stars

This evening I saw the movie premier of Overheard《竊聽風雲》 at Grand Cinema, Elements, West Kowloon, Hong Kong. Not one of the movies from my Must See Movies list.

It stars 劉青雲 (Lau Ching-wan), 古天樂 (Louis Koo), 吳彥祖 (Daniel Wu) and 王敏德 (Michael F. Wong), with the former being one of my favorite actors, which I’ve watched almost every one of his movies.

The plot of the movie is smiple. It is about a unit of the CIB unit of the Hong Kong Police being assigned to keep surveillance on a company that the government is investigating. The movie did not spend enough time building the characters and background. There were moments of mission-impossible-esq scenes to create suspense but did not really carry through the movie. The several twists in the plot were too predictable and did not give the audience the feeling of originality.

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Apple Privacy Caused Death or Is It a Conspiracy?

I was reading the article, Chinese Worker & Apple iPhone 4G, from VentureBeat yesterday and it made me think that we are getting too much pressure at work.

According to the story from Chinese sources [Chinese], last Thursday (July 16th) an employee of Foxconn, who is responsible for shipping prototypes from the factory in Shenzhen to Apple in Cupertino, committed suicide after being questioned for loosing one of the 16 prototype next generation (4th generation) iPhones. Is there a conspiracy?

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Review: BindoGPS on iPhone

Bindo LogoIf you are a hiker, a runner or just anyone who likes to keep track of where you’ve been, then BindoGPS, is the application for you.

This is another Hong Kong built iPhone application from the growing iPhone development community here in Hong Kong. It is the newest among these applications: Darkroom (currently not compatible with iPhone firmware 3.0), Finger and HK Movie. The latter I will have an upcoming review.

Bindo Marker PhotoBindoGPS is great when you want to record the track you took during your hike, or if you’re a runner you can use it to supplement your training; unfortunately, it does not yet allow the export of tracks in GPX or KML format. Although, BindoGPS.com has just added the ability to see the tracks you’ve recorded using the BindoGPS iPhone application on your iPhone.

BindoGPS’ ability to use either a photo from the iPhone’s photo albums or instantly capture it with the iPhone built in camera, as a waypoint is particularly useful if you want to record visual memory of your hike or conditions of a location during your run.

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3 HK Underhanded Tactics & Ridiculous Info to Customers

3 HK LogoIn the past several days I had been trying to trouble shoot why a follower (“Ms. iPhone”) on Twitter cannot get to iTunes Store from her iPhone. This was the iPhone 3G model on the 3 HK, Apple’s carrier partner in Hong Kong, network.

Ms. iPhone finally complaint to 3 HK Customer Service, and today she tells me what 3 HK Customer Service has told her:

All iPhones purchased in Hong Kong cannot access iTunes Store. The only iPhones that can access the iTunes Store are iPhones purchased outside of Hong Kong and hacked for used in Hong Kong.

What a ridiculous statement.

As many of you know Ms. iPhone’s problem with her iPhone not having access to iTunes Store (music and movies) via the iTunes application on her iPhone is not because she bought her iPhone in Hong Kong. Ms. iPhone problem is that her iTunes Store account is with iTunes Store Hong Kong and iTunes Store HK does not have a music and movie section.

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Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Half – Blood Prince

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My Rating: 4Stars

This evening I saw the movie Harry Potter and the Half – Blood Prince at Grand Cinema, Elements, West Kowloon, Hong Kong. Another one of the movies from my Must See Movies list.

This is the sixth movie in the series, after Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in 2001, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in 2002, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in 2004, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in 2005 and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in 2007.

I tried reading the book several times but for whatever reason I could not get past chapter 3 and started had to start from the beginning at least 4 times because I cannot remember where in the story I stopped at. Not sure whether this was due to the book’s inability to capture my attention until the end. But having said that, if you are a Harry Potter fans this is again a must see.

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When is Nudity Becomes a Taboo

Naked Baby
Just read the article, When Do They Need a Fig Leaf?, on New York Times. This brought up an issue that I see fairly frequently. That is the presence of kids of opposite gender in washrooms.

The article asks at what age should kids be prevented from running around in public or private home naked? Should children ever allowed to be running around naked?

I think these are questions that have different answers depending on your cultural up bringing and the social acceptance of the city/country where you live.

In the case of public washroom I think any children older than 5 should not be allow to go into washroom of opposite gender.

It is unfortunate, but our society has too many weirdos and bad people to allow our children to maintain their innocence. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for children maintaining their innocence as long as possible. I think we should teach our next generation to respect our body and others, educate them on the differences of their body as early as possible, and the appropriateness of when they can be naked.

What do you think? Love to hear your comments below, on Twitter, Facebook or FriendFeed.

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Smartone-Vodafone & iPhone in Hong Kong

Smartone-Vodafone logoLast Friday I reported that I was stuck at a Starbucks that did not have a reliable WiFi connection, so I decided to give the iPhone tethering a try. That trial ended up lasting 4 hours of work on my Mac.

When I decided to use it, I was not 100% certain how Smartone-Vodafone was going to bill me. I have one of their IOM (Internet on Mobile) plan that has since been discontinued, but very similar to the current “IOM Value Pack” except without a contract.

This plan comes with a HKD15.00/15MB rate for any HSDPA traffic outside of their “Internet Browsing” traffic. So I concluded that Smartone-Vodafone cannot tell the difference between regular local data traffic and tethered traffic from my Mac. Therefore and tethered traffic will be charged based on the HKD15.00/15MB rate (with a price cap of HKD298.00).

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Review: Hong Kong 720º on iPhone

Hong Kong 720º LogoToday Thomas B. (@thomashk) introduced me to an iPhone application, Hong Kong 720º, released by the Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB). It is designed to promote Hong Kong attractions while assisting visitors with locating famous tourist spots, and getting a virtual tour of the attractions before they arrive to help plan their visits to Hong Kong. Best of all this application is available in the iTunes App Store for free.

The application contains QuickTime VR tours of all the major tourist locations, including Google Map of the location, English and Chinese phrase for the tourist to show taxi drivers or others when they are lost, recommended travel directions, and photo gallery of the tourist attraction.

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Movie Review: Murderer《殺人犯》

Poster

My Rating: 1Stars

This evening I saw the movie Murderer at AMC Theater, Pacific Place, Hong Kong. Another one of the movies from my Must See Movies list. After seeing the movie in person I had to remove it from my Must See Movies list.

Yes, it was that bad. If it was not for Aaron Kwok the movie would have easily become one of Hong Kong’s many B-movies. Fans of Kwok will be angry with me, but I felt that every scene Kwok was in he was trying to imitate Jack Nicholson and Johnny Depp. I guess in a way it was necessary due to the mental state of the character, Inspector Ling, he was playing. In comparison the supporting actors in the movie was worst, especially Josie Ho

I believe the director, Hsien-yang Chou, has much to do with the down fall of this movie and not to mention the writing duo Chi-long To and Roy Chow Hin Yeung. They are all new to the movie industry expect for To. Not only is the dialogue and directions are bad, the special effects are also very unbelievable.

Unless you’re a fan of Kwok I suggest you give this a miss.

Rating Legend:
5Stars Not to be missed
4Stars Wait for the DVD
3Stars Buy from iTunes Store
2Stars Rent it on iTunes
1Stars Waste your time elsewhere
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Mobil Carriers Differences in HK

Smartone-Vodafone logoBefore you jump into a mobile tariff contract (for 2 years or 15 months) with your new iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS you need to understand that not all 3G (HSDPA) network are the same. This is especially important if you are going to buy a new iPhone 3GS.

3 HK LogoThe reason is because, unlike the iPhone 3G, the iPhone 3GS is capable of supporting 7.2 Mbps downlink and 5 Mbps uplink speeds. At the moment as far as I know the 3 HK HSDPA network is capable of supporting 3.6 Mbps downlink speed at most locations and 7.2 Mbps at certain locations. Where as Smartone-Vodafone’s HSDPA network is already capable of supporting 14 Mbps downlink at every location.