Category: opinion

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First of Hong Kong’s Carriers to Get the iPhone

3 HK LogoIt is reported that the first of Hong Kong’s mobile carriers: CSL (with two brands 1010 and One2Free), People (recently purchased by China Telecom), Sunday (recently purchased by PCCW), Smartone-Vodafone (with a partnership involving the mobile giant, Vodafone) and Hutchison Telcom’s Orange and 3. The latter is where Hutchison announced that they will resell the Apple iPhone later this year in Hong Kong and Macau.

Recently Apple shows signs of changing their business model for the iPhone partnerships with carriers. When Apple is predicted to make their announcement of the next generation iPhone, at the keynote speech of the WWDC, there will be multiple carriers selling iPhones for any given country.

With this in mind I am hoping the big brother of Smartone-Vodafone will be reselling the iPhone also.

read more | digg story

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Precaution Censorship

Last evening (May 7) my hosting provider (HP) informed me that my site has been assigned a new IP address (May 7, 2008, 20:00). I then found out the IP address assigned is a dedicated IP for my site. This is so that my HP can isolate my site from the rest of the sites hosted by the server.

This all came about after I reported an issue with my ability to access services on my site/domain. As a result they pointed to my article on the Tibet issue and all other articles about China as the reason for their precautions.

They are worry that the China government’s firewall will block my site, hence, IP address. Causing all the sites and services on the said server to be block from access within the mainland China border. In directly, they also pointed out that I should have known better.

Not exactly sure if this is related, but my site and services since Thursday, May 8, 00:30 had been much faster than ever.

So if my sites is indeed blocked by the China government’s firewall, it will be unfortunate, and my friends in mainland China will have to go without the insights and articles I post to Vinko.Com, see all the photos I’ve taken in my photo albums, read the movie reviews before they go to the theatre, or shop at my online store, Vinko Treasures. But my site and services will be much faster.

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Vodafone releasing iPhone Press Release

Vodafone logoThe reaction to the Vodafone announcement that it has strike a deal with Apple to release the iPhone in 10 countries: Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey, was a mix bag of haters, be-littler and fan-boy.

The iPhone arriving in Asia had been anticipated for some time. The latest is definitely good news for all the countries mentioned in the Vodafone press release.

As we all know, Vodafone has one of the largest worldwide mobile network, and has 3G coverage in many of them.

Whether Vodafone waited for the 3G version of the iPhone before signing the deal with Apple, no one really knows for sure accept the parties in these talks. Whether Apple will retire the 2.5G version of the iPhone is also a speculation.

No matter which country you’re in, there are consumers who are happy with the speed and capabilities of a 2.5G network iPhone, and there are ones who need and want to pay for a 3G network iPhone. Ironically, the only exception being the United States, as 3G coverage is not that prevalent in North America.

Critics; particularly the Americans, should step back and recognize that Apple is aiming at the global mobile phone market and not just United States.

As for the original rumors about the iPhone’s Asian launch, the stages are:
India –> Australia/New Zealand –> Taiwan –> Hong Kong –> China.

Personally living in Hong Kong, should make me feel like a second class citizen; in this case 3rd or even 4th. But I am not disappointed, because like the thousands of iPhone users in Hong Kong, we are happily using our jailbroken/unlocked iPhone on every local carrier network since June 2007. Like most early adopters, will continue to do so until the 3G network version comes out, which I will upgrade to… anyone likes to buy an used iPhone?

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Do We Have It Backwards?

Being a technologist I have the following principal and believe:

One needs to give a great deal of effort into the development of a technology, if one wants to ensure a good, effortless, intuitive interface for the end-user.

So when they say a technology is a metaphor for a real life process, I expect a lot from this technology. Case in point, the Mac OS interface.

Kevin & Kell Comic Strip

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Another Chinese Decision

China’s going to launch their own mobile TV technology in time for the Olympic games’ opening ceremony on August 8, 2008.

Mobile TV standards have been largely incompatible, with systems in the North America, South America, South Korea, Italy and Japan. Now we see yet another incompatible system to be introduced in one of the largest potential user based. Shall we keep starting these standards wars? We saw the battle of BetaMAX and VHS. We recently saw the HD disk format war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray.

China had always wanted to come up with their own standards. They attempted to do so with WiFi, but failed drastically when the Chinese businesses complain that the China WiFi system would not be compatible with 802.11, hence forcing all Chinese businesses to equip their staff; who travels outside of China, with connected devices compatible with dual WiFi system.

Then China choose a HD TV standard that is incompatible with the rest of the world’s HD TV standard, but this time there are no Chinese businesses available to fight the decision for the consumer. So due to business survival, TV manufactures are making converter boxes that will sit between their HD TV sets and the signal coming at Chinese cities. For what have to be a patriotic decision, Hong Kong choose to go with the China standard rather than the standard that is use in majority of the countries outside of China.

Standards wars are never good for the ultimate consumers. I call for the technology decision makers and government officials, to consider the ultimate consumers in their decisions.

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China’s Olympic Torch Relay 2008

This Olympic torch relay around the world has now become such a controversy that the International Olympic Asscociation is considering terminating the relay. If this decision is final, it will become the first world record obtained by China in this year’s Olympic.

The people at “Torch Relay Beijing 2008” has created an animation to show their disguss of the recent events.

Please enable Javascript in your browser if you want to see the animated image here.

So far most sites who had talked about this or mentioned Tibet has been banned from China. I suppose mentioning these facts will also cause my site to be banned from China. After over 16 years of Internet presence for my site, I have finally dragged myself into a political topic that will cause me to loose the readership of fellow Chinese in China.

Hopefully, the well informed any Internet savy readers will find the usual techniques to circumvent the Chinese government’s censorship.

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What is Your Most Desired Native iPhone Application?

Now that the iPhone has been officially released for over four months, in four different countries. What is the most desired native application you wish someone, other than Apple, will release?

By “native” I mean application that runs on the iPhone without Safari (MobileSafari).

Before anyone say it, I do know about the vast number of 3rd party applications alresdy out there. I have used many of them, but what I am talking about here are the sanctioned 3rd party applications released by developers utilizing Apple’s official iPhone SDK.

My most desired is something that will be the IM (instant messenger) consolidator, like Adium on the Macintosh and Trillian on Windows. Currently there are MobileChat and Apollo from 3rd party developers, but neither works consistently nor do they allow simultaneous logins to multiple IM services at the same time.

The other thing that I really really wish the iPhone has is copy-and-paste. Apple being the first to made popular the concept of copy-and-paste in its Macintosh OS 24+ years ago, did not release a subset of Mac OS X for the iPhone with copy-and-paste, is very surprising. Now with 6 revisions of the iPhone firmware, we still have yet to see this feature on the iPhone. I wonder if a 3rd party using the official Apple SDK will be able to bring us this feature prevalent across every user interface and applications in the iPhone.

Another cool app will be something to do with the built-in camera on the iPhone. A simple application like MobilePhotoBooth or a more complexed application which will assist with uploading taken photos to the various photo sharing sites: Flickr, Smugmug, etc.. I know there are currently iFlickr and Pushr, but both are flaky and unstable.

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Hong Kong Standard Chartered Marathon Disgrace

Each year on the third Sunday of Feburary there is a marathon in Hong Kong. Several years ago Standard Chartered Bank took over as the primary sponsor of this marathon. Such that it is now called the “Standard Chartered Marathon”.

Like any other marathon this is a charity event, but to which charity it is raising money for, very few people know or remember. One of the direct results of the heavy emphasis on Standard Chartered the company, bank and what it brings to Hong Kong.

This commercialization has caused it to route the marathon through the heart of the city. Going through the heaviest trafficed areas. Closing down roads to vehicles and pedestrians. Causing thousands of stores to shut their doors until the marathon has passed, which took hours. Cutting into the primary business hours for this location; even on a Sunday.

In Causeway Bay, one of the world’s busiest location, has its major artery closed down. Delivery trucks could not get to make their deliveries. Hundreds of bus routes have to be rerouted. Even pedestrians are forced to go through a round about way, into the mazed of MTR’s (Hong Kong subway) Causeway Bay station, just to cross the street. Along the way no signage of any kind to inform the pedestrians how they can get to where they need to go.

The lack of the organizer’s, Standard Chartered, care for the citizens of Hong Kong is further evidence, by the lack of prepareness of Hong Kong Police and the MTR to deal with the confusion and congestion this closures would cause.

Eventually MTR had to invoke crowd control and ask the police to manage the crowds at the affected MTR exits.

If it wasn’t for the heavy commercialization there would not be a need to route the marathon into the heart on the city. Is this the only way for a city to organize events like this? The answer may be obvious, but I am not sinical, as events like the Olympic and Soccer World Cup can be evidence.

Are there really no more desire for corporations to be caring citizens of their communities? Does it always have to come down to money and what this participating entities will get out of their effort?

I hope all parties concern will see this post and reconsider their plans in future events.

Posted on

Hong Kong Standard Chartered Marathon Disgrace

Each year on the third Sunday of Feburary there is a marathon in Hong Kong. Several years ago Standard Chartered Bank took over as the primary sponsor of this marathon. Such that it is now called the “Standard Chartered Marathon”.
Like any other marathon this is a charity event, but to which charity it is raising money for, very few people know or remember. One of the direct results of the heavy emphasis on Standard Chartered the company, bank and what it brings to Hong Kong.

This commercialization has caused it to route the marathon through the heart of the city. Going through the heaviest trafficed areas. Closing down roads to vehicles and pedestrians. Causing thousands of stores to shut their doors until the marathon has passed, which took hours. Cutting into the primary business hours for this location; even on a Sunday.

In Causeway Bay, one of the world’s busiest location, has its major artery closed down. Delivery trucks could not get to make their deliveries. Hundreds of bus routes have to be rerouted. Even pedestrians are forced to go through a round about way, into the mazed of MTR’s (Hong Kong subway) Causeway Bay station, just to cross the street. Along the way no signage of any kind to inform the pedestrians how they can get to where they need to go.

The lack of the organizer’s, Standard Chartered, care for the citizens of Hong Kong is further evidence, by the lack of prepareness of Hong Kong Police and the MTR to deal with the confusion and congestion this closures would cause.

Eventually MTR had to invoke crowd control and ask the police to manage the crowds at the affected MTR exits.

If it wasn’t for the heavy commercialization there would not be a need to route the marathon into the heart on the city. Is this the only way for a city to organize events like this? The answer may be obvious, but I am not sinical, as events like the Olympic and Soccer World Cup can be evidence.

Are there really no more desire for corporations to be caring citizens of their communities? Does it always have to come down to money and what this participating entities will get out of their effort?

I hope all parties concern will see this post and reconsider their plans in future events.

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Great Music Find

I was listening to the latest MacCast podcast, and normally I would skip the Podcast Safe music that Adam plays at the end, but this time I was busy with something else.

To my surprise, the song that Adam chose, “Overboard” by Shannon Hurley, from her new album “Ready to Wake Up” (to be released November 5, 2007) was amazing.

I began my search for the song on iTunes USA Store, but could not find it. So I contacted the artist on her MySpace page.

To my amazement Shannon answered me right away and told me that currently the only place to find the song is on AmieStreet.

Of course I quickly purchased it while it was still at a low price. For those who do not know about AmieStreet, it is a great place to find DRM free music at as low as USD0.00 up to USD0.98 per song.

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