ITCOW [L]

Last November, i wrote about HP’s mScape technology, it’s here! in Singapore.

There is a new playground for Singaporeans to head to for some fun and relaxation now that HortPark has been officially unveiled to the public. Officially opened by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on May 10, HortPark is Southeast Asia’s first one-stop gardening and lifestyle hub. It also serves as a park connector for Telok Blangah Hill Park and Kent Ridge Park.

HP Singapore is playing a very big role in helping the National Parks Board (NParks) promote HortPark by developing an eLearning trail for upper primary and lower secondary students. Called HortPark Mediascape, this pilot project uses HP mScape technology to create a self-conducted virtual tour, which will allow visitors to learn more about the park and its flora.

However, this is unlike any normal guided tour. Students use the HP iPAQ 612 Business Navigator to get information on a particular attraction in the park when they arrive at the corresponding hotspot. There will be 26 hotspots spread around this 23-hectare park, but this is not all. Interactive quizzes and games have been developed to engage the students. These activities are based on an original fairytale—The Enchanted Flower Kingdom—created by HP Singapore. Featuring the five geomancy elements of metal, wood, water, fire and earth, this game will make learning about the park more fun and enriching for students.

Tan Yen Yen, Vice President & Managing Director of HP Singapore, and Yong Yiam Tong from TSG Education Services had the opportunity to demonstrate HortPark Mediascape to PM Lee when he stopped by the Herb & Spice Garden during his tour of HortPark.

Tan shared HP’s commitment to innovate for the environment. “With HortPark Mediascape, HP is tapping its creativity and technological expertise to interest and educate the young in nature and flora.”

Ng Lang, CEO of NParks, said: “Technology can add a new dimension to our mission to create memorable recreational experiences and lifestyles for Singaporeans. Our partnership with HP is an important step to giving park visitors personalized, interactive experiences using technology.”

The entire mediascape interactive experience in HortPark will take a maximum of 25 minutes for visitors to complete and up to three people can share one device. The public can rent the HP iPAQ 612 Business Navigators for free once a month if they join the guided walks conducted by NParks. However, visitors have to make advance bookings via the hotline or email.

HortPark Mediascape is not the first mediascape project HP Singapore has done. HP, IDA and Tao Nan School of Singapore collaborated on a mScape-based learning game trial in the Singapore Zoo last June. Presently, there are no public places in Singapore that are using a similar technology.

From http://h41131.www4.hp.com/sg/en/stories/singapore_hortpark_0508.html

Anyone can love these!

http://www.samsung.com/common/microsite/sg/sleekprinters/

Yep, he did, remember Bob Metcalfe? He ate his coloumn remember? Yep, ate it when he say the Internet will “die”.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.11/metcalfe.html

Well, yes, it did not and has not.

Also check out how happy he was eating it after. http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/1997-04/msg00192.html

oh, by the way, he founded 3COM.

It just fails. Singapore, Feb 1 – 4 2007 was the big “WOW” experience if any of you still remembers. The delight of seeing all the nice looking shrinked wrapped copies of Vista and the so many versions of it, we’ll come to that, the nice looking pavilion, the tech talk to the public and demostration of Vista and Office 2007.

Shortly after that, was the yearly IT Show 2007. Over the peroid of March 8 to 11 2007, visitors were once again fed with eye candies of Vista, Office 2007, Microsoft, buy buy buy…

Then it hit those who has bought back in March. I was using Vista Enterprise around 2 weeks before the Singapore launch. Enterprise versions were given out to partners who had to rush to install their hardware like new PCs and laptops that are to be launched with Vista. I went back to Windows XP Pro SP2 in 5 days.

Choices, options. It’s just darn confusing for the average PC user. Everyone just want the Ultimate version. Fullstop. See the versions here. Ultimate, Home Premium, Home Basic, Business and Enterprise. Who cares what has this that the other editions do not have? Just get the one that has everything but wait. it’s $665SGD (Source) for the ultimate edition.

It just doesn’t work. Recent rollouts (bigger page) of workstations that will eventually replace SESOPS Windows XP SP2. Need I say more or why?

What failed then?

Developers not being able to get the drivers up in time for one. When Windows XP was launched, it was fairly easy to be able to switch over from whatever we were running then, Windows 98, Windows 95 even to the polish Windows XP. The look of it was just enough reason then drivers were of no problem for printers, graphic cards, motherboards, anything you throw at it.

Enter Vista, back in Feb 2007, I tried it and the frustration, the installation was fine even on my relatively new motherboard and everything (Asus P5WDG2-WS), even sound drivers was detected after the installation, I pretty much do not had to do anything for the bare vanilla version of Vista but there’s about where it all ends.

There wasn’t ways for me to burn DVD backups of my webservers using mine and I believe many others’ favourite Nero, CD/DVD image mounting tools crashes it (Daemon Tools), Games do not run at optimum performance thus a driver upgrade ws tried for the graphic card (XFX7800GT) followed by bluescreens and errors, I gave up. Went back to Windows XP Pro after a week.

Long URL to send to someone? If you have not heard, try this out. tinyURL and what is a godsend is this, the Firefox TinyURL

Check it out http://mozmonkey.com/tinyurl/

If you have not realised, I host this site and a few other sites from home running off VMWare, off one PC, off Linux thus the long long long URL at times that I have to send to people to access certain photos or articles to solutions they may need. The gallery is at times, a nightmare link, so long it gives my email reply a really ugly look.

It’s all in the nice formatted reply! I was sending this link out to friends asking how do they mount what they bought or going to buy from TagoTech.

Imagine sending this

 http://moonshine.homedns.org:2655/wp-gl/v/photo_shoots/album87/album192/umbrella/clamp_connection.jpg.html 

or this

http://tinyurl.com/34vqsd

See my point?! Enjoy the tool.

Interesting concept.

“mediascapes are mobile, location-based experiences that incorporate digital media with the sights, sounds, and textures of the world around you. A mediascape blends digital images, video, audio and interactions with the physical landscape. Games, guided walks, tours, and destinations are among the mediascapes created to date. Download a mediascape onto a portable device, and see how your landscape comes alive as you move through the environment.”

Pardon the really oudated design, see http://www.toweroflondontour.com/who’re using this to guide tourist and play a game or 2 of escaping the tower just like real life prisioners did 300 years ago.

Check out http://www.mscapers.com/

What the fuck is the use of having a password on files you want to share? It’s just dumb as it’s eventually when someone actually have it on a non password stream/BT to share to the rest of the world and or someone actually repacking it up and redistributing it as a whole file.

It isn’t even a movie or TV show bittorrent file I am talking about. I know those files get this kind of treatment all the time to drive temporary traffic to these guys website using the excuse of what? To protect their privacy and the downloader’s privacy.  What nonsense? It’s like those forums where you actually have to click on “Yes, I’m above 18 years old” to register or tick on the 3 screen longs “Agreement” to pass that time wasting page. Anyone below 18 years old know they have to click to bypass that and or putting a tick to agree. What’s the point then? Protect the website hosting that actual forum? It’s not even porn sites, from technology forums to just some talk shop.

So back to the password-ed BT files. If the CIA or FBI or any organisation that wants to catch the seeder/ person providing that file, do you think they do not have the brains or technologies to like, guess your passwords? No wonder people say people are dumb…I an google and found a actual RAR file cracks in seconds. Organisations that are trying to get these people most probably have something of miltary grade and can crack the password if they can’t get the passwords from the “Instructions” which was provided in my rar file. It typically tells you to:

1. Go to this webpage, some dumb page that may not even load for the matter.

2. Enter your email address, with bold underlined text saying it doesn’t have to be your email address. It’s like WTF?!

3. On the next page, there’ll be green text, that’ll be your password oh and or some puzzle fun, take the first 2 characters, add that to _ _ U P I D. hmmm, let’s see. oh yes. It’s stupid.

So what’s more efficient? SPAM to get traffic to their sites? I do not know why they want traffic to their site in the first place when people will be providing bogus email address in the first place and any simple javascript checker for forms will only detect if there’s a dot (.), a com, a net or .org or whatever with a @ and something, anything before the @.

And by the way, I was downloading a lesser known Linux distribution I saw on Distrowatch and found a BT seed on Mininova through Google.

This month’s PC Magazine editor-in-chief, Lance Ulanoff released an open letter to Palm.

Sad but true, they were too slow in development and seriously, releasing the OS’s source tux style will benefit a lot of people. What had happen to Palm? They were the forerunner in mobile device and mobile devices OS…

It’s no suprise someone made a Windows alternative to HTC’s Touch interface. Check it out here. It’s the touch commander.

Also, new ads for Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6.

Enjoy!

Check it out
here.
While there, check out the recently announced Nikon D3 and D300 prices too!

Check out http://www.dpreview.com/previews/canoneos40d/page3.asp

Most important and interesting for me will be the WFT-E3/E3A wireless transmitter*censored*grip. It’s been too long since this accessories is introduced into this range of Canon DSLR. Of course, there’s also the “Instead of instantly powering down when the CF card door is opened the EOS 40D displays a warning message and a countdown of how many more images are being written before it is safe to remove the card. At long last!”. At last, there is this mechanism in place for after so long. This CF Card slot feature is the same as on the 1D Mark III.