Colin Charles Agenda

Found a cool Malaysian company, eoe. They apparently have physical stores, but what’s cool about them is online printing of photos — something which I believe is totally new in Malaysia.

They’re cheap – RM0.30/4R print. They’re even trying the viral marketing thing – get bloggers to write about them (no, I am not participating) in exchange for free photos.

I might try there services at some stage, but not today. Why? Because I have to upload photos through my browser. Their “Easy Upload” app displays a silly message saying they don’t support Firefox (so I don’t get the fancy pants editing of images, et al.).

<free advice>If they want to be a smarter Malaysian company, they would partner with Flickr, and harness the Flickr API, so that people can make easy prints from Flickr. After all, advertising for Flickr is already done for free, thanks to Maxis (they love advertising Flickr and how easy it is to use on their phone network). Printing images that are already there, rather than re-uploading (with slow, unreliable Streamyx) will make a whole lot more sense. Besides, each photo coming out of my camera, is probably 5MB in size — so I’ll pass.</free advice>

Here’s wishing Eoe much success, and hope they partner with the likes of Flickr, or just harness their darned API, for easy printing.

Two weekends ago, for Valentine’s Day, Sara and I decided to spend it up in the mountains, and the closest one we found, with enough fun, was Genting Highlands (going down to 18°C is good for us living near the Equator). Besides the trip being absolutely fun, we had intentions of visiting the casino to try our hand on the tables — unfortunately for us, it was crowded and there wasn’t even a single seat free on any table!

She asked me about card counting and how its done. I explained a little, and somehow we got onto conversation that you cannot bring laptops into casinos (I remember Crown Casino, in Melbourne will ask you to keep it at the coat check). Genting was surprisingly lax. She then asked me what about if it was on her iPhone or something – since these phones are significantly powerful enough.

I thought about it for a bit, and said, “Yeah, its definitely possible”. Upon further thinking, I figured it can’t be that hard to hack up even. So it comes to me as no surprise to see that someone else has already done so :-)

It seems Hi Lo does this and more. Available from the iTunes App Store for a mere USD$0.99, even! Its most definitely illegal (two more apps, Card Counter, and Blackjack Card Counter exist even), and you can be thrown out of the casino for this.

Today, maybe an astute casino security manager will look for iPhones. But tomorrow, there may be apps like this on Android phones, heck, even on Nokia’s Symbian platform (the 5800 XpressMusic has a touch screen that may be ideal for this). I wonder when casinos will start sending mobile phones to the coat check (the guards are already looking out for camera phones, etc. that point to the casino floor — this is especially the case at Crown where there are restaurants inside the casino grounds).

What about a mobile application that communicates with the cloud? Offload processing, and you can run simulations that are even more demanding for games like baccarat or roulette. Or is the common smartphone today, capable of it? Hmm…

So, I don’t read dead tree newspapers (dislike newsprint, think I get more unbiased news online, anyway), but I wish I had got The Star from a few days ago. Why?

Because Anas Zubedy published an amazing ad. He spent about RM40,000 on it. The gist of the message?

Please stop the power chase, call for a truce and focus on the economy.

Malaysia is about the only country that seems to focus largely on political power plays in this time of day. Every other country has a news service and a government that focuses on the economy. Our economic news seems to hardly cover the mainstream — lowering interest rates, losing value to the USD, job loss, and more. Politics though, still the focus.

Stop the fighting. Its childish. We didn’t elect a government to lead us into more screwups. Fix the economy. If you’re Malaysian, read the ad. If you’re not, realise that we might say we’re “Truly Asia” and multicultural, but that’s just on the surface — finding a “Malaysian” is hard (note: I feel for Zubedy, because I too like to call myself Malaysian — but I’m a rare breed), so maybe you’ll get a true picture from reading the ad.

And if you want to know more about this colourful character, there’s an interview with Zubedy, where he focuses and strives on unity. We need more forward-thinking Malaysians like Zubedy. We need Malaysians, period (you know, stop focusing on racial lines — stop race based parties, etc.).

Bernard Leong writes about some Cisco video conferencing hardware:

the Cisco TelePresence 1000 (made for the home user – we are told the price is US$79K) and the Cisco TelePresence 3000 (made for companies – and the price is US$299K)

How many home users are willing to shell out US$79K for a video-conferencing kit? Why not just use Skype?

I was watching some TV earlier, and Oprah uses Skype. She brought on Jennifer Aniston’s two dogs, and Owen Wilson from Maui. Full screen (some large-ish TV). Clear. Powered by Skype.

Apparently, Oprah has been doing this for a while. I think Cisco isn’t going too far with their TelePresence stuff for the home. Can’t imagine many a business (SME-sized) wanting such an expensive system, either.

What about open source video? Video over SIP? Don’t really see anything being as mainstream as Skype (which does audio and video, just fine, despite being proprietary).

The fun with Maxis Broadband continues. I last wrote about the real story behind Maxis Broadband, which apparently is quite a favourite amongst Google searches. Today, @hantu asks on Twitter: $99 mobile unlimited or $138 maxis broadband?.

Lets delve into this a little deeper. I have the RM99 mobile unlimited connection, so that my E71 can surf the Internet. It allows me to check and send email on the go, post updates to Twitter, perform quick Google searches, and when I’m waiting for someone, read my Google Reader feeds. I estimate I use about 150MB or so per month, and this will probably grow in size, as I have JoikuSpot installed, and can share it with my iPod Touch. If I had an iPhone (and used it), I can imagine my data usage being a lot higher.

I’ve also had a Maxis Broadband SIM card, that I pay RM143 per month for. No, its not RM138, because they decided to send me a bill, which costs RM5/month. Nothing I do, can stop me from receiving said paper bill (not even threatening to stop their services). Do I use the Mobile Broadband services? Yes I do – I average 2GB per month, sometimes more, depending on where I choose to work for majority of the time.

In my head, I’ve been thinking, with the economy being the way it is: why am I paying RM143 and RM99 for mobile data? I noticed Maxis had a “Multi-SIM” service, in where you pay RM15/month, and you get a second SIM for your number. I thought that this was the way out – get a second SIM for my primary number, pay an extra RM15 and share the 3G connection (the second SIM to be placed in my broadband modem, a Huawei E220).

To my dismay, I visited the Maxis store and was told I couldn’t do this. If I wanted a second SIM, my services don’t extend to it. That means, I have to pay RM15 + RM10 + RM99 for the second SIM. Could I have found two idiots at the Maxis Centre in Klang – quite possibly – I think her name was Lina, and her supervisor was no better.

Maxis has an FAQ that suggests I can get a second SIM card, and just place it in my broadband modem. Imagine, only paying RM99+15 (RM114) rather than RM242.

My only solace? I don’t pay RM143 any longer. I only pay RM118, as I have Mobile Broadband and I am a Maxis postpaid customer. If you listen to the customer service representative, you’ll realise that you’re paying RM124 per month. I however think the customer service rep, is just being a plain idiot, and this can be fixed.

Why don’t I just use JoikuSpot, or tether via Bluetooth, to my Nokia E71? Because of battery life. The last time I tethered to my Nokia E61i, I had about 2 hours of battery life, before the phone got really hot in my pants pocket, and the battery went almost flat. Not having a working phone, is of course, unacceptable, which is why I’ve gone the mobile broadband route.

So, Andy, what’s your best choice? It depends on your usage. If you’re using your phone a lot, get an unlimited data package for RM99. If you don’t need access too much, consider Bluetooth tethering, which will work OK (maybe you have to carry a phone charger around). If you need to sit in cafes a lot, or work away from your desk and proper Internet connection, consider the Mobile Broadband package, at RM143/RM138/RM118 (paper bill/no paper bill/Maxis postpaid Bolt-on program).

If I ever get this multi-SIM bullshit figured out, I’ll be sure to write about it, and let you all save money. If any other provider (Celcom, DiGi, U mobile) offer it, don’t hesitate to leave a comment behind.

I decided to experiment with Google Friend Connect today, after seeing the “Social bar” being used on the Open Source Bridge site. I had even set aside some time to start writing some code; to my surprise, Google did all the magic for me, and it didn’t even take me longer than five minutes to setup.

It was as simple as setting up a new site, uploading two files into ~/www/, then editing my WordPress theme’s footer.php and adding the auto-generated code before the </body> tag (I did it after the <?php wp_footer(); ?> call though).

I immediately joined my own site. At first, I setup a profile, but then realised that I could import my profile from my usual Google one. Heck, I could even import a profile from Twitter! One thing I found odd, was that to edit my profile, I had to do it from the social bar itself (from the far left column).

The social bar – click for a larger version

On the far left column, you can join the site, or edit your profile and settings. Next to that, you can see the activity stream throughout the site. Next to that, you’re given the option to add comments. And on the far right, you can see like-minded visitors who’ve joined, and even become friends with them.

What does the social bar do for me?

1. It allows members to join my blog and be part of my community. Do you remember MyBlogLog (a Yahoo! service)? Well, Friend Connect allows me to have MyBlogLog type features, with no problem whatsoever.
2. It allows comments from members. These can be fine grained comments – either for the particular page, or for the whole site. In my experimentation, I’m using it for the whole site naturally. On a blog, if you’re going to write a comment of substance, you’re going to do it with the commenting facility available on the blog – however, if you just want to write throwaway comments, one-liners, “me too” replies or have one of those “chatboxes” that blogs tend to have, you’ll find the Friend Connect Social Bar to be quite useful.

I’ll be the first to admit, that its probably not too useful for me, per se, but I can see its usefulness for sites that require a lot of collaboration.

Sites that I think can benefit from Friend Connect? Kenny Sia – the Chatterbox can be replaced with the comments in Friend Connect, and frankly all the one-liner comments will be better suited for the Social bar’s comments (maybe on a per-page basis?) – plus, he’ll get a “community” for free. LiewCF can also benefit – the “members” feature provided by MyBlogLog (he currently boasts 1,441 members) can probably grow with Friend Connect, and all those one-liner comments again, can go into the comments of the Social bar. Not picking on either site, but I think they can “socialise” their sites a lot better.

MyBlogLog is kind of a walled garden. You need to have an account there (on Yahoo!). Friend Connect tends to be a bit more useful – you can either use a Google, AIM, Yahoo! or OpenID account to login (a lot of bloggers will already realise they have OpenID for free – wordpress.com, livejournal, et al provide this). I think it can be a bit more useful if it supported logins from Windows Live/MSN accounts too – after all, a large proportion of my non-geek friends are MSN users.

And if I join another community, that information is cross-pollinated to my other communities. As a site owner, you can even see “reports” of how social your site is, over time – this whole idea of data mining (ok, analytics) is highly useful.

What if you decided to use comments on your blog, for just that – comments. But use the Social bar to enter “blog suggestions”. Smells like Skribit, to some extent. Do I see myself keeping the Friend Connect Social bar at the bottom of my blog for long? Who’s to say. Let’s see if a community builds up around it. I think this will be most useful for sites that really want conversations amongst readers, something like the foss.my site, or other social sites.

Are you using Google Friend Connect? How? What are your thoughts on it? Don’t hesitate to share them in the comments (or via the Friend Connect Social Bar!).