It is about time. I have always been wanting/waiting for an app which would enable users to call via the internet (3G, WiFi). Reason being international calls is not cheap and I have contacts overseas which I would like to call. Recently, an app called Viber has been making a name for itself – it boasts free calls to any number using Wifi or 3G. I am only able to confirm the existence of the iPhone App for it.

To download the app, click here. Oh, did I mention that the app is free?

Once you have downloaded the app, launch it and it will request for your phone number. Type in your phone number correctly and you should receive a confirmation with an access code in it. I have heard reports of people not receiving their codes though I received mine seconds after confirming my phone number. Weird. Let me know your experience!

Get your family and friends on Viber!

Stereo Mix is enabled by default in Windows 7 though I am not sure whether it is the case for every other PC.

First, locate the speaker icon on the right of your taskbar. It should be located next to the time/date display. Right click it and select recording devices.

Then, a window should pop up. You should be seeing something like the image above. If you are able to see the “Rec. Playback” icon, you are set to go. To send audio from your computer directly, just select the “Rec. Playback” input as your microphone.

If you do not see the “Rec. Playback” icon, right click anywhere on the window and hit “Show Disabled Devices”. The “Rec. Playback” icon should appear in grey. Right click it and click enable. You’re done!

I went to the Apple Store in the morning just to look at the crowd in front of the store. As expected there were plenty of people queuing up waiting for the store to be opened. Since it was a working day, I could not join the people queuing up to collect the iPhone 4.

People waiting eagerly to enter the store

After work, I had a quick dinner and visited the Apple Store to check out the iPhone 4. There were plenty of demo units for customers to try out. First impression was that the 3.5″ retina display is really amazing. The clarity is superb thanks to the 960 x 640 pixels display. It feels more solid than the 3GS in my hand. iOS 4 seems great with iBook and multitasking ability.

I spent about half an hour checking out the new features and admiring the new design of the phone. I tested most of the features like FaceTime, 5M camera and iBooks. Everything loads quite instantly without any noticeable lag. It must be the A4 processor doing the job very well.

Well, I wish I can write more but unfortunately time does not permit me to do so. I have to rest early. Check out the picture taken by the iPhone 4 (sent via Email)!

Apple iPhone 4

Apple iPhone 4

Retina Display

It's thin!

Photo captured by iPhone 4

I reserved one!

I have been using the Dell XPS 1645 for a few months now. Have been experiencing random hangs but I never thought much of it until it became quite frequent. Very annoying. I did my own research and found out that the random crashes are to be blamed on Dell. The solution? A 130W power cord and a third-party program. What makes matters worse is I bought the laptop back home in Malaysia and now I am in Australia. Can’t believe I paid RM5K to have a half past six product.

Dear Dell, please send me a 130W power cord to me ASAP. I’ve already send an email to your Australian Branch. Thank you.

For those of you who are looking for the solution, look at http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=446193.

Chinese Characters Support in Web

Who would need this guide?
If you bought your phone from oversea (countries such as United Kingdom or United States) or you bought an AP-set phone, then most probably your phone is not running on APAC firmware. You will notice it when Chinese characters are displayed as “squares” on your phone.

What if I need both read and write Chinese characters support?
The easiest solution is to change the product code of your phone to APAC code and then update it with Nokia Software Updater (NSU). This will trick NSU that your phone is from APAC region and it will install the firmware with Chinese language support into your phone. After the firmware update/reinstall, your phone will support Chinese language natively.

However, by changing the product code you void the warranty of your phone. Personally I am not sure how true this is but if Nokia finds out you have changed your product code before (even if you change back to the original code after updating with NSU) you will still lose the warranty.

How do I do it?
Goal: You need to add 4 files (for my case: S60SNR.TTF, S60SSB.TTF, S60TSB.TTF and S60ZDIGI.TTF) to resource\Fonts folder in your phone memory, mass storage OR memory card. The 4 files are identical, just with different file names.

1. Download the necessary files here. (I will remove this link if I am not supposed to share these files.)

2. Connect your phone to the computer via USB in Mass Storage mode or use a card reader.

3. Extract the 4 files to “E:\resource\Fonts”, where E is the drive letter of the memory card. You might need to create a new folder named “Fonts” under “resources” if you can’t find it. Beware that the file name should be “Fonts” and not “font”.

I copied them to C:\ instead of E:\

4. Now, unplug the phone from computer.

5. Then, reboot the phone and your phone can now display Chinese characters.

First thing you will notice is the system font of your phone has changed. The Chinese font is less bold compared to the font in EURO firmwares.

Thick versus thinner font

Chinese Characters in Music Player

Chinese Characters in the Homescreen

Will it slow down my phone?
You will notice your phone is slowed down by half a second if the font files are stored in the memory card. Hence, I copied the files to the internal memory of the phone instead. However, you must have write permission to your C:\. (Not part of this tutorial!)

What if my phone still display “squares”?
- Make sure that you have followed the steps above correctly.
- Your phone might be using different file names for fonts. Use a file manager such as Xplore to access to Z:\resource\Fonts. Rename the files in E:\resource\Fonts to match the file names in Z:\.

Note: Do it at your own risk. I take no responsibility for data lost or phone crash during the process.

If you’re a photographer (even if you do not take pictures frequently), you definitely need a way to sort your pictures for viewing. Not to forget some pictures that you might have accidentally misplaced! Picasa does the job well, it scans your whole computer (unless specified where exactly to scan) with certain parameters. For i.e. minimum picture size is 100px x 100px. I’ve been using Picasa for a while and I’m satisfied with what I am getting – it allows me to look through my pictures in a timeline easily! If there’s a better program out there that’s free, I might consider jumping ship.

Somehow my copy of Picasa does not automatically updates itself. It was not long ago that I noticed Picasa 3.5 on the website. One of the new feature was face recognition. Hell was I excited! I could now retrieve pictures of people whenever needed instantly! I got it downloaded and installed it.

The face recognition feature is definitely awesome (for starters)! The satisfaction of assigning a name to a face (Picasa groups faces which it computes are similar) and looking at the collection grow. However, satisfaction turned to frustration and boredom. Imagine if you have 30,000 pictures. After a few hours, the scan is still only at 10%. To make matters worse, Picasa’s face recognition feature is also able to recognize faces in the distant background or those that are really blur. I think that if this was fixed, Picasa would be better.

The problem is a pain in the neck when, for example, Picasa successfully detects A’s pixelated and blurry face in the background. The next time around, Picasa will detect another face (not A’s) in a similar manner and thinks that they belong to A. You can however remove the suggestion but it’ll be a good workout for your fingers =]. Also, since Picasa does not look at faces like we do, it also easily confuses faces of two pictures from well taken photographs.

In conclusion, the face recognition feature in Picasa 3.5 is a good add-on but it definitely needs a lot of tweaking. At the end of the day, you yourself are the best face recognition device ever created.

Download Picasa at http://picasa.google.com/.

I would’ve used the term “camera prostitute” but I will wait for that term to catch on. Anyhow, if you love yourself ALOT and/or love taking pictures of yourself, the Samsung TL225 have answered your prayers! Besides taking yourself, the Samsung TL225 also makes it easier/less risky for you to take a picture with someone (or many people). You don’t have to get somebody to take a shot for you (whom might just decide to run away with your 10K DSLR). You get to compose the shot yourself too!

This Korean girl definitely phail as a camwhorer. You are supposed to look at the camera! BOK CHOI!!! (Yea, yea I’m sure you can tell me a hundred reasons why she is not looking at the camera). If you are interested, just peek around the net to look for reviews on the camera. I haven’t read the reviews personally though. Looking at DSLRs and lenses. Both Canon and Nikon only. Don’t sue me!

The pictures I took off the net didn’t come from me (of course). So, to give the source its due credits, here are “suggestions” of where you can read about the Samsung TL225.

http://reviews.digitaltrends.com/first-look/331/samsung-tl225-front-lcd-camera
http://www.samsungimaging.net/samsung-st550tl225-and-st1000cl65-hit-korean-market/

Better stop oogling at Korean girls or Malaysia might have a population decline! (Assuming that girls are oogling at Korean boys too)

Lenovo today (28th August 2009) announced the Lenovo C100, a stylish and affordable addition to its range of all-in-one PCs. Boasting a 52mm screen depth and slim line design, the C100 integrates the traditional tower desktop, screen with a camera, speakers and microphone into a compact form factor that is easy to set up and is a good fit anywhere in the home. Designed to provide cost-conscious consumers with a fun digital home experience, the C100 comes with an 18.5 inch, 16:9 aspect ratio widescreen and software features for added reliability such as the Lenovo Rescue System that lets users easily restore and recover valuable data with the touch of a button.

Mr. Yao Ying Jia, Vice President, Innovation Design Center Lenovo Group.

For consumers seeking a complete PC solution, the All-in-one PCs is favoured and has become increasingly popular nowadays. Lenovo offers consumers with two All-in-One product lines targeting their different needs. The A series highlights sophisticated style and multimedia while the C series delivers and excellent PC experience at a mainstream price point. “Packed with cool experiences and available at a very affordable price, the C100 expands Lenovo’s consumer offering for the fast growing All-in-One market segment”, said Mr. Eric Zhao. ” The C100 is simple to set up and easy to use, ideal for those seeking a convenient way to enhance their digital lifestyle”.

Guests having a go at the All-in-One PCs

I asked the Lenovo Team what is the upgrade-ability of the All-in-One PCs. They replied, “Nowadays, a high capacity pendrive can be easily bought and attached to the computer via the USB instantly. On the other hand, there are also external hard disks.” What I had in mind was whether the consumer will be able to change components such as the CPU, GPU, RAM (as compared to the tower desktops) at his/her own discretion. Lee Eu-Juin asked the Lenovo Team what is their target consumer (ie. graphic designers, hardcore gamers). The whole team responded by mentioning that they cater to consumers according to their needs, namely the A and C series.

Ping Pong!

After the Q&A session, there was a mini competition for 16 of the “lucky” guests. Two persons would play a knock out ping pong match against each other. The loser loses while the winner advances. The prize? A brand new All-in-One C300! I personally got a go at the C300 All-in-One PC. It was running on a single Intel Atom (what you would normally find in a netbook) and 1GB of RAM on Windows Vista. The computer hung when I tried to play the Diablo 3 trailer on it. Not to mention that there seems to be a problem with the speaker too. If you turn the speakers up, you might her a high pitched noise (clearly something wrong here). It’s either hardware or software, I don’t know. The A series All-in-One PCs run on dual-core Intel Atom and at least 2GB of RAM. Not to forget, it comes with a controller (you can use it to simply control the compute or play games with it like the Nintendo Wii!).

In my opinion, if you are serious about performance, go get a tower desktop with an i7 CPU in it. Oh, did I mention that a C series All-in-One PC costs RM 3K and above?? You’re paying for its small and slim design.