Zit Seng's Superwall

I just made a discovery, or perhaps shall I say, saw a relationship between the iPhone 4 signal loss problems, the way the phone is held, and multitasking. You’ve probably read about how the iPhone 4 encounters some problems with its cellular signal strength when held in a certain way. Steve Jobs answer was to simply not hold it that way. It seems that the iPhone 4 works better if held in the right hand. Well, I started to think about how I held my hand phone. Hmm. I use my left hand.

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Hmm, I must sound very geeky to be excited by the release of Android 2.2 (aka Froyo) source code today. There is already a Froyo ROM floating around the Internet, but it is only with the source availability that enables modders to build custom ROMs for various Android devices. Many Android users are happier with the custom ROMs than what originally shipped with their device. Even if it is a pristine ROM, like the one that comes with the Nexus One, that hasn’t been mutilated by any manufacturer.

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I finally got to lay my hands on an Apple iPad. It looks nice, and it feels light. I couldn’t feel the bare metal though, because the owner refused to take off the protective cover. But I’m sure there would be no surprises, seeing how much the iPad has already been described in tremendous details all over the media. I still remain unmoved, however. What in the world would I use an iPad for? It’s not going to replace a MacBook Pro, and it’s not something compact enough to bring around outside of work when I don’t have a bag to stuff it in.

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I just heard about what the rain is doing to various parts of Singapore. Like turning Lucky Plaza’s basement into a swimming pool. It’s the kind of rain that happens only once every 50 years that has come to visit us again. Just only 209 days since the last time such a rain struck us (I think it was 19 November 2009).

I saw some pictures posted about the scene down on Orchard Road. It looks very third-world. Murky flood waters covering the roads, with stranded vehicles, even big vehicles like busses.

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The new iPhone 4 has been announced at WWDC 2010. Right on cue, as everyone expected. It also looks exactly like what we expected, since we got a preview thanks to a leaked prototype got into the hands of Gizmodo earlier. As I skimmed through the keynote, the renaming of the “iPhone OS” to “iOS” briefly caught my attention. I wonder if Cisco will take issue with Apple over that name. After all, “IOS” has been the Cisco software since forever. I was beginning to wonder if the iPhone 4 would be anything exciting at all.

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We’ve finally moved to a new office. Three years late, after the rest of the school had already moved. We joked that we were unimportant third-class citizens, and hence were left behind. (Sometimes we do feel like third-class citizens…) This is only my 3rd room, although some colleagues who worked for slightly shorter time could have had gone through more rooms than me.

I’m quite pleased to get back the original furniture arrangement that I had in my first office. My then colleague and I had this idea of a centre island of work tables that we share on opposite sides. We shared offices two-to-a-room. The design was unique, functional and promoted team work.

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It used to be our private joke about how, perhaps, the iPad predates the iPhone. They look similar, the iPad being an oversized version of the iPhone. In fact, they look even more similar if you compare with the rumoured next generation (4G) of the iPhone. It’s as if the original iPhone design was really that big (i.e. 9.56in x 7.47in), then someone higher up in Apple said: “Hey, how do you expect someone to use a phone so big…” And so, the original iPhone was shelved, and Apple engineers had to make a mini iPhone, eventually the first generation iPhone we know today.

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Oh no, someone’s kid knows how to boot up a PC and use a mouse at the age of two. Vanessa is already three. It seems we are a little behind time. But she’s quite the expert using Nokia touchscreen smart phones, navigating to the music player, and listening to her favourite “Nobody, nobody but you” song. Quite impressive, I think. I’m not clear what exactly “running software” means, but it does sound like a significant achievement. Or, maybe it just means to launch Internet Explorer.

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Last year’s ICT achievement was about an arcade game. This year, I couldn’t advance to the next level because the fire button was broken. Oh, too bad. But we didn’t have a lot of time to spend in the mess anyway. What would this year’s most significant ICT achievement be? Hmm, I can’t seem to pin it down to anything specific. So perhaps I’ll just mention a few.

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Well, it turned out not. Rumours surfaced earlier this week about Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer speaking at Apple’s WWDC 2010 keynote. It turns out not. The enemy’s enemy denied. The rumour had earlier said that Microsoft’s CEO would have 7 minutes at the keynote to talk about a new version of Visual Studio 2010 producing iPad, iPhone and Mac apps.

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