The New iPad launched in Singapore on 16 March 2012. That’s a good six weeks ago, a little too late for me to write yet-another-review of the most exciting iPad yet. But there’s always an opportunity to share personal experiences, even though, then again, I’m sure there are many others like me who are jumping from the 1st generation iPad to the 3rd generation iPad. So here I am, with the new 3rd generation iPad. Coming from the original iPad,…
At a security class yesterday, the trainer asked if we access Facebook with the Facebook App on our mobile phones. Most of us do. More importantly, do we use Wifi while doing so? As you know, Wifi traffic can be easily snooped, particularly on open Wifi networks such as Wireless@SG. If hackers can capture the traffic between your device and Facebook servers, they could easily obtain your Facebook session key and, subsequently, use it to hijack your Facebook session. There…
What do we really know about safe computing? I was reading an ISC2 blog post “Practice Safe Computing” recently, and it preached several practices that we should all adopt to use our computers safely. It’s something that the author teaches to children. I’m an adult, I’m an IT person, and IT security is one of the things I do. So, I’m surprised I didn’t arrive at the correct answer to his first question. “What is the first thing we should…
I did not know yesterday was World Backup Day. Earth Hour happened last night, that I know, even though this time around there wasn’t much fuss about it. After a few years of Earth Hours, the excitement has waned. World Backup Day, on the other hand, is quite new. Yesterday was its second year. What is World Backup Day about? Simple. It’s a reminder to backup your stuffs. As I write this, I plugged in my external hard disk so…
Yes, yes, I know, for a “techie” person, I’m awfully behind time moving on to Windows 7. The Windows 8 consumer preview is already out in the wild, and I’m only just getting around to putting Windows 7 on my work desktop. In my defense: I must point out that I’m primarily a Mac user, then a Unix user, and then finally an unwilling Windows user. My Windows work desktop is there because, well, occasionally, I need Internet Explorer. Or,…
Canonical recently showed off Ubuntu running on an Android smartphone at the Mobile World Congress. It looks really cool. I’ve been thinking about an idea like this for some time. Smartphones are getting really powerful. Can we see see our smartphone becoming our computer some day soon? I can’t say in the long term if this is how our gadgets are going to be like this. But this idea seems like something workable in the short term. Can we merge…
In all the recent excitement over the ICS release for the Samsung Galaxy S II (SGS2), I forgot there was also news about the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S III (SGS3). Yes, the 3rd generation Galaxy S. You didn’t think Samsung would stop at the SGS2, did you? Samsung’s Galaxy S series of Android smartphones have been extremely successful. Everyone’s expecting the SGS3 to take over as Samsung’s Android smartphone flagship in 2012. So what do we know about the SGS3?…
I was a little intrigued when I saw an advertisement for an ultra-thin USB thumb drive. The advertisement boasted the thumb drive’s 4mm thickness (or, well, thinness). Sounds thin? Well, not quite. I’ve been using this neat little microSD USB adapter. See how small it is? Yup, it’s just that thin piece of flat plastic with the gold contacts on one side. It doesn’t even have the metal jacket that forms the outside of the typical USB connector. Do you…
The much anticipated Android 4.0.3 “Ice Cream Sandwich” (ICS) ROM for Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S II (SGS2) phone has just been officially released. This comes after over 3 months of “leaked” ROMs that has allowed many eager SGS2 users, like myself, to experience what ICS has to offer, and to preview what Samsung has been prepping for this final release. This is version “LPQ”, built on 8 March 2012, and became public five days later on 13 March 2012. The…
Since the ideology of software freedom is still swirling in our heads, this being the week Richard Stallman gave two talks at NUS, let me talk about something at the opposite end. Embracing commercial, paid-for, non-free software. Evil software, so says the GNU man, like Microsoft Office. So, I need to ask, how many of you out there embrace evil software? I don’t specifically go out to embrace non-free software. They usually cost money, and since I don’t print money,…
