When I was doing my degree in IT, I sort of developed a sense of how would you call it, affection for all things Unix. Partially because the university that I was in did pretty much everything in Unix.

From the first thing you saw in the computer labs, right down to the assignments that you were given, there was no way to escape from it, unless you were one of those die-hards who believed that Windows was the be-all, end-all.

As a home user, it seemed to fulfill quite a bit of my daily needs, with the exception of perhaps, games. Nevertheless, it was the overall style of Unix that kind of drew me to using it as often as I could.

Minimalist programs, one separate application for every function, and the fact that since it’s so different from the rest of the world, protection from your non-nerdish friends snooping around on your PC because they don’t know how to use the damn command-line.

Unless you’re into Ubuntu, which I don’t really have a liking for.

But it is because of these factors that have caused me to turn cynical, especially towards programs that seem to suck your computer’s resources, rather than utilizing them properly.

Programs such as iTunes and Ovi, which in my opinion, do a lot more harm than good. At least, if you tend to use your memory and/or CPU from frugally.

Sure, they’re full of functions and features, enough to keep you interested for as long as possible. But there were times when I wondered if I really needed all these extra bells and whistles.

I just downloaded iTunes, and by the powers of Greyskull, it ticks off at 93MB. Ovi is hardly any better, which is quite bemusing really, especially when all you intend for is the syncing of your mobile phone.

I start to sneer whenever an installation file starts off at more than 75MB in size. Chances are that they’re probably going to expand in excesses of 200MB or so.

And let’s not forget that each time some of these applications are started up, they end up using every resource possible. So much so that if you try to multi-task, you’re going to end up being more than a little frustrated.

That’s as big as some OSes go, seriously. Now, I can understand if it was a graphics rendering thingy, or a proper sound editing tool, because most everyone knows that they need all the power and memory that they can get.

But a program that lists the music in your iPod, plays them, uploads them from your computer? Sure, it has the additional stuff like podcasts, radio and yada yada, but you can’t help but feel overwhelmed at times by some of these things. Especially if you don’t use them, now or in the future.

Of course, Linux distributions aren’t without their own forms of bloatware. I’ve seen my fair share of bumbling programs; stuff that should have been revamped totally, or just coded by someone else altogether.

Firefox falls into this category especially. Once a fast and light piece of work, it’s now so big and unwieldly, that it should probably audition as a stunt double for a Boomer. And I don’t mean the Grace Park kind too.

Some of you are going to argue that with the way things are going for computers, worrying about application sizes shouldn’t be a problem. With Moore’s Law in place, today’s computer powerhouses should be as fast as tomorrow’s calculators.

But does that mean that tomorrow’s music players should take the same amount of resources as a graphics renderer today would? If so, I’m a little worried.

Note: Sure, I don’t use Unix as much as I used to. In fact, I actually use Windows 7 a lot these days. Largely because my primary computer happens to be a netbook, to which supporting drivers tend to be at times, insufficient.

And I’m also too lazy to install a Linux system on my netbook. Talk about whinging, eh? But then again, I want to play games without worrying about how to get it working on Wine.

Most albums released these days tend to consist of a hit single, a couple of good songs, and a really good song somewhere near the end of the 76 minutes that make up a CD.

And as the story goes (in my most humble opinion), everything else is tripe. Pick up an album. Any album for that matter, and try listening past track five. See if you find yourself pressing the ‘forward’ button on your iPod/phone/car radio. If you don’t, you’ve either landed yourself a stellar album, or too bored to care.

Unless perhaps, you’re Pink Floyd, Rush, or Sieges Even.

For example, I’m currently listening to No Sacrifice, No Victory by Hammerfall. After going through the tracks, I’ve come to the conclusion that the album only has four good (or decent-ish) songs that I would bother listening to: Any Means Necessary, Hallowed Be My Name, No Sacrifice, No Victory, and One of A Kind.

Sometimes you get the idea that either the record labels are pushing artistes to make crappy music just to meet set requirements. Maybe its because they ask themselves what some customers might:

“Why should I pay X dollars for an album which only has a couple of songs, when I can pay the same amount for 14, even though all I want to listen to is the hit single?”

Which may also a reason why record companies come out with the ‘The Best Of’ albums. They really are the best of all the albums a band has made in its song-writing (or if you’re a mainstream pop group, chances are you haven’t done any song-writing) history.

And it may also be why some online (music) distribution services such as Ovi Music/iTunes/Amazon work, because it lets you skip past the crap you don’t need, and go straight for the song you want. Try and see if they’ll let you do the same thing for a CD you pick up at MPH.

Although it’s a pity that Ovi Music isn’t too stocked up in the European power metal department, or I would have used the X6 more often.

Yes, I listen to power metal.  \m/

A couple of days ago, I got an email from the boss regarding my writing. In the letter, he went on to inform me of the incorrect usage of ‘its’ and ‘it’s’ in one of my articles.

Yes, just when you thought you had it all figured out, then BAM! You make that mistake again, along with all the other errors in your command of the English language.

I can almost see my old primary school English teacher (her name escapes my mind) barging in through the newsroom to rap me on the knuckles. It’s possibly every writer’s nightmare to see that scary white-haired lady with the orange metre-long wooden ruler bearing down you, asking why you got your words mixed up again.

Sure, I get the occasional grammatical error every now and then. After all, a writer is not without his typos, which is why publishing teams hire subs, and in turn, subs hire a bottle of aspirin. Or a bottle(s) of beer. Whichever comes first.

But I must confess: I don’t know what a preposition is, and I have to be reminded what powers an adjective may possess, as well as that for a verb. Although to my credit, I can write a song extolling the glories of a noun.

Yes, I know what the subject or the predicate is, and all the tenses needed, but bugger it if I have to explain what the difference between the nominative and dative, or the properties of an adverb or a coverb.

But I hold it to my knowledge that I know how to piece an article together (at the risk of my readers swearing themselves off my work). How? I don’t know how to explain it, but the words just… fit. No, seriously, they do. It’s like knowing the difference between beef and chicken, grilled and baked, sausage and onions.

Wow, I’m also a little hungry now. Go figure.

Anyways, use your English carefully. Or else. (above picture sourced from pbfcomics.com)

It was said in Sun Tzu’s Art of War that knowing is half the battle won. Although it has to be said that there may be times when you can happen to know a bit too much.

"Sun-Tzu. Bad-ass." source: realestateradiousa.com

As much as we’d like to believe that we’re more advanced or intelligent than our Middle-Age/Iron-Age counterparts, it has to be said that we’re no more human than they were. And that means we’re finite, limited to a certain amount of physical (or in this case, mental) capacity.

Some have even coined up a term for it, calling it information overload.

"Paper Mountain. Lady not included." source: acit.lbcc.edu

I couldn’t agree more, although it’s not surprising, given the world that we live in. Never in human history has the power of the media been at the fingertips of the receiver, where a viewer can expect to tune into Al-Jazeera over satellite television, open up his Twitter or Facebook and have a little banter with his friends. And that’s not taking into account other sources, such as newspapers, SMSes, and if you’re old enough to remember them, pagers.

"The future!" source: inetengineers.com

Not a problem for me, considering that I don’t follow that many people, and that I tend to choose my information sources, rather than have them come to me on a plate. Nevertheless, there may be some of you who happen to have taken in more than you expected.

Of course, the other way to go about it is to just remain aloof and practice a form of selective reading/information-gathering. It’s actually a lot easier than it seems, unless you have a sentimental attachment to those that you follow.

• 1) Have a ‘no info’ periods where you’ll ignore or close your mail client/Twitter/Facebook/whatever.
• 2) Categorize your information into groups. Make lists, mail folders.
• 3) Unfollow people who don’t really matter. Yes, it may seem like you’re shutting them out of your lives, but you could do without all the clutter.
• 4) Cut back on your podcasts or news stories. Decide on a few high-quality blogs or websites instead of the whole lot, and then let the rest go.
• 5) Don’t feel pressured to reply to every single tweet/FB-note that you receive. Read, and then move on. Reply only if you have to.

"Unless you're of course, some sort of troller." source: redwing.hutman.net (Flame Warriors by Mike Reed)

For those of you who find hard to deal with your information overload, there are some tools, such as TwitCleaner. Which kind of helps, if you’ve got more than a few people on your Twitter lists.

"Nahhh, I think I'll keep him." (twitter.com/therealdrM)

If there’s one thing I don’t enjoy too much about Nokia’s Comes With Music, its having to browse through several pages worth of search results just to get to what you want. If anything the results are a motley, like a library full of books but without a system to properly catalogue them.

It’s almost, what’s the word for that term; saturated?

But before I continue, I would need to talk a little bit about Comes With Music, or at least from its user interface point-of-view. Being a massive Akka Dakka (AC/DC in Aussie) fan, I decided to do a little search of the band on Ovi Music.

Naturally, Ovi Music lands you with roughly 10 search results per page, although the search results didn’t tell me what I was looking at. Was I looking at albums, artistes or songs, which was confusing, given that I was returned with 292 different results, or in other words, 30 pages of results.

Normally, this wouldn’t have been a problem on my PC, but on a 3-ish-inch screen with limited processing power?

Where’s Back in Black? Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap? And who the heck is this AC/DC Tribute Band? And what’s the deal with these bands having a female silhoutte right next to bands without profile pictures? Also, how did Sentieri Selvaggi get to the top of the list (Ludovico Einaudi is still good, if you like contemporary minimalist classical, however)?

Fair enough, if AC/DC hasn’t given Nokia the permission to put its tracks up on Ovi Music, which seems to be the case.

I wonder if this is Nokia’s way of helping me to discover new types of music. If so, no thanks. I think I’ll stick to Allmusic.

Computers were first discovered on our shores a number of years ago, after it was reported that they had quietly made their way to Malaysia over the sea. Soon we came to accept them as a part of our daily lives, although we treated them with more fondness than we did in comparison to other migrants.

While they made many of our lives substantially more meaningful, they also brought in one of the greatest inventions ever known to mankind.

The Internet.

The only marketplace in the world where you can get cardamom seeds in one stall, and French midget pornography in the next. And with this illustrious collection of vendors, came the legions of spam.

Which is one thing that has been invading the office for the past few weeks. Sure, we get a bit of spam every now and then. They’re like the ‘friend’ who comes to you when they need a few thousand dollars for an investment that’ll surely give instant returns, so long as you can loan them the money.

And all of a sudden, our inboxes have been bombarded by a nearly non-stop flow of spam messages that seem to have curiously gotten past our filters. And the only real-world (not really) equivalent that I can think of would be to see a horde of rabid in-laws swarming outside my house, waiting for a handout.

Come on, guys! It's not even the end of the month! (source:podcastingnews.com)

Like money-grubbing ‘friends’, there can be only one way to deal with spam. A wall as long as the Federal Highway. Although, there’s always the one or two that will get through, as if to show you that they can.

I remember growing up to spot fake keys in the mail, telling me that I was in the running to win a brand new Proton Saga, so long as I would subscribe to another yearly issue of The Reader’s Digest. Being at a tender young age, I tossed the letter straight into the bin and pasted the sticker of the car that came with the mail onto my cylindrical stationary holder.

That sticker is still there today, probably about twenty years on. Which goes to show you that the lifeline of piece of spam is only for an instant, while stickers will last forever.

So spammers, take a lesson from history and make stickers, not junk mail. You’ll make a young child happy somewhere.

The Mobile World Team was at the 3rd Asia Pacific Mobile Learning & Edutainment (APACMLEAP) Conference 2009 last week that was organised by CommTechAsia.

Mobile World Mag is the official publication for that conference. Read the official news here our check out the CommTechAsia website.

Basically the conference is about getting people to use “learning” on mobile phones and I believe this would be the next step E-Learning. …..Click here to read more

Have you seen this month’s issue of Mobile World Magazine?

Here’s what you get this month!

• Mobile Phone: Got One?- An intense look into the statistics of Malaysian mobile users and their habits.

• Nokia Enters Uncharted Territory- All about Nokia Life Tools in Indonesia.

• Broadband Plans For All- The latest in mobile broadband that Celcom has to offer.

• Can Windows 7 Revive The UMPCs?- We get up close and personal with Windows 7 on a Fujitsu Ultra-Mobile PC.

• Rugged Mobile Test- We put Samsung B2100 through some torture sessions.

• 30 X’mas Gifts For Every Budget- Out of ideas for the end-of-the-year shopping? Check out our list of mobile products and choose which one gets to sit under that ol’ Yule tree this year!

• Mobile Content Challenge 2009 Mobility Development Camp- A first-person account from what went down at this year’s Mobile Content Challenge event.

Reviews this month include: …..Click here to read more

This article appeared in December issue of Mobile World Magazine

Everyone in Malaysia is talking about P1’s Potong ad campaign which certainly got Malaysians all riled up. People are sharply divided on whether the ad was in bad taste or not with debate raging on almost every media and at every level; from the mamak shops all the way up to parliament.

I don’t plan to add my two cents worth to that particular debate.

But I really like one of the positive outcomes of this campaign. It has brought the state of our broadband, mobile or wired, out into the open. While the advertisement got a lot of attention because of its provocative message, the ad really hit home hard because it touched a chord with frustrated wired broadband users fed up with the quality and speed they get from their Internet account. There is a lot of pent up frustration among Malaysians with the state of broadband in the country. It’s a safe bet that anyone who surfs the Net in Malaysia will at one time or another experience terrible internet speeds and even complete downtime.

…..Click here to read more

This article appeared in Mobile World November 209 Issue

The last 2 weeks have been one hectic period. We successfully organised the three GoMobile events. We’ve shown steady progress from last year. The conference went well with many interesting discussions, the Gala Dinner again was fun and yet serious with its recognitions of success stories in mobile devices and more importantly in mobile content and applications segment.

The Expo could have done with more visitors but the rain, H1N1 fears and other similar factors kept the attendance down a bit. Nevertheless, the Expo featured great booths and we received very positive feedback from those who came. Many of the booths that were selling phones and accessories reported more than decent sales which underscored the fact that although attendance could have been better, the quality of those who came was excellent. Many were serious buyers and genuinely interested in the latest in mobile apps and services.

…..Click here to read more