For those wondering where your Flash Player 10.1 Beta is, you might have to download it from the Market. Just do a search for “Flash Player” and you should be able to find it.

If not, just open this link on your browser: www.adobe.com/go/getfp10android and it will load up Market with Flash Player 10.1 Beta.

Let me know how your experience with Flash Player 10.1 Beta is, and how it works for you.

For those who can’t wait, here’s how you manually update your Nexus One to Froyo.

1. Download the update from Google – http://android.clients.google.com/packages/passion/signed-passion-FRF50-from-ERE27.1e519a24.zip
2. Rename the file update.zip and copy it to your microSD card via USB.
3. Turn off your Nexus One.
4. Press “Volume Down” button together with the “Power” button to get to the safe-mode screen.
5. Press the “Volume Down” button ONCE to choose the “RECOVERY” option. Press the “Power” button to select it.
6. When you see the triangle with an exclamation point symbol, press the “Power” and “Volume Up” buttons at the same time.
7. From the menu that appears, select “Apply sdcard:update.zip.”
8. Wait.
9. It should reboot by itself. If not, select “reboot system now” and wait for the phone to power back up.

Go to “Settings” and “About Phone” and you should see “Android version 2.2″. Enjoy.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a gaming event by Nokia and Barkingseed. Boy, did I have fun with the games.

That Roach Game

One of the more popular games that caught everyone’s attention and addiction was “That Roach Game”. It’s essentially a very simple game of “whack-a-mole” game, except you’re just killing roaches. As Margaret Chan would say, “I’ll crush you like a cockroach.” Check out the videos below for the game play.

If you like it, get them at the Ovi Store for free.

Ninjani – Emperor’s Revenge

Ninjani is another game similar to the “whack-a-mole” style, except you’re shooting shurikens at ninjas. It’s slightly tricky to play this game because the ninjas keep jumping around and disappearing. It also incorporates a storyline into the game.

If you like it, get them at the Ovi Store for free.

Monsterilla

This is a new game not yet released. It is a puzzle game that involves moving rows and columns to get 3 or more similar colour and monsters connected in some way (does not have to be a straight line). That’s it. Simple and fun puzzle game, great for any ages. Check out some of the pictures.

Competition

As I mentioned previously, these games are exclusive to Nokia Ovi Store until August 2010. Furthermore, there are a series of monthly competitions will be held for four months beginning 7th of May across the South East Asia Pacific region, including Singapore.

So what are you waiting for? If you own an Nokia phone (touch screen or keypad) and have Ovi Store on it, download these free games and play them. Do your country proud by winning this competition!

Prizes up for grabs include the Nokia X6 and exclusive Barkingseed.com merchandise. (Barkingseed.com is the official portal for the Nokia-Breakdesign competition.)

Photos

Spot the similarities? Like it? Hate it? I like the old design better since the focus is on the results, not the menu at the side.

{Community} Technology Update 2010

The Singapore user group communities, Professional .NET User Group, SQL Server User Group, and Windows IT Pros User Group, once again, have come together to bring to you a day of in-depth sessions and demonstrations of the new Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 and Visual Studio 2010.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 is packed with a wealth of new features and capabilities that can help organizations to scale with confidence on a trusted platform, improve IT and developer efficiency, and enable self service business intelligence. The benefits of the enhanced capabilities extend to application and multi-server management, complex event processing, master data services and powerful BI tools.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 is an integrated environment that simplifies the whole development lifecycle, from design to development. Developers can use existing skills to model, code, debug and deploy a growing number of applications types.

With SQL Server 2008 R2 and Visual Studio 2010, users will be able to create compelling applications that deliver business value soonest while maintaining the quality and integrity of your IT assets.

Why should you attend the event:

• To learn how significant new capabilities of SQL Server 2008 R2 to run your most demanding mission-critical applications, increase IT and developer efficiency, and deliver business insight where and when your users need it.
• To learn how Visual Studio 2010 can help you to unleash your creativity to deliver impactful solutions

Who should attend the event:
Database Administrators, IT Professionals, & Developers

This is a not-to-be-missed launch FOR THE COMMUNITY, BY THE COMMUNITY.

FREE FOR COMMUNITY MEMBERS, DETAILS ON REGISTRATION SITE.
Not yet a member? Join now for free.

Click here for detailed agenda and register for the event >>

For enquiries, please contact Vivian at
Email: vivian@rhapsodyconcept.com.sg
Tel: +65 6296 7769

Interested in learning how new innovations in Microsoft’s Web Platform and developer tools like ASP.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 can make you a more productive web developer? If you’re currently working with PHP, Ruby, ASP or older versions of ASP.NET and want to hear how you can create amazing websites more easily, then register for a Web Camp near you today!

Microsoft’s Web Camps are free, two-day events that allow you to learn and build on the Microsoft Web Platform. At camp, you will hear from Microsoft experts on the latest components of the platform, includingASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC, jQuery, Entity Framework, IIS, Visual Studio 2010 and much more.

Web Camps also provide the opportunity to get hands on with labs and get creative by building in teams. All this with Microsoft experts on hand to guide you through.

On Day 1 you’ll learn through demos and presentations and Day 2 is a fun hack day for doing labs and working in teams to win prizes. Check out the full agenda here.

Learn more | Register Here

Speaker

James Senior is based in Seattle and is Microsoft’s Web Evangelist and holds a special interest in the ASP.NET MVC, jQuery and Social Web technologies. He is a noted author, blogger and speaker and generally helps developers make smart decisions about which technologies to use.

A published author on the topic of software quality, James writes a blog focussing on technology at www.jamessenior.com. You can also connect with him on Linked In, Facebook, Twitter (@jsenior).

Singapore

Dates: June 04-05, 2010
Location:
Microsoft Auditorium
Level 21 NTUC Centre
One Marina Boulevard
Microsoft Singapore

I had a chance to play with the Canon PowerShot SX210 IS for half a day, taking some photos at Universal Studios Singapore Canon Event. I don’t actually know how to use a camera properly, or take great shots. So I’m going to talk about my experience with the Canon PowerShot SX210 IS from a normal person’s perspective.

Specifications

As usual, here are some specifications of the Canon PowerShot SX210 IS that I find informative.

Canon PowerShot SX210 IS
Total MegaPixels	14.1MP
Zoom	14x Optical / 4x Digital / 56x Combined
Colours
Storage Medium	SD/SDHC/SDXC Memory Card, MultiMediaCard, MMC Plus Card, HC MMC Plus Card
Shooting Modes	Smart Shutter (Smile, Wink Self-timer, Face Detection Self-timer), Low Light, Color Accent, Color Swap, Fisheye Effect, Miniature Effect, Beach, Foliage, Snow, Fireworks, Stitch Assist

I think the most notable are the Smart Shutter, Color Accent / Swap, Fisheye and Miniature effects.

Features

At the event, we were told to try out 3 major features of the camera’s functionalities. I have no idea what effects these were, but what the heck I’ll just try them out for fun.

• Colour Accent and Colour Swap
• FishEye Effect
• Miniature Effect

Colour Accent and Colour Swap

This is my most favourite effect, the Colour Accent. Colour Accents essentially only takes 1 colour, accentuates that colour in your photo, and makes every colour black and white. I’m the kind of person who takes photos just for fun, and I’m not that artistic in any way. But the Colour Accent effect had me wanting to take more of these photos. Just take a look at the following photos.

Girl Walking Alone

A Lonely Street

Sad Boy

The Yellow Line On My Feet

Roger Rabbit...?

What am I waiting for?

I don’t know about you, but I think those photos I took are a few of my best shots ever.

Pink Guy

Colour swap takes 2 colours and swaps them with each other. You can only do a 2 colour swap. Personally, I don’t quite know what to do with the colour swap, but here’s a funny try I did. I turned this guy into a shade of pink. It didn’t turn out very well though. What do you think?

FishEye Effect

A FishEye effect enlarges the center of the photo. There are 3 modes in the Canon PowerShot SX210 IS – Low, Medium, High – which are the strengths of the enlargement. Again, I had no idea why one would use a FishEye effect, but I tried it out anyway. It is probably for some funny shots. Here are some of my attempts.

Shrek's Lair

This photo had a medium FishEye effect which made Shrek’s house a little more twisted then it originally is, which I thought it gave a better eerie feel.

My Big Spikey Ball

Growl! I enlarged the spikey ball with the heavy FishEye effect. Time to smash everything into bits and pieces. Just kidding. What did you think? No Photoshop at all! Wee!

OMG! Skinny DK!

Mini Canons

Motorola BackFlip is currently exclusive to SingTel due to the fact that it offers MotoBlur. Motorola BackFlip is a new phone form factor with the keyboard at the back which you flip to the front like opening a book cover, except it is the cover you’re reading, and not the contents inside.

Specifications

As usual, I will only show the significant specifications I feel that are important.

Nothing really significant except the special form factor. Let’s go through what’s interesting about the phone.

Interesting Features

First of all, the most significant will be the new form factor, where the keypad is actually behind, and it flips out to give you a nice keypad size. The keypad is rugged-ized with this flat 1 piece plastic. The keypad takes some time to get used to because it’s so flushed and the tactile feedback isn’t that great.

This is a comparison between the keypads from the Motorola Dext and Motorola BackFlip. Take a look at the amount of space you have for the keypad from the BackFlip. That’s essentially the greatest plus point.

Instead of offering you a trackball, they gave you a trackpad behind the screen. This means you get your control your screen from behind. However, I thought the trackpad was slightly too far away for my tiny Asian fingers, and I had to stretch a little behind. It is essentially just a replacement for your trackball, which works great while scrolling pages without obscuring your view.

The back cover is an interesting slide lock. It took me a while to figure out how to fit the back cover in. Essentially, you put the cover behind, and slide it to your right until it clicks. To release, press down the button with the lock sign and push it left.

You have your usual removable battery, 2GB microSD card that comes with the phone, and your SIM card. Notice that there is a red lock near the microSD card. Push that upwards, and you can remove your microSD card without removing your battery. Why didn’t they do the same for the SIM card?

If you put the Motorola BackFlip on your table, and lifted it up, the clock application will open much like the Nexus One when you dock it.

Motorola BackFlip is an awesome companion device if you like to watch TV. SingTel offers MobileTV for a subscription fee (similar to StarHubTV). The keypad acts as a dock or a stand for the device, allowing a great viewing experience. Notice how good the viewing angle is too. This is probably the 1 most compelling feature that will make me get this phone.

This is an awesome idea to include the camera as part of the keypad. It allows you to take photos as usual, and when you flip it open, it becomes a front-facing 5 megapixels camera. 1 camera that acts as 2 types of cameras. Simply awesome benefit from a flip. However, you will smudge the camera protective lens when you type, so remember to wipe it off before taking photos.

A small minor thing, but great. If your phone needs charging, the MicroUSB will glow, indicating you need to charge. I like it.

This is how thick the Motorola BackFlip is compared to the Nexus One. As you can see, it is pretty thick at 15.3 mm.

Summary

This phone is really targeted at the low-end consumer market, for those who want a cheap smartphone with a keypad. Compared to the Motorola Dext, it is just a small step up. It also comes with MotoBlur, which is the same service you get on the Dext.

+ Love the ability to stand
+ Huge Physical Keypad
- Keypad is difficult to use
- Android 1.5 only

It is currently exclusive to SingTel from Saturday, 1st May 2010 from as low as S$0 on selected price plans.

Slideshow

I just recently got a chance to review Adobe CS5 Master Collection, so I will be posting a series of blogpost for each product. But first up, the installation experience.

Clicking on the button opens up a folder, instead of the installer itself. Personally, I’d prefer a button to the installer itself, instead of opening up the folder.

Click on the “install” file to load up the installer.

It takes a couple of minutes for it to initialize. Yes, a couple of minutes. It could have been optimized a little, but that’s not a big deal.

The usual license agreement. Click to accept the license agreement.

I have my own serial number, but I’m not letting you guys know. Just type that in, or install it as a trial version.

Not too sure what Adobe CS Live is or how it integrates to Adobe CS5, but I just added my account and went on. I’ll check it out later what kind of services are available.

By default it selects everything. I’ll just install everything and review each product along the series. Above shows all the applications available for install.

Note: I just got word that you can install Adobe CS4 and Adobe CS5 side by side without any conflicts. Even after you’ve uninstalled Adobe CS5.

If you select a product, you get a list of components that are optional for installation. Once you’re done with everything, click on Install.

Now, you wait. Take a nap, do some other work. Yes, you didn’t see the time to take at all. It isn’t over 300 minutes to install, but it does take more than 1 to 2 hours to install.

You’re done installing! I’ll write on each product in my later posts.

I was recently invited to this scam that I thought was somewhat interesting. I knew the moment I stepped into this place that it was a scam, by the way they handled everything. I’ll document everything that I had experienced with this scam.

The Phone Call

I received a phone call from an advertising/marketing company, which the lady (Sally) didn’t want to tell me which company it was. Anyway, she told me I’ve been “specially selected” from a survey I took a few weeks back regarding the number of credit cards I have. I do recall somewhat that I received a phone call regarding something along these lines back around the 5th April. But I do not recall giving my complete details, like my full name and identification number. However, Sally had all these information on hand. Someone probably had sold these information to them, because I’ve never given my full name to anyone. Just ask any of my friends what my full name is, majority of them wouldn’t know.

So Sally told me I’ve “won” 3 prizes. A $50 voucher of either NTUC (grocery store) or Isetan (departmental + grocery store); 1 for 1 cruise to nowhere, the Caribbean, etc; 8D7N hotel stay in Thailand. I thought nothing of this and just said okay, I’ll meet them to hear what they have to say and arranged to meet them the next day. I asked about what the company name was, and Sally told me it was called “Touch Planet”.

Location and Phone Details of This Scam

Since my information was readily available to them, I don’t see why I should keep their information private too.

Sally’s Cell Number: +65 9270 2557
Sally’s Office Number: +65 64382119
i-Discover (or Touch Planet) Address: Regency Tower #03-15

The Initial Walk In

So I went with my friend, of course. When I found the place (I was about 1/2 hr late trying to locate the place), I only saw the word “iDiscover” and a piece of printed paper on the door with a few words indicating “Touch Planet” was here. We went in and was told to fill up a particulars form with my name, occupation, age, marital status, etc. After that, we waited to be called into this room with lots of individual tables and chairs, each table with a “sales” representative to “sell” you their product. I thought, “Of course nothing comes for free. I’ll just have to listen to what they have to sell. Why not?” So I sat down and met this pretty lady who spoke very typically bad Singaporean English.

The Pitch

I can’t remember everything she was trying to tell me, but it boils down to these few selling points.

• Pay $350 for a “voucher-like” 10N hotel stay anywhere per year
• Depending on where you stay, there’s a USD$10 to $40 “processing fee” per night
• Purchase blocks of 3N hotel stay after you’ve finished your 10N “voucher” for about USD$30 per night on top of the “processing fee”
• These hotel stay are transferable to anyone
• If the 10N hotel stay ($350) is not used, a rebate of $600 will be issued to you
• Convert the 10N hotel stay ($350) to a 2 return ticket on top of variable “processing fee” depending on peak period and location (ranging from USD$10 to USD$1000 per person)

She helped me do a cost comparison between an actual ticket to Japan for 14 nights stay with their plan, and it gave me a savings of 45% (at about SGD$2,100). Everything sounds very good, doesn’t it?

The Hidden Cost

Then she popped the question, “How much are you willing to pay for this?” That essentially shocked me. I thought that was all the cost, you mean I have to pay MORE? She called her manager to talk to me regarding this. From my friend’s research during that 2 hours she was explaining what she was trying to sell me, we found out that the “membership fee” is about SGD$19,000 for 10 years. That will equate to about SGD$1,900 per year, comparing with what I “save” (SGD$2,100), I actually ONLY save SGD$200, which I could save with the NATAS Travel Fair provided I actually spend that amount per year on travelling.

Is that a SCAM or what?

The Insult

My friend Justin, who is an insurance agent, was accompanying me. So now the manager is talking to me with his fake smile and his even-more-horrible-Singaporean-English-than-the-pretty-sales-lady asking me how much I am willing to pay for this. I explained he has to tell me how much it is first, before I can consider. But he kept insisting to give a number, so I quickly did my calculation in my head and I figured out that if I had to pay anything more than SGD$1,000 per year, I wouldn’t see any returns at all. I just told him (already knowing fully how much it is going to cost me) that if he offered less than SGD$1,000 per year, I might consider.

Knowing that my friend is an insurance agent, he took this opportunity to compare buying insurance with buying his package. He explained that you wouldn’t see any visible returns from buying insurance until possibly many years down the road, or even never. However, with his package, you can see visible returns instantly every year. This pissed me off to the point that I was enraged at him comparing a “death and sickness” (do note that my dad is still in the hospital) with a HOLIDAY TRIP.

How can you compare a necessity of getting medical insurance to cover a potential illness, injury or death with something “optional” that you can do without like going for a holiday? That was the last straw and he told me “I think this package is not suited for you.” I told him back “I think so too, since I don’t see any benefits at all.”

The Gifts

Remember they were supposed to give me 3 “gifts” for going through their whole marketing scam? Well, I only received the $50 Isetan voucher. Furthermore, they wanted to see my identification card, AND my credit card, which I insisted on covering the credit card numbers.

Before I left, the pretty lady was nice enough to say “Thanks for coming, and sorry for wasting your time.” The manager just told her off saying loudly “We’re not wasting their time, they’re wasting our time.” and pushed her back into the room.

The Conclusion

If they didn’t have the shocking “membership fees” at the end of the whole presentation, I would have actually gotten this really great deal. However, they were just out to cheat and con innocently stupid people who can’t calculate properly for themselves. So I hope this blog post will educate more people of how these scams aren’t really helping you save money at all.

Lessons Learned:

• Don’t ever compare insurance with anything else
• Don’t try to cheat a Math/Statistics/Accounting Major with Computer Science Degree
• Be upfront with all the cost, including the hidden ones, for your client to make an informed decision
• Good Service is always important even if your client doesn’t make a purchase