By now, few people in the IT industry would dispute the benefits that the open source development model brings to businesses: flexibility and to some extent security, though it isn’t always the cheaper option if you do your TCO (total cost of ownership) sums.

The best open source software, notably the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) stack, is commonly used by enterprises large and small, with many businesses running mission-critical applications such as sales transactions on Linux.

Yet, the merits of open source software should not be judged based on its “open source” label. While there are a handful of stars like the LAMP stack, there are thousands out there that will never gain the prominence of Linux and remain difficult to use and maintain.

Our three local telcos — SingTel, StarHub and M1 — often appear at every major IT show, but this year SingTel is conspicuously absent from Sitex. Sitex 2009, which is currently being held at the Expo, started yesterday (26th November) and runs all the way through the long weekend to Sunday (29th November).

Perhaps SingTel felt that their earlier Suntec Christmas Fair was sufficient, and thus didn’t want to have a presence at Sitex. Still, they are running promotions till end of the week even though they don’t have a booth.

IT shows are where the telcos and vendors roll out freebies to entice people to buy. And this year, the M1 booth is really aggressive with their marketing and freebies given. Compared to SingTel and StarHub, I feel that M1 just has that little bit more discount plus goodies being thrown around. For example, up to 50 per cent off their home broadband and mobile broadband plans, and “freebies worth over S$420″ — according to their marketing brochure — being given out for every package signed up. Some of the M1 phone offers even come with extra micro SD cards, Ez-link cards and grocery vouchers(!).

If you don’t care much about bundling your phone and broadband contracts with a pay TV option — i.e. StarHub’s Cable TV and SingTel’s MioTV — M1’s deals are worth taking a look at. Was tempted, but unfortunately, I’m still bound by contract to StarHub for about a year left, and no pay TV is not an option. So kaypoh look only. Ah well.

Often a tolerant lot, Singaporeans can accept a lot of things – slow broadband speeds, lack of full number portability (until last year) and even not being able to choose their government (in some wards).

But one thing they can’t stand, joked a journalist pal of mine, is to have their weekend football fix taken away. Should that happen, he declared, there’d be a “RIOOOOT!”

That perhaps explains why the Singapore media authorities did a stunning U-turn yesterday, saying that they might just  make SingTel share its fresh-in-the-bag Barclays Premier League rights with StarHub come next year.

Acting Minister for Information, Communication and the Arts Lui Tuck Yew, even went so far as to say the government was considering an universal pay-TV set-top box for Singapore homes, so that people don’t have to get two set-top boxes to watch BPL on SingTel and other popular channels that StarHub carries.

Yes, Google has spoken… when it comes to improving its map’s accuracy and ease of use, it’s going to haul ass as it brings in multiple data streams quickly.

At a press conference held in the basement level of the Dhoby Ghaut MRT station in Singapore, LTA and Google announced a new data partnership between the two which promises to help LTA reach its goal of creating a “people-centred land transport system that shows the commuter how to commute seamlessly”, according to Mr Yam Ah Mee, LTA’s chief executive.

Are homegrown online maps being side-lined?
However, it’s interesting to note that this visualisation of the “penultimate” transport network will not be stewarded by homegrown online map providers like gothere (lauded by Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in a national speech) and Singapore Press Holdings’ Rednano search engine.

Techgoondu is heading down Thursday morning for an announcement by Google and the Land Transport Authority (LTA).

What could it be?
According to the media invite teaser, I am guessing it could well be a data blend between LTA’s live traffic update and Google Maps’ routing feature (that thingamajing which tells you the route to take from point A to B).

Google Maps already employ a crowdsourced solution in certain US states which tracks (anonymously, or so Google says) the movement of mobile phones when users opt in to the My Location feature and aggregates this data into an average representation of prevailing traffic conditions.

Will Singapore’s Google map be a mix of LTA’s data and big G’s crowdsourced solution? Would there be more stuff like SBS Transit’s Intelligent Route Information System (iris) which estimates arrival time of buses from a bus stop built in?

It’s taken four years.

Four years to get the Wi-Fi 802.11n specifications finally agreed upon. Four years ago, Airgo Networks (now part of Qualcomm) was a trailblazer in MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output), which is the technology behind 802.11n. By using multiple antennas in MIMO, the data throughput and range can be increased.

I remember that 802.11n — then in its draft incarnation — was one of the freshest news to hit the scene four years back when I was still a trade journalist.

Fast forward to today. What was supposed to be a two-year ratification process took four, and 802.11n was finally officially ratified this year in September 2009. Ratification means that if your device is labeled 802.11n compliant, it will work with any other 802.11n device, regardless of vendor.

All of this is history. Except that I got reminded about this when I met Aruba Networks last week at a press event, where they were in town to tout their newest enterprise 802.11n access point device: The AP-105, which is going for US$695 (S$962).

The Nokia E72, the followup to last year’s E71 sleeper hit, has gone on sale here for S$750 (without any subscription contract).

Featuring the same large screen + Qwerty keyboard layout in a skinny frame, this will likely be a hit with the Blackberry crowd as well as existing E71 users looking to upgrade to a new phone that’s sans touch-screen .

What we like most: 10.2Mbps 3.5G downloads – great for downloading those huge attachments or when surfing the Net for football scores, of course. Other useful features: an optical navi key, as well as a decent 5-meg camera (not bad for a “business” phone).

Of course, going with Nokia means you have to live with the Symbian OS, which is a plus to some but minus to others (mostly Android fans like me).

Still, outside of Blackberry, there were not many phones that did mobile messaging better than the original E71 last year. The E72, with some new components under the hood, should appeal to the same group of heavy messaging users.

Voice search for your phone – sounds good yeah?

I thought so too – so I tried out the latest Google Mobile App’s voice search feature on my Nokia E71 (which means the S60 flavour of the app).

Google Mobile App

The app is basically kinda like a one-stop-shop to quickly link to and search through Google stuff, so you will need a data connection (wifi or cellphone network), and the other mobile apps (Gmail, Google Maps etc) loaded if you want to fire it up from the above home screen.

If you enable its location-based function, it’s supposed to yield more relevant results. But it didn’t seem to do anything for me in terms of returning more relevant search results so I shut that feature off.

Having been somewhat disappointed by Sony Ericsson’s recently-released Satio and Aino phones, are we glad that there’s a new Xperia that uses the Android OS instead of the two entertainment phones’ Symbian S60 software.

The Xperia X10, unveiled today, brings SE back to the fight against the likes of HTC, which has been looking ever stronger with its Android-based Hero and upcoming Windows Phone 6.5-based gizmos.

On the X10, SE has got an XL-sized, 4-inch touch-screen that boasts an ultra-high resolution of 480×854 pixels (old 14-inch CRT monitors only displayed 640×480). There’s also an 8.1-meg camera with Xenon flash, which is sweet for photo buffs.

And for music lovers, what the Satio did not have – a 3.5mm headphone jack – the X10 packs it. This lets you easily plug in your own expensive Shure or Ultimate Ears earphones if you want to.

Seeing the X10, I can’t help but think this is what the Satio could have been.

But having seen SE do such a good job making Windows Mobile work so well on the original Xperia X1, I’m pretty optimistic with what it can do with the Android OS as well.