Nimbuzz may not think much of television commercials at the moment, but it seems to be getting WeChat a fair bit of traction here in Singapore and the region.

A month after the China-based instant messaging app made its debut on local television, showing off its functionality through Taiwanese celebrities Show Luo and Rainie Yang, WeChat is now topping the charts on iTunes, Google Play, and the Windows Phone Store. …

(Photo credit: Standard Chartered Bank)

Don’t you just hate it when you climb to the peak of Mount Everest and find yourself unable to engage in mobile banking activities?

Yes, the financial world keeps moving and pays no heed to your momentous achievement of scaling the highest mountain on Earth. If you foresee yourself getting into a tangle like this, you may at least rest easy knowing that two mountaineers are currently on their way up to the peak of Mount Everest just to prove that it’s possible.

Sponsored by Standard Chartered Bank, Horacio Galanti and Horacio Cunietti will attempt to trade stocks and transfer funds at the peak through the bank’s Breeze mobile banking apps. …

Millions of messages fly above our heads every second, each one akin to a grenade lobbed into an instant messaging (IM) competitor’s camp. Although WhatsApp remains the most popular mobile IM client in Singapore, other up-and-rising stars, such as LINE, WeChat, and KakaoTalk, are starting to make their aggressive moves in Southeast Asia.

In this impending war for your messages, one lesser known app is slowly making its move in Southeast Asia. Nimbuzz, which just hit 150 million users worldwide in March, started out as an aggregator of various chat services, such as Google Talk and Skype, and is now also setting its sights on the lucrative Southeast Asian market.

Techgoondu recently sat down with Joby Babu, chief of operations at Nimbuzz (pictured above), to find out more about the company and the state of mobile instant messaging in general. …

There comes a point where our gadgets and gizmos become so small that it just doesn’t matter if one brand is marginally smaller than another. But that’s not stopping ASUS from claiming the “world’s smallest” for its new WL-330NUL pocket router.

At only 6.5 cm in length and weighing only 17.5g, the WL-330NUL may very well be the world’s smallest router, but it comes with a full set of features created specifically for travellers.  …

You’ve got to give it to BlackBerry for sticking to its guns.

Close to 5 months after re-branding itself from Research in Motion to BlackBerry and unleashing the first BlackBerry 10 devices into the world, the Canadian company is still showing no signs of the demise that many have gleefully foretold, even turning a profit of US$94 million in Q4 of 2012.

At its annual BlackBerry Live conference in Orlando earlier today, BlackBerry unveiled the new BlackBerry Q5 smartphone (pictured above), a QWERTY device (similar to the Q10) aimed at the company’s strongholds in emerging markets such as Indonesia. …

Ever since the iPhone 4 with its self-styled retina display hit the market, tech companies have been scrambling over each other trying to top each other in the display of their smartphones. Smartphones with 1080p displays are all the rage right now, and even televisions are getting their resolutions bump up to 4K.

Thankfully, laptops are also starting to receive this much-needed upgrade, with Sony’s latest range of affordable laptops shipping with displays of at least 1,600 x 900 pixels. …

When Adobe launched its Creative Cloud offerings to creative professionals in Singapore, it was clear to observers that the software subscription service would be Adobe’s main focus from then on. However, few expected Adobe to scrap its perpetual license offerings entirely and go all-in with Creative Cloud.

But that is exactly what Adobe has announced on Tuesday: the existing Creative Suite 6 will be the last of its kind, and all production software from Adobe will henceforth be issued under the broad Creative Cloud moniker. …

Of all the ultrabooks designed to take on Apple’s MacBook Air, few were as stunning as the ThinkPad Carbon X1, which combined the ThinkPad’s classic design with modern speedy chips and a super thin body.

Lenovo is back at it once more with the newest iteration of the X1, this time with a 10-point multi-touch screen that enables users to take advantage of Windows 8′s touch-friendly UI. …

Folks looking for their next smartphone running stock Android may be surprised to find themselves looking no further than Singapore, where local firm Synrgic on Tuesday unveiled the Uno, their new mid-range smartphone.

Sporting a sleek, umber-coloured exterior, the Uno — which means “one” in Spanish or Italian — is completely designed and developed in the Singapore. And instead of mass-producing the smartphone in China, as most brands are wont to do, the Uno will be manufactured in South Korea “to get the best quality”, according to Synrgic CEO Cheo Suan Jin. …

Warning of a “breaking point” in today’s data centers, HP on Tuesday showed off in Singapore its new generation of Moonshot “microservers” that promise to address the data challenges created by social, cloud, mobile, and big data.

These Moonshot servers are built from chips more commonly found in smartphones and tablets – such as Intel’s Atom processors – so that they generate less heat and consume less power.

As a result, each complete server can be packed onto one high-density cartridge, 45 of which can then be slotted into a chassis with integrated cooling, power supply, and management software. …