Singapore is so small that if you don’t know how to get around town, you really shouldn’t be driving around much. That was my response to in-car GPS kits in the past, being the smart driver that I thought I was.

Then I started using Google Maps on my Android phone to start getting around town. I realised the suggested route sometimes helped me rethink how I always went around town – it often got me there without me testing out routes and missing a turn to a building’s car park, for example.

Thus when I placed the TomTom Go 2050 in my car a few weeks ago, I was more than happy to hear a friendly female voice tell me how best to get from, say, Takashimaya shopping centre to Alexandra Road. …

Google Street View has been expanded in Singapore to include panoramic views of the city-state’s iconic and heritage sites.

According to a media statement Tuesday, Google said the new sites were chosen by Singaporeans in a poll jointly organised with the Singapore Tourism Board, where respondents indicated locations they wanted to see on Street View. These include the Singapore Flyer, Haw Par Villa, Fort Canning Park, One Fullerton, Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve, Kampong Buangkok and Kampong Glam. …

Singaporeans are a cellphone-crazy lot. Even while on vacation, most will remain tethered to their smartphones, checking in from obscure locations to earn bragging rights and lapping up tips left behind by others. In this week’s app round-up, we review our favourite travel apps that will let you tap into all kind of information on the road. …

Microsoft is partnering with Dell to build a green data centre that will power Bing Maps‘ suite of geospatial imaging applications. The centre is located on the grounds of a Microsoft facility in Boulder, Colorado.

Dell claims that the new data centre is highly efficient in energy consumption, thanks to a cooling system that uses air with evaporative cooling technology to achieve a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rating of as low as 1.03. …

The nuvifone A50 is a smartphone-GPS hybrid that packs in Garmin’s signature GPS software for turn-by-turn directions.

This Android-based gadget works as promised, offering good estimates of the distance you need to cover before the next turn. It also suggests alternative routes if you fail to make a turn. While you can set trip preferences based on time, distance and road features to avoid, like most car GPS units, the A50 takes you on a longer route on some occasions.

Garmin’s software also integrates Google Street View for those who want to peek at their destinations, including locations of bus stops, taxi stands and carpark entrances. Until GPS devices can direct drivers to building carparks, which may be on a different side of the road from where you’re coming from, I’ve been relying on Street View to suss out carpark entrances at unfamiliar places.
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Get rewarded for running in Singapore. No payments, no onerous marketing sign-ups. Just put on your jogging shoes and run.

If you like to run, or better yet, you want to get some motivation to get fit, simply sign up at local non-profit site Liverun.sg and use their iPhone app to track your runs.

I had the chance to interview Liverun.sg founders Jeffrey Chan, 27 and Ignatius Ong, 28 on the craziness of running a pure non-profit(!) site exhorting Singaporeans to run.

“Yeah, many of our friends thought we were mad when we started up the site,” said Jeffrey wryly.

The idea for the site came last year in March 2009 when the two idealists and run enthusiasts were dreaming up fun projects of what they could do to improve the world and were passionate about.

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Singapore’s mapping start-up Gothere.sg launched their new iPhone application about exactly a week ago. I had the pleasure of catching up with Junhan, one of Gothere’s founders, to get both a demo of their app and a status update of what they’ve been doing.

Firstly, below are some YouTube videos that the scrappy Gothere guys have put up on the Interwebs to explain what their app is about:

Basically it’s a front end client app on iPhone that extends their already popular Gothere.sg site. I’m don’t own an iPhone (I have a HTC Desire and am on the Android platform), but in the preview session that Junhan demoed the app to me and a few other work colleagues on the iPhone 4, I found the app to be excellent.

Everything that I liked about Gothere.sg — various driving public transport suggestions + estimated costs (e.g. avoiding ERP gantrys), trip summaries, smart autocompletion of search locations, etc. — had been shrunk down into one portable app. And the best thing is that the price point of S$1.99 for the app is something that is very affordable.

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There has been quite a bit of talk over the new public transport distance fare calculations that have been put in place in Singapore since July 3rd.

There have been the usual government overtures that in general people pay less and the system is fairer under the new distance fares.

From the opposite camp, irate citizen bloggers claim that this isn’t true at all.

I find the official LTA fare calculator a pain to use, so if you’re interested in how much more (or less) you’re paying, go use Gothere’s mapping and directions tool. I use Gothere often to get directions, so the extra functionality is just groovy.

Thanks to this post on DK’s blog, from which I first came across this!

Hmmm. Gothere folks, if you’re reading this, perhaps with your data collected on searches done by Singaporeans you can probably do a good estimate on the question everybody is dying to know: Are Singaporeans paying more or less for transport under the new system?

If you send this in to the various local media, I’m certain they will love to know!

Availability: 27th March 2010, via M1 and StarHub, and all authorized resellers
Retail Price: S$638 (including GST)
Quick highlights: Windows Mobile 6.5.3 phone, comes bundled with preloaded navigation from Garmin and Tele Atlas, 3.5 inch WVGA 480×800 screen
Promotions: Consumers who purchase the Garmin-Asus M10 smart phone between 27th March to 2nd May 2010 can get a car kit at a discounted price of S$65 (usual price S$78)

Garmin and Asus made a big splash today at their media event for their upcoming launch of the M10 phone in Singapore.

Now Asus is better known for their range of netbooks and graphics cards, but they have been trying to break into the smartphone market for at least two years. I haven’t been really impressed with Asus smartphones I’ve reviewed in the past as I found that both interface and form factor wise were just so-so.

But the Asus folks believe that this phone is a breakout one that will be lapped up by consumers. Benson Lin, vice president and general manager of Asus’ personal mobile devices business unit, believes that their phone will do very well against the competition, like the upcoming HTC HD mini (also a Windows 6.5.3 phone) and HTC Legend (Android 2.1).

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… is still a netbook.

Yes, I am talking about Nokia’s Booklet 3G, the cellphone giant’s first mini laptop. If you needed the surest sign of the convergence between smartphones and laptops, details of Nokia’s new gizmo are it.

Unveiled hours ago, the 1.25kg Booklet 3G will feature the usual compact screen (a 10-incher here) first made famous by the first netbooks in the shape of Asus’ Eee PC. Nokia’s small machine will also feature an Intel Atom processor and run Microsoft Windows – standard fare now in netbooks.

So, is this another “me too” product from Nokia, long after the first two waves of netbooks have come from Taiwanese electronics makers and then “A-brand” PC makers? …