The inaugural Youth Olympic Games, or YOG for short, is running in Singapore this year from 14th to 26th August.

As part of the worldwide promotion to create buzz around the event, the Singapore Youth Olympic Games Organising Committee (SYOGOC), together with the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), is creating a virtual world called Singapore 2010 Odyssey.

Said RADM(NS) Ronnie Tay, Chief Executive Officer of IDA at the official launch on Saturday 6th March: “The Singapore 2010 Odyssey is a unique virtual world platform offering many possibilities for learning, social networking and entertainment, as it reaches out to the youths from all over the world in a fun and interactive way. The development of the 3D virtual world is testimony to Singapore’s infocomm capabilities in innovatively harnessing digital media technologies to support major events like the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games.”

Find the Odyssey at www.singapore2010.sg/o

Of course, what’s more important is the content of this virtual world. I had a preview of the world last Wednesday at a media/blogger session (the news was embargoed till today) but to see how it really was working out, I decided to give it a real life test.

Wireless@SG login screen - say goodbye to it

Hard to log in. Keep getting disconnected.

If those problems have kept you from surfing the Web with Wireless@SG, you’ll be happy to hear that the free Wi-Fi hotspot service islandwide is now going to be a breeze to use.

With a new secure sign-on system announced today, you will only need to sign in once on your PC or phone and never have to do it again when you next visit a Wireless@SG hotspot.

NETS, the Singapore electronic payment vendor, just launched their iNETS mobile service, in which you can pay your bills via your mobile phone in Singapore.

The story was covered by quite a few of the main papers in Singapore, like the Straits Times, Today, and My Paper, as this story broke yesterday.

What struck me when I read the story in the Straits Times is that the iNETS mobile payment platform supports “all mobile phones save the iPhone and the Android platform”.

When I read this, I almost fell out of my chair thinking: Errr, aren’t these some of the more popular platforms? And Android phones will definitely be set to grow in the market this year, with the Google Nexus One, Samsung Galaxy Spica, and Motorola Dext already out since February with more to come.

Google Street View Singapore at construction of ION Orchard

Tiny Singapore finally joins the ranks of countries with Street View today, right on the heels of the roll out in Hawaii and large parts of Spain in November.

This also makes Singapore the third Asian country after Japan and Taiwan (Taipei city only) to be mapped in 3D by the Mountain View firm.

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.

LTA and Google representatives posing for the media

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.

Existing visual routing on the iPhone 3GS

Existing visual routing (highlighted in purple) on the iPhone 3GS which avoids high traffic areas (in red).

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?

Robot butler at Techfest '09

Singapore does do interesting infotech R&D. But it doesn’t get the publicity it deserves, which is such a waste.

Take for example the recent Techfest ‘09, which was held at Fusionpolis last week from October 8th to 9th. Techfest, which A*Star I2R (Institute of Infocomm Research) started in 2005, is an open-to-public exhibition showcase of emerging technology research in Singapore. A*Star, for those of our readers who are not familiar with the brand, is a government institution dedicated to charting Singapore’s science and technology future.

Now A*Star has interesting research projects that make for great tech stories, but Techfest ‘09 was a bland colourless event. It’s open to the public, but most of the attendees were government folks, and it felt as if many exhibitors — all A*Star folks — were there more because they were “arrowed” into showcasing their work instead of wanting to show off their work to a good audience.

Wireless@SG goes 1Mbps today

There’s nothing like a free lunch. But once in a while, you do get freebies without so much as firing up your laptop.

From today, users of Singapore’s Wireless@SG service will be getting a speed boost, as part of a handful of upgrades for the free Wi-Fi hotspot offering that were first announced at CommunicAsia 2009.

They will be able to surf at up to 1Mbps (instead of 512Mbps) at 7,500 hotspots islandwide. There is no need to re-configure their laptops or Wi-Fi-enabled cellphones, said the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) this morning, as it showed Techgoondu and other media a demo of the faster service at the Wi-Fi-enabled TCC cafe at NAFA.

As you may have heard, some 95 per cent of Singapore is being wired up with fibre optic cables for the country’s next-generation broadband network, which promises an almost unlimited speed boost over existing SingTel’s copper-line phone system and StarHub’s HFC (hybrid fibre coaxial) network.

But little has been said about what this cable laying project means to the average Joe.

Earlier this week, OpenNet, the consortium tasked with wiring up Singapore, gave the media a glimpse of how things will pan out. The quick takeaway is that it is on-schedule, and will be sending letters to residents in selected areas to inform them that contractors would be coming to their homes to hook up the new cables.