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.

Two bungling engineers and a faulty cable brought down Singapore’s biggest bank DBS — all of the ATMs, internet banking — for about 7 hours last month on 5th July.

Or so that was the narrative painted by the Straits Times two days ago on Thursday that it was all due to human error. (There’s a far lengthier version in the printed Straits Times version than the gimped version online). The big headline inside the paper on page four was this: “It was definitely a human error”.

Really? Is that the best narrative that explained why the system crashed that day? Everything was due to “human error”, and two “bungling” IBM engineers were to blame?

If Singapore’s biggest bank could so easily be brought down by “human errors”, then I find it genuinely shocking. Surely IBM’s 10-year S$1.2 billion outsourcing contract — about S$120 million per year to maintain the IT infrastructure — details a stringent process for disaster recovery?

Doesn’t DBS and IBM have SLAs that spell out how IT failures should be recovered from, with a detailed escalation process? And seriously, a single misplugged cable can bring down your entire storage system? I don’t buy this at all. You’re not talking about a start-up servicing a bank; you’re talking about a maintenance contract deal worth millions.

Thus, the main point is not about “human error” — a totally wrongheaded slant that ST took, in my opinion — but the fact that DBS’ business process screwed up along the way. Yes, human error may have started this, but the recovery process screwed up and failed to kick in.

The blow-by-blow account of how engineers triggered this failure is not interesting. What’s interesting would have been how and why DBS’s disaster recovery process failed to kick in.

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!

Hitatchi Data Systems (HDS) has just started operations on their one-month old spanking new S$4.6 million Asia Pacific distribution facility in Singapore.

The centre will serve Asia Pacific (excluding Japan), and will serve to bring down shipment times by an average of two business days for customers in the region, said HDS’ Frans van Rijn, senior VP and chief logistics officer at a press conference today.

If you’re a customer in Singapore, it is even better news — shipments can now be delivered in hours. Prior to having this Asia Pacific distribution facility, HDS had to ship their products from US to Japan and then to the rest of Asia Pacific. This Asia Pacific HDS distribution facility is the third to be built globally and joins HDS’ existing distribution facilities in Indianopolis, US and in Waardenburg, Netherlands.

It’s no surprise for anybody who went down to last weekend’s Licence2Play that Starcraft 2 was the biggest thing there.

Blizzard and IAHGames had a big booth showcasing Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty at the gaming fair, which was held this year from 28th to 30th May at the Singapore Expo. Besides this, not much else has changed compared to last year’s event, except that it is not held at Suntec anymore.

There were some events being run by the Singapore Cybersports and Online Gaming Association (SCOGA), but this paled in comparison to the big draw: A chance to play Starcraft 2 beta and pre-order the game.

I was tempted to get it, but the S$109 pre-order price for the game and beta key was a little steep. The dog-tag souvenir was not enticing enough for me to pay upwards of S$100+, so without more shiny stuff, I passed. Hopefully, when the game comes out on July 27th, it will be more reasonably priced.

Firstly, a big thank you to all the fans and supporters of our scrappy little blog here.

Thanks to all the attendees who took the time and effort to come down to Techgoondu’s first indepedent and wireless event UNWIRED last Thursday 27 May at the Singapore Management University.

Time for a little shameless plug here.

Organised by chief goondu Alfred Siew, the event was a success due to the excellent crowd and overall quality of speakers. Registered attendees numbered over a hundred-odd, and there were lots of friends from both media and PR in attendance. For a first-time event that no one had heard of a month and a half back, it certainly met and exceeded some of our attendees’ expectations.

Said Daniel Goh, PR and media manager at Samsung Asia, and owner of the excellent start-up blog YoungUpstarts: “I’m quite surprised with the crowd. They actually asked a lot of questions!”

There were so many questions being asked that time overran on many of the sessions on that day.

Alf will probably add on a blog post on this baby of his, but I thought I would do a quick wrap-up of the “Mobile applications: the future driver of wireless technologies?” panel that I moderated.

code::XtremeApps, the annual Singapore 24-hour computer programming competition organised by the Information Technology Standards Committee (ITSC), is going green this year with its theme.

Competitors will be required to create an application to promote awareness of environmental issues and sustainable living. The details of the competition guidelines were released last Wednesday 21st April to the public and media, and can be found online here.

This is the fourth year that ITSC has run code:XtremeApps, and the top three teams for both the Open (above 12 years of age) and Junior (below 12 years of age) will stand to win attractive prizes like S$9,000 in cash (per team) or electronic devices.

Does Singapore really need yet another consumer electronics show, besides the quarterly four — IT Show (March at Suntec), PC Show (June at Suntec), Comex (September at Suntec) and Sitex (November at Expo) — that we already have here?

Apparently yes, especially if there’s money to be made off tech-crazy Singaporeans.

It’s not a gaming-themed show like last year’s Licence2Play, but the Singapore Great Electronics Sale 2010 this weekend at Suntec city (9th to 11th April) was supposed to be about 3D-TVs. Even though it is not, it drew in 30,000 people on the first day.

The event, which took up one convention hall on the 6th floor at Suntec, turned out to be a pretty meh experience for me.

Besides a few tech vendors like Samsung, LG, Panasonic and AudioHouse, the event was full of non-tech booths. DBS credit cards, crystal fengshui stuff and spa massages were some of the booths I spotted in my quick tour around the hall. It was an eclectic mess.

More flat-screen TVs, portable hard disks, printers and laptops were what I expected when I joined the mass of humanity that had congregated at the IT Show at Suntec Singapore yesterday.

Arriving just before noon, I could still find many lots in the carpark. And there weren’t so many people carting away large-screen TVs and printers on trolleys. Is it because everyone already has two TVs and three printers at home, thanks to spending crazily at previous shows?

My tiredness of the bargain-hunting, however, soon disappeared when I saw how cheap these new Intel Core i3 and i5-based laptops were going for.

I’m talking about prices from S$999 for an entry-level Dell Inspiron with a 14-inch screen. Cute with bright colours like cherry red and ice blue, it comes with enough horsepower from the dual-core processor to crunch everyday work. It helps too that Windows 7 now doesn’t suck up as much resources as Windows Vista previously.

The more I talk to the Youth Olympic Games folks to uncover stories for Digital Life, the more I find out that some of the really interesting YOG social media content is hidden behind “official” content and not given enough publicity.

Take a look at the Youth Guru YouTube video below. It’s quite a hilarious series, with 15 videos to date. *Chio peng* (aka ROTFLMAO in hokkien dialect). Well done Youth Guru folks!

The content in this series is far more fun than many of the videos on the official Singapore2010 channel on YouTube. Youth Guru should have its own YouTube channel, or just highlighted instead of being lost in the array of official videos on the main channel.

As I’ve said before, I think some of the social media content for YOG needs more love. For example, this Youth Guru series is hilarious. Others, like the Odyssey Singapore 2010 virtual world, needs a little bit more work.

The key issue is that all of them could use a little more publicity. And as I’ve said before, one relatively easy way is to reach out to the Singaporean blogs!