Nokia, which has traditionally done well in the low-price segment of the mobile phone market, will be facing the true test of its future relevance come May 5, when its budget Windows Phone – the Lumia 610 - hits shelves in Singapore.

Retailing for a very attractive S$379, the phone could well be offered by telcos on contract as a zero-dollar phone. This is a significant difference from the Lumia 800, its current highest-end Windows Phone available here, which is retailing for S$775. …

The newly-opened up broadband market in Singapore has seen the entry of new players such as MyRepublic, which promises to cater to niche markets such as gamers with its differentiated fibre broadband offerings.

Just how do these smaller players get their game going and can they continue to prosper as the Big Three telcos in Singapore slash prices in an all-out fibre broadband war?

In this month’s Q&A, we speak to Malcolm Rodrigues, the CEO and co-founder of MyRepublic, the new kid on the block in the broadband market, for his views. …

Dr Tan Tin Wee, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS), has been honoured as a “Global Connector” in the Internet Society’s inaugural batch of Internet Hall of Fame inductees for his instrumental role in the internationalisation of the Internet.

Tan’s list of achievements and awards over the course of his professional life is a long one. He has been working with the Internet since the 1980s when he was training as a biochemist and molecular biologist in Cambridge and Edinburgh.

One of Tan’s key contributions was support for the Chinese and Tamil languages on the Web. …

The ASUS Transformer Prime is an excellent piece of kit, and the Transformer Pad Infinity even more so, but those looking for a more budget-friendly “Transformer” can now satisfy their tablet desires with the Transformer Pad TF300.

Unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in February, the new tablet will be available in Singapore from mid-May. …

Microsoft today opened a S$23 million technology centre in Singapore to enable companies to test out new technologies such as cloud computing and unified communications before rolling them out at their own premises.

The first in Southeast Asia, the centre joins another 26 worldwide in showcasing and concept-proofing the software giant’s new offerings to corporate customers.  …

After years of complaining about slow connections, Singapore’s broadband users can now join a study that uses their actual day-to-day experience to offer a clear snapshot of just how fast their Internet service is.

One of the long-standing problems here is that much of the content that users access is based overseas, and links to these sites seldom reach the advertised speeds, say, 100Mbps, that service providers promise. Now, instead of second-guessing or asking for advice from strangers in a forum, users can get a better sense of the actual speeds from real users’ feedback.

Some 900 volunteers are now sought to participate in a study conducted by well-known research firm SamKnows, which has carried out similar research in Europe and the United States. Singapore’s Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) is backing this survey in Singapore.

While the IDA has been publishing monthly throughput results based on its own tests, the new tests will have users collecting the information from their homes. This promises a more realistic look at how fast things are in the real world. …

Healthcare service providers in the Asia-Pacific region are planning to turn to cloud computing to improve patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes, a new survey has found.

According to IDC Health Insights, 69 per cent of IT decision makers across the region indicated that they have allocated budgets to cloud computing. None of the respondents intend to reduce cloud spending, while more than half plan to spend more within the next three years. …

A recent survey commissioned by anti-virus maker Norton found that 76 per cent of Singaporeans would rather say no to US$1 million than allow strangers unlimited access to their computers. …

Music lovers can now check out new artistes with downloadable mobile music albums that stream the music to them smoothly by adapting the quality to either online or offline use.

Called Orastream, the technology was first tested by Techgoondu back in December 2011. It will play back at a lossless CD-like quality if a track is streamed, say, over Wi-Fi at home, but it will switch to a less demanding compressed quality if the user decides to stream the tracks over a cellphone network while on the move, for example.

Three artistes, including award-winning composer pianist Tze from Singapore, have now signed on to release their music on these mobile albums, which come in the form of downloadable iOS apps. The Singapore firm behind the technology, MP4SLS, calls these albums or apps digital catalog LPs (DLPs), in a tribute to the old record format. …

Fraser & Neave (F&N) became the latest large enterprise to hop onto the cloud computing wave when it announced plans to move 3,000 employees in Singapore to Google Apps.

The move follows an earlier effort by the producer of Tiger Beer and energy drink 100 Plus to move 2,000 employees in its Malaysian subsidiary F&N Holdings Berhad to Google Apps last year.

In a media statement, Google said F&N had sought a secure, accessible cloud-based email solution that could scale for new devices and keep up with their fast-moving, far-ranging employees.

F&N was using Lotus Notes as its e-mail system, which could not be accessed by employees who were on the move, according to Leong Yin Hoe, manager of manufacturing systems at F&N Holdings Bhd. …