If you live in Singapore and you haven’t heard of or tried Gothere, do yourself a favour and take a look. It’s such a useful resource that I have the URL bookmarked in my brain.

I’ll flat out admit it: I’m a huge fan and user.

Of all the various map, location and road routing sites for Singapore, I feel that Gothere is the best. It trashes the competition out there in terms of usability and function: the incumbent Streetdirectory, StreetDB, and Google Maps.

Don’t even get me started on SLA’s map or Rednano’s one.

Started up in just May 2008 this year, Gothere.sg has generated buzz in the blogosphere but is still under the radar in the mainstream.

Gothere's simple, excellent searchbar interface

…click here to read more

“The finish line
is just around the bend
I’ll pause this game
so our love will never end…”

An “emo” love song about the red plumber, his perpetually kidnapped princess, and go-karts, this destined-to-be-classic YouTube video has racked up more than 1.5 million views since it’s release last month. I got this through viral word-of-mouth — a friend who emailed me the URL link coz’ he thought I would love it. And he’s right.

It’s strange yet touchingly sweet – a brilliant concoction that has brought a wistful smile to this gamer’s face.

It even spawned this equally excellent video response. Always had a soft spot for Bowser. Go villains go!

So good, both have been converted to mp3s as part of my music playlists.

Old school gamers, enjoy.

The idea: you spot a pair of pink hello kitty slippers in a boutique mall in Japan’s trendy Shinjuku shopping district to die for, and you want to let all your friends know. You whip out your phone, snap it, and upload it where all your friends can goggle over your latest purchase.

Except that with Shoplette (beta), the whole world can find out what and where you like to shop.

“Shopping is a very social thing,” said Shoplette founder Shannon Low Shen-Li, 32, in an interview with Techgoondu. “If you spot a good buy, you are often excited to tell others about what you have bought!”

…click here to read more

Another one bites the dust.

By the time you read this, news has probably spread - through the Net, no less - about the latest casualty resulting from the double whammy of lower advertising revenues and the current credit crunch.

The Tribune Co., which publishes the renowned Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, officially declared bankruptcy today (US time Dec 8), after reports over the weekend had hinted at its financial troubles.

Even with the current doom and gloom, the news of the biggest bankruptcy of a news outlet in years still ranks as one of the most alarming to come from troubled US newspapers of late. …click here to read more

Yebber is a Singapore-based website that aggregates reviews by end users and provides a mechanism for users to search for them.

So far, pretty standard. The catch? It pays you to have an opinion.

How does it work? You create an account, hammer out a review, and it pays you Yebber dollars, which can be exchanged for gifts or hard cash.

…click here to read more

I often hear laments from my friends about the dead tech innovation scene in Singapore.

“There is nothing new in tech coming out of Singapore”, they cry. Singaporeans in IT are nothing but glorified tech sales and marketeers for big name MNCs who have set up shop in this little dot that we call home. Or, they work for GLCs (government linked companies) or statuary boards trying to copy technology from elsewhere. And failing miserably on innovation.

Contrary to the belief that Singapore has no tech innovation and we only have Creative to talk about (and that was before its star started falling), there are lots of interesting small tech start-ups here. We have a bevy of innovators experimenting with business ideas tapping on social media concepts, web-based services that provide useful services to Singaporeans, and a small but growing games and media industry.

One of the biggest problems? Getting publicity.

…click here to read more

Social media platforms have disruptively changed the environment in which big media works. It is now possible for anybody to reach out to millions, at very low-cost, on the web. We here at Techgoondu, are doing just that in this tech blog.

But the process of gathering information – arguably the core of journalism – is distinctly separate from the technology (enablers like twitter and plurk), or from the final product (like these blog pages that you read here).

Take a look at Spot.US. This recent media experiment, officially launched 10 Nov 2008, uses crowdfunding to pay professional journalists, and crowsourcing to get ideas. The video below by David Cohn, the founder of Spot.US, lays out what the project is about.

David was also founder of the now defunct Assignment Zero project, an experiment with Wired, on “open sourcing” journalism – a really interesting read. Guess we’ll have to wait and see how the Spot.US experiment unfolds.

Nokia N97

Right after Sony Ericsson shipped its Xperia X1, along comes Nokia’s new N-series “hero” product, the N97, that comes with, surprise, a slide-out keyboard.

But unlike the Xperia, which runs on Windows Mobile, Nokia’s N97 uses Symbian OS, the company behind which it recently acquired.

Notably, from early hands-on first-looks here at the Nokia World show in Barcelona, the N97 has a few promising features. …click here to read more

Do you want an Asus Eee PC or an HP mini?

That seems to be the choice that Sitex shoppers are being asked to make by SingTel and StarHub, as the two broadband operators slug it out in an increasingly saturated broadband market.

Counting personal broadband services like 3.5G offerings, Singapore has a residential broadband penetration of 93 per cent.

What do SingTel and StarHub do then? Tie you in with ever more attractive deals, of course! …click here to read more

Do check out Part I, Part II and Part III of Techgoondu’s coverage at Sitex ‘08 if you haven’t, where Alf did a bang-up job covering most of the stuff. Here’s my additional two cents:

Sitex isn’t a show just for electronic gadgets it seems. I saw cars, handbags, exercise equipment, and even one booth selling spa treatments(!).

The Awesome Threesome at Sitex

…click here to read more