The music service offers ad-free access to more than 10 million tracks, and will initially be offered at a rate of S$0.99 (for web) and S$1.99 (for web and mobile on the Android platform) per month in Singapore.

After three months, the price point will jump to S$4.99 per month for web and S$9.99 per month for web and mobile respectively.

Take a look:

My initial reaction was: meh. I’m not really impressed after I visited the site.

I expected to have some kind of trial or download demo, but that wasn’t the case. Besides having to sign-in with an email account, you have to put in your credit card and pay to see what you can get.

No demo or trial.

Now, music streaming is not a new business at all, and for anybody late coming to the party, you would expect the new kid-on-the-block to come up with demos to persuade people what the fuss was about.

Yes, some of the more dodgy music streaming sites have gone out of business, or have changed business models, but there are still dozens of alternatives — and quite a few are free — out there.

That’s not even mentioning all the strides telcos and mobile vendors have made in making streaming music available over the air, like SingTel with AMPed, and all the experiments Nokia and Sony Ericsson had with mobile music services.

And based on Rara.com’s EULA, the music tracks come laden with DRM, something that is a pet peeve of mine for content issues.

I understand that it is a necessary evil, but I’m not comfortable with the portion on DRM in their EULA.

Quoting directly from Rara.com’s EULA:

“Because the rara Application includes security components, special rules and policies apply. You agree to abide by the rules and policies established from time to time by rara media. We will apply such rules and policies generally in a non-discriminatory manner to users of the rara Application, and such rules and policies may include, for example, required or automated updates, modifications, and/or reinstallations of the rara Application to address security, interoperability, and/or performance issues. These updates, modifications and the like may occur on a periodic or as needed basis without notice to you.

All streaming content is encrypted and, where your Subscription allows you to cache Content for offline playback, that cached Content is protected by digital rights management (DRM) technology to protect the Content against unauthorised use. You must not do anything to disable or circumvent the encryption of the DRM technology.

In addition, you understand that the rara Application is capable of monitoring itself for security-related and tamper-detection purposes and for communicating information to rara media about security incidents. You hereby consent to the operation of the rara Application in this way. Your copy of the Software and your access to certain applications that communicate with it are subject to restriction and/or revocation (such as being shut down) for security purposes or according to consistently applied Content-protection policies. You understand and agree that this may result in Content that was previously available for use being unavailable thereafter.”

I don’t like not knowing what DRM software I’m installing on my PC or device, but more importantly I’d like to know what information it’s sending to Rara.com without my notice. Clarifications on the DRM in the EULA might help.

Yes, Rara.com may have secured international licensing agreements with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Music and Warner Music Group and has a large 10 million-plus track database. It may be available in 20 countries around the globe, and is available in Singapore, unlike Deezer, Pandora or Spotify.

And yes, the music streaming industry is not an easy one — anyone remember Soundbuzz, who was one of Singapore’s first online music store but went out of business about two-and-a-half years back?

But that doesn’t change the fact that, for a latecomer, Rara.com feels pretty meh to me on first impressions.

And given that I cannot try the service without paying money, I’ll stick with Grooveshark, Last.fm and Musicovery for my music streaming needs.

I’ll be honest. I wasn’t crazy about the Galaxy Note when I first saw it a few weeks ago at Samsung’s big show-and-tell in Jakarta. The 5.3-inch screen makes it bigger than most phones (the Galaxy S II has a 4.3-inch screen), yet is smaller than the most petite tablet, like the original 7-inch Galaxy Tab.

Samsung’s new gizmo also uses a stylus in addition to the usual finger gestures that you can use to interact with the Android 2.3.5 OS (upgradable next year to Android 4.0). Now, where have we seen a stylus before? Yes, in the HTC Flyer, a slightly larger tablet, which didn’t do fantastically well.

Then there are other “middle of the road” devices like Dell’s Streak, which was well-made but didn’t win over enough fans, some of whom must have been confused by its “hybrid” nature.

And now, here we are with the Galaxy Note, which is cosmetically, a larger version of the popular Galaxy S II. What I think is crucial to its popularity in recent weeks, as I’ve heard from sources, is that it has come at a time when the screen sizes of phones have themselves increased from the iPhone’s 3.5 inches to 4.7 inches on the HTC Sensation XL, for example.

It helps too that the Galaxy Note can still be held in one hand. And if you have a big, loose pair of jeans, you can just about squeeze it into your back pocket. Just remember to take it out when you rush for a seat on the MRT train, and if you like skinny jeans, forget about the Galaxy Note.

What of the stylus then? I’d say the 5.3-inch screen helps give you enough space to scribble on. Personally, I’m not a scribbler who relies on transcribing software to convert my notes to text, because T9 predictive text and a virtual keyboard can be so good these days. But for folks who have always liked to doodle, the Galaxy Note works pretty smoothly as a digital pad.

Besides that, you can also use the stylus to crop pictures, which is a little tough to do accurately with your fingers. Then there’s a smart calendar app that lets you jot down your appointments like on a good old paper filofax, which will surely resonate with folks who miss their old leather-bound diaries.

The Galaxy Note also boasts the smooth interface that has made the Galaxy S II so popular. Under the hood, or rather, inside the light 178g frame, is a speedy 1.4GHz dual-core chip. When I tested it briefly some weeks back, I couldn’t detect any slowdown at all, despite the extra pixels needed to be processed thanks to the big screen.

That, by the way, is a bright Super AMOLED screen pumping out 1,280 x 800 pixels. The result: a whole lot of detail that ensures the text and pictures on screen are really sharp. Come to think about it, my mom’s old 19-inch PC LCD monitor only displays slightly more pixels and details, despite being so much bigger.

From what I recall from my quick hands-on with the Galaxy Note, what’s perhaps even most interesting is the 8-meg camera, which shoots videos and images pretty well even in low light.

By that, I mean it can even detect the vague shapes of people in a dimly-lit hall, like the one that the phone was launched in. A fellow journalist on the trip with me shot a quick video of the group of us at the table, and guess what, I could even make out each person in a very dark function room.

Personally, the Galaxy Note is not something I’d buy, because I prefer two devices – a tablet at home (or when overseas) and a phone while I’m out in town. But for others who have been looking for a device that fits both worlds – women who don’t have to stuff their mobile phones into their skinny jeans, for example – the S$998 Galaxy Note can be an interesting “middle of the road” gadget to check out.

Despite being one of the first with an Android phone when it released the Droid and Milestone about two years ago, Motorola has not had a top-end phone that stood toe to toe with offerings from rivals such as Samsung, HTC and even Sony Ericsson of late.

That changes now with the new Razr, which brings the Android pioneer up to the speed with not just the latest hardware but also a surprisingly nifty software experience.

First off, for those not in the know, the Razr is named after the original clamshell design from 2004, which brought Motorola so much success (it was number two phone maker, after Nokia, at one point) and which ultimately led to the company breaking up and almost being lost as a has-been phone maker.

The new Razr, besides the sleek branding and ultra-thin design, has little resemblance to the old. Okay, the premium design is still there, with Kevlar fibre in the back of the phone for rigidity and texture and the 7.1-mm frame making this one of the slimmest phones around.

But the designers have also taken pains to make sure the beauty is more than skin deep, reporters were told at a Singapore launch event on Friday. The Corning Gorilla glass, for example, is able to prevent your keys scratching the screen, and interestingly, the components under the hood are sprayed with a nano material to keep water out, in case you spill water or wine on the Razr.

The hardware, as I said before at the unveiling of the phone, brings it on par with the rest of the competition. The 4.3-inch Super AMOLED screen is big and bright enough for surfing the Web comfortably, the 1.2GHz processor and 1GB RAM keep things humming along smoothly, and the 8-meg HD camera shoots HD videos on holidays.

If the specs look good on paper, I wasn’t disappointed either when I  got a quick hands on at the launch. First off, the Kevlar fibre does remind one of the iconic textured design of the original Razr, which had etched button keys. The screen on the new Razr is also one of the brighter ones I have seen (other than Samsung’s Super AMOLED plus on its Galaxy S II phone).

What’s more impressive is the software that Motorola seems to have thrown in. The MotoCast software that comes with the phone easily lets you connect to documents on your home PC, which you can also use to stream movies and songs from while you are on the go.

I know this is not new – even Windows Mobile of old had similar, though less easy to use apps – but MotoCast being included in the box makes it fuss-free for non-techies to get things done. All you have to do is install the software, connect your phone and set a password. Once you are out and about, you can simply log in to see the files you have shared on your PC.

The good news is, the interface is pretty as well. Similar to the album flow that Apple’s MP3 players are known for, the Motorola music player lets you browse albums intuitively by flipping virtual album covers. You can browse both the songs stored on your phone and those you have set to stream over the Internet to your PC.

What’s not so cool, of course, is that the 3G cellular network is not always super fast. So, such cloud computing services on mobile devices are still something to be improved on when the network is more ready. You’d probably also need to have fast uploads from home – likely on a fibre broadband service – if you want to stream HD movies from your home PC to your phone while on holiday.

Like with its previous phones, Motorola has thrown in a number of other customisations to sell the idea that the Razr is not another cookie cutter Android gizmo.

Some are useful, like a feature that lets you turn certain settings on and off automatically to extend battery life.  For example, you can set your Bluetooth or GPS off when you reach home – the phone gauges your pre-set home location – because you may not need them.

This, according to Motorola, can save up to 30 per cent of battery life, which is handy at a time when phones like the Apple iPhone 4 S and Samsung Galaxy S II are often running out of juice because of all the features onboard.

Not everything that Motorola has thrown in is useful, of course. For example, there is a neat, little animation that lights up your screen when you slide through several main screen menus. Such touches are nice but users should approach with a word of warning – they can slow down the phone if you have loads of widgets running at the same time.

Fortunately, when I tried one of the “clean” out-of-box Razrs, the performance was hard to complain about. I could swipe through the screens and launch apps without any perceivable lag.

All the enhancements which Motorola is so proud of also means it needs time – possibly more than its rivals – to update the Android operating system on the Razr. It is running the “Gingerbread” 2.3.5 version, and Motorola executives did not give a time line for an update to the newly-announced Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” OS for Asian markets.

Still, that does not make the Razr a bad phone. The only device slated to ship with Android 4.0 and its long list of enhancements is the Galaxy Nexus (no dates for Singapore yet), so the Razr is still pretty up to date with most rivals, as far as features are concerned.

Should you buy the Razr? I’d say it’s definitely in my list of top phones for the moment, along with the HTC Sensation XL and Samsung Galaxy S II. And the Razr’s asking price of S$888 in Singapore, when it ships in Singapore on November 11, is a competitive one, considering that top-end phones these days are closer to S$1,000 here.

Photos courtesy of our technology content partners at Yahoo! News Singapore.

If you’ve ever thought of running Android apps on a PC, there’s now an easy way to do it.

Bluestacks, a company headed by former McAfee executives, has developed a virtualisation software that offers a full Android environment on other computing platforms. The technology is similar to that of Parallels Desktop for Mac, which lets you run the Windows on a Mac computer.

Bluestacks is currently available as an alpha release for Windows, though its multi-OS virtualisation technology can support Android on Chrome OS, as well as Windows systems powered by ARM processors. A Mac version of Bluestacks is also in the works.

I took Bluestacks for a spin and was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to run Android apps on a Windows 7 machine. After installing the software, a process that took less than 5 minutes on my four-year-old notebook, you will see a desktop widget on screen.

Clicking on the widget opens a list of pre-installed apps like Talking Tom 2, Bloomberg and Drag Racing. You can add more apps from Bluestacks’ limited repository, or send the apps that you have on your Android device to the PC by installing the Bluestacks Cloud Connect Android app. This effectively means you can’t use Bluestacks without an Android device – unless you’re perfectly happy with the Bluestacks apps.

All apps will run in full screen. You can control the apps with the keyboard and mouse in place of taps and swipes. Clicking on an ad within an app will take you to the advertiser’s website displayed in the standard Android browser.

I didn’t notice any performance issues, though some apps such as Bubble Buster did run a little slower than on a mobile device. Not all apps will work out of the box. Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja, for example, can only run on a Pro version of Bluestacks that isn’t available yet.

After months of the usual hoopla from fan boys in the media and supposedly leaked images of a next great iPhone to take back the lead from Android gizmos, Apple yesterday unveiled a new model that can be best described in a word: underwhelming.

The iPhone 4S comes with improvements like a dual-core chip, a better 8-meg camera, improved notifications with the new iOS5 software and a claimed 200 new features. But an iPhone 5 this is not, and to take back market share from the Android OS is a task it is clearly not up to.

Essentially, this is an iPhone that shows that Apple has become a follower for features that have already been in the market months, even years, ago.

Let’s start with Siri, a voice command feature touted by Apple folks yesterday. Sure, it does cool stuff like making phone calls and scheduling appointments, but what’s new and innovative here when Google has had these functions all this while? Perhaps the fact that it can “understand” human speech and fire up the appropriate tasks, as the ever Apple-friendly New York Times points out. Perhaps.

The same feeling of “been there, done that” can be attributed to the iCloud service that Apple is squarely aiming at Google. But we already have Gmail, Google Docs and YouTube well built into Android phones, so why does anyone but Apple fans need yet another third-party service to complicate things?

Apple has, in the past, brushed aside grouses against its tight control over how you can use your phone or how much leeway developers can have in making iOS apps, but this draconian strategy of making people give up flexibility for great design and usability is surely up for questioning now.

Investors certainly reacted, dumping shares throughout the day until Apple’s stock fell by as much as 5 per cent. The losses were reversed by the end of trading, but the sharp reaction reflected the widespread disappointment felt immediately on social media networks like Twitter and Facebook.

It didn’t help that, for the first time in years, it was not Steve Jobs and his black turtleneck in the spotlight last night, but new man at the helm, Tim Cook, who sold the new product to the masses. This was a show-and-tell that even the most ardent of fan boys will be forced to admit: the iPhone 4S is old wine in new bottles.

Even the case looks the same. The good old 3.5-inch screen, though one of the sharpest in the business, is looking small and dated next to the 4.3-inchers from Android today, like the HTC Sensation and the Samsung Galaxy S II.

And while Android has long allowed for live widgets and other customisations on screen, the same old icon-based menu greets iPhone 4S users when they fire up the new iOS5. Apple is playing catchup and this time, it’s obvious even to non-techie users.

The bad news for Apple is that it is no longer the leader and will find it even tougher to push back the Android advance. It will still sell lots of iPhones 4S phones, but it will likely not haul back the lead that Android-based devices have gained in the past year.

In the second quarter of 2011, Android phones accounted for 43.4 per cent of smartphones in the world, up from just 17.2 per cent a year ago, according to research firm Gartner. Apple, meanwhile, stays third with a 4.1 percentage point gain to grab 18.2 per cent of the share (second is Symbian, despite having its share halved from 40 per cent a year ago). Remember, that slim margin of share gained for Apple was helped by a successful iPhone 4 launch.

How will the “upgrade model”, an iPhone 4S, fare? It won’t be a flop, for sure, because it is still a competent phone that competes well, especially when the basic 16GB model sells for an attractive US$199 in the United States, with a telco contract. In Apple-mad Singapore, you can except long lines of fans queueing up for one when it comes to the three telcos here later this month.

But to many other users, this iPhone 4S will be underwhelming and basically more of the same, after the competition has already moved far ahead. Tellingly, the number of anguished iPhone users asking the question “should I switch to Android” might just pop up on your Facebook updates more often than before.

In the coming weeks, you’ll probably hear how great all the upgrades are under the hood, as the New York Times has already reminded us. Or that things “just work” with Apple products (except its website yesterday, which buckled under the load for long periods during the launch). You might even hear Apple fans bringing up that old nugget – viruses will harm your Android phones, just like Windows.

But the truth is, this is one iPhone to skip. For those who have held out for an iPhone 5 all this while, believing the rumour mill that a world-beating, magical Apple gizmo would replace your current model, it’s time to check out an Android or a Windows Phone 7.5 device.

Say goodbye to the endless restrictions from Apple – an outdated icon-driven menu and a lack of a memory card slot, to name but two – because the trouble is just not worth it any more. Clearly now, there are better alternatives.

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.

Triposo, available from iTunes App Store, Android Market and Windows Phone Marketplace (Bangkok Guide only)
Move over Lonely Planet, there’s now an app developed by former Googlers that promises to give printed travel guides a run for their money. Developed by Jon Tirsen and Douwe Osinga, Triposo uses an algorithm that mixes, mashes and annotates free content from Wikitravel, Wikipedia, World66 and Openstreetmap to distill travel guides. Not surprisingly, its technology is similar to how search engines work, from crawling, parsing and matching content to relevance ranking and organising the data. If you are curious about how Triposo guides are put together, read a detailed explanation here.

For now, the Android version of the app has over 50 guides available for download, compared with just over 20 destinations for the iPhone and iPad apps. Once you fire up the app, search for guides to download based on continent, distance from your current location and from an A-to-Z listing. While some guides for cities like Bangkok are comprehensive, others are not. The Singapore guide, for example, only lists a handful of sights – albeit lesser known ones like the Poh Ern Shih Temple – that are strangely grouped under Symphony Lake at Botanic Gardens. The Night Life section is also skimpy, with Harry’s Bar as its only entry.

Wikitude, available from iTunes App Store and Android Market
Nominated as one of the best augmented reality (AR) browsers in 2010 by Augmented Planet blog which also organises conferences on the subject, Wikitude takes AR to its full potential by gathering information from sources such as Wikipedia, Twitter and Panoramio that have been tagged with location-based data. So, if you are standing in the middle of Orchard Road, use the app to get a run-down of the shopping belt’s history, malls, discounts and Twitter conversations in the area.

You can only select one source at a time, and view the relevant results represented as bubbles in the camera view. To read, say a Wikipedia article on Orchard Road, just tap on the Orchard Road bubble. But what happens if there are too many bubbles clustered on the camera view? In this case, switch to the map view to display the results on Google Maps, or list view to see the results as a list. For now, Wikitude remains a “consumption-based” app for perusing information contributed by others. Down the road, its developers should consider letting users contribute their own content by deepening the integration between the app and its data sources.

Trip Journal Lite, available from iTunes App Store and Android Market
Keeping a travel journal may sound a little old school to some folks. But decades later, a trip journal may well be a reflective record of your thoughts, experiences and memories for your posterity. Trip Journal is a nifty app that lets you trace your travels, pen notes as you stop at each point in your journey and snap images along the way.

Your can archive and share trips with others by exporting them as KMZ files to be viewed in Google Earth. Each KMZ file includes your trip route, photos, notes and checkpoints in the journey. There is a Facebook and Twitter export feature, too, that lets you send photos to Facebook and post your current location on Twitter. The app also includes a compass for finding your way around. As with all technology products, things get obsolete quickly. To ensure the memories are preserved, it’s important that the KMZ format that comprises the open-standard KML file and accompanying files like images, will continue to be supported by future software.

SGTaxi, available from Windows Phone Marketplace
SGTaxi is an amazing app that lets users book a taxi through the local SMS service with an elegant and intuitive interface. The app lets you save your most frequently-used locations and the ability to book a taxi with just one tap. For the privacy advocates out there, there’s also the option to not save your location at all, and manually enter them every time you want a booking. Made a booking that you don’t need any more? You can also cancel them from the app. SGTaxi currently only supports Comfort and SMRT taxi bookings. – Raymond Lau

iChangi, available from iTunes App Store, Android Market and Windows Phone Marketplace
Our Changi airport is no doubt one of the best airports out there; any Singaporean can attest to that. To top it off, Singapore is a small place and visiting the airport just for fun is a viable option. You can search and track flights for both arrivals and departures, and check out the shopping and dining options in the airport. The app also updates itself with latest airport highlights, such as the Angry Birds Finnair flight, or promotions like the ongoing $10 set lunches. General information about the airport, such as inter-terminal transfer, directions to and from the airport, and customs information, are also available in-app. - Raymond Lau

Kayak flight & hotel search, available from iTunes App Store, Android Market and Windows Phone Marketplace
For those not familiar with Kayak, it’s an online service which lets users search and compare the prices of flights, rental cars, hotels, cruises and travel packages across hundreds of travel sites. Booking can also be made directly through the app. Plus, if you fly frequently, Kayak lets you track flights and manage your itinerary right from within the app. And it doesn’t hurt that Kayak is a beautifully designed app with great transition animations. On the downside, the app is not completely localised: prices are displayed in US dollars, for one. - Raymond Lau

Kyoto NouryouYuka, available from Android Market
Sure, you can look up Tripadvisor and find a restaurant in Kyoto, but you’d realise that 1) there are many reviews in Japanese (because it’s popular to domestic travellers as well) and 2) the information is often not up to date.

One app that I turned to when I was in Kyoto earlier this year was the English-based Kyoto NouryouYuka, which I stumbled upon while searching for a localised app to show me some nice places for dinner, complete with the standard information like address, opening hours and perhaps even a nice picture or two of the place.

Besides letting you search up a restaurant quickly, this app also has all the useful buttons that give you one-touch access to call the restaurant and even to call a taxi easily. It really helped us when our taxi driver was lost in one of the side streets of the wonderful Japanese city and could not find a restaurant where we had made a dinner booking at. He could easily just speak to the restaurant staff because we first knew how to call the place with the app!

This wonderful app even lists the restaurants according to the cuisine they serve. There’s Japanese, of course, then “Kyoto” which signifies that an eatery serves the city’s famed cuisine, and even French, for when you feel like something different while on holiday there. – Alfred Siew

Hotels.com, available from Android Market
This is the mobile app to one of my favourite online hotels booking sites. Why do I use Hotels.com? It’s almost always one of the cheapest – along with Expedia.com – and has access to more than 130,000 hotels in 200 countries.

Like many other hotel booking apps, this lets you search for a place to spend the night in and book the hotel right on your smartphone. There are also reviews and ratings from fellow travellers, so at least you get a preview of what others have experienced.

This app is excellent for those who travel without their laptops and use their smartphones to do everything on the go.

I say this especially for folks who often forget to bring hotel vouchers or confirmation letters with them – some places still require that besides your passport. This app lets you access your reservations with your phone so that at least you can bring up a confirmation screen to show to the front desk staff and get checked in quickly. Handy, especially after a long haul flight. – Alfred Siew

The Xperia Active and Live with Walkman are retailing at $498 and $398 respectively without a mobile plan contract. Check today’s papers for telco deals.

So having spent more than two weeks with mine (a 16GB Wifi Galaxy Tab 10.1), here’s my take on it.

If you only have half a minute, my quick answer is it’s better than the iPad2 ONLY if you’re a power user, but you’ll be better off with an iPad 2 if simplicity is what you’re looking for.

And if you have a little more time, here’s why.

The Android 3.1 operating system plus Samsung’s customised user interface on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is the most polished of all Android tabs that I have seen. But like all Android tabs, there is a myriad of options that are customisable. Excellent for the power user who wants to set everything from the intensity of the vibration to the huge variety of virtual keyboard inputs, but this translates to too many options for the user looking for simplicity.

Another common complaint about Android tablets is that they are laggy. Well, they ARE laggy if you put a whole ton of widgets on the “desktop” – imagine your tablet having to update your news, email, Facebook feed, weather, stock quotes etc at the same time.

The iOS on the iPad 2 is smarter in that it doesn’t let you muck around with adding tons of widgets – so you’ll have to switch from one app to another other, but in return, each app can use the full computing power of the tablet and hence when you turn it on, that one single app that appears on your screen works quickly. But on the Galaxy Tab, here’s the solution – don’t clutter the Tab’s desktop with tons of widgets! Keep it nice and clean like this and you’ll find it much nippier.

The Galaxy Tab also isn’t right up there with in terms of sheer computing power. Take a look at the benchmarks from AnTuTu. It even lags behind the Galaxy S II smartphone!

But that’s all a little academic as I haven’t encountered an instance where the tablet choked on any particular processing task.

It does have some lovely built-in apps out of the box, such as its YouTube app and Pulse, a news feed aggregator. And through its email client, it does sync with your work Microsoft Exchange server (even an old Exchange server like my workplace’s Exchange 2003).

But to get the extra mile out of your tablet, here are some of the apps that you might want to load right out of the box:

Dolphin HD browser – wondering how to go to the top of the page while browsing? You can’t simply tap at the top of the screen like in the iPhone/iPad’s Safari. But the Dolphin browser lets you draw an ‘up arrow’ gesture to get there. And that’s just one of the way it beats the stock browser. Oh, and should already know that Adobe Flash Player works on both the stock browser and Dolphin HD.

MoboPlayer – can’t view your usual video files in the stock media player? Try it in MoboPlayer. It should fix it. Full stop.

IMO chat – instant messenger client that connects to almost any IM ecosystem that you can think of. Including Skype and Facebook.

And if you own a Synology NAS like I do, there are a few Synology apps that you’d want to load on your tablet to help you control your NAS – stuff like DS audio, DS finger, DS file and Synodroid.

So am I happy with my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1? Well, yes! And here’s a couple of reasons why.

All I had to do to transfer files between my computer and the tablet was to plug it into the USB port – no drivers, no software, no iTunes to install. I like.

Over here in Hong Kong, I can use Google Voice input in Cantonese to try to search for places where I only know how it sounds (but have no idea how it’s written) on Google Maps.

And Angry Birds is free. Enough said?

That said, I do have my iPhone to keep up with all the happenings in the iOS world.

Salesforce has unveiled a slew of new tools and services to lure developers to its cloud-based platform.

Leading the pack is Database.com, a cloud database that can power apps built for Android and iOS-based devices. These apps can be hosted on Salesforce’s own Force.com or other cloud-based platforms including Amazon Web Services and Windows Azure.

Database.com can also be used to run social media applications using a social data model that holds and manages data for social feeds, user profiles and status updates. Developers can specify followers for database records or request data feeds to display real-time data updates through social APIs.

The database is already used by over 100,000 Salesforce customers and is now generally available to all enterprises. It managed over 36 billion transactions and 13 billion custom objects in the second quarter alone.

A free account will support up to 100,000 records, 50,000 transactions per month, with support for three enterprise users. Additional capacity, transactions and users can be purchased at prices starting from US$10 per month.

“Database.com is the heart of the social enterprise,” said George Hu, Salesforce’s executive vice president for platform, marketing and operations.

“Just like Salesforce is reborn social, databases need to be reborn social,” he added. “That’s why we’ve redesigned our multi-tenant cloud database to be social, mobile and open”.

Salesforce has also beefed up Force.com with a new visual workflow designer that lets companies model and deploy business processes entirely on the cloud.

Users will be able to easily collaborate on business workflows using simple drag-and-drop features. The tool also lets partners and independent software vendors create new capabilities and to integrate with third-party apps.

Also new to Force.com is touch.salesforce.com, a feature that renders Salesforce apps using HTML5 to fit smartphones and tablet displays. What this means is that developers will no longer need to develop mobile versions of their apps to fit smaller screens.

One such app is Seesmic CRM, which lets users search their Salesforce accounts as well as look up and create leads, contacts and sales opportunities on Android phones. On the record, Seesmic says the app does not compete with touch.salesforce.com, but it’s hard to buy that line given the similarity between the two.

To entice the large community of Java developers to create apps for the Salesforce platform, the company announced Java support for Heroku, the app development platform that Salesforce plans to acquire for US$212 million.

Heroku, a Ruby on Rails cloud application platform, was created in 2007 with the aim of making deploying and managing cloud apps as easy as developing them.

The application platform features a workflow and interface designed to mirror how developers work. Because the platform is delivered as a service, there are no virtual machines, software and hardware to manage.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff had said earlier that the Heroku acquisition was driven by calls for the company to embrace open development platforms such as Ruby on Rails and Java.

The vendor’s own Apex programming language, which employs syntax that is similar to Java, had been criticized for being too proprietary.

During a demo at Dreamforce 2011, Salesforce executives showed the ease with which a Java program can be deployed as a Facebook app in a few clicks with Heroku. The program, which allows Facebook users to purchase Harry Potter movie merchandise, was developed by Warner Bros.

In our first weekly round-up: a Rock Band-style Glee app for the iPhone, Summon Auntie to help you look out for carpark attendants and more!

iOS: Tap Tap Glee
Fans of the high school drama currently showing only on SingTel mioTV would not want to miss this app that features all the stars on the Emmy’s Award winning hit series. Besides checking out profiles of cast members, you can also download a free Glee track of the day to be used in the app’s Guitar Hero/Rock Band style rhythmic game.

The ad-supported app also sports links to YouTube videos of music performances in previous seasons plus trailers of the upcoming Glee 3D movie. Die-hard fans may purchase their favourite Glee numbers that cost US$0.99 each through an in-app purchase. Or, earn credits to buy the songs by taking up offers such as liking the Facebook page of mobile app network Tapjoy Games.

iOS: Summon Auntie
This quintessentially Singapore app is the driver’s best friend. It taps on the wisdom of crowds to alert drivers in a specific vicinity that a traffic warden or car park attendant is on the prowl. How it works is simple: lock your location after you’ve parked your car. If another user spots a “summon auntie” near your area, you will receive a notification to make a dash for the car. And if you spot a traffic warden, be nice and alert others too.

How useful this app is depends on the cooperation of everyone on the network. Pranksters and folks who are just trying the app for fun will surely result in false alarms. In any case, we simply love the Singlish that’s used to describe the app’s buttons: Park (Ready to Park, Remember to Tap Hor); Alert (Jialat! Auntie Lai Liao) and Kena (Sian. Kena Already). Kudos to the folks from Replaid for this brilliant app. Now, how about an Android version?

Android: Launcher Pro
We wrote about this in a review of Samsung’s Galaxy SII phone, and this invaluable launcher for Android phones replaces your existing interface with one that is more intuitive, easier to use and infinitely more powerful. With support for multiple docks, different icons and a nifty 3D drawer for icons, this makes Android look so much slicker.

And we’re just talking about the free version here – the paid one supports even more powerful advanced widgets. This is a must-have app for most Android users and in particular, folks who love Samsung’s new Galaxy SII, but can’t stand its cartoony TouchWiz interface.

Android: Squeeze Commander
A perfect tool for those who own a Squeezebox music streaming device at home, this is a music lover’s delight. The 2.99€ app basically lets you take control of your library of songs – stored on a Squeezebox server or PC – and lets you play, forward and even download the songs onto your Android device.

While Apple iOS has its great iPeng software app for Squeezebox, this Android counterpart is just as good – in fact, it’s better than Logitech’s official Squeezebox app in that it’s more powerful and stable. Along with the Squeezebox, excellent control software like Squeeze Commander is the reason why many audiophiles are no longer getting off their couches to change CDs – access to thousands of songs is just a finger swipe away.

iOS and Android: Singpet
Nowadays it’s not enough to be just simply an online merchant. For the best of worlds, and to ensure that you deliver the best service to your customers, you will also need to go onto mobile platforms.

An example of this is Singpet, an online pet store in Singapore who just launched their free Android Singpet app recently.

Basically, this app allows pet owners to buy pet supplies and accessories whilst on the go. One nifty time saver is the bar code scanning function. Scan the bar code of pet supplies using your phone’s camera, and this will automatically recognize the product and put it into the shopping cart.

Besides this, the app also stores old invoices, preferences and prior choices, making it easy to place and manage orders.

SGTransport
An absolute must-have for frequent travellers in Singapore, this free app centralises all transport information into one easy-to-use app. Check bus arrival timings, bus routes, and pin your favourites for quick access. Do you drive instead of take public transport? SGTransport also incorporates traffic information like street cameras, and traffic news.

In addition, the app taps on your Windows Phone’s GPS to help you discover nearby bus stops and other amenities, including petrol stations, car parks, and ATMs. And with the ability to set Bing’s picture of the day as the app’s background, every day is a brand new commute.

Ilomilo
If I could pick just one Xbox Live game to purchase on Windows Phone 7, I would pick the S$6.99 ilomilo. This is an old-ish game, but an extremely fun and challenging game. Ilo and Milo, two close friends who like to play together, always seem to get lost. Your goal is to help them navigate a three-dimensional puzzle and reunite.

It sounds easier than it really is, due mainly to the dizzying array of obstacles and routes. Walk straight, sideways, upside down, and all over the place trying to find a way from one end of the puzzle to the other, and get an enormous sense of satisfaction when you finally help ilo and milo get together again.