Going on the Internet is so important to its wired Gen Y users today that they rate it as something as essential and basic as air, food, water and shelter, according to a report released late last week.
A third of a group of about 2,800 youths told a survey conducted by networking vendor Cisco earlier this year that they considered the Internet as important as some of the most basic needs for survival. More than half of them said they could not live without the Internet, citing it as something that was “integral” to their everyday lives. …
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. …
Techgoondu had the chance to be at unConference 2009 held yesterday at the Biopolis, thanks to the kind folks at e27 who had put together an excellent program that brought together some of the top forward-thinkers in the region. Here’s a recap of what I felt were the highlights of the event:
Panel discussion: Innovation in Asia and where is it heading? …
Machinima. Virtual worlds. Next generation human computer interfaces.
Bruce Branit’s nine minute World Builder short film is poignant, brilliant and beautiful. A work of art that fires on all cylinders — concept, storytelling, music.
If you’re a sci-fi fan or computer geek, it’s definitely worth a look. Super cool.
The story of how World Builder became a viral internet video is also pretty interesting. According to this excellent story on NewTeeVee by Wagner James Au, Bruce sent out his video last year to various film festival circuits, but it drew little attention.
Dejected, he put it up on the internet as a portfolio, and a high quality video was put on both Vimeo and YouTube about a month ago. Within days it became a viral hit and spread via word-of-mouth and blogs (like this one here!). It is still drawing traction, as the Viral Video Charts can attest.
Yes. you heard it right. Even if you are playing a single player campaign or a 1vs1 skirmish against the computer. You need to first launch Steam and log in to Steam for the game to even launch. And this is not just for initial activation, but for subsequent plays. So when I tried to run the game without logging into Steam, nothing happens at all. The game doesn’t even launch. I log into Steam and the game loads.
It’s quite obvious what these guys are trying to do – they are trying to fight piracy. But they end up alienating the users. I have played RTS since the first Dune 2, and I have never had to go online to fight against the computer. In fact, I have never played a PC game that requires me to do this, unless it is an MMOG like World Of Warcraft.
I understand that piracy is really killing the PC business, but in an environment where console games are outselling PC games (revenues for console games are about 8x more than PC games worldwide) and beating the shit out of them, you don’t want to make you legitimate PC gamers angry.
And what about selling to the countries without much of a Net penetration? Or have they given up on these countries altogether?
Update: Some forumers are asking if this will work if Steam is running in offline mode. I will try that tonight. Another issue is whether you need to have a Windows Live account logged-in to play. Will also test that tonight. But having played this game for about 6 hours, I do like it a lot.
A friend asked me about this, so I thought it’s good to share in a post.
You’ll need an audio editor/recorder. One that I highly recommend is the open source software Audacity, available for Windows, Mac and Linux.
It’s pretty easy to use. Open a new project. Just click the record button when the music is playing, and stop the record when the music ends. If you want higher quality, just increase the sampling rate (default is 44.1Mhz). Export to Wav, mp3 or org vorbis when done.
Two tips that might help:
Make sure that your line in settings are turned on and not muted. For Windows, this option can be found under My Computer->Control Panel->Sounds and Audio Device->Device Volume. Otherwise you might be wondering why there is no line input.
To record in stereo (mono is default in Audacity), go to Edit->Preferences. Change the channels from 1(mono) to 2(stereo). For an FAQ for Audacity, you can find it here.
Besides YouTube, audio recorders like Audacity are useful for recording snippets from podcasts and streamed internet radio, especially for niche indie content.
In fact, I find myself sampling and converting to mp3 a lot more indie stuff nowadays as the internet makes it so easy to find great and unique music. Here’s a sample:
Things so Singaporean, by Judith d’Silva and Ann Hussein (YouTube)
Love Song for Singapore, by Mr Brown and folks (Mr Brown Show)
I’ll stick my neck out and make a prediction: in the future we won’t need to own digital copies of mp3s, let alone CDs.
Not when we can pull music off the virtual cloud that is the Internet.
Music is one big area that is exploding in the new social Web 2.0. You can discover, search, and share playlists on many music websites out there, and never have to own a single copy of any song.
It feels like Napster days all over again. But far more than filesharing platforms or basic internet streamed radio, these Web 2.0 sites – and there are many of them out there – allow you interesting ways to find and play music.
I hardly listen to my own mp3s nowadays except when I’m on the move. When I’m home doing work, I’m typically listening to one of these sites below:
A throng of Santas running down the usually sleepy streets of costal Paignton in Devon, England.
Overcompensating Christmas trees, snow in the the heart of the desert and theme park living in Dubai.
All these and more at fortylove.tv, a travelogue of roads less trodden by two friends criss-crossing continents. At fortylove.tv, two globe-trotting babes share three minute postcard videos of their travels with each other, and also with the wider web world.
It is no surprise really, for those of us not asleep at the wheel, that newspapers are under major threat.
According to this insightful December 9th 2008 press release by market research firm ZenithOptimedia, ad spend on the Internet is scheduled to rise from 10.3% in 2008 to 15.6% in 2011.
Now, if there is an increase in the pie for the internet slice, something else must go down. And this comes mostly at the newspapers expense: from 25.4% in 2008 to 21.2% in 2011.
In terms of numbers, the Internet ad market will rise from around US$50 billion in 2008 to US$84.3 billion in 2011, whilst the newspapers ad market will decrease from US$123 billion in 2008 to about US$115 billion in 2011.
Another piece of interesting news is that, due to the credit crisis, the global ad market will contract (-0.2%) in 2009, with most of the decline in US (-6.7%) and Europe (-1.0%).
Singapore government releases more data to public, aims for “social innovation”
Goondu DIY: sourcing, storing and managing your digital music
Microsoft Surface Pro to cost from S$1,198 in Singapore
Four affordable – yet fast – ultrabooks for about S$1,500
Nokia Lumia 925 goes metallic, still has great camera
