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!

The inaugural Youth Olympic Games, or YOG for short, is running in Singapore this year from 14th to 26th August.

As part of the worldwide promotion to create buzz around the event, the Singapore Youth Olympic Games Organising Committee (SYOGOC), together with the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), is creating a virtual world called Singapore 2010 Odyssey.

Said RADM(NS) Ronnie Tay, Chief Executive Officer of IDA at the official launch on Saturday 6th March: “The Singapore 2010 Odyssey is a unique virtual world platform offering many possibilities for learning, social networking and entertainment, as it reaches out to the youths from all over the world in a fun and interactive way. The development of the 3D virtual world is testimony to Singapore’s infocomm capabilities in innovatively harnessing digital media technologies to support major events like the Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games.”

Find the Odyssey at www.singapore2010.sg/o

Of course, what’s more important is the content of this virtual world. I had a preview of the world last Wednesday at a media/blogger session (the news was embargoed till today) but to see how it really was working out, I decided to give it a real life test.

Wireless@SG login screen - say goodbye to it

Hard to log in. Keep getting disconnected.

If those problems have kept you from surfing the Web with Wireless@SG, you’ll be happy to hear that the free Wi-Fi hotspot service islandwide is now going to be a breeze to use.

With a new secure sign-on system announced today, you will only need to sign in once on your PC or phone and never have to do it again when you next visit a Wireless@SG hotspot.

NETS, the Singapore electronic payment vendor, just launched their iNETS mobile service, in which you can pay your bills via your mobile phone in Singapore.

The story was covered by quite a few of the main papers in Singapore, like the Straits Times, Today, and My Paper, as this story broke yesterday.

What struck me when I read the story in the Straits Times is that the iNETS mobile payment platform supports “all mobile phones save the iPhone and the Android platform”.

When I read this, I almost fell out of my chair thinking: Errr, aren’t these some of the more popular platforms? And Android phones will definitely be set to grow in the market this year, with the Google Nexus One, Samsung Galaxy Spica, and Motorola Dext already out since February with more to come.

Robot butler at Techfest '09

Singapore does do interesting infotech R&D. But it doesn’t get the publicity it deserves, which is such a waste.

Take for example the recent Techfest ‘09, which was held at Fusionpolis last week from October 8th to 9th. Techfest, which A*Star I2R (Institute of Infocomm Research) started in 2005, is an open-to-public exhibition showcase of emerging technology research in Singapore. A*Star, for those of our readers who are not familiar with the brand, is a government institution dedicated to charting Singapore’s science and technology future.

Now A*Star has interesting research projects that make for great tech stories, but Techfest ‘09 was a bland colourless event. It’s open to the public, but most of the attendees were government folks, and it felt as if many exhibitors — all A*Star folks — were there more because they were “arrowed” into showcasing their work instead of wanting to show off their work to a good audience.

Communic Asia has been a busy week, with IDA press updates on the iN2015 rollout, extension of wireless@SG for another three years (yay!), and launches of phones by both Sony Ericsson (Satio) and Samsung (Jet).

But sometimes just walking the showfloor can uncover interesting technology gems and surprises, and I came across some cool stuff at Broadcast Asia 2009, a sister event to Communic Asia held concurrently at Expo. At the Singapore pavilion at Broadcast Asia in Hall 8, I came across the 3M Vikuiti rear projection film technology being distributed by Singaporean firm GG Alliance.

3M Vikuiti film on display

What you’re seeing is a video being projected on a glass panel that has the 3M Vikuiti film stuck to it, a thin film layer (about 0.3mm) that can be cut to any shape and stuck to any glass panel from the inside. The projection is behind the glass panel (not in front as I originally thought), and the film is easy to both apply (self-adhesive) and remove.

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?

SuperModelMe.tv

Think of SuperModelMe.tv as another “America’s Next Top Model” type of show.

Except that it is set in Asia, the episodes of this reality series are available only online, and it is a homegrown experiment by Singapore-based multimedia production agency Refinery Media and Exploit Technologies (subsidiary of government linked company A*STAR).

Set to debut about a month from now on 16th June 2009, SuperModelme.tv is a twice-weekly, 20-episode online model search that will document the trials of ten aspiring models from Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, Thailand, Philippines and India. They will compete for a grand prize of S$10,000, with first and second runner up getting S$5,000 and S$4,000 respectively.

Hosted by top local Singapore model Charmaine Harn, the show doesn’t veer from established reality show formats. The models need to impress the resident judges or get voted out, and some judges name-dropped at the swanky announcement event today include fashion photographer Geoff Ang, fashion designer Frederick Lee and celebrity hairstylist David Gan.

The first question a fellow hack at the event said to me when I asked him for his opinion was: “Is this going to be like another S-factor?”

At yesterday’s Lotus Singapore 2009 — part of a series of regional roadshows that IBM Lotus is holding in Asia Pacific — the key theme emphasized throughout the conference was on collaboration.

I was expecting more updates on IBM Lotus’ cloud computing platform — LotusLive — which was launched earlier this year in January, but the IBM folks didn’t have much to say on this. I wrote about this when it was first unveiled.

There’s little to add to what I haven’t said already, except that LotusLive is one of many such platforms in the market all looking to ride the next big tech wave. All the big software giants — e.g. Microsoft Azure and Google App Engine — are looking at the social collaboration/cloud computing space.

Who will win out? It’s anybody’s guess, but no one would discount behemoth Big Blue with their clout.

It’s that time of the year again when the biggest consumer computer show — IT Show ‘09 — hits Singapore.

Running from March 12th to 15th (today to this Sunday), the IT Show takes up floors one to six of the Suntec convention centre. The show opens daily at 12pm and ends at 9pm during this four-day period.

IT Show is really huge this year. All three Singapore telcos have big booths. M1 and SingTel are on floor 2, and StarHub is on floor 3. Floor 4 is the main hall with all the big consumer brands like HP, Canon and Samsung, whilst floor 6 hosts all the small chapalang IT gadgets vendors, from computer games to memory cards to GPS gadgets.

It might be a down economy, but it sure didn’t seem like it as the place was thronged with people this morning when I went. In certain places — especially on the fourth floor near the popular booths — you will get stuck in a human traffic jam trying to squeeze past the milling crowd. This weekend will be a nightmare to find parking if you’re visiting the show, so public transport is advised.

IT Show'09 crowd at one of the booth intersections. Photo doesn't do justice to the crowd!