01. Human Japanese

Learn Japanese for under $10
Human Japanese is the most expensive app I’ve ever purchased and it is worth every single penny. The interface is absolutely gorgeous and very intuitive. The lessons are easy to understand and are interactive with audio and quizzes. Although, it is a little bit unnecessarily wordy. 9.99 USD might sound expensive for an app but think about it this way: can you buy a kick-ass beginners Japanese language textbook for 9.99 USD? Nope, didn’t so.

Excerpt from the Hiragana chapter

Vocab Quiz

02. Akinator

Impress your friends with your own genie
Akinator is a mystical genie who can guess who you’re thinking about just by asking a few questions. There’s a free web version at akinator.com so I’m not sure if I would pay USD 1.99 to upgrade from the lite version, which gives users 5 tries. Nevertheless, a very cool app to kill time and impress your friends with.

Question asking stage on the Akinator

Search result on the Akinator

If you manage to defeat the Akinator with an impossible-to-guess character, this is what the genie looks like. (In case you’re wondering, I was thinking about 藤田 玲司 Fujita Reiji, the protagonist from an obscure seinen anime called Gallery Fake.)

03. Instafetch

Every commuter’s best friend
I take the subway to work and back everyday. Unfortunately, the data connection on my subway line is fairly slow. So Instafetch has been very useful. I just save articles that are usually too long to read during my work breaks to Instapaper.com. Instafetch will then sync with Instapaper and download the article content. While the app’s got a fairly basic UI, the text is presented in a very readable serif font a la the New York Times app.

Instafetch Dashboard

Downloaded Article from Instafetch

04. Foodspotting

Foursquare for foodies
This app detects your location and shows you food and beverages that other users have recommended in the vicinity. I’m usually not a fan of location-based apps (because I have my doubts on check-ins) but this is actually pretty nifty. Pity the app is still fairly bare bone and has some stability issues. Nevertheless, there’s tremendous potential for this app to flourish — especially in a country full of mad foodies like Singapore.

05. Package Buddy

Obsessively track your online shopping hauls
While the enigma of not knowing when your package will arrive is exciting for some, control freaks like me prefer to know exactly where the fruits of my online shopping spree has been and when it’ll arrive. This app saves me a lot obsessive refreshing on the unfortunate courier’s website. Package Buddy can be set to auto update and notify you on your packages’ latest whereabouts.

Well, I hope you found some interesting apps in this entry. I know I’m terrible at keeping my blog updated, but I do hope to make this a series of entries.

So please do share your favorite apps in the comments!

If you’re an app developer, feel free to email me with your product details. It I think it’s great, I’ll be sure to give it the coverage it deserves!

Related posts:

1. Taking Screenshots on the Android-powered Nexus S
2. Which Part of the World Should I Live In?
3. Chinese Condoms and Favorite Animal

This is the W2486L. As with many LG products, the design is very sleek.

What I Like About the LG W2486L Monitor

Aside from its its looks, here are few things that make this monitor stand out from the usual monitors.

Slim and Lightweight

It’s very, very slim. I have a very narrow table and it doesn’t take up much space at all. Here’s a size comparison with my Macbook.

Ambient light sensor

It’s got a light sensor that changes the brightness of the screen according the brightness of your room. (Thanks Justin for pointing it out!) This is great for someone who frequently alternates between light sources like me. I switch between fluorescent and accent lights quite a bit.

Nifty software and menu

For me the selling point is its extensive menu and software, the forteManager. Aside from the usual brightness and color controls, the LG W2486L menu comes built-in with nifty features like photo effects and cinema mode.

With photo effects, you could set the monitor display in Gaussian Blur, Sepia, and Black & White. Here’s a photo of the W2486L in Black & White Mode next to a book that I’ve currently reading, just so you know I didn’t Photoshop it.

I think photo effects is a great feature for content creators like designers, photographers and video producers. Imagine viewing your movie, photos or your logo designs in black and white with just a touch of a button on your monitor. No more need for messy adjustments on Photoshop or Final Cut Pro!

For the movie buffs and YouTube addicts, the menu also comes with a special cinema mode, which blacks out the rest of the window so you could focus on the movie.

As for the forteManager, it comes with a slew of calibration tools to make sure the monitor display colors as correctly as possible. I’m very particular about good color reproduction, so this is a great software to have.

What I Didn’t Like About the LG W2486L Monitor

As always, there were a few things that I wished could have been done better.

Touch menu buttons

I think this could be my personal bias, but I don’t really like touch buttons because I need to have some sort of feedback when I press something. I also have very a bad habit of surfing in dim light, so I had to struggle to find the right menu buttons.

Fixed viewing angle

I don’t really know the right phrase for this but I couldn’t change the vertical angle of the monitor. I have a habit of slouching after surfing the web for too long and this monitor just wouldn’t let me slouch! I had to perpetually sit straight because I couldn’t move the monitor vertically. Perhaps this is not such a bad thing after all, since I probably have very good posture now. Hahaha!

Manual resolution and color adjustments needed

I think this could be just my machines or my tech noobness, but I had to make manual resolution and color adjustments when I hooked up the W2486L with my netbook and Macbook. My machines somehow couldn’t automatically detect the right resolution to display on the monitor. And when it was hooked to my netbook, the color reproduction just wasn’t quite… there. With that said, installing forteManager did fix that.

No forteManager for the Mac

Unfortunately, the packaged software is not compatible with the Mac. I would’ve liked to see how the color calibration would work with my Macbook. Perhaps I could’ve produced some of the best colors ever! Nevertheless, the built-in menu can do a majority of what the software does. So the nifty features like cinema mode and photo effects can be still be applied to the Mac.

Anime on the LG W2486L Monitor

This is totally random but I couldn’t resist taking this shot. It’s my favorite anime of 2009, Kemono no Souja Erin on the LG W2486L. It’s like a mini TV!

So anyway, I hope you find this review useful. If you have any questions, do drop me a comment and I will try to answer as best as I can.

Related posts:

1. User Review: Samsung N310 Netbook
2. TopHostingCenter Review – After 1 Year of Service

1) ASUS 1005 HA for its long battery life
2) MSI Wind U100 Plus for its affordable price tag.
3) Acer Aspire One D250 for having both Windows and Android OSes.
4) Toshiba Mini NB205 for its positive reviews.
5) HP Mini 311 for its ergonomic keyboard.

But when I arrived at the fair, I realized I made a grave mistake. Netbooks aren’t really about specs, they’re about usability. I was disappointed with my “to consider” list. Most of them just didn’t feel right. Some had difficult keyboards, others felt like over sized toys. I was very reluctant to part with my money… until I saw the Samsung N310.

It was love at first touch.

Why I Love the Samsung N310

Keyboard: The Samsung N310 has a Mac-like or chiclet keyboard. And as a Macbook user, I can type with my eyes closed and make no mistakes on the N310. I also really appreciate the full-sized “Tab” button because I fill in quite a bit of forms and like to change windows quickly.

Texture: The shell of the Samsung N310 is covered by this rubbery material reminiscent of those exorbitantly-priced Japanese mechanical pencils. I think they call those things soft grip. The soft grip just makes me want to molest the netbook.

Design: It’s minimalistic and there’s something very Japanese about it… like my blog. (Yes, I’m aware Samsung is Korean.) Upon further research, I learned that the Samsung N310 is designed by Naoto Fukasawa – the dude who designed everything from indestructible paper bags to MUJI’s CD player. So perhaps that’s why there was that certain Japanese-ness to it.

Battery Life: Officially, the website says it’ll run 9 hours with a 6-cell 8850 mAh battery. It’s actually not too far from the truth. My N310 hasn’t gotten a chance to run out of juice yet so I can’t say for certain. However, I did run it for 4.5 hours on Normal battery mode with USB broadband on mobile modem on, iTunes playing, Google Chrome with 3 tabs running, Google Talk and Windows Live Messenger with 3 windows open – and my battery meter still read “48% battery life left; 3.8 hours left”!

Sound: The audio is crisp, clear and very, very loud. And I hate to admit this, but it’s louder than my Macbook’s speakers.

But of course, no product is ever perfect. Over 2 weeks of use, I discovered a few things that annoyed me but nothing severe enough to make me regret my buy.

Why the Samsung N310 annoys me

Heat: It gets a little warm on the left side. Of course, it depends on the surface I place it on. On tables, it doesn’t seem to get that warm that quickly or easily – unless I’m doing something resource intensive. But on softer surfaces like beds, pillows or even on my lap, it does get warm fairly quickly.

Performance: Compared to my friend’s Toshiba NB205, the Samsung N310 on Normal battery mode performs much slower at multimedia tasks like Facebook flash games and webcam chats. (Our specs are the same, except that hers runs on Windows 7 Starter and mine on Windows XP.) But when the N310 runs on Max Performance mode, it was on par with the NB205.

Mouse Trackpad: The touchpad is less responsive than the Mac’s, so I have to tap a little harder to click. I’m also not a fan of the mouse button. Windows machines shouldn’t have one button. With right-click, it just doesn’t make sense.

Logo Design That is one seriously gigantic Samsung logo. Worst thing is, it’s embossed so I can’t cover it with a sticker. Besides, stickers will destroy its beautiful soft grip skin. Argh!

Price

After some bargaining with a very knowledgeable salesperson, I bought the Samsung N310 for S$649 (approx USD $450) with a 2GB RAM upgrade (plus installation) and a laundry list of freebies including:

• External DVD writer
• 2-year extended warranty
• Antivirus software
• 4GB Sandisk Cruzer
• Laptop cooler
• Mouse
• Laptop cleaner

Tech Reviews of the Samsung N310

I’m only a poseur geek, so my review is probably not comprehensive enough for the true geeks. Just shimmy over to the real geeks’ reviews here if this isn’t what you’re looking for:

• CNET’s Review
• Laptop Mag’s Review
• Tech65′s Review

Dear readers, do you own a netbook? If so, which one? If don’t own one, would you consider buying one? Why or why not?

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For those who are new to Nanyate?!, here’s some background info:

In December 2007, I took a giant leap of faith signing up with a newly-established company TopHostingCenter. They had just released the original Rudolf plan, which costs 95$ for lifetime hosting with 3 terabyte monthly bandwidth and 250 gigabyte space. I thought it was simply too good to be true. I mean, it had to be a) a scam, or b) doomed to failure within months, right? Wrong. It’s been a year and no such thing has happened.

Anyway, here’s how they fare after 1 year of service.

TopHostingCenter Review

Support Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

THC’s support remains impeccable! They still respond just as quickly as they did a year ago. I had quite a fiasco with some WordPress plugin updates, and the support staff not only helped me resolved my issue, but also offered to re-install my WordPress for FREE (even though script installation is usually a paid service).

Speed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I do recall a few weeks when the page loads were significantly slower. It did take a while, but THC ultimately fixed the issue by upgrading the servers. From experience, many start-ups don’t even bother addressing your complaints, let alone investing in new hardware to keep their low value customers happy. So for that, kudos to THC.

Uptime Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

The downtime has been intolerable recently; and I PMS more frequently than I blog. So for someone like me to notice and bothered by the downtimes is quite problematic. And please don’t even get me started about how the recent database downtime affected my Technorati rankings. Totally not cool.

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

TopHostingCenter is still doing a pretty good job considering the amount I paid for my hosting. I still strongly recommend them to those interested in dedicated servers. As for shared hosting, and especially of the Rudolf variety, I’d only recommend them for the extremely budget conscious and those first timers who just want to play around with a website. I’d imagine the occasional speed lag and downtime is quite harmless to this crowd – especially since they have no money, rankings or readership to lose. What’s most important for them is support. They need to have that round-the-clock support to help them solve their noobie woes, along the lines of “what’s this control panel thing”. And this is precisely what THC offers for an amazing price.

The great news is that the Rudolf plan is back with a vengeance, although it’s not exactly the same as the one I’m on. It now comes in two price denominations: a mini plan for $48 and a higher-end plan for $148. Yes, and that’s all you pay for as long as THC stays in business.

Should I move to a new host?

With that said, I have been thinking about moving Nanyate?! to a new host. I will still keep my other domains at TopHostingCenter, but I really cannot tolerate anymore downtime for nanyate.com. Here’s why:

I originally started Nanyate?! as a low profile personal blog. Just a humble place where I write my daily musings and tinker with WordPress for an audience of… I don’t know.. 10? So downtimes wouldn’t have been a problem. But over the past year, it grew beyond my expectations. I now have 70+ subscribers (100+ when I bitched about Apple), regular commenters, online and offline friends, and even the occasionally media query to answer to. Come to think of it, even my job has become contingent upon this blog.

Nanyate?! simply has too many stakeholders now, so I can’t afford to have anymore downtimes – at least not ones that last few hours/days.

Requirements for My Next Web Host

Extremely fast servers and reliable uptime, but won’t cost me much. I don’t need 100s of gigabytes of bandwidth and space, since nanyate.com isn’t exactly resource-intensive. And I only get stumbled/dugg once a few months.

Some Hosts I’m Considering

Of course there are the tried and tested ones like HostGator, Dreamhost and 1and1. But where’s the adventure of going mainstream, when I am presented with the perfect opportunity to test the startups.

• Geek Storage: Their servers are tuned for performance and reliability and runs on Litespeed, which processes PHP 50% more efficiently than traditional Apache servers. Their pre-sales support has been very helpful as well! Almost every review I read about them has been positive – with a few exceptions complaining about that one major hard drive failure that occurred last year. And okay, I admit it. I’m a sucker for beautiful web design. Geek Storage’s layout is too cute. It’s hard to say no to that!
• Web Host Giant: Every review I’ve read about them has been positive. They are running Plesk, which I’ve never used before, so that’s kinda enticing since I’d like to have working knowledge of as many control panels as possible. But I’m not keen on the unlimited bandwidth bit, since that’s quite susceptible to downtimes. Also, their parent company, WebIntellects isn’t receiving good reviews.

So should I move Nanyate.com to a new host? Do you have any recommendations (below 4USD per month)? How was your experience with GeekStorage or WebHostGiant?

Related posts:

1. Host Review: TopHostingCenter
2. Review for My Host, TopHostingCenter.Com
3. Happy 1 Year, Nanyate.com!

Last week, your Egg D’vine sandwich declared war on me. The sandwich suffered severe casualties with its innards splattered everywhere – the table, the wall and even on my face. This war could have been easily avoided, if only you had a better understanding of knife politics.

I ordered a baguette with egg mayo topping; and I was served with the usual utensils – a soup spoon, a fork and a table knife. I hope you already see the problem in my first sentence. I said, baguette and then a table knife.

That’s right. A table knife. Table knives aren’t meant to cut breads like baguettes. That’s the reason why the bread knife was invented in the first place.

I know eating sandwiches with tableware is your idea of having your customers look more posh and well-mannered – as opposed to the casual American burger dining etiquette. However, proper utensils should be used, lest your customer would end up looking like a 5 year old with the table manners of a canine.

Despite my hardships in battle, I have emerged the victor and have successfully annihilated my opponent. As such, I now have the right to demand for reparation and restoration costs. Until they are honored, I am officially calling a truce with you.

• Change Your Knives – I have no qualms with eating sandwiches the posh way. I just prefer to have my food subjugate to me without waging war – as most humans would expect today.
• Offer an Egg D’vine Croissant – All this wouldn’t have occurred, if your bistro had croissants available in the first place, as it was my original order. So I demand a free croissant for my hardship.
• Change Your Pronunciation – Also, croissant is pronounced as “kru-wah-sont” not “croy-zend”. You should teach your staff to pronounce some basic French words, lest they sound unlearned, which I am sure, is not what a French bistro is trying to achieve.

I sincerely await your response.

Yours truly,
Ivy “I just wanted to have a good dinner with Delifrance’s awesome egg mayo sandwich, must it be that difficult?” T.

—-

Readers, have you ever had food wage war on you?

NB: Although this entry is expressed with satire, the experience is very real. Please do not overlook that, Delifrance.

Related posts:

1. Singapore and Cellphones
2. FORMULA 1 Singapore Grand Prix

A new theme at Nanyate?! will always be accompanied with some awesome new plugins. So here are the chosen ones.

1. @Reply with Comment Preview Plugin

Since I wanted to keep this design clean, I have reluctantly removed WordPress Thread Comments and WP Paged Comments. It is now replaced with a Twitter-esque comment system, where you place @name to reply to comments. This plugin allows you to display the comment you’re replying to when you hover the @name. To use it on Nanyate?!, click on “respond to this comment” in the comment box you want to reply to. The HTML code that displays the @name will then be transposed in the comment text area.

I personally don’t think that this plugin’s potential is fully maximized, since it is not very friendly to those who have no knowledge of HTML. I would much prefer to see something like [@name] than a line of HTML code. (Plugin author Marcus Himmel, you hear me?) Also, the CSS and the XHTML are neither easily accessible nor valid for those who those customizing Web Standards Nazis. With all that said, it’s still an innovative plugin that might catch on in the near future – provided that it is improved upon.

2. WordPress Mobile Plugin

With the advent of iPhone, HTC Dream and other mainstream internet browsing-centric phones, I think mobile web surfing will be the next big thing in the very near future, and likely the norm 2 – 3 years. So, it’s best to start catering to them now!

This plugin turns your site design into a mobile-friendly one, when it detects a reader is browsing from his or her phone. The CSS is fully customizable. In return, the author requests you put a small Google Mobile or Admob ad, and demands a small share of the revenue. Alternatively, you can pay the author 25 Euros to remove all advertising.

There are alternatives out there, but most of them route to another URL and place ads on them. Until a fully free mobile plugin is released, I think this plugin is a pretty good deal.

3. Author Highlight Comments (not a plugin)

I wanted better control of my comment highlights, so I dug out a couple links from my rusting favorites folder “design resource”, and lookey what I found: Matt Cutt’s Highlight Author Comments

It’s better than the plugin Highlight Author Comments, which does not allow for flexible CSS-styling. And better than most other tutorials that determines the author based on email, which would clearly be very vulnerable to impersonations. Matt Cutt’s tutorial bypasses all that by using the WordPress admin ID to determine the author. So unless the impersonator-to-be knows your password, you’re pretty safe.

Embarassing story: it took me a few hours to get this code working because I am PHP-stupid, and got so overwhelmed by the new code that I was completely oblivious to the error in my CSS. Long and boring story. Basically, it was my CSS that caused the problem, not the PHP.

Anyway, if you’re as PHP-stupid as I am, or afraid of tweaking your comments.php, please read this excellent step-by-step guide by Colin King; just don’t follow the author highlight tutorial given. Alternatively, feel free to ask this PHP-stupid web enthusiast, if you run into any trouble. Just leave me a comment or send me an e-mail.

Hope you found this WordPress plugins review useful!

Thank You, Commenters!

Lastly, I’d like to thank those provided feedback to my layout. Theme Torii is now in Beta release. I’ve made the header marginally smaller, and changed the footer. Theme Torii now works on the following browsers: Firefox 3, Opera, Internet Explorer 6 + 7, Safari and Google Chrome.

Related posts:

1. New WordPress Plugins!
2. New Theme Finalized, New Plugins & Code
3. Problematic WordPress Upgrade

That’s all I’m hearing right now.

My company recently sent me to the Singapore F1 Grand Prix this week to be a receptionist/sales person at the Media Centre. It’s an invaluable addition to my resume, although the hours long and the work tedious. It’s a wonderful opportunity to be part of history in the making, as this is the first F1 night race in the world, and the first street race in a very long time.

Ferrari Engineers; View from the Media Centre

I’ve never really been a fan of motorsports racing, but I do have some knowledge about it – thanks to the anime Capeta. Capeta tracks the life of a poor boy striving to make it big in the rich world of motorsports. Everything from the hardships of maintainence, to the hardships of driving round a track, and the hardships of transiting from go-karts to race cars is shown in great detail.

Protagonist: Taira Capeta

The drawing isn’t that great, and the story is very similar to Major (baseball manga from the early 90s). However, just like all sport animes,  you will learn a lot about the sport simply just by watching. So, I recommend Capeta to all those F1 fans, new F1 fans and girlfriends of F1 fans. It’s an interesting perspective on an interesting sport.

And you’ll never know when you’ll be suddenly asked to work at the F1 circuit.

Related posts:

1. Singapore and Cellphones

Having just returned from a technology unsavvy country such as Canada, I wasn’t going to spend too much money on something I rarely use. But as much as I hate to admit, I’m quite the gadget enthusiast. Looks don’t matter too much. For me, the more functions the phone has, the more bang for my buck. So, I looked hard for a smartphone with wi-fi access and a QWERTY keyboard. The pool of the latest phones quickly narrowed down to two: Sony Ericsson P1 and HTC S730.

Sony Ericsson’s P1 QWERTY felt strange to the touch. HTC S730 lacked a touch screen. But I ultimately let ergonomics win me over and chose the HTC S730.

HTC S730 Review

So I’ve been using the HTC S730 for about a week now. The features are endless so I can’t say I know how to fully operate the phone but I’d say I’m an intermediate-advanced user. I’m not a professional phone review, so I won’t go into meticulous details. Thought I’d just make list of pros and cons that anyone considering to buy this should know and then wrap it with my concluding opinion.

Pros

• Latest connectivity: 3.5G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HSPA and Internet Sharing.
• Two Good Cameras: Main camera has 2 Megapixels. Secondary VGA camera for self-camwhoring. No flash but both capture light very well!
• Useful functions: Microsoft Office, QWERTY Keyboard, MSN Messenger, Adobe Reader, RSS Aggregator and Flash Lite Player.
• Microsoft Windows Mobile is great for downloading many free programs like Skype on the phone.

Cons

• Runs on Windows Mobile: Also means that it’s slow and inefficient in starting up both the phone and applications.
• Badly-designed menus and confirmations: The developer who programmed the menu and the commands should really be shot. Everything is counter-intuitive. For example, I would expect that when I transfer SIM contacts to the phone, I’d find it under the Contacts menu or possibly under Settings. But no, the developer had to put it in an application called SIM Manager filed under a Folder called Expert – as if transferring contacts is an advanced use.
• Badly-design file explorer: The file explorer is designed to mirror normal PC Windows. It’s very functional on a computer but quite a drag on a phone. I don’t want to be looking through phone system files while searching for a file I just sent from my computer. It’s very dangerous since I could accidentally delete something vital for phone operations.

Final Verdict

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

HTC clearly did a good job taking care of the ergonomics and design. The keyboard and keypad are both fairly comfortable to use – though I would have preferred the keyboard keys to be slightly larger. The camera is amazing for a 2 megapixel. Photos are sharp, colors are bright even in poor light and without a flash. Battery is decent; it lasted about two days with some bluetooth, wi-fi and 30 mins of phone calls. The matte gray finish looks quite elegant and professional. Definitely something you could bring to the office and look good in.

The biggest problem is with its operating system. Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 needs to go back to the drawing board. It’s slow, cumbersome and can barely sustain itself in a phone with 256MB ROM + 64MB RAM. The menus are a pain to use. Even for a gadget geek like me, I had to refer to the instructions manual to do some very basic things like deleting contacts.

With all that said, this is an amazing smartphone for a low price. To be precise, I got it FREE for a 2 year contract. I’d pay a few hundred for this, if I had to. This is a Blackberry and more. It’s designed for the business user, but after holding a few MSN conversations with it and checking my RSS subscriptions on it, I’d say it can definitely be used for leisure too!

Hope you enjoyed this haphazard review. Will sweep for grammatical and spelling errors tomorrow morning. I may also add a few camera samples. I’m too sleepy now. Sorry!

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