Pasar malam in Trafalgar Square

This Friday Trafalgar Square will host a traditional Malaysia night market (Pasar Malam). The event starts from 3pm to 10pm and Malaysia Kitchen has promised that there would be about 20 Malaysian restaurants with stalls serving up delicious food for Londoners to sample.

If you are planning to attend I suggest to sample the beef rendang, satay (hopefully they have them properly grilled unlike the tacky oven based stuff they serve in London-based Thai restaurants) and laksa. There will also be stalls selling authentic ingredients like spices and pastes.

I will be there with some mates, hopefully throughout the evening. If you want to meet up @ on twitter.

Three UK meetup

Last Thursday I was invited to meet the new Three 'social media' team. If you haven't heard, Three has decided to create a new in-house team. While it was sad not being able to work with Michelle again, at least not within Three, the new team are raring to get into business with forming a relationship with bloggers. And what better way to break the ice than having a meetup! Having said that, we hope they will extend this relationship to you loyal readers as well.

They had the new MiFi for trial and as you would have known from this review you will know I love it. I was given another trial MiFi 2 to play with and this was stolen on Saturday while I was travelling in a packed Tube. The team was kind enough to arrange for another MiFi to be sent out the next day! So yeah, @ThreeUKLatest = amazing people!

One of my regret of the evening (the other being there was little time to talk to everyone) was not spotting the iPad competition on the window. I guess I was busy making sure I was at the right place as I thought the meet was supposed to be at Meza but was in fact was held at the cigar bar next to it! Still a massive congratulations to Melinda for winning it!

Also was great to meet other bloggers, most of whom I've already met before, including Abul of adonisdemon.com, Dan of World of Nokia, Richard Lai of Engadget, Marc Flores, John Wood of generationstarwars.com, Stephen Wing, Ben Smith, Chris of toogeektobetrue.com, Christiano Betta and of course, Melinda of missgeeky.com

HTC London event

This is part two of a series of tech and social related posts relating to events I attended last week. I debated whether to post them as one whole long post, but I felt better breaking them up into separate posts. The previous was about Nokia World 2010 - this is about HTC London event.

The HTC event in London proved to be a little more exciting, if for all the wrong reasons. I arrived at Old Billingsgate to be greeted not by HTC representatives but by a team of Nokia employees (or models) carrying red balloons advertising the virtues of Ovi Maps.

Those who have followed me on twitter will know what I am talking about, but those who haven't - well I was given a Nokia lunch box which they dubbed the HTC survival kit. Inside contained a ham, tomato and cheese sandwich (HTC sandwich, geddit?) and some other little toys, like an eye mask that read "I am dreaming of an N8". Well I am *still* dreaming of an N8.

I've seen some criticism and defences on the web about how Nokia behaved at the HTC London event and can respect both sides of the argument, but I will be honest here - when I first saw the balloons I chuckled. I knew nothing about the bus that HTC sent to ExCeL (I was on Internet blackout when riding the DLR from ExCeL to Monument).

Other than that I have absolutely no opinion whatsoever about whether Nokia was right to send lunch ladies to greet us or whether HTC was right to send buses to Nokia World. At event launches like these it is all about the devices.

HTC announced two new devices at the event, the HTC Desire HD and Desire Z. Both runs on Android kernel 2.2 (aka Froyo). The Desire Z is a great looking device with neat looking sliding QWERTY keyboard that feels better than the E7, and features a 'Z' hinge that is said to improve typing experience. The hinge looks sturdy enough and the device passed by squeeze test.

The Desire HD has a 4.3" screen, which makes the device a little too large for my liking. It is fast. Well both devices felt quick. The Desire Z has a lesser processor but honestly I did not detect any slowdowns compared to the Desire HD.

Both these devices will be ready to go on sale in the UK from next month, when the N8 hits the market, and when the E7 doesn't... A HTC UK rep told me that they expect both devices to be available for free on a £35 a month 24 months contract, but wouldn't be able to commit on it. I expect it to be true, but you would be crazy to lock yourself into a 24 months contract. I yearn for a time when 12 months contract were the norm.

In any case, I am seriously considering getting a Desire Z next month. While not a five row keyboard, it feels better than the one on the Nokia E7. I will publish a more detailed hands-on in due course once I have the time.

There is last thing I want to add before I sign this post off. Something I will forever remember at the HTC event (besides the Nokia stunt) that irked me so badly I actually live tweeted it the moment it reached my ear and my inner self exploded in rage. It was when a HTC designer blurted out that people do not want plastic watches. This is quite simply the stupidest comment I have had the misfortune to hear (apologies to the guy seated next to me when I moaned loudly).

It is nice that HTC thinks we all need premium metal in our phones - lord knows we need our phones to be more expensive and use up more battery to hold onto a cell signal - but they ought to pay more attention to hardware quality control. All my past HTC devices, either HTC-branded or OEM have failed one way or another (XDA IIs, the all metal Palm Tungsten T3, imate JAM etc. - usually the touchscreen). My £10 Casio and £30 Swatch lasts way longer than any of my past HTC devices!

Nokia World 2010

Last week has to be one of the most intense week of my life. I've only had a couple of hours a sleep a night and am completely exhausted by the end of the week. But as the new week dawns I think it is about time for me to post a few thoughts. This post forms the beginning of a series of tech and social related posts relating to the events from last week. The next post will be about the now infamous HTC London event.

Nokia World 2010 has come and gone, and while I am impressed by the N8. My first hands experience with the device confirmed what I thought - it has a fantastic hardware, the camera is amazing and it is a multimedia heaven. But I won't be getting it, and here's why: No Symbian^4 upgrade path for it. Do not get me wrong, Nokia has done a great job with the N8 with Symbian^3 and hardware is fantastic. It's just while I may be a geek, but I am not a rich geek who has loads of money to throw around.

Next up is the E7. Nokia describes it as a Communicator. *Cough* but that is a load of bollocks. It is a lovely device but what I (and some others I've talked to agree) saw was a Nseries device rebadged as an Eseries, basically an N8 with an alright keyboard and lesser camera, a successor to the much maligned Nokia N97 than the brilliant E90. Nothing I have seen from the E7 could convince me that this is the real deal. Nokia made a big deal about the E7 being BIG, but apart from a big screen (which isn't that BIG), it isn't that BIG a deal. I am sure (or at least I hope) that Nokia has plans for a proper E72 successor and E90 successor, but for whatever reasons they are not announcing them yet. Fingers crossed we will see the real deal soon.

Moving on. The new(er) C6-01 which bears no resemblance to the new C6 just launched last month (an example of Nokia's colossal fuck with the the new naming scheme) and C7 are fantastic. If priced correctly, they are winners. They are cheaper than the N8 and would target a demographic who probably would not care about Symbian^4, so the lack of upgrade path does not matter. The screens are fantastic, and are better than the N8, and contains most of not all the features that the average smartphone users would demand in 2010. What I find mind boggling is that Nokia decided not to include the same screen to the N8, the supposed 'flagship' Symbian^3 device.

About the Touch and Type phones. Well they look good, but anyone who knows me would know I don't give a hoot about S40 so let's just leave it at that.

After lunch (when I got firked for complaining about the lack of knives), I took the chance to attend a few of their Developer Summit sessions. The QC process of getting apps onto Ovi Store is interesting. Nokia has a content guide for apps that features bare chested male models and women in bikinis - these apps would not make many countries including Malaysia. The certification process takes a maximum of 5 days, so, baring any issues, developer or publisher can expect their app to be up in store in less than five days. In-app ads are also allowed as long as it they respect the content guide and does not point to another app store. As you may have known, app signing is free now for both native and Java apps. Nokia will not be taking any share monetary shares from generated via operator billing.

I also attended a session on Qt on Symbian^3 where Daniel Rocha of Nokia demonstrated the development, debugging and packaging of apps, including the latest Qt Mobility API. This session is interesting. Despite coming from a none-programming background, the session demonstrated the ease of Qt Creator in compiling apps for targetted devices (in this case the N8), and I walked away convinced.

The morning of day two of Nokia World was spent watching the keynote speech by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. If there ever was a god, this would the guy. Thanks to him I have been on the web for more than 15 years. He pointed out that while 80% of the world population have access, only 20% are connected to the Internet. A crazy figure by any means and one that has to do more with barrier to entry than anything else.

Sir Tim spoke about the importance of geo location sharing and the responsibility of providers to find a balance between privacy issues and providing a service. It made me think about how I did not get my swarm badge on both days of Nokia World, despite the large presence of mobile geeks. Maybe because there is no official Foursquare application on Symbian!

Nokia World closed with some developers contest. I am not familiar with many of the apps on display, but one shown was beyond cool. It uses the phone's front camera to unlock the phone based on facial recognition. Nokia's new CEO stressed the importance of developers, and this I agree. The issue is whether Nokia can convince developers to develop for Symbian and Meego. Not taking any commissions out of apps sold via operators billing is a first step, but the next is to get the word out and I am not convinced Nokia is doing their best to do just that.

So is Nokia back? Well they've never been away. But they do have a lot of work to do to win the mindshare of stuffy tech journos. I myself am planning on taking a break away from Nokia for a year (still feel free to send me trial devices to review though!), or until Symbian^4 or Meego phones are ready. Next month is my birthday and I'll be temporarily defecting to Android or Windows Phone 7 with a new smartphone. Moving away will give me a fresh perspective of a fast changing mobile landscape. Not that I am counting Nokia out yet. As I said earlier I'll be back for Symbian^4 or Meego.

Nokia phone bench

Last Wednesday I spent some time with Katie of WOMWorldNokia and Benny of Pink Pegion checking out the making of park benches made of recycled Nokia phones at Artem, a cool art studio specialising in special effects for clients in the TV and film industry (they did the effects in Hot Fuzz, the Gremlins in Gremlins, the bunnies from Sony's Bravia "Playdoh" ad).

Anyway, this is a project initiated by Nokia. The park benches, which are to displayed at Nokia World in ExCeL London, are made of the ABS plastic from old Nokia phones. Park benches may sound boring compared to Gremlins and Hot Fuzz, but they still look good and I love the paint job on them. It is a good start, and time will tell if initiatives like this will spur more people to help recycle their old gadgets into something a bit more useful, like a rollercoaster. ;)

Oh Nokia, since me and Katie did some work on them, perhaps you peeps can arrange to deliver one to each of us? Please?!?

Hello loyal readers!

Apologies for the lack of updates. It will only get worse as I'll be taking some time off and camping in New Forest next weekend. But I promise some exciting stuff are going to happen soon!

I'll be at Nokia World 2010 (where the N9 will be announced, surely, no?) and HTC London event (where we expect to see the launch of the HTC HD2/Vision/whatever and their first Windows Phone 7 device) from 14-15 September 2010, covering for Fone Arena. So follow me at @jonchoo for the latest updates as I will be live tweeting from the event. Once I have the time the report will go onto Fone Arena (obviously), though you may see some of the more personal vocal opinions here. :)

And that's that!

Scott Pilgrim awesomeness

Just got back from a sold out screening of Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World film. This is easily the best comic book to film adaptation I have seen yet, in that they respected the source material as accurate and as possible. I personally think they shouldn't have used all seven evil exes and save some for a sequel, as the second half felt rushed. But it was still ace.

There's even a possibility of me watching it again (and this coming from a guy who now rarely visits the cinema these days - heck, I haven't even watch Toy Story 3 yet!), that'show much I loved it. Go read the books, play the game and watch this genre bending film.

This should have gone on Facebook

What a fantastic weekend!

Received an e-mail pretty much confirming my attendence to Nokia World 2010 (thanks Varun of FoneArena!). Met up with Katie, Lydia, Rhiannon, Paul and Klara from WOMWorldNokia for Okonomiyaki lunch at Abeno Too on Friday.

Spent much of Saturday and Sunday morning exploring (and Foursquare'ing up) Greenwich. Here we bumped into Mandy, a Twitter peep we knew from the Gumtree meet in May - how random!. Got me my 'Barista' and 'I'm on a Boat' in Greenwich Pier, and 'TLC Summer' badge at Hamleys in London (thanks Benjezzy!). Speaking of Foursquare, check out this recap of the first ever Foursquare Appreciation Society of Great Britain meet-up.

Finally met up with Julien at his swanky new bachelor's pad in Shoreditch, and his brother Mikhael and girlfriend, Clotilde, from France, for dinner in Cafe Raj in Brick Lane. Food was rubbish, but you can't beat the great company.