Technology Companies Apple and Google Most Valuable

Apple leads the pact with Google coming in second place while beverage giant Coke rounds up the top three. Don't know what are the criterias but being able to be at the top in a list that started over a decade ago surely would mean a great deal.

via Android Community.

Famous Penang Tau Sar Pheah

Pulau Pinang aka Penang is famous for one particular type of biscuit and whenever locals or foreigners visit the island, they would buy a box or two, or three, or... I've been fortunate to sample the biscuits fresh off the oven once and it was just awesome. A little less awesome if you eat them thereafter. It's (me thinks) got green bean paste as fillings, tastes sweet with a hint of salt. I really don't know which is the original because there are a few brands out there but my colleague bought some and I discovered this particular brand has been around for 155 years and still counting!

Well, according to Penang Street Food, Ghee Hiang pictured above is indeed the original.

Slow Motion on the iPhone 5s

I never thought this particular feature would have any effect on me but recent videos published online such as the one below made me want an iPhone 5s. The power of Apple.

iPhone 5s Test Footage - 120 fps from Rishi Kaneria on Vimeo.

via Cult of Mac.

Christian Bale's Audition for Batman Begins

It's amazing how established actors, too, need to go for auditions and coming as an added feature in the upcoming Batman Trilogy collection, below is Christian Bale auditioning in Val Kilmer's version of Batman costume:

Christian Bale auditions for Batman Begins in... by BatmanNewsCom

Cillian Murphy also auditioned to become Batman but his version probably looked like a Scarecrow which prompted his casting as the villain.

via io9.

My iOS 7 Experience So Far

The Good
At first sight, this new iOS looked very colourful, cheerful and the word cartoonish came to mind but after meddling a bit with it, I found that the user experience had improved such as the Control Centre that slides up from the bottom. Easy access to turning on/off things such as wifi, Bluetooth, Do Not Disturb and brightness control. What I hoped to find there is the ability to enable/disable mobile (or cellular if you are at that part of the world) data and GPS which eat up more battery than wifi and Bluetooth.

I did discover that Siri had improved a lot, recognised my speech and could turn off mobile data (and a slew of others)! Nice! I think I might just start to use it.

I've been using Google Chrome a lot for browsing lately and was not really impressed with what I've read about the new mobile Safari until I used it. What I liked about Chrome were its unified search and address bar and switching between tabs by swiping left or right. iOS 7's Safari has the unified bar, a cool screen to switch between tabs (not on the iPad, though) AND by swiping left or right, you can go back or forward of your history! Wow!

All the new transparency effects make the new UI look modern and that is certainly most welcome. The current flat design (that's what everyone calls it at a time when cinemas and TVs are all promoting 3D) sure looks fresh compared to the older skeuomorphic design though I'm a little horrified that a lot of apps are going flat, too. Gasp!

Multitasking seems to be up a level with Apple opening up for background app refresh though I've yet to notice that happening despite one of my favourite Pocket claiming it does.

The "I Don't Care"

The parallax effect is so subtle that it didn't matter if it existed or not. Nice to check out the first few times and after the third day, I didn't bother with it. I read that Flipboard is using that effect for some thing, so I've got to try that out, though.

The dynamic moving bubble bokeh wallpapers looked nice but besides moving when titling the screen, they were mere display that it's not possible for animated wallpapers. Developers come out with some cooler ones already!

The multitasking "bar" looks good now that it displays the screen since the last use together with the app's icon and you could close the app by swiping up. Well, it looks cool, but I don't really care, actually. Besides that, on the iPad, swiping up with four fingers would normally reveal the row of icons at the bottom but now it would open up to the whole multitasking "bar" which I felt had some continuity problem.

The Bad

Since updating to iOS 7, I've "successfully" got it to hang a few times:

1. Twice while messing around Settings.

2. After a call, the screen froze and rebooted.

3. Can't remember what happened.

Occasionally, scrolling on the iPhone 5 was no longer as smooth as it used to be. That's not very nice and I suppose iOS 8 would make the phone so slow that I'd need an iPhone 6. Oooh, I like that. XD

The Notification Centre now has three tabs - Today, All and Missed. I get "Today" and I get "Missed" but I don't get "All". I'm still puzzled because it only has notifications. I thought "All" would mean everything. I guess I must have misunderstood. Also, to clear a notification, I've still got to touch on the "X" rather than do a swiping motion. Not so nice.

The new folders have only 9 icons when open and since they can have multiple pages, it could take awhile to find some apps from the same category. I have lots of photo apps and games so these two proved to be the most problematic so I had to rearrange the more commonly used ones on the first page or make another folder for the least used ones.

Wrapping up this post, I love the new ringtones and tones but they (ringtones, especially) are too soft and could not replace the "Old Phone" ringtone that I've been using... even that sounds softer after the update.

Generally, I'm loving the new update because the whole experience is great and I could live with the "I Don't Care" and "Bad" ones, too.

Paranoia Review

Despite a 4% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I had to go watch it because I've not seen Harrison Ford in action for far too long and the pull of watching Gary Oldman as the villain after his good guy Commissioner Gordon role is too enticing. I must be getting old because I didn't watch it because of the beautiful young man and woman. XD

Ahem, on with the plot: ambitious young man Adam Cassidy (Liam Hemsworth, yes, I'm one of those that get confused with him and his Thor bro) messed up by using the credit card issued by his employer Wyatt (Oldman) for a night of clubbing after his presentation to the boss failed. Using this as blackmail, Wyatt got Cassidy to do some industrial espionage on Goddard's (Ford) company which is developing the ultimate smartphone. Sounds like a situation about our two current smartphone leaders but I think the stuff in this movie were over the top most of the time. Along the way, Cassidy fell in love with Goddard's head of marketing Emma Jennings ( Amber Heard). Following this, things get predictable as Cassidy had a change of heart... Although depending on your focus on the movie, there could be a twist somewhere at the later part of the movie.

Needless to say, the spy had to survive and need to do something smart to escape because those at the top will stop at nothing to have the upper hand... even killing. Sounds like a framework for a movie that could stir up some contemporary thrills but it fell just short of that. It won't make you nod off but it won't stop you from blinking either. By the way, I don't think the movie really emphasised much about paranoia. It probably got us paranoid of technological giants instead... oh wait, was that what this is all about?

Pretty girl and boy. Yeah, the two leads. 3/5

Awesome acting? Not really. Nothing that could win any awards but it doesn't look fake either. 3/5

Thrilling? Mostly predictable, no at the edge of your seat incident here. 2/5

Predictable plot but not the worst out there, IMHO it deserved more than the 4% rotten rating. 3/5

The Flu (Korean) Review

A Korean attempt on a widespread epidemic of a flu-like virus, the movie focuses on a city situated just on the outskirts of Seoul. The title characters are a rescue worker who saved a doctor (beautiful Korean chic, YEAH!) from a car that was knocked off its tracks into a deep construction pit. The rescuer had fallen for the doctor almost at first sight and one thing after another led to him meeting the doctor's daughter. Earlier the little girl met an illegal immigrant who was the only survivor (who developed immunity to the virus) from a group that was smuggled in to Korea in a container.

The illegal had broken lose when two brothers opened the container. This is where the infection started and all hell broke lose after that. The plot goes on to paint a picture of politicians who started off being sceptical and only had their self interests in mind. Quarantine procedures would go wrong and the people panicked. All these while the beautiful doctor tried to keep her daughter (infected by the illegal) from being taken away into quarantine. The gallant rescue worker would come in and help save the day, too.

The movie started off with some attempt at comedy and proceed to a more serious tone after that. There were also touching moments and of course picture of the people's struggle. I would say it was not overly thrilling but not to the point of boredom either.

Story wise, nothing that we've not seen in Hollywood productions. 2/5
Beautiful Koreans? 3/5
Ugly side of politics could be exaggerated but the point came across pretty well. 3/5
Not a waste of your time. 3/5

Video Guide to Draw Om Nom

How can I not post an instructional video showing how to draw the legendary cutey that is the star of the Cut The Rope series?!

Even though it's a step-by-step guide, it's so damn tough!!!

Smartphone Cameras - What's the Optimum Amount of Pixels?

In my unscientific gut opinion, as large as the sensor could go with around 8 megapixels but DPReview has a much better explanation with the following conclusion:

... for most purposes 3MP is plenty, but you might want to shoot at around 8MP for the crispest possible details. 8MP is a sensible minimum for big prints and 4K TVs, and even higher resolutions allow you to crop photos without sacrificing quality too much. However, make sure that very high resolutions are matched by an equivalent increase in sensor size.

However, do note that image quality also highly depends on the lens, image processing, sensor design, etc. so the search for the Holy Grail continues...

iOS 7 on the way...

I've got iOS 7 on my phone and was pretty impressed with it. Besides, I'm getting a new toy out of a phone that's going to be a year old. And now, my old iPad will be getting an update!

"Evil" Developers Just Want To Earn More

Some developers are taking the opportunity to charge iOS 7 users for a new revision of their apps, effectively treating the radically new iOS as a clean slate to reboot their apps. In all matter of speaking, I'm totally against this but Cult of Mac has it put down in a way that these developers are really not all that bad. Shucks!!!

Interesting Observation: Simple Cameras

Interesting observation at Open Mike (The Online Photographer Editorial) - one less mentioned reason that camera phones are "eating" into digital camera sales is because of their super simple ease of use. That's not all - camera phones' popularity might eventually lead to their very own increasing complexity. I noticed this happening with all the 3rd party iOS apps and stock Android ones. I like complex cameras and I love full control when I need it but I'm not the majority of users out there. For the record, I often like a quick snap with a simple camera, too.

via Daring Fireball.

It reads "big"

Contrary to the previous post, this Chinese word actually means big. It came about when the hawker wrote on the takeaway packaging to indicate that the portion is large. I'm ashamed to say that the packaging might not be the biodegradable type. We're not quite there yet in Malaysia.

Miniature Effect

I've always find it interesting how blurring some areas, in this case top and bottom, could turn certain images into miniatures. Wikipedia calls this the diorama effect or diorama illusion. For the initiated, you can check it out here. For me, I'm just satisfied with just blurring portions of the image... XD

Epilogue - What's after Apple’s September 10 event?

A motion co-processor aptly named M7? Remarkably suitable for tracking motion? May I join the foray and speculate that Apple's wearable device(s?) is coming really soon? O.o