Got Slapped for Mysterious Lady's Voice

A woman wanted to reach her husband on his mobile phone but discovered that she was out of credit; she asked her son - to use his own phone to pass an urgent message to daddy who is at work site.

After the son had called, he got back to mummy to inform her that it was a lady that picked up daddy's phone the three times he tried reaching dad on the mobile phone. (Women!!)

She waited impatiently for her husband to return from work site, immediately when she saw him, she gave him a very hot tight slap. While the hubby was trying to ask why the slap? She repeated the slap, people from the neighborhood rushed around to know what is happening.

The man asked the son to tell everybody what the lady said to him when he called, the son said - "The number u are trying to call is not reachable at the moment. Please try again later".
Tags: Technology, Funny, Humour, Jokes

Mass Emergency SMS Notification

Lately, the newspapers did report on certain SMS being unsolicited and sent out to telcos customers without them requesting for it and yet get charged for it. This controversial issue was highlighted in Screenshots. At certain times, unsolicited SMS would be welcomed by customers.

In the cities of Zhanjiang, Maoming and Meizhou in China, a tropical storm was said to be approaching these cities and rumour started as early as 4.00 a.m. (12 Aug) with this SMS message "Huge rainstorm in Leizhou Peninsula began to spread like a plague in those areas."

At the point of receiving such SMS message, the rumour began. Government officials were notified of such SMS message but now the message has turned to "Huge earthquake will be triggered by the rainstorm in Zhanjiang."

One of the town mayor who went out to work noticed the citizens lingering outside houses, offices, buildings and checked on the peculiar situation. Now he has heard that the SMS message became "the huge rainstorm in Leizhou will trigger off an earthquake."

The Zhanjiang Earthquake Bureau and the Zhanjiang Weather Observatory heard about the rumour. Not long after that, they decided to use the Weather Observatory's SMS emergency notification system to disseminate an accurate information to dispel the rumoured message being spread via SMS message. At the rate of 500,000 SMS message per hour, the local government was able to send out messages to the 1,400,000 mobile telephone users in the city.

* At 8.41a.m., the following was sent out:-

"The Zhanjiang city Earthquake Bureau and Weather Observatory reminds you: there has not been any earthquakes recently even though earthquake rumors began to appear at 4am this morning in the Leizhou, Wushi, Beihuo and Tanduo of Zhanjiang city. Please do not be afraid!"

* At 10:30am, a second emergency SMS notification system was issued:-

"The Zhanjiang city weather observatory gives this special reminder: the weather will be unstable for the two days, with showers and heavy rains. Please be prepared and call 12121 anytime for the latest weather report."

A success for the local government as they were able to send out 2.8 million in 3 hours. Is Malaysia ready for that sort of exercise? Instead of just harping on who sent out the rumours that de-stabilised the cities, the local government took up the responsibility to make right the situation. (Adopted from Zonaeuropa)

Tags: China, Zhanjiang, Maoming, Meizhou, SMS, SMS Message, Zhanjiang Earthquake Bureau, Zhanjiang Weather Observatory

Now Nokia is Conducting a Recall

After a major recall by Mattel/Fisher-Price for their toys that were manufactured in China, Nokia joined the bandwagon reluctantly.

Nokia is recalling batteries sold as the Nokia-branded BL-5C battery manufactured by Matsushita Battery Industrial Co. Ltd. of Japan between December 2005 and November 2006.

The word "BL-5C" is printed on the front of the battery.
On the back of the battery, the Nokia mark appears at the top, and the battery identification number (consisting of 26 characters) is found at the bottom. If the battery identification number does not contain 26 characters, it is not subject to this product advisory.

The reason for the recall is because this batch of batteries could overheat due to a short circuit especially during re-charging time. Overall, there are 300 million of such batteries out there somewhere but only 46 million needed to be recalled (with the criteria as listed above) Phew!!!!!! ...................

So, not only China made goods are useless, even Japanese made products could be a suspect now. All this due to non-stringent quality assessment/quality control again or because of cost-cutting measures that caused such an issue?????? Only the manufacturers will know.

I think those betting companies will be starting new betting schemes on what kind of products will be recalled next.
Reading: Nokia users heed this call - The Star

Tags: Nokia, Matsushita, Matsushita Battery Industrial Co Ltd, Japan, Nokia Battery, BL-5C, Overheat, Battery Identification Number, Recall

Creating a CON Folder

An Indian national discovered that nobody can create a FOLDER anywhere on the computer which can be named as "CON".

This is something pretty cool...and unbelievable... it can't work with Words, Excel, Powerpoint, PDF files.

The whole team in Microsoft, including Bill Gates, couldn't answer why this happened. So, tell all your friends.

Try it now, it will not create " CON " Folder.
Try to rename the New Folder as CON or con, it will not accept ............ ........ .......
Tags: Folder, Computer, Con, Microsoft, Technology

Space Tourism Business

More and more companies are targetting this area of tourism industry. Ever thought of travelling up to the open space and see earth. Most have to go thought extensive training in order to become an astronaut but technology advancement will make it possible for an ordinary guy like to have a taste of it.

Only issue is $$$$$$$$.

EADS (European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company), an aerospace giant, has jumped onto the bandwagon of space tourism under a space division called EADS Astrium. Plans are in store for fare-paying passengers on a sub-orbital ride more than 100km above the planet. Wow!!! The price for this trip will be around 200,000 euros (£135,000). First commercial flight expected to be available in 2012, still long time more and maybe enough time for you to save those money up. You'll get to experience weightlessness while travelling for about 3 to 5 minutes, not bad but too short a time after paying so much for the trip.

EADS Astrium said that such space development could incur as much as 1 billion euros. EADS Astrium is the fourth company that has announced such development apart from The Spaceship Company, Blue Origin and Space Adventures Ltd. Quite a tight competition too especially with such an expensive development cost and there were no examples to follow.

Tags: EADS, EADS Astrium, Space Tourism, Space Travel, Space

Unfortunate Event

Was trying to log in on Friday night (at home) and the laptop suddenly went blank. Unable to get it switched on again.

On Saturday morning, called the office's IT Manager and was hoping there was something up his sleeve but the laptop was not co-operative enough. Sadly, no updates in my blog since Friday night.

Today, when I brought it to the IT Manager, the laptop was ............. IN A NORMAL CONDITION. So, nobody could check what went wrong....... and the joke was on me as the IT Dept guys said that I could have dabbled with the internal system or I downloaded something which I was not supposed to....... hehehehehe (the effect of Wahaha)
Tags: IT Manager, Laptop

Palm Inc Spamming?

* Latest update - received an email response from Palm Inc (in Comments section) confirming that it was not from them. Therefore, it's a spam. Do people check the authenticity of such emails before emailing out. What was in their mindset when they saw such email? Getting that Palm Treo??
---------------------
Received an email (as below) from a colleague purportedly from Palm Inc. It said that free Palm PDA/Smartphones would be given away free if people would continue to relay the email on their promotion to a minimum number of 15 people. Somehow in their promotion, the Indonesian's Palm's website was quoted instead of Malaysia's website.

Following was extracted from the Palm Malaysian website:-

Special Offers on Palm® Products
current retail promotions

Currently there are no promotions on our range of products and accessories. From time-to-time we run promotions, so bookmark this page and in the near future check again.

Is Palm Inc or Palm Indonesia trying to spam the email system just to have a cheap promotion tactic?

Have emailed to asia.service@palm.com (general email add) and awaiting their response.

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2007 3:02 AM
To: xxxxxx
Subject: Fwd: Free PDA+GSM Palm

Dear Friends,
Here is to announce that our company Palm, Inc., headquarter is located in Sunnyvale, California US opens our marketing office in Kuala Lumpur for Asia region.

We are promoting our product and for the detail you can visit:
http://www.palm.com/id/products/smartphones/

For first launching of our product in Malaysia, we will give away for free the new product of PDA+GSM Palm Type Treo 650 and Treo 680 and Treo 750. By giving the product of PDA+GSM , we will get valuable feed back from the customers and get the mouth to mouth advertising.

You only have to forward to 15 people. After 2 weeks you will receive a PDA+GSM Palm Type Treo 650. If you forward to 25 people, you will receive a PDA+GSM Handspring Type Treo 680. And if you forward to 40 people you will get a PDA+GSM Palm Type Treo 750.

The only thing to remember is to send cc (copy) to: louise.jasmine@gmail.com
Only by sending email to this address, we know you have forwarded this massage to your friends.

Good Luck!!
Louise Jasmine
Executive Promotion
Kuala Lumpur Office
Palm, Inc.
Email:
Private : louise.jasmine@gmail.com

Business: louise.jasmine@palm.com

Tags: Palm Inc, PDA, Smartphone, Treo 650, Treo 680, Treo 750, Spam Email, PDA+GSM Palm

SMS Message on Bus Services

Singapore has embarked on a new technology service which you could find out on your forthcoming bus schedule via SMS. What a service! This will save you lots of time where you don't need to wait for umpteenth hours or you know how fast you need to run in order to hop on to the bus on time.

SBS Transit, the bus company has collaborated with SingTel, a Singapore telco created this service, iris NextBus, to serve the bus commuters who are of SingTel subscribers. This service will be extended to other telco network in time to come. Just a simple SMS message to this service of your preferred bus number, a reply will inform you of the next bus service that will come your way.
Tags: SMS Message, SMS, SBS Transit, SingTel, Singapore, iris NextBus, Technology

Energy Pod

Ever thought of taking a nap in office especially those minutes after a heavy lunch? Well, Metronaps has came out with a superb invention to allow people to be rejuvenated in a short 20 minutes powernap. It's called the EnergyPod.
Thought of getting one for your home? Forget it, get a bed instead for your house. It would be nice if the office has the EnergyPod but I guessed every colleague would be making a beeline at the EnergyPod too.
It will cost you (most probably not you) or your office a small dent, US$8,000 to own it. You won't oversleep in this EnergyPod as after 20 minutes, it will trigger a vibration and acoustic alarm.

Tags: EnergyPod, Metronaps, Rest, Nap, Sleep, Powernap

See Thru Laptop

Another exciting Apple release? Apple's Macbook (or laptop/notebook) - with new technology where its screen is transparent even when it is fully operational. Interesting! Won't come cheap either. Apple is normally quite fast with its technology, just like the iPhone. Though their sales may not be high but there are still numerous buyers waiting for its latest release each time.


Tags: Laptop, Notebook, Apple, MacBook, iPhone, Technology

Estonia Attacked !!!

Reports have gone out that Estonia, a newly accepted European Union member, has been attacked. Not hit by any missiles or rockets or invaded by enemies.

• Estonia's whole internet system was down nationwide since end April 2007. Both NATO IT specialists and Estonia top 300 IT specialists were rushed to salvage the situation.

Estonia has suspected Russia behind the cyber attack which Russia has denied their involvement. Why was Russia singled out? It seems that Russian was not pleased in a controversy removal of a monument dedicated to Soviet soldiers in the capital city of Tallinn. Russia has even called for economics blockade on Estonia due to the removal of the monument. What a farce!!!

For Estonia, such removal is a removal of 50 years of Soviet oppression. But why previous Soviet issues could still trigger such anger from Russia? Was Russia top government officials trying to intimidate Estonia, a country with only a population of 1,500,000? Surprisingly, Russians leaving in Estonia came out to protest and riot began.

Next thing, came the non-access to internet and emails system on the same rioting day. Life in the country was disrupted for the last 3 weeks, entire state administration was paralyzed, banks came to a standstill and companies had to freeze their operations.

This is how bad it could be in a cyber war. Nuclear bombs are not required anymore. North Korea and Iran may want to import such cyber war knowledge in future. (source: ABC News)
Tags: Estonia, Russia, NATO, Cyber War, Cyber Attack, Technology, Internet, Soviet

YouTube / MySpace Banned

YouTube / MySpace are banned???? Why? By Whom? Don't worry, it's not banned in Malaysia.
USA's Ministry of Defence ("MOD") has called for an indefinite ban on the following websites:-
* Video-sharing sites YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos and FileCabi;
* Social networking sites MySpace, BlackPlanet and Hi5;
* Music sites Pandora, MTV, 1.fm and live365; and
* Photo-sharing site Photobucket.

Reason: Traffic to such websites is hurting system performance thus hampering fast info being relayed on urgent issues (like getting the President's thumb's up to launch a missile to another country??)

Must be very disheartening on such ban as soldiers being based overseas do rely on such software to communicate with their respective family members back home. Sharing of videos or blogging of family's life back home could be viewed by solders based faraway. Sort of a motivation in a way.

The other worry that the MOD has is that weaponary or military secrets could leaked out to the general public at ease. Guess that's the same reason various companies denied access to such websites too where corporate secrets being leaked could be detrimental.

Reading: Pentagon Bans YouTube, MySpace -CBS

Reading: Military puts MySpace, other sites off limits -CNN

Tags:

Pentagon, Ministry of Defence, USA, Military, Soldier, YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos, FileCabi, Social Networking, MySpace, BlackPlanet, Hi5, Pandora, MTV, 1.fm, live365, Photobucket, Ban

Yahoo Photos to Shut Down

News is flying around that Yahoo will be shutting down Yahoo Photos, an online photo storage/sharing.

Yahoo Photos will request its existing users to use Yahoo Flickr instead. Looks like tens of millions of users under Yahoo Photos will be migrated over to Flickr later on. Tremendous transfers which may slow down the up/downloading of photos in Yahoo Flickr later on. (source: Yahoo! News)

Can see that many bloggers were already linked to their respective Yahoo Flickr photos in their blogs. Yahoo Photos will be assisting its existing users to transfer their photos not only to Flickr but even to its competitors.

Looks like Yahoo is consolidating its users and wish to catch up with their competitors hold on photo storage site. Yahoo Photos' share of the users is approximately 5.8% of the USA market whereas Flickr is only at 4.5%.

The top site is currently held by PhotoBucket with 40% market share now. (source: Hitwise U.S. Web audience data)

Tags: Yahoo Photos, Yahoo Flickr, Flickr, Photo Storage, PhotoBucket

Police Technology

In China, police has adopted a small video camera attached to their hat which will capture your wrongdoings and will be used to settle any disputes between you and the police. Easily caught red-handed.
Smart usage of technology. Another way to overcome bribery provided what was recorded was relayed back to the police HQ and couldn't be deleted. (source: 6park.com)
Tags: China, Police, Video Camera, Technology

Key Tracker

Received this article via an email:-

A new device has been introduced to the marketplace that is a huge danger to anyone who uses a PC that is not theirs. It is known as a key tracker and it sits between the keyboard and the PC. As can be seen in the pictures it is very discreet but is probably one of the most dangerous items of equipment to personal information that is readily available. These devices record every key that is pressed on the keyboard. Due to it’s position (it sits between the keyboard and the PC) the information is logged by the tracker before the PC knows about it and as such is very difficult for the PC to detect. They are available in both USB and PS2 formats so pretty much any PC can be logged. The user puts the tracker in line, leaves it there for a set amount of time and then retrieves it. They can then download the data onto their own PC.

If you intend to use a PC that is not yours (ie hotel business centre, internet café, airport etc) I would advise looking at the back of the PC to see if one of these trackers has been placed in line (scrambling under a desk is the better alternative to losing your email details). If you cannot get to see the back of the PC, I would suggest you don’t use it for anything personal. If a tracker is there and you do not notice it, whoever placed it there (could be any user of that PC before you) will be able to recall all of your keystrokes – logins, passwords etc.

These trackers cost less than £30 and they are definitely out there already.
Tags: Technology, PC, Key Tracker, USB, PS2

Google TiSP

Google TiSP (BETA) is a fully functional, end-to-end system that provides in-home wireless access by connecting your commode-based TiSP wireless router to one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines.

All you need is a simple kit from Google and gather some simple installation steps and there you are!

As such, you could plug your wireless access gadget in whichever toilet bowl or better still, while doing "your business" you could just connect a wire straight to your laptop and get some entertainment while sitting on your throne.

If you are still unsure on how it really works, leave a message.

Tags: Google, Google TiSP, Technology, Wireless Router, Access Nodes, Fiber-Optic, Sewage

Internet Service in Turkmenistan

If you have been complaining how long it took you to connect to the internet or how long it took to download a movie/song from the internet, you are considered very blessed already. Some would even complain that at 1MB/sec is still bad just for reading their favourite websites. As for me, I have experienced internet services since 1996 or 1997.

But for the citizens living in Turkmenistan, they have just gotten their FIRST taste of internet services on 16 Feb 2007. Internet services were available in Turkmenistan for quite some time but it was restricted to the state or officially approved groups, embassies, foreign journalist and international bodies.

Even though internet services are available now, it's only available in 2 government-approved internet cafes located in the capital city of Ashgabat. The country is still quite repressive and I'm sure you would be monitored on which website assess. One of the main promise during the pre-election campaign was the availability of internet services to the citizens. The cost of internet service? Well, it's £2 per hour. (source: Times Online)
Tags: Turkmenistan, Ashgabat, Internet, Internet Cafe

PDA TV Phone

The mobile phone is really having a revelation with more capabilities/features and thus, made me held on to my purchase of a good mobile phone.

Taiwan seems to be able to incubate lots telecommunication linked companies such as this Gigabyte Communication which has produce the PDA TV Phone. The TV features support the NTSC and PAL formats which means you can watch the TV shows while in Malaysia. The antenna is being plugged into the USB slot.

There 2 new models with the i128 retailing for RM2,099 while the i120 goes for RM2,299.

Tags: Mobile Phone, Technology, Gadgets, PDA Phone, TV, Gigabyte Communication, GSmart, Communication, Telecommunication, Taiwan

Nokia 8800 Sirocco

Nokia has teamed up with the Italian car maker Lamborghini for this limited edition 8800 Sirocco phone. The phone contains Lamborghini made ball bearings for the sliding mechanism and the logo is laser etched on the front and stainless steel casing along with the serial number. Only 500 phones will be made and they are reserved exclusively for Lamborghini customers.
Tags: Nokia, Lamborghini, 8800 Sirocco, Mobile Phone

China's Space Range Missiles

China at long last developed a new type of long range missiles. The target area? Space!

China was quiet in this area of missiles development and out of a sudden, with the last such missile being used by another nation was 20 years ago, China shot a missle up to the space to destroy one of its own weather satellite. It shocked many other nations such as USA, UK, Australia, Canada, South Korea and Japan.

China's explanation for the launching of such missile is to force USA into talks in doing away with space weapons. The missile was launched from Xichang Space Centre in Sichuan province at a speed of 76,000km/h (47,000mph) slammed straight at the weather satellite.

Reading:
* Missile test knocks out satellite - The Age
* Space attack will force US to rethink tactics with spy in the sky satellites - Times Online
* Canada expresses 'strong concerns' over China's satellite destruction - Canada Post
* Britain Concerned By Chinese Satellite Shoot-Down - AP via Space War
Tags: China, Weather Satellite, Missiles, Space War, Arnament, Military Force, Defence, Xichang Space Centre, Sichuan, USA