This is what you get when you tried to play World of Warcraft on a moving bus over 3G haha :-)

I met Martin in Japan few months ago where he talks about working with Taiwanese manufacturer to make customized base stations for FON. Downloading firmware into WRT54g may be fun for a technie but perhaps not for the masses. So why not make their own boxes? Afterall, you can easily find a manufacturer for US$20-25 (or less depending on the volumne).

Then FON went silent for a few months and then come back with this niffy fonera base station for US$5. So technie see technie do, I ordered one but nooooo…they dont ship to Singapore. :-(

But thanks to some friends in FON and pulling some string, I just got this in the fedex :-) Oh boy, cant wait to plug this in….

Veni just send me an email to inform me that Bulgarian Foreign Minister starts his blog, meets Paul Twomey and Joichi Ito, and uses CreativeCommons!

Minister Kalfin started his own blog, to be found at www.kalfin.eu, where he will be discussion issues about Bulgarian foreign policy, EU membership, etc. The blog is based on open source software – WordPress, and is the first such an initiative by a Bulgarian minister. Mr. Kalfin invited Joichi Ito to become an author at his blog – an invitation that was accepted by the famous Japanese IT-investor and blogger.

I didnt know Joi was in Bulgaria. I think I just went to a raid (in warcraft) with him a couple of days ago. Anyway, it is cool!

Then again, Singapore Foreign Minister, George Yeo also blog at BeyondSG. In fact, Singapore win with a Podcast :-)

Someone email me today and asked me if I have become a banker?

Hahaha.

I am still a technologist. And I hang around with bankers enough to know I am definitely not qualify to be one.

However, it was pretty flattering when Edwin (below) asked me the same question when I met him in Shanghai. He has seen some of the investment advisory I did and thought I was one, or have the training as one.

Thank you :-)

ps: A mentor did advise me to consider to explore a career in financial engineering. Afterall, it is still engineering :-)

Edwin J. Nimpuno, the former Indonesian banker I met in Shanghai.

He is now retired in Shanghai but still actively investing in property in Shanghai as well as helping various groups like Tuan Sing (another Indonesian group which is investing big in Shanghai).

With permission :-)

My new toy, Nokia E61, the supposingly Blackberry-killer from Nokia. Got this yesterday and took sometime to play with it :-)

I love the full keyboard. It is actually usable! (and does not take too long to get used to)

I also like the big screen. I feels really good to read email on such big screen.

Aboveall, I love the unlimited data plan. I realised the impedence to use data disappear!

How about pulling all my gmails onto the phone? Why not? Set to auto-retrieve too!

The cool AgileMessager IM client that I wanted to try for a while? Sure, lets play with it. Keep the connection on too!

Or why not use Nokia Podcast to subscribe and download some podcast like mrbrownshow.com? The latest show is 12mb? Heck, why not!

Someone once told me that if you want some service to be popular, then just reduce the number of buying decision (not neccessary the price). Pay per use = decision every use vs Unlimited usage = one decision every month. Guess which wins?

A question I got quite often lately that is particularly not easy to answer.

The first thing to establish is what do the person mean by WiMAX? Because there are actually two kind of WiMAX, Fixed (802.16d) and Mobile (802.16e). The former is often used in point-to-point links whereas the latter is a point-to-multi-point configuration. Often, both tends to lump the two together as if it is the same but really, other than both are using OFDM, they are very different beast when it comes to deployment.

Fixed WiMAX is established whereas Mobile WiMAX is far newer and less tested in the field. However, the one which got everyone excited right now, e.g. Softbank, Sprint, ClearWire/Intel etc.

The main reason why everyone is excited about Mobile WiMAX is that it has the potential to be a competitor to other broadband last-mile technology, current dominated by DSL and Cable. Vendors are also beating the drum of how good the technology is, how it is able to serve 100mbps in a 10km radius which adds to the hype.

Sadly, that’s it: Hype and Hype.
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This isn’t the first time I was in Shanghai. Yet, Shanghai is a new city to me every trip. The more I come, the less I seem to know about the city.

Shanghai development is still going fast. You can still see a lot of buildings being built. The streets are packed and people are rushing from one point to another constantly, just like any other cosmopolitian city. But friends told me behind this exciting front, the development is saturated and people can feel the the growth rate is slowing down as compared to the last few years.

I also had several meetings that sadly I cant blog about yet. But suffice to say, it was an eye opener for me. I can really sense that the young people are in charge! I feel old! :-P

I suppose I can share this anecdote: I had two dinner last night (man I am still stuff!). Met some really interesting young people in Shanghai over dinner. The pretty young lady sat beside me was really surprised when I asked her name. I suppose when you are 李小路 (picture), you don’t go unrecognized here. Gosh I was embrassed. :P (btw, I learnt that she started acting when she was three…)

I am back in Beijing for a lunch appointment and will be flying back to Singapore tonight.

Overall, this was a very useful trip for me. I should do this more often.

Trying to catch up with my RSS but I am going to point out the talk by by James Enck at Telco 2.0 called : Ten things I hate about you.

Some of the ten things he mention arent new, stuff many people including myself have blog about in the last two years but heck, it is James Enck! When he speaks, CNN Money listen.

He said these at a conference full of telco executives at their face : telco can’t innovate and telco shouldn’t try to innovate :-)

I remember one of the things Singtel executives was pretty proud of is how they weather through the dotcom bust*. They love to say “we don’t have R&D. we buy product.” And given that Singtel has done excellently in the last couple of years, I think James Enck wasn’t too far off but damn, it is irriating being a technologist in Singapore trying to get the largest local telco interested in anything remotely in R&D.

Anyway, read his article. No wait, download his speech (torrent). :-) (I will do that when I am back home in Singapore).

* hush hush on C2C…”no really, we didn’t lost money during the dotcom bust”

Last year, I wrote about AJAX: “Oh, for programmers, I am sure AJAX programmers is going to be in demand.”

Now, I am writing to look for AJAX programmers to work with me on a project. It will be a 1-2 month project that you can do your own free time. Yes, you will be paid.

(Since we are on this topic, I am also looking for good J2ME & Symbian programmers)

If you are interested, drop me an email at james@seng.sg.

ps: Please don’t ask whats the project. Will tell you after you sign the NDA.