“Half of the teens in Singapore aged 15 to 19 are on the Internet, blogging or podcasting, and this figure is set to grow. This means there are 120,000 or so blogs by these youngster online.” Chua Hian Hou reported. (via Good Morning Yesterday)

Article also on Bangkok Post

Just read on Crunch Gear that Samsung is showing off their WiBRO Mobile Phone.

But the one which everyone talking about (and has being waiting for since June) is the one below: Samsung SPH-P9000.

It is really more of a PDA with a fold-out keyboard. Beside the interesting form-factor, it support EV-DO as well as WiBRO* (Tech Spec).

Samsung must be working very hard to make sure they are in the running with the Sprint US$2B WiMAX project. I have no complains..it is great for the industry to see someone finally driving the CPE side of WiMAX :-)

* These days, when Samsung talks about WiBRO, it is not certain if they are referring to Korea WiBRO or the (going to be) harmonized WiBRO with Mobile WiMAX.

A few days ago, IDA called for bids to operate the centralized number portability database for Singapore.

The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) issued the Request for Proposal on the Centralised Number Portability Database Solution (RFP) to invite interested ICT companies to submit proposals for the provision and operation of the Centralised Number Portability Database in Singapore. The RFP arose from IDA’s 2 August 2006 announcement to implement True Number Portability in Singapore from fourth quarter of 2007.

Wasn’t Singapore one of the first country in Asia to have number portability? Well, as I noted before: “What we have in Singapore now is “Call Forwarding” and we are trying to move to “Onward Routing” or “All Call Query”. Both will give us true number portability (ie, the Caller ID will match your number)”

Incidently, a friend called me up a few weeks ago as he was assigned by his company to look at this thing called “number port that government is calling for bid”.

Friend: Hey, you know anything about number portability?

Me: Erm, yea. Kind of…what can I do to help?

Friend: So hur, who is most likely to win?

Me: Well, Neustar has put a lot of effort in this area for a while so they are in a good position whereas I am not aware of any Telecordia activities.

Friend: So should my company partner Neustar?

Me: Sure why not? If you can convience them to partner, good for you!

Friend: But but..why would they partner with us?

Me: Thats for you to figure out right?

Friend: Shouldnt government make it such that no foreign companies can bid for it?

Me: Huh? Why?

Friend: So they have a reason to partner with us.

Me: … (WTF!)

My dear friend, Singapore government no longer works in that way…not anymore in the Telecom sector.

Link

I am a fan of Gmail as well as the Gmail mobile. I use it extensively to check my mails on my mobile phone. The mobile web portal Gmail has is clean and fast and I like it alot. I also use the POP feature of Gmail to retrieve the email onto my mobile phone Messaging. While not fantastic, it is okay for an offline system.

But nothing beats what I found yesterday, a Gmail mobile application by Google. Just point your mobile web browswer to http://gmail.com/app and it will auto-detect your phone and ask you to install the relevant application onto the phone as below.

And it is really really cool! It has all the shortkeys you expect. Press “8” twice to mark the email as spam, “9” to archive it, “4” to reply, “5” to reply all and “1” to search etc. But I have a 3 wish lists

1. The application is not tolerant to unstable mobile connections, which is pretty common until the mobile data quality is improved.

2. All editing are done in the native edit pad provided by Symbian on a horrible black on blue interface. I am sure they can do better

3. Please please do it for Google Calendar soon!

Finally found some time and catch up some news. Some of the news that matters to me enough for me to forward them around.

– ChinaPay Allies With International E-payment Partners

– YeePay Partners with Dang Dang for Online Marketplace

– PacNet introduces @irPower

– (Malaysia) WiMAX tender evaluation is now on

Oh yea, I also found my name on TheStar, Chic to be geek, an interview I did several weeks ago for and I nearly forgot about it. I think it is originally on ST Digital Life.

Trying out this moblogging tool by dave winer call YoMoBlog.com.

Not sure how useful tho. Its just a website that is customized for a mobile screen size, something most blogging tools can easily do. I was hoping to look for something like ecto on Symbian.

The Starfish and The Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstorm

A friend recommended me the book 2 months ago. I went to Borders only to be told it will only come out in end Oct. It is a long wait but probably worth it. I havent read it yet but heck, the book has praises from Pierre Omidyar, Nicholas J. Nicholas, Paul Saffo among others.

Just got it and going to find sometime to enjoy the book ;-)