Google's Singapore Haze Map

This map map from Google shows Singapore and Malaysia air quality in near real-time.  The original site can be found here.

Android-itis

The new 'toy'

I confess the have spent the morning 'gadget-fiddling', something I undertake every couple of years when a new mobile phone is purchased.

In Singapore people change mobile and smart phones as quickly as they change shirts, which is often in the sticky tropics.  The latest models available from Singtel or Starhub are a sight to behold. Every year sees more features and smarter product design.  The models available in New Zealand it has to be said are more utilitarian.

This was a case of 'needs must' as my previous iPAQ which had given sterling service died an unnatural battery death.

My mobile has become something I have relied on to organise my life over the years.  Where once upon a time you simply spoke to someone on a phone, now its tells you where you are standing at any given moment, prompts you to buy a coffee at a nearby restaurant, provides a camera so you can snap the accompanying muffin and share it with friends and lets you schedule what you will be doing for the rest of the week. Appointments such as 'attend gym' to burn of the muffin calories.

Hence the expression 'smart phone' which usually means that it is smarter than you, the Luddite who made the purchase.  There after all only so many apps that one can sensibly use in a lifetime.

My morning then has been spent taking the Google Android device out of its box and getting my spatulate thumbs moving in unison so that I can drag and flick the menu around the touch screen.

Mine's a Huawei device which just goes to show how Chinese manufacturing has combined with US know-how in the modern world.

Founded in 1987 in Shenzhen, this company now sells $US20 billion of its products annually in 140 countries - not bad going for a small enterprise that started off selling switches.

Of course the thing I really wanted to get working, I couldn't.  The camera told me I need an additional SD micro-card installed.  A quick rummage through the packaging again and no, I clearly have not got one of these.

A car ride to the local Dick Smith's electronic store followed where I purchased the necessary storage card, which had a retail price of $NZ32.

It was my lucky day as the price was discounted to $20 (reason given - old packaging) and the bargain came with some additional free goodies; a can of V energy drink, a soft screen cloth and a set of earphones and voice activated microphone in a clear plastic tube.

Frustrating as the above may have been, it was a lot more pleasant than the annual 'flu shot which I also had this morning.

Related articles

• Huawei to launch range of smartphones from £100 (telegraph.co.uk)
• Cell Phone Elbow - Seriously? (fitsugar.com)

No Joke

Yes, it is real: Scrubby Bottoms

The first of April has come and gone and with it the usual line up of gags, spoofs and false news stories.

We have Chaucer to partly blame for promoting this strange annual observance, some 700 years ago in his Canterbury Tales.  Certainly by the 16th century April 1st was celebrated for its foolish japes.

According to an entry in Wikipedia in 1698, several people were tricked into going to the Tower of London to "see the Lions washed".

There have been other classic pranks such as the Dutch television station in the 1950's who informed their gullible viewvers that the leaning Tower of Pisa had finally fallen over.

In more modern times companies such as Google have continued the tradition.  This year is was a new piece of funcionality called Google Motion which claimed one could control Gmail with your body.




Another prank by Google has been to promote the often revelied font Comic Sans, because ithey discovered it "consistently outperformed all others when it comes to user satisfaction, level of engagement, understanding web content, productivity, click-through rates and conversion rates. We’ll therefore be rolling out Comic Sans as our default font across all Google products on April 4, 2011".

However not all strange stories on the first have been April Fools jokes.  Take for example news that a 50-strong gang of chickens that terrorised residents in Southport has been evicted by Lancashire Police.

Or, news that a baker has been flooded with complaints after calling his shop Nice Baps. 

But perhaps once of the most bizarre has been the revelation that Britain's National Trust has published a list of the UK's top 10 "silly walks" to such colourfully-named locations as Scrubby Bottoms, Pembrokeshire, Booby's Bay, Cornwall and Windy Gap in Surrey.

Related articles

• Google Gets Funny With Fonts (huffingtonpost.com)

New Zealand's Answer To The MRT

Monorail wins $1.3m from Google

News today that a New Zealand invention has won sponsorship from Google to undergo further development.

This injection of capital will reportedly elevate it from a  them park ride to "a "mass transit" system for use in traffic-clogged, skyscraper-strewn cities".

I can visualise this being deployed from Jurong to JB.  A couple of hours exercise in the hot sun to get across the Causeway, do some shopping, and then return without the need to fill up on cheap petrol in Malaysia!