BM#7 : I ain’t no phone lover

At first I was very gung-ho in blogging about the Samsung i550 phone but looking at other bloggers’ postings such as the Phone Lover’s, I realize that competition is very keen. This guy is so comprehensive in his evaluation of the phone! He didn’t call himself a Phone Lover for nothing. I feel like throwing in the towel already. Let him win the phone lah while I continue to sleep in my comfy bed. And when the i550 alarm wakes me up to send the kids to school, I’ll just hit snooze and go back to wallowing in the thought that the phone is flying away from me on the Phone Lover’s blogging carpet. Boo-hoo, oh misery.

Still, I have an obligation to perform. Samsung didn’t loan me the phone for one month with no strings attached. Let me display some of that string here.

I’ve always owned chunky phones, first the hand-me-downs from my brother, then my own Nokia 3315. So I always thought to myself that the next phone I get will be a cool, handy little gadget. My youngest brother once owned such a small phone that it could be strapped on to his wrist like a watch.

Imagine when I first got my hands on the Samsung SGH i550. It looked as big as my Nokia though it was much slimmer. Bleh, I thought. In the looks department, it doesn’t score very high marks indeed. But what it lacked in appearance, it more than made up for with its functions.

What I really like about it is the big screen. (I’m not a technophile, so I won’t be spouting all those jargons that Phone Lover and others of his calibre use. The others were talking about Symbian this and Symbian that which the i550 has. Say what, when I first heard the term : simian as in monkeys? I googled the word and discovered explanations such as this. I’m still a bit woolly about it though.) Back to the screen. Not only is it big but it is in full technicolor! When you have eyes that have to squint and hold reading material at arm’s length in order to read it, believe me, this colourful screen is a sight for sore eyes.

Two of the features in its Organiser that I really like is the calculator and calendar. The calculator mode (sorry, I haven’t figured out how to reproduce screen shots here – I’m no Phone Lover, okay?) has a keypad like a regular calculator. Instead of pressing one key countless times to access the different functions like addition, multiplication etc (as in regular phones), all you have to do is to scroll the trackball to the required function and press it. It’s really nifty.

You know those little calling-card size yearly calenders that companies give out for free? The print is so tiny that you need a magnifying class to decipher it. That’s why I like the i550′s calender. It is so clear and readable. Of course, it’s more than a calender. You can use it to manage your appointments too. Sure, other phones can do that too but the i550 wins in terms of size. Big is better as far as I’m concerned. Big screen and big print means big in readability which is a great deal when you get to my age (my friends say I’m in denial in refusing to wear reading glasses).

That’s it for now, folks, to pacify the Samsungites and the Mobile Worldlings.

Blondie and the aunty warriors

I posted an entry at my other blog at mumcentre.com.my which I think you might like to read. This drama happened outside no. 2′s school. No one has got hurt, yet.

BM#6 : Authors need camera phones

Whenever I visit bookstores, I like to check out their best seller lists to see if my book has made it to the charts. When Honk! If You’re Malaysian was first released, I always made a beeline to the spot where they put up the poster. Actually, I still do.

About two weeks after Honk’s release, I was at MPH MidValley and discovered to my elation that it had topped the chart at number 1. I was practically jumping up and down with joy. I desperately wished then that I had a camera phone to snap a picture, but I didn’t. So I did the next best thing. I asked a passer-by to snap the photo and email it to me. Unfortunately, the guy was busy and later he couldn’t find the cable or something. Eventually I had to ask the bookstore personnel to snap a pix and email it to me. The trouble I had to go through to get a photo of the chart!

With the Samsung SGH i550 which was loaned to me, my days of bugging strangers and bookstore staff with handphone cameras are over – at least for a month. The i550 comes with a 3.0 megapixel camera and it’s easy to use too. I just press the button at the side of the phone or roll up the track ball (like what they have on laptops) to activate it. Best of all, the quality is good, as you can see from this photo.  I just need to train my hands to keep steady.

This is Popular’s March best seller chart. Honk! made it to no. 7 of the non-fiction category after being out of it from December 2007 to February 2008. In 2007, it acquired P.R. status there for 9 months. Perhaps the Readers’ Choice contest will help it stay on top a little while longer.

Celebrate with Bookxcess

April 23 is World Book Day. Go celebrate with Bookxcess in Amcorp Mall. I’ve bought some books from there before. They’re really cheap : brand new paperbacks are going for RM19.90!  Happy reading.

Readers’ Choice

Popular has nominated twenty best selling local books to vie for the Star/Popular Readers’ Choice Awards. Readers get to choose their favourite titles and if their ranking matches the final tally, they get to win a prize too.

Get your voting form from The Star – Tuesday and Sunday editions.

Last Sunday, Starmag ran a guide to the fiction titles. I hope the non-fiction list will be out this Sunday. Watch out for it.

I’m glad that in the non-fiction category, Adibah Amin’s As I Was Passing and Yvonne Lee’s The Sky is Crazy made it to the list too with Honk! If You’re Malaysian. In a sense, Adibah is my mentor, in a passive way. I used to read her Sri Delima’s column back in the seventies. Yvonne is my mentee. I’ve watched her break into print and author a best-selling book. She has taught me quite a few things too, especially in matters pertaining to book PR.

I think it’s great that mentor-me-mentee are all in the fray.

Series : singular or plural?

I have a tattered Oxford dictionary, a Webster which I don’t like to use, two thick tomes of World Book dictionary and two Roget’s thesaurus.  Nowadays I hardly refer to these writing tools.  I find the online dictionary and thesaurus so much more easy to use.  All I have to do is to key in the word and the explanation pops up in a jiffy.  No more leafing through pages and squinting at small print.

Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com are very useful but if I’m looking for some grammar references in addition to word definition, Encarta is where I go to.  For example, this morning I was searching the word ‘series’ as I wasn’t sure what the singular form of the word is.  I found this useful explanation on the Word Usage box at the bottom of the page.

Series can be a singular or a plural noun, depending on its meaning. When it is used to refer to a single set of things, it takes a singular verb even if it is followed by the preposition of and a plural noun: A series of medical tests is planned for next week. When series refers to two or more sets of things, it takes a plural verb: Three series of medical tests are planned for next week.

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P/S : Regular visitors to this blog, please bear with the many entries on the Samsung SGH i550 phone. It’s only up to May 17, promise. And I hope to intersperse them with other postings too, like this one.

BM#5 : The tooth ain’t blue

I’ve heard the word Bluetooth being bandied around for some time. Though I know it doesn’t refer to a tooth that’s blue in colour just as a blue moon doesn’t mean that it’s literally blue, I’ve paid scant attention to this technology and what it means.

Yesterday, I discovered how Bluetooth actually works. One of the Sunday School classes in my church had a baking session the week before. One of the teachers had taken some photos of the kids using her camera phone. She wanted to send them to me for updating on the Sunday School blog. As her phone and my temporary Samsung SGH i550 both has Bluetooth, she was able to send the pictures to me in a jiffy.

What, now only you’re learning how to use Bluetooth? Well, what do you expect? My Nokia 3315 is such a dinosaur that it only has a monochrome display and basic functions. I’ve never had such a technological wonder like the i550 to play around with.

For the information of technophobes like myself, here is an extract from wikipedia :

Bluetooth is an industrial specification for wireless personal area networks (PANs). Bluetooth provides a way to connect and exchange information between devices such as mobile phones, laptops, personal computers, printers, GPS receivers, digital cameras, and video game consoles over a secure, globally unlicensed short-range radio frequency.

Another definition by what-is-what.com :

Bluetooth is a wireless protocol- a method by which devices can communicate without a physical connection such as a cable.

On why is Bluetooth named such, from wikipedia :

Bluetooth was named after a late tenth century king, Harald Bluetooth, King of Denmark and Norway. He is known for his unification of previously warring tribes from Denmark (including now Swedish Scania, where the Bluetooth technology was invented), and Norway. Bluetooth likewise was intended to unify different technologies, such as personal computers and mobile phones.

Picture taken with i550

I took the above picture of our Sunday School teachers meeting with the i550 and ….

showed off the high tech phone to them.

More on the i550′s recording function :

My church is organising a Parents’ Day gathering on 25 May and as part of the program, we’re going to run pre-recorded messages by children addressed to their parents. Yesterday I used the i550 to record snippets of the children which will be compiled for playback on that day. It’s really cool.

BM#4 – My first tv clip on my blog

The Samsung SGH i550 is proving to be very handy indeed.  I had never been able to record my tv appearances as I don’t have a camcorder.  I used to have a VCR which served this purpose wonderfully but it had gone kaput some time back.

This morning, RTM2 aired the interview which was conducted on January 27 and for the first time ever, I was able to record it and post it on my blog.  Yay for the i550!  And I did it on my own too, without any help from the kids.

Go here to view the clip.

BM#3 – Wifi at 4sekawan

Tried out the wifi at 4sekawan, a modern kopitiam which charges an arm and a leg for Yang Chow fried rice with a few slivers of chicken meat and some mixed vegetables. Ah well, I guess we gotta pay for the ambience and internet connection. The Nissin noodles is a better choice. Though it’s plain old instant noodles, at least it has egg, ham and sausage.

I mentioned in BM#2 that no. 2 helped me to access the wifi at Starbucks. Today, only no. 4 was with me and she’s too young to even understand the meaning of wifi, so she’s of no help at all. I asked the waiter, “what is the internet line.” You see, at Starbucks, I had been told to use Timezone, so I figured there must be a different network here. The waiter looked at me blankly. Forget it, I thought. I might as well have asked him, “Do you know where is Timbuktu?”

Sitting at the alfresco section was a young man working on his laptop.  I approached him for help.  I figured  that he wouldn’t think I was trying to pick him up as I was in my “aunty” attire and had a kid with me.  He was nice enough to let me take him through the steps I went through. “Did you key in the password?” he asked. Er, what password? “If you ask the waiters, they’ll give you the password.”

I told him that my earlier query met with a stone wall. “Perhaps they only understand if you ask for password,” he suggested.

Ah, I see. The magic word is password. The helpful man told me what the password was and I managed to get connected finally.

These are the steps to take :

At the connectivity menu : conn. mgr/available WLAN networks/select network(say, 4sekawan)/define access point/pre-shared key (key in password)

At the web menu : Options/settings/general/access point/user defined/select access point* (say, Timezone)

My mistake at Starbucks was that I didn’t change the access point*. In the case of 4sekawan, I did not key in the password. Funny though, at Starbucks I didn’t have to key in the password to access the wifi.

Ok, the next time I visit another hotspot, I should have no problem, I hope. This wifi ability is such a useful feature as I don’t have a laptop to keep me connected on the go. With the Samsung SGH i-550, I can easily log on to check my email and do a spot of cybersurfing. Top marks for this feature.

This is my to-do list for the i-550 phone testing :

1. Wifi – checked.

2. Camera

3. GPS

4. Other tools and features

5. Summary

BM#2 – posting from star bucks

was trying to use samsung phone to connect to the wifi For ages but could not. Ready to throw phone away. Calledu anthony to complain. He said he will call me but before he did, no. 2 joined me. She fiddled with phone for 5 min and voila! Can connect. Teenagers brain wired differently from dinosaur parents. My daughter so clever one. Will write on what i did wrong later. Sorry for typo.

Readers Choice Awards

Honk! If You’re Malaysian is one of the top 10 books sold in 2007 in Popular and has been nominated for The Star-Popular Readers Choice Awards 2008. I’m not going to do a walkabout in bookstores to urge people to vote for me but if you’ve enjoyed the book, please do get a copy of The Star (Tuesday and Sunday editions) for your contest form and send in your vote. Readers, thank you for putting the book up on the list.

(Click on the article and again, to see a bigger picture.)