My very first PDA was in 2002. Its the Sony Clié PEG-SJ20. Its a 320 x 320 monochrome stylus based PDA running on Palm OS4.1 and it had a whopping 16MB memory. After using it for about a year or two, I lost it. I believe I dropped it in a cab and had to replace it.
Sony Clié SJ22
Then came the Sony Clié PEG-SJ22 (which i still have now & am charging it as i’m typing this). Its very much like the SJ20 but with colour. Yes, a whopping 16MB ram as well.
Then came the era where phones were PDA too a few years later.
Dopod 818 Pro
I bought the Dopod 818 Pro. That was one buggy phone with Windows Mobile and all, but I still managed to use it for 2 years.
HTC Touch
My contract was up and I got the HTC Touch. I liked the smart phone a lot and used it heavily. 20 months went past and I upgraded again.
iPhone 3GS
I got the iPhone 3Gs. I’m using it for about 1 year+ now and it changed the way i accessed information. From Twitter to Facebook and Foursquare.
The concept of the PDA was out side of the phone, it moved into the phone, now its moving out of the phone again.
I haz iPad
Now I haz iPad. And this post was typed partially on my iPad with the WordPress App. ;)
Seeing that mrbrown have setup his own custom URL shortener “mrbrwn.co”, I also wanna use my “pan.sg” to for URL shortening. Now time to go experiment.
I recently had a haircut. Guess what, I did not ask the hair dresser for her credentials, neither did I ask for a draft. She did ask me quite a number of clever questions and I trusted her. I treated her as a professional and let her did what she do best. I mean what do I know about cutting hair, all I see is what I can see in the mirror. Most of the time, I don’t even know what I look like from behind. The outcome was fairly good.
That got me thinking. I’m in the creative industry, but there is hardly any trust. Clients insist on credentials, they insist on seeing a draft. And when they see the draft, most of the time they usually have a lot to say and there were even times when some clients dictated how they want like their website to be. They know their business better, that I fully agree, but how could they possibility know web design best practices more then someone who have done websites for more then 10 years?
As a web practitioner, we often make jokes about clients and can so relate with one another on all those hair pulling experiences. There is even a site dedicated to Clients From Hell. But I also question myself. Is it true that most clients are idiots? Do they also have their hair pulling moments about vendors? I did a check… no vendorsfromhell.com and vendorsfromhell.net does not exist. Then again if clients banded together to create such a site, then there is no need for vendors already. har har…
Yes its true, sometimes clients catch the obvious lazy alignment issues, the amateurish design that was done by an inexpensive freelancer and the half baked proposal that was done grudgingly over the weekend. But the more fundamental issue is that sometimes there is a clear lack of business understanding from web design companies. To clients, their website is an asset that not only represents them online, but it may also be there to provide a service or to meet certain business objectives. Looking nice is just a hygiene factor. So the question now is how many web designers actually have good business acumen?
Clients are idiots. Web designers are hopeless. Stalemate!
I think web practitioners need to make the first move. We need to better understand our clients’ business. We need to understand their pain points. We need to understand that it hurts to pay so much money only to get something that might look nice, but does not work. Go try your client’s products. Go experience your client’s services. Go spend a day with your client.
The day we stop thinking our clients are idiots may be the day our clients start treating us as professionals and give us the creative trust we finally deserve.
“Breeze is a whole new way of banking that lets you manage your money like never before.” That was what the evening of 10 Aug 2010 was all about and it all happened at The Waterboat House.
Those who know me will know i’m currently working at Qais and that I was helping my client organise this meetup with local bloggers. I feel very blessed to be working on stuff that I personally like and on a product that I actually believe in. This is my personal blog ok, so in no way will I be biased ok ok. ;)
The best part of the night for me (although officially I was working) was I finally managed to meet quite a few people i’ve known online for quite some time and I also managed to make a few new friends that night.
Magic by Jack
There was magic that night literally. lol… Above you see Joan going up close to experience magic tricks performed by Jack. He was really fast and there was so many OMG! moments. I got no idea where he hides his stuff as he got his sleeves all rolled up.
Jarmon showing us how much he have
After quick explanation of what Breeze is, Jarmon from SCB demo-ed the Breeze Online interface and shared with us how much he really have in his bank account. lol… There was also a Q&A session and you can see some of the exchanges at Hisham’s blog.
Breeze Calendar View
One of the coolest interface was being able to see all your debits and credits in a calendar view. But instead of using normal banking terms like “Debit” and “Credit” (which I struggled with in accounts while in school) red means outgoing money and green means incoming money while grey meant reminders. I really feel this is very cool and so easy to understand especially when i’m trying to visualise where my money in my bank account went in the month.
Breeze Celebrates NDP 2010
As it was NDP week, the login screen even on the Breeze iPhone app had a nice celebratory touch to it. Sweet.
Grilled Fish for mains
There was food of cause and the main dish was grilled fish! I’ve been craving for good grilled fish for quite sometime already and when you see the skin STILL nicely on the fish, you know its prepared with much care. You can also check out Sparklette’s review of this place.
But value for money wise, i really think Ashton’s grilled fish is great too. I just did a search for their website and realised that their website is running on blogspot!! You really have the “we are not so expensive” feeling lol…
I believe I sat on the table with the most bloggers. There was lively discussions and everyone have extremely interesting jobs, but I doubt anyone can top Aloysius who had no choice but forced to finish SC2 in 2 days in order to review it. I think i’ve only finished 7 campaign missions up till today.
Its really nice to finally put faces to people whom i’ve known via domain names and twitter accounts.
Group photo together with Kevin Lim and members from the Breeze team
The above 2 photos are from Kevin Lim. See more of his photos here. I think he had some of the best photos of the evening. Unfortunately I did not manage to take photos with the other bloggers like PatLaw, Sheylara, Jayne, Hisham, Joan, Howie and Stephie.
SCB Breeze Wishlist feature
So now Breeze Online is available and i went ahead to setup my favourite feature. Wishlists!
My Wishlist
The wishlist feature to me is like virtual accounts. You see I only have one saving account, but I can use wishlists to partition my money and set money aside for stuff.
So i’ve setup 2 wishlist items for the 2 holidays I’m planning next year. Currently Pearl is expecting #3, so December holiday is out. So the aim is to go Tokyo in June 2011 with Pearl. The last time when we went Tokyo it was just too brief as we followed a tour group, so this time we must go for a real exploration. Can you believe I DID NOT even go to Akihabara at all that time.
And in September 2011 I hope to bring the kids to experience farm stay in Australia during spring. They are too metro already, must rural-ise them abit.
So having tried almost all the Breeze Online features, I have to say its really impressive and intuitive, but problem is also because it appears to be so easy to use, hence I sort of expect it to be perfect, but its not. For example, although its cool that I can set cute icons to specific payees, but if i’ve already created these payees in my classic Online Banking it seems like there is no option for me to change the default drug abuser silhouette icon. The only workaround I can think of is to remove the payee and recreate the payee via Breeze. I’ve lodged a feedback via Breeze’s internal inbox, hope they do something about it.
Do you have a SCB account? Have you tried Breeze? What do you think of it?
This year I sang the National Anthem, recited the National Pledge for a total of 3 times. The first once was at my daughter’s school where a National Day celebration was held in her school. It was really cute to see little primary school girl guides doing the drills of marching towards the flag pole with the flag, the unfolding and raising of flag.
Clié’s class performed two dance numbers and I have to say dancing is something she excel in. You can see her in the above photo. She is the middle one on the front row wearing the white skirt.
Cleo also performed this year and it was at the Punggol National Day Observance Ceremony. She did a dance number too with her classmates and they sang We are Singapore. The kids were in four groups and when the chorus came around each group represented a different aspect for “This is my country, this is my flag, this is my future, this is my life”. Cleo was the third group, so when it was her group’s turn for the line “This is my future”, she raise a roll of paper which represented certification. Quite cute.
At the Punggol event, there was also a decorate your bike contest, so you can find all sort of bikes decorated with red, white, flags, stars, etc. It was really carnival-ish feel to it. Very nice.
At the Punggol event, there was also the traditional National Anthem, Pledge reciting too, so that makes it my second set.
In the evening, our good friends came over for dinner. We just ordered pizzas and watch NDP on TV. Living in Punggol, we get to see all the planes from Paya Lebar airbase taking off, getting into formation and flying eastwards in their formation, then turning south over Changi and then heading towards the Padang where the main celebrations were. On twitter, I can see so many people from all over Singapore tweeting about the planes flying over where they stay. Suddenly I felt Singaporeans were so close to one another and how dense our tiny country really is. But no matter how small we were, “NDP” made trending topic on twitter.
So during NDP on TV, I sort of did the National Anthem and pledge thing once again which completes my third set.
A few interesting NDP related links:
Singapore Swing (Singapore songs done with a Jazz touch. Free MP3 downloads.)
Fly our Digital Flag (an initiative started by Victor and myself to encourage Singaporeans to put up their flags online. Just before the NDP parade, we manage to get 2500 supporters. woot! You can also see Victor’s post here.)
