Singapore Army to equip recruits with 8,000 iPads

The Singapore Army has announced plans to purchase 8,000 iPads for new recruits into the army. According to the Defence Chief, General Neo (no relation to Neo of the Matrix-trilogy, but somehow apt…), he claims that adopting the iPad would enable the Armed forces to harness the technological abilities of the youth. With the built-in camera, servicemen are able to snap photos and video clips in the field that can then be uploaded and could come in handy to carry out post-mission debriefing.


(Photo taken from Asiaone website)

There’s more to it obviously, since I think it would be more sensible otherwise to equip all the recruits with cameras, (which would make for a very strange headline indeed). The iPads would presumably also be useful as a learning tool, replacing paper maps, note-taking during mission briefings etc. But I think the iPad would not be sufficiently rugged nor waterproofed to withstand more than a few hours in the field.

I struggled to think of a similar non-violent gadget that had widespread civilian acceptance and that was subsequently adopted by the military. Arguably, running shoes would fall into the same category – no one expects soldiers to go to war wearing running shoes, but during peacetime training, the comfort and ease provided by running shoes for keeping fit in the army camp can be justified. The second example is that using laptops and powerpoint presentations for briefings are pretty much part and parcel of classroom-based learning in many advanced militaries.

Personally, I think the iPod Touch 4G would be a better choice, given that they are more mobile and less unwieldy than iPads.

This story was reported in the local Singapore dailies here and here.

Trip to Hong Kong: survey of Chinese iPhone magazines

I recently took a vacation in Hong Kong with my family and I was pretty excited to check out the iPhone scene over there. There were several Chinese-language magazines that covered only iPhone and iPad related stuff, but what caught my eye was this magazine called ‘iPhone’. I bought the magazine and snapped a photo of the cover here:



If you were wondering, like me, how the lady sitting on the sports car could be related to the iPhone scene, I can tell you: “Plenty!”.

First of all, she introduced the readers to all the possible ways to charge an iPhone or iPad in your car – you know, for those days when you desperately needed to mount and charge your iPhone or iPad in your car, and I’m guessing it’s for that drive from Kowloon to Hong Kong island.



Then, she appeared in the centrefold to let us know the various apps she could use in Hong Kong to (going clockwise): navigate in Hong Kong or Macau, find a parking lot, locate the nearest gas station, check out traffic conditions, sell her car, and find the nearest servicing center.



I was also quite amazed how versatile the iPhone could be. IK Multimedia has managed to develop a system where you could plug in a microphone into the audio jack and karaoke to the tune that is playing on the iPhone!



The game-changer in this app-accessory package, called the iRig Mic, has to be in its ability to recognise the song on your iTunes and display the correct lyrics with the prompter. The package requires users to download the iRig Recorder app or AmpliTube. It is selling for HKD$599. Their website is over here.

Teenager sells kidney to buy iPad 2 and iPhone

I just saw this news from the main Singaporean english daily, The Straits Times, and thought that it was pretty horrifying at so many levels. And if you think about it, such 'horrors' happen everyday - people sacrificing themselves or part of themselves in an irreversible manner for material rewards that a majority of us would deem unnecessary or overextended. In this case, the incident only made the news because an iPad or iPhone was involved.

The article dated 3 June 2011:

A TEENAGER in China reportedly sold one of his kidneys for 22,000 yuan (S$4,185) so he could buy an iPad 2.

The Global Times said the 17-year-old high school student, identified only as Zheng, had confessed to his mother after she noticed the gadget and a deep red scar on his body, which was from the surgery.

Zheng had travelled from his home in Anhui province to the city of Chenzhou without his family's knowledge, where his kidney was removed at a hospital under the supervision of a kidney agent.

The Global Times said Zheng's mother took him back to Chenzhou to report the incident to the authorities, but the contact numbers given by the kidney agents were not working.

Zheng also bought an iPhone and a laptop with the proceeds from the sale of his kidney, his mother said.

The Chenzhou hospital where the boy had his surgery denied any connection with the kidney removal, but admitted that it had contracted out its urology department to a businessman.

Adding Wallpaper to HTC Widget HD using iFile

The default wallpaper for the HTC Widget HD is just a black background. However, you can choose to insert your own wallpaper. This can entirely be performed using iFile:

1. Copy your wallpaper into this location 'var/mobile/Library/Springboard'.

2. Rename your wallpaper as 'HomeBackgroundPortrait.jpg'.

3. Respring.

In my case, I like the default wallpaper '100.png' (the one with the bubbles) and it can be found for my iPhone in the directory 'var/stash/Wallpaper.ajkUws/iPhone'. The screenshot is illustrated here.

Borowitz Report: iPad prevents adultery

New and serious "research" uncovered by the Borowitz Report dated 19 May 2011, says that iPad owners are less likely to commit adultery “because they stop noticing other people altogether.”




The article here, goes on to say that the study, which was conducted on a sample of one thousand iPad owners, found that not only did iPad use make them thoroughly uninterested in extramarital sex, “their nonstop talking about the amazing features and apps on their iPads made them completely unattractive to potential sex partners as well.”

Being an iPad owner, I was both agreeing and offended by the article. Firstly, I thought being less likely to commit adultery was a good thing. However, the article was extremely discriminatory towards iPad owners since it would apply to all Tablet owners, unless, it supposes that potential iPad owners were more sexually promiscuous than the average Tablet owner before they bought the iPad.

Secondly, my wife notices me less when she's checking her facebook updates on her Macbook. So obviously, you become less sexually interested also when you're (1) on facebook and (2)using your Macbook. Although, if you're checking your facebook updates of your ex-girl/boyfriend, that would be very suspicious so this is obviously something very difficult to factor into any experiment or research study.

Thirdly, the sample size of 1000 iPad owners is extremely small, given that there are many more iPad owners than any other tablet in the market. And being an Asian, I suspect that the sample size wasn't reflective of the global ethnic demography. However, having checked the chinese app market, the higher than average rankings of tintillating apps/ebooks suggest that being Flash-unfriendly was definitely necessary in keeping Asian iPad owners on the straight and narrow.

In conclusion, given that Mcdonalds is required to put up warning labels on their paper cups regarding the dangers of hot fluids, there should then be a warning that pops up at 30 minute-intervals of iPad usage, reminding every iPad owner not to forget to spend a few minutes stretching, talking to your wife and kids and petting the family dog.

Winterboard Alternative: PerPage Themes for iPhone 4

As you may already know, there are far more adventurous possibilities for theming your iPhone if it is jailbroken. Having been dissatisfied for some time with merely swapping wallpapers, I explored various theme packs on Cydia. This requires time and patience as some themes don't work well with other plug-ins. Recently, I've stumbled upon PerPageHTML, which is a very cool alternative to Winterboard for those of us who like to install cool themes for their iPhones.

PerPage is currently a free tweak in Cydia (although there is a paid version as well) which allows the installation of PerPage Javascript-based widgets on the SpringBoard. However, it is far more powerful than Winterboard because it allows the user to specify which page each widget would show up on. For example, as shown below, I've installed the HTCAniPPH perpage widget to display only on the Homescreen i.e. 'Page 1'.



This is useful because it allows other widgets to be installed on every page and with the paid version of the tweak, overlapping widgets can also be installed. In my case, this allows me to continue using my LockCalendar tweak for my Lockscreen.

For further tweaking of the weather locale in the HTCAniPPH widget, SSH or use iFile to go into the 'var/mobile/Library/PerPageHTML/HTCAniPPH/configureMe.js' and substitute the default weathercode at var locale = "SNXX0001". (SNXX0001 gives me Bukit Panjang). Your weather code can be found by going to www.weather.com.

Below are the weather location codes for Singapore as used by AOL Weather, The Weather Channel (weather.com) and Yahoo! Weather.

SNXX0001, Bukit Panjang
SNXX0002, Bukit Timah
SNXX0003, Changi
SNXX0004, Paya Lebar
SNXX0005, Serangoon
SNXX0006, Singapore

My icons are from the Winterboard theme 'HTC Froyo'.

PerPage has proved to be very stable on iOS 4.2.1.

How Apple can improve the next iPhone

Phone blog website GottabeMobile has got an interesting article here about practical teen concerns on the areas where an Android phone has managed to do better than the iPhone 4.

In the article, the author Kevin Purcell highlights four practical areas his teenage son feels Android phones do better than iPhones:

(1) Text Messaging
(2) Casing and Screensize
(3) Onscreen keyboard
(4) Camera access

Funny thing is, 2 out of the 3 iOS related issues already have jailbreak solutions. The drawbacks of iOS text messaging in terms of the inability to quick reply at lockscreen have been addressed on the Cydia store by iRealSMS 3.0, BiteSMS 5.2 and other sms apps, while his gripe about quick camera access can be easily overcome by button remapping jb tweaks.

I would add that iOS 5 should really address the issue of why we cannot organise our photos into different albums on the iPhone. The only clean solution is to pay US$4.99 for a Cydia app like Photoalbums+ to do this.

And unfortunately, I think Swype is not going to be available on the iPhone anytime soon...