Archives For May 2012

Blackberry 10 Seems Promising… Too Little Too Late?

3 May 2012

In all honesty, I didn’t even know Blackberry World 2012 was going on until the major tech blogs were live blogging Thorsten Heins’keynote event, RIM’s newly appointed CEO from earlier this year.

It seemed all the hype was about RIM’s Blackberry 10 OS and it’s developer’s device, the Blackberry 10 dev alpha. The Blackberry 10 dev alpha looks like an iPhone 4S without a home button but the common consensus was that it was more similar to the Blackberry Playbook in terms of build and design.

The company seems to be neglecting the enterprise market with its OS improvements with gesture enhanced virtual keyboards, timeline camera features and OS notification features that were extremely similar to the Playbook OS.

RIM was really trying to entice developers to jump ship from Android and iOS by assuring that new developers who built apps for the the platform would earn at least $10,000 in the year after their app was launch and if they don’t, RIM would top up the remaining amount of cash to reach that amount.

I wonder if $10,000 would be enough to entice the big players to start developing for the Blackberry devices but certainly it would help the smaller indie developers.

It seems like RIM is finally starting to get the ball rolling and playing the catch up game on Android and iOS but is this move too little too late? And by focusing their efforts on the consumer market with these improvements, are they getting distracted and fragmented with their approach to regain the mobile space?

Things are certainly getting interesting for RIM and I wonder how would all the Indonesians react to having to use touchscreen devices if RIM removed keypads on their Blackberry 10 devices? They’d probably have a riot like the ones witnessed during the Blackberry Bold 9790 launch in Jakarta.

Geesh calm down people.

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Gelukkig Nederlandse Dag van Melbourne!

2 May 2012

I chanced upon this event (Dutch Orange Day) on the What’s On In Melbourne website and decided to check it out in the city with a mate over the weekend. Apparently it’s the Dutch Queen’s birthday on the 30th April so there would be celebrations among Dutch communities around the world on the weekend itself.

With the dreaded winter upon us and everyone scurrying to cover themselves up with layers of dull coloured winter clothing, it’s refreshing to withness a splash of (orange) colour at Queensbridge Square.

There was a main stage with various traditional Dutch performances going on, stalls selling Dutch beer and food (unfortunately no, there wasn’t any hash brownies) and stands selling all things Dutch ranging from antique toys, wooden tulips to second hand books.

There were also cruises organised along the Yarra River to simulate boat rides in the Amsterdam canal ways.

It’s always good fun to see the different communities celebrating our diversity in a multi cultural country like Australia. Anyone knows when a similar Singaporean event is on?!

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United Loses Derby And Victory Dumps Covic

1 May 2012

It’s really been a bad day for me in terms of football.

United lost to City with only two games left in the season and City is now level on points with United but in top position due to a better goal difference.

I’m absolutely gutted that we couldn’t finish off Everton last weekend, lost to Wigan a couple of weeks ago and fell to Blackburn during the Christmas period. If we had won all those games, we wouldn’t be finding ourselves in this vulnerable position and would probably have wrapped the title up by now.

We only registered three shots on goal last night and NONE on target. Yes NONE. That’s unforgivable for a team like United.

Now I can only hope Newcastle can do us a favour next weekend and get a result against City and fingers cross, let the title stay in the red half of Manchester. At this point in time, the title is City’s to lose.

Turning to local football, Melbourne Victory hasn’t been in the best of forms for this season even though we signed probably the biggest star of the league thus far, Harry Kewell. The only shining beacon of light for me this season was the performance of Ante Covic who has saved our blushes a couple of times.

Our defence looked out of sorts in some games and the experience of Covic has pulled us through and got us a couple of draws. Covic was in fact supposed to be a back up to new signing from Perth Glory, Tando Velaphi. Velaphi injured himself early on during pre-season and Covic was thrusted in the spotlight and he did not disappoint. In fact, he did so well that he was voted as Melbourne Victory’s Player of the Season.

And with Covic’s contract expiring this season, what did Melbourne Victory do? With Velaphi now returning from injury and youngster Lawrence Thomas on the bylines, Victory deemed that Covic was surplus to demands despite consistent performances this season and saving Brett Emerton’s penalty in the first game of the season against Sydney FC.

Melbourne Victory announced that they had released Ante Covic from the club along with another stalwart, former Manchester United trainee Grant Brebner.

I respect the fact that newly appointed coach Ange Postecoglou wants to make new changes to the team who did so badly this season but keeping sub par performers like Archie Thompson and Danny Allsop p (who played for Manchester City between 1998 – 2000 and is turning 34 years old in August) just does not sit well with me.

What infuriated me further was when someone tweeted to the Melbourne Victory twitter account and asked why was Covic released and this was their response:

So Covic was plain “unlucky” because his contract was expiring and Velaphi and Thomas wasn’t? This is how you reward a player who played well for the club? A player who has been ever present for Victory is taken for granted whereas a star like Kewell isn’t even going to be showing up for the upcoming friendly against Olympiakos.

The football teams I am supporting are seriously giving me the shits these couple of days. I’m going to go back to watching The Voice on telly. #fml