Budget Accommodation, Hostels stays, Transport, Mobile plans and Mobile data in Singapore Many of you are coming to Singapore for the upcoming Barcamp Sg 5. Here are some basic stuff regarding transport, accommodation and connectivity. Accommodation A wide range of accommodation is available in Singapore. Check these hotel booking sites. Agoda.com,Wotif.com. Octopustravel seems to throw up the best rates for hotels in Singapore.  These are two budget places (from 15 to 50 S$ any they are close to the Arab Street and Bugis MRT) 1. Superb Hub Hostel, no website, email them at superbhub@yahoo.com.sg Some reviews of Superb hub here  2. ABC Backpackers Hostel (Around 18$ for dorms and upwards) A little further away is the  3. City Backpakers Another place that has received good reviews from travellers is the Mitraa  hostel near the Little India/Balestier road area. (Around 25$ for dorms and upwards) 4. Mitraa Hostel Check out this Google map search for hostels in Singapore   Mobile voice and data  Starhub Maxmobile Prepaid Card – Buy at 7/11 stores and mobie phone shopsSingtel also has a prepaid mobile data and voice SIM, you can buy them at Singtel kiosks.M1 - You can buy M1's pre-paid data sim from M1 shop at Bugis Junction. $18 for 3 days unlimited mobile internet usage. All three providers have a voice only SIM pre-paid SIM cards too. You need your passport for identification. Most mobile shops and kiosks will sell you these cards.  Singapore also has a free island-wide wireless network - wireless.sg but you will need a mobile phone with singapore number to receive the passwords once you register for this network.   Public Transport You can buy a Singapore Tourist Pass for use in Bus and the MRT service. The card is available in 1,2 and 3 days options. It costs 8$ per day. The pass is available at the Changi airport MRT station (terminal 2). The fastest way to reach the city is via the MRT (at terminal 2). Off the train hours, you will have to get a Taxi.  Cambodian Tech Girls at Hackerspace.sg Neararath and Kounila visited us late last week and spoke about the tech inCambodia. Presentations on Cambodia at Hackerspace.SG Our friend John Weeks was here from Phnom Penh. John has been studying and talking about Khmer comics. He brought some of these comics for us and spoke about Khmer comics history. Below, a Khmer folk tale that talks about a myth related to origin of some mountains. Below, a love/family story. A Khmer language horror comic John's Khmer Comics links John's account of the visit Global Voices Global Voices Online - Bringing the world to you via Translation View more presentations from Preetam Rai. Nokia N900 in Singapore Got a chance to try out Nokia's upcoming Maemo based N900 phone. Seems it will be launched in late March in Singapore and slightly later in South East Asia. No updates on the pricing yet. The phone feels solid with nice keyboard.  Bright screen. There is a stand at the back.  Geeks will love the fact that the phone allows you to open an unix terminal window and type away commands.   The phone can drive an external display or projector via a video out socket.   Personal Mobile Wi-Fi In Tokyo, many people use these little gadgets. It is a 3G data modem coupled with a little wi-fi router. You turn it on, put it in your pocket or bag. It creates a data connection via the 3G data sim card. Then it uses the built in wi-fi router to create a wi-fi network. Now you have your own personal wi-fi network that goes with you.  The battery lasts for 4 to 5 hours. It supports 5 computers/mobile devices. Many iPod Touch users like this device as they can connect to the internet from anywhere.    I got my own via Ebay. Similar device to the one I had seen in Japan. Both are made by Huawei and the model number is Huawei E5830.  I have been using it for last couple of days and it works fine.  By: Week Five: RSS and Feed Readers | 23 Things Kansas [...] Using Bloglines is an illustrated guide: sign-up, subscribing to feeds of various sorts. [...] Yangon Barcamp 2010 Yes, big thanks to the folks in Yangon. Had a great time at the Barcamp Yangon 2010 So many topics A talk on OpenOffice We had couple of thousand people joining in for the two days It was nice to see so many confident presenters talking about a wide variety of tech topics. And the local organisers and the volunteers did a great job keeping the event running smoothly. and the dinners    Shwedagon at night Magic Ball and Recycling Machine, Interesting Things in Japan Some things I found in Japan This magic ball opens up and changes colors Recycling used paper cups and getting back money By: keylogger freeware Freeware keylogger records all keystrokes; including username/password, incoming/outgoing emails, and both sides of online chat conversations, etc. By: game items Great information. Thanks for this tips By: beta key Thanks for sharing the info Prepaid Mobile internet for Travelers to South East Asia I am often traveling in South East Asia so I keep a few SIM cards handy. Here is a lost of prepaid Mobile internet services offered by mobile telcos in Cambodia, Indonesia, Malayasia, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam Cambodia Cellcard offers a tourist 2.5 G SIM for short stay use. It costs 10$ and comes with 10$ worth of data usage. (The data rate is 1USD for 5 MB) Indonesia (thanks Rezwan) Indosat: A new IM3 brand SIM costs between 10000Rp-20000Rps (Apx 1-2 USDs) including 5000Rp balance. There is a Internet voucher which is sold in many outlets Internet charges – toll based or volume based: * Toll INTERNET = Rp 5000 voucher. Customers duration settings based & internet access for 45 seconds. So will be charged Rp 20, Toll INTERNET balance = Rp 4980. * The volume of customers change settings based & Internet Access 1 Mb. So will be charged Rp 1100 (1100 Kb x Rp 1.1), SHG balance of voucher Toll INTERNET = Rp 3880. http://www.indosat.com/Mentari/Mentari_Update/Voucher_Internet_Indosat Tariff of XL: http://www.xl.co.id/XLPascabayar/XLInternet/Tarifdanlayanan/PaketXLInternetInstan.aspx Malaysia Celcom Broadband Prepaid™ Pack at just RM25 with preloaded credit of RM20 and be among the 1st to enjoy: The widest and fastest Mobile Internet Service in Malaysia so you can get more done wherever you are.? Hassle free access, with no registration needed.? Affordability from only RM20 per week with no fixed monthly charges. Myanmar Prepaid SIM card is available for 20 USD from mobile shops in bigger cities but there is no data. The Phillipines Thans Mike Aquino for .Ph info The Philippines has two main prepaid line providers – Smart Buddy and Globe Prepaid. Both of them have data services, too. SIM data dongles like Smart Bro and Globe Tattoo are pretty cheap, and getting cheaper. Singapore Starhub Maxmobile Prepaid Card – Buy at 7/11 stores and mobie phone shops Singtel has a pre-paid mobile but their Flash laden site, makes it difficult to search M1 - You can buy M1's pre-paid data sim from M1 shop at Bugis Junction. $18 for 3 days unlimited mobile internet usage. Singapore also has a free island-wide wireless network - wireless.sg but you will need a mobile phone with singapore number to receive the passwords once you register for this network. Thailand I usually buy the 123Go Sim card from the 7/11 stores. Vietnam Most of the cafes and budget hotels offer wi-fi. Thanks to Dave A who posted the following in comments VIET NAM Vinaphone has 100mb for 50000vnd (about $3us)per 30 days you have to enable gprs by texting GPRS ON to 888 after recieving confirmation text M50 ON to 888 and the data plan is activated and will deduct this amount every month. there are other plans with other activation codes, including an unlimited plan for i think 300000vnd but i dont know those codes. i have been completely satisfied with the service, have had coverage everywhere in the mekong delta, even way out in the countryside, and quite often full 3G in cdecent sized towns. hope this helps! Should we update the Alphabet Chart? I heard a kid sing the Alphabet song the other day. I think we have not kept up with times when it comes to alphabets. Seriously, don't we type more compared to writing. My wrists start hurting if I try to write something more than two pages. And going forward I feel kids would be typing more. So here is what I have devised. We need to fill in some of the gaps. Also should it be Y for Yahoo! or YouTube. OR W for Wikipedia or Windows? And as June san says, we need a Qwerty song. F for Flickr or Firefox. Some twitter responses to this and my responses. natthefatcat: @preetamrai If we have to teach them in QWERTY order, that means we - the teachers- gotta learn in in QWERTY order as well. LAZYYYY. about 4 hours ago from web Preetam: Yes, so I made this chart above. ?theurbanrant: Qwerty was solvg a probm with manual typewriters RT @preetamrai: Why don't we teach kids alphabets in QWERTY order.no reason2 do ABC order. Preetam: Yes, but I think Qwerty is here to stay until the keyboard (both on screen and physical) are around. misscalamity: @preetamrai then what would become of the alphabet song?! Preetam: Lets make a Qwerty song ?kengggg: @preetamrai what about DVORAK? Preetam: I think Qwerty is the most popular one. nhklein: @preetamrai You mean those under the British imperial history & the USA? The French, Germans, Spanish & other ABC users to not use QWERTY Preetam: But don't the French and the Germans have their own alphabet charts anyway. The French can have an Azerty chart. Mozilla Drumbeat Presentation: Hat-Tip System for Free Content Hat Tip for Free Content View more presentations from Preetam Rai. Last weekend I was in Singapore for the Neotony-Mozilla event. Mozilla has this Drumbeat series of event where they are looking for ideas on making the web better. I presented an idea to reward free content producers. We want to build a system where we have a sort of currency that we can award to people who create freely accessible content. I consume a lot of creative commons licensed material (photos on Flickr, music on Jamendo). I learn things from the videos that people upload on YouTube. I wish I was able to buy them beer or coffee or tea or ice cream, but I can't as I am not in their city. We did build a similar system last year where we enabled one to buy drinks for friends and kind people who helped us out. The system died as we could not expand it beyond a city and various other reasons. It is something akin to Hatena's star system in Japan. You buy these starts and you can plug it on the content (one people's blog) you like. The stars are decorative only and provides no physical value for the recipient, which may not be a bad thing. Someone spent some money to give you a colored star. Our system is in the similar spirit. What we are trying to do is find a currency that does not translate to real cash but something yet may provide say some percentage of a Flickr pro account or some Skype credits. These things are universal and can be utilized by any internet user. Lets call them Free Content Dollars or FCDs. These FCDs can be bought by internet users from a FCD exchange. A part of these FCDs can be sponsored by internet companies say Yahoo! as Flickr pro credits. So how does it work. You find someone has written a good post on say shopping in Bangkok. I can give the FCDs to this person. We are still discussing the mechanism of how this can be done. Once the blogger has accumulated enough FCDs she can re-deem it for say a Flickr Pro account or some Skype credits.I will post more as the idea develops. Dragon Speech App on iPhone This is so accurate it's like science fiction. Sony's New Thin Notebook Pics Justin showed me this Sony Viao demo unit at Hackerspace.sg. Runs windows 7 and cost around 2000 SGD. Thin Has one more USB compared to Macbook Air. It is small and thin and very light with 64GB SSD drive The keys are small, the size of early eepcs. Otherwise looks like a nifty portable computer. 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