Yuhui said:

This group was created in response to a comment by well known American blogger, Michael Arrington. In a blog entry, he claimed that Singaporean blogs are (largely) controlled by the government. [...] it is more likely that there are many more Singaporean blogs that are NOT controlled by the government [...].

Recommended by yuhui: "We need to educate people from around the world about the independence of our Singapore blogosphere!"

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Techxav said:

I was actually quite surprised that my tech blog was selected as one of the finalists in the second Singapore Blog Awards without even doing any promotion on Twitter, Facebook or even my huge network of local friends. Most of my friends said that I will definitely win the SG Blog Awards but I cannot guarantee the success. One of my adult friend even told me that “The Blog Awards need me more than I need them.” Well, this seems quite true but I still want to win to attract more local readers to my blog.

Recommended by Anonymous Coward: "Read the full interview. This 15 year old may be Singapore's top twitter user, but his attitude is really too cocky. Is this how our youths are brought up to be like these days - cocky and arrogant?"

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Techgoondu said:

We are a bunch of technology journalists and ex-journalists from Singapore who share a common love for all things geeky and digital, from cellphones to graphics cards to games. Together, we’ve had decades of experience covering news and reviews from the early 1990s. The aim of this site? Simply to discuss tech issues that’s often not mainstream but pique the interest of tech users nonetheless.

Recommended by ramblinglibrarian: "I seldom see Singapore journalists identify themselves when they blog, much less blog professionally. The blog serves a niche too."

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Hui Qi said:

Apparently, we even made it to THE TOP SEARCH on TECHNORATI, on that very Thursday itself. A feat, indeed.

Keywords were "meridian junior college" and "mjc".

We were even more popular than tibet, news, AMERICAN IDOL, "some arabic word", myspace, MYANMAR, OBAMA, linux, and kiss.

Recommended by Anonymous Coward: "A Singaporean school had actually made it to the top search of Technorati, on May 08, 2008, and cuurently reigns at number 16th. A student from that very college explains why."

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Slashdot said:

Since the release of Windows Vista, Creative has promised their Sound Cards as being 'Vista Ready'. Unfortunately, as many unlucky customers did discover, this is not true. What the users actually found were buggy, feature crippled drivers. Creative insisted that features such as Decoding of Dolby® Digital and DTS(TM) signals and DVD-Audio which worked fine in WinXP, would not work on windows Vista. With Creative releasing less than one new driver a year, things seemed bleak. Fortunately, a talented user, Daniel_K, was recently able to 'fix' many of the drivers, enabling the incompatible features and also fixing many bugs. Just today Creative has decided to put a stop to this. They removed all links to his modified drivers, and banned several users who were posting links to the now banned drivers.

Recommended by shianux: "And the reason why Creative is facing losses year after year is because...? You piss off your customers, intentionally cripple your customer's products, and then later on, restrict people who bought your products from enabling those features, using "intellectual property" as a cudgel. Well done."

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The Register said:

Always enjoyable and ambiguous "media reports" coming out of Malaysia have Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi bragging that Google plans to build the world's largest data center in his country.

That's great news, right?

Uh, well sort of. Malaysia can expect to see upwards of $600m in hardware, software and construction services roll into town, which is nice. After that, though, Google usually employs only 200 workers at its largest data centers. Double that total for the "world's biggest" ad serving sweatshop, and you're looking at 400 workers getting paid to plug things in and mop the floor.

Recommended by shianux: "If Google sets up a datacenter in your country, what kind and number of jobs would they create?"

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littlespeck said:

British scientist Alan Colman, who helped clone Dolly the sheep, is leaving Singapore, dealing another blow to the city-state's biotech ambitions.

Stem cell scientist Colman, who had been lured to the city-state with grants and research facilities, now heads a Singapore consortium in stem cell research.

He will leave next May for the Stem Cell Centre at King's College London, the city-state's Agency for Science, Technology and Research said in a statement.

The latest move follows news in September that two other top British scientists, David and Birgitte Lane, will also leave next year, giving weight to the World Bank's criticism that Singapore's biotech drive was overly reliant on "footloose" scientists who could leave at short notice.

Recommended by at82: "This is what happens when we when don't groom our own talents."

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Firdooze said:

Expecting 1 Gbps download speed from all servers is IMPOSSIBLE. Firstly, the intended use of transferring huge files around in the network will cause lots of congestion, thus slow download speeds. Unless a better congestion control (than what we have now) is put into place, getting a constant 1 Gbps is nearly impossible.

Recommended by Anonymous Coward: "The author sheds lights on the possible setbacks that the new ultra broadband network could encounter. An interesting post to read for the layman. "

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Wired Science said:

I find it quite funny that Minister Yeo is a magnet for nanotechnology gifts. During his speech, he described a coffee mug that causes the carbon dioxide in soda to fizzle out quickly. After his speech, he was given a plaque with a fuel cell embedded in it. Considering how things are going, I suspect that he will receive a lot more of them in the coming years.

Recommended by Lucian: "Singapore looks set to beat the US in scientific areas such as nanotechnology."

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Russell Brown said:

Frankly a week at CommunicAsia has me not loving telcos. Hour after hour it was carriers blathering at each other, or being blathered at by consultants, about how content is king, and must be "compelling" and "exclusive" if consumers are to be wooed to new mobile and "quadruple play" IP services - without a single content person in the house. Not one.

Recommended by mb: "Russell Brown of New Zealand spends a week at CommunicAsia and shares his thoughts on the event, telcos, and Singapore."

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Elite Bastards said:

So, what exactly are the problems facing Creative right now, and how will the company react to try and keep their place on the top of the sound processing pile? We investigate and speculate to give you the low-down and our thoughts on the future of audio in the PC market.

Recommended by mb: "Via Slashdot. A fairly technical read."

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Aljazeera said:

A biotech company in Singapore said on Friday that it has created human embryonic stem cells that comply with the strict standards imposed for clinical use in humans.

Recommended by Lucian: "because it comes from Al Jazeera!"

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The bunch of Singaporeans over at The Purdue Diaries developed an ipod remote control...which uses hand gestures! Their little gadget made it to TechEBlog's "Top 10 Strangest Tech Inventions", and is available on video.

Zhuang, Derrick, and Colin of Purdue University created “Handy”, a prototype “hand gesture based remote control”. The setup consists of a Handy box, an iPod Nano, and a BOSE Sound Dock.

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Link to Video

The Inquirer said:

Well, for all the years I've been here, Lion City never really bothered about sophisticated computer hardware design... Also, a general lack of knowledge about hardware, especially high-end, of what the vendor is really selling you, has created some really comical sales (or waste of money) even in the government sector over the years. Now, ASUS comes to set up its first international R&D centre here? Well, I can only applaud the move - I dearly hope that means that this little island moves forward to grasp the high-end, high-performance, high-margin hardware design business seriously.

Recommended by shianux: "Technology analysts gives opinion on Asus' move to set up their worldwide HQ and international R&D centre in Singapore."

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Adrian Lee said:

Overall, it was great and heartening to see something actually showcasing technology startups in Singapore and the innovation that’s happening. It was billed as a Web 2.0 startup showcase, although in my opinion none of the startups showcased was truly Web 2.0...

Recommended by Anonymous Coward: Interesting to see that you don't have to travel all the way to Silicon Valley to find innovative web startups and entrepreneurs based in Singapore who are trying to make a global impact as showcased in the Entrepreneur 27 event at NUS. You can also read the reviews for the individuals startups:

• Bezurk
• PetValley
• TenCube

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Anand Shiva said:

Keep in mind that Gmail is first and foremost a mail app. The integrated Talk is just a thoughtful feature to skip the mailing process wherever possible. Remember that and you might actually enjoy this add-on.

Recommended by Anonymous Coward: "Review of Gmail Talk. I haven't seen it in my account yet...."

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themediaslut said:

themediaslut was given the opportunity to review the new Windows Live Messenger, also know as Messenger 8.

Recommended by Anonymous Coward: "It seems like everybody is looking for the invite to use Windows Live, but somehow themediaslut got it and has provided a short review of it.. Amazing... "

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James Seng recently asked why the Singapore blogosphere seemed to have predominant influence over Technorati. Finding it interesting, I digged deeper:

James' observation stemmed from how issues in the local blogosphere, such as the “Sarong Party Girl” issue in June and and “NKF incident” in July, made it as the most searched keywords on Technorati. Currently, the top 10 searches on Technorati includes “Daphne Teo” (#2) and “Dawn Yang” (#7), both of which are talk of the online town.

My initial impression is that the social structure of Singapore has strategic qualities which lend itself well to Media Literacy (See Wikipedia: Media Literacy). Where “Information Literacy” referred to the ability to find, comprehend (linguistically) and consume information for use, the term “Media Literacy” refers to the ability to produce, create and successfully communicate information in its various forms. This runs parallel with the produser philosophy and the new traditions highlighted in Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 model...

If you are tickled by this kind of thing, have a look at the rest of the article here.

hiptechblog.com said:

Called Airwash, the waterfall-inspired washing unit is waterless and does not use detergents. Instead, it utilises negative ions, compressed air and deodorants to clean clothes.

Recommended by ketsugi: "NUS students actually doing interesting stuff! Amazing!"

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Engadget said:

...the Nanyang Technological University-developed NTU Mine Shoe design represents a promising development in mine clearing technology. The six legs of the shoe detect mines and kick up before triggering the detonation mechanism.

Recommended by ketsugi: "It's not often that we get to see Singapore featured -- favourably -- on tech news sites like Engadget."

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