Right now, I’m traveling the US on a three week tour of the West Coast. Though I brought my trusty MacBook Pro along, I installed a fair number of apps on my iPhone so that I could get to them from my fingertips at any time.
Here’s what I found really handy. (Of course I didn’t install ALL of them! Some are based on findings and recommendations by friends). They’re my unbiased reviews of apps I’ve found. Do feel free to share with others if you have favorite apps of your …

When the Apple iPhone was first launched, there was no application that allowed inter-iPhone-messaging. Then came Ping! which stirred up the community somewhat, but was not wildly accepted. Then came WhatsApp that was heaps better and received widespread acceptance.
Today, it is hailed as one of the first apps an iPhone user MUST install, as it allows you to message your friends for free. As their tagline goes, “SMS is so 2008″.
However, WhatsApp was limited to just the iPhone and that was rather, errr… limiting? But not anymore. It has now …

Was on Twitter today, and saw a new blurb pop up announcing Local Trends.

Find out what’s trending in a locality near you… but only if you are from one of these countries or cities. Twitter currently supports:

Brazil
Canada
Ireland
Mexico
United Kingdom
United States (filter down to: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, London, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Francisco, Seattle, São Paulo, Washington D.C.

Here’s a comparison of what is trending worldwide vs what’s trending in different countries.

And if we look at different cities in the United States, some have …

You’ve heard the phrase, you cannot create something viral: it just becomes viral. And it’s absolutely true!
On January 16th 2010, the Malaysian Information Communication and Culture minister, Dr Rais Yatim stated the following, which was deemed as rather preposterous. This had the whole Internet up in arms against him, especially on the Twittersphere. Here’s an excerpt on what he said taken from The Star Online:
SEREMBAN: Malaysians, especially Muslims, must avoid being totally immersed in the internet culture, especially Facebook and Twitter, said Information Communication and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Dr …

If you’re not from the US and have already started an iTunes account based in your own country, you probably know you’re treated as a second rate iTunes citizen. Some applications, podcasts, etc… are just not allowed simple because we’re not “based in the US of A”. I was really, really annoyed that I couldn’t download the FREE Photoshop App or the Kindle for iPhone and resolved to “fix it somehow”.
Here’s the typical “You’re not American” error that you may encounter. It actually says, “Your account is only valid for …

WhatsApp is a great application that is useful for instant messaging from iPhone-to-iPhone for FREE. It is akin to the Blackberry Messenger, and is a rival application to the much famed Ping, which picked up a huge following due to the $0 price tag when it first launched. (They have since launched Ping Lite which is still free).
However, WhatsApp seemingly does not support quite a number of countries, but there is a legitimate way around it. Their website quotes in their FAQ:

What countries do you support?
Most of them! We took …

Oh bugger, I’ve been Rickrolled! I was out getting tea and I received a phone call – I spotted Rick’s face which shocked me for a bit, but then remembered reading about the virus which originated in Australia. I guess it crawled fast enough over to my iPhone from there. After doing research and reading several incomplete methods on cleaning up the virus, I’ve put together a comprehensive 2 part article – how to remove it, and how to secure your iPhone from getting infected by it.
If you haven’t heard, …

I’ve been intrigued by Snow Leopard (OSX 10.6) ever since it came out. Sure, many people hail it as the king of bugfixes (just like what Windows 7 is to Vista), but it does sport some pretty nifty features beneath that facade which are unseen.
Anyhow, in keeping with the times, we needed a new Mac-based machine in the office and I decided to get grimy and build one with Snow Leopard AND Windows. Yup, dual-booting it’s called. Over the weekend, I encountered numerous grey screens of death, hung computers and …

Today started off as any other day, except for the fact that tweets flooded in about FREE COFFEE at Starbucks!

Never mind the ingenius barista who tried to upsell me the full-blown breakfast, I still got a swell deal on coffee.
The concept of the campaign is awesome – freebies will definitely engage the general population and word of mouth will be the powerful medium in addition to social media tools that will spread the brand like wildfire.
Literally 50% of my office went to the Starbucks outlet downstairs to get a cuppa, …

Krishnakant Mane is a truly amazing young man who hails from Mumbai, India. He is a very accomplished visually disabled person, who has fought to overcome his weaknesses and maximize his strengths. During TEDxKL in June, I was fortunate to meet him and record his moving (and extremely funny) talk on the use of technology, open source software and how a disabled person can live a more normal life with the use of speech synthesis.
I think my favorite lines from here were with regards to how his laptop battery can …