I just finished this year’s IPPT test and I should thank God for seeing me through yet another year. The test was held during my ongoing incamp training and I was worried about a stretched hamstring and strained right ankle sustained from last week’s virgin snow ski experience.

Well, I didn’t have to worry about those two medical issues at all, because when I started my shuttle run station, I pulled a left rear muscle above my thigh!

That prevented me from getting a good score on the shuttle run, but I managed to do pretty ok for the rest of the stations (chin-up, standing broad jump, situps and 2.4km run) because those didn’t really use the affected muscle.

If the records are right, I should be getting another silver award (yay, $200!) for the fourth year running. Looks like all these months of waking up at 5.30am for a quick jog around the estate has actually paid off.

As I hobbled home with a strained body tonight, several things struck me.

- I’ve been doing IPPT since I was 10 years old. That’s 24 years of physical testing! When will this horror end? Unlike some friends who’ve already finished their national service quota, I seem to be stuck in limbo with my unit mates.

- I’m probably fitter now than I’ve ever been in the past decade. Journalism wasn’t good for my fitness – I drove around and sat on my seat too much. The irregular hours meant no time to exercise at all.

Today, in my current job, I have regular working hours and I walk at least 2km a day to the MRT and to the office and back.

Here’s how my 2.4km score has improved (well, overall) over the past few years

• 2007 – 12 min 10 sec
• 2008 – 11 min 52 sec
• 2009 – 11 min 55 sec
• 2010 – 11 min 11 sec

This is not me showing off, because I used to clock below ten minutes regularly in the 1990s (now that’s me showing off, 15 years too late)!

But just sharing that despite my disdain for IPPT, I do admit it’s kept me on my toes and my heart pumping for a long time. I remember, during my uni days, I didn’t exercise much and I nearly fainted after my IPPT in 2000, after over two years of physical inactivity.

But IPPT is also a sad reminder of how our bodies gradually break down over time.

No matter how hard I train, I don’t think I can possibly return to the days when we were 18 and could finish off a 2.4km run without flailing around for breath or balance. I’ve never pulled any muscle in the past, but today’s incident was a grim reminder that those days of being a flexible youth are long gone.

What upsets me most, is no matter how much I jog regularly, my double chin wouldn’t stop expanding! But how can I ignore good food? Sigh, the choices we make, have greater impact as we get older.

And what is IPPT anyway, you say? Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPPT_Award_Badge

Related posts:

1. Not so super after all
2. The last thoughts of 2007
3. Where is the love?

One of the more surprising announcements from the PMA event – Sony’s jumping into the small hybrid dSLR space too, after Olympus and Panasonic made a big splash with their Micro Four Thirds cameras (Pen and GF1 respectively) over the past 7 months. They showed off some concept prototypes (above) and plan to launch by the end of this year.

From PC Magazine:

Even though Sony is late to the market of small-body camera with interchangeable lenses, its camera will likely produce better-quality images than Micro Four-Thirds cameras because it will use a larger 24-mm by 16-mm APS-C image sensor, as opposed to the 17-mm by 13-mm sensor found in current Olympus and Panasonic cameras. The sensor, Sony’s Exmore APS HD CMOS, will also allow the camera to capture video using the AVCHD codec – a standard that can produce high-quality 1080p footage.

Sony Answers Micro Four Thirds Challenge

Excuse me, but Sony isn’t late to the party at all. It’s only just started.

I’ll admit I’ve been a SLR snob, refusing to touch any Sony dSLR largely because of my Canon fanboy status. (Also because no one asked me to try one when I was a tech journo. Will not comment further on Sony PR back in the mid 2000s.)

The Pen changed my perspective on the smaller camera players other than Canon and Nikon though.

Now despite my resistance against their Alpha cameras, I think Sony has a good shot at winning in this niche where Oly and Pana dominate now.

Why?

1. Despite rocky financials, Sony has never wavered in pushing the limits in industrial design. Their VAIO laptops are unsurpassed in style within the PC space. Anyone who’s owned a Sony MiniDisc knows they were beautiful machines. The prototypes above look boring, but the final version could surprise everyone.

2. A bigger image sensor than the MFT family. At almost 43% larger surface area, and at the same sensor size as many APS-C dSLRs today, the Sony cameras will provide true dSLR quality. The MFT sensor size is better than a digicam sensor, but gets really grainy at about ISO 1600. APS-C sensors today have really quite low noise at the same film sensitivity.

I love my Pen, but if a better Pen equivalent comes along, why not? These are the future of prosumer cameras, and they can’t come soon enough.

In 3-4 years, I predict that conventional dSLRs will go back to becoming niche products for enthusiasts and professionals, while these smaller hybrid dSLR cameras will cream the mid to high end of the mass audience.

Methinks prices need to reach these levels though (in Singapore currency) before hybrid dSLRs become mainstream, given current consumer price tolerance (which is elastic over a long period).

- Digicams (small compacts): $150 to $600

- Hybrid dSLRs (MFT, Alpha smalls dSLRs) : S$600 to S$1,000

- Conventional dSLRs (the usual guys): S$900 and above.

One interesting thing to note though – if you see the prototypes above, the lenses are a little too big for the bodies, which is natural given that these are dSLR-sized lenses, not smaller MFT lenses. It’ll be a big challenge to design an ergonomic camera with this constraint, but personally I don’t care as long as the images look good.

Related posts:

1. “Which camera should I buy?”
2. The Pen family expands really quickly
3. We want pancakes!

Mediocrity begins with a closed mind. People who refuse to step into the shoes of others are doomed to live their lives out with a narrow perspective. Sounds like common sense, but you’d be surprised how many people refuse to take off their rose-tinted glasses.

People only go on the defensive when you go on the offensive. Some people have little idea how to evaluate matters in an objective manner, which in turn forces people to take a defensive stance that leads to little positive outcome. If you want to go on the offensive, use facts, not assumptions to build your case.

Related posts:

1. Cynicism revisited
2. A response to Ms Catherine Lim

I’m quite relieved that Google Buzz tanked upon its launch. Not because I don’t like their products, but because I’m really tired of this whole new social media paradigm that is making people communicate in rather unhealthy ways.

We don’t need another social media platform and another massive time-suck, for goodness sake!

We’ve reached a stage in cyberspace where suddenly, it’s cool to be navel-gazing or to put every single thought up for display in public.

Yes, this coming from me – one who updates my status in Facebook several times a day to the amazement or horror of some friends – might seem ironic and contradictory.

But Facebook is in its own league of communications and allows people to shape conversations on their own time and space.

Given its massive user base (400m at time of writing), it’s an incredible way of connecting with friends and sharing stuff you could never do so before using your own website/blog/homepage. It combines the visual, the aural, and the verbal in truly useful ways.

Compare this to Twitter, which seems to have spawned a generation of people who cannot help but keep putting up 140 character updates on every little small thing. Already, I check FB too frequently, but you have to double or triple that frequency when using Twitter!

There are folks and companies which truly use Twitter in a controlled manner and post useful information, but having tried to be a Twitterer several times over the past few years, I really find it to be a high-risk platform where I might blurt out something I’d truly regret.

And for what purpose? Millions of tweets go unread every day, a far higher frequency than Facebook postings.

For me, the worst thing about Twitter is that its so “un-visual”. Everything has to be squashed into a TinyURL or Bit-ly link.

Let me detour a bit to the marketing profession on a related rant.

There are some..make that many, marketers who now believe that one should ply all their energies into Facebook and Twitter. I don’t disagree with them as marketing platforms (heck, I set up our Xbox fanpage and maintain it daily), but one should not miss the forest for the trees.

Just because you are using social media, doesn’t make you a good marketer. And just because you’re getting some fancy numbers, doesn’t mean you’re moving the needle where it counts.

The fundamentals of using all the marketing levers, old and new, is still critical especially in Asia where old media continues to rule mindshare. You’d be surprised to know how many marketers I’ve seen who don’t understand old media, or outdoor publicity to begin with. Those fundamentals cannot be ignored because we live in a real world, not a virtual one.

The thing people (who get enamoured with social networks) keep forgetting is that the information you post on such networks is so fleeting, it hardly registers with the majority of people unless you keep grinding at it constantly and consistently.

Trust me, it’s hard to find the right people who can truly engage the public online. Xbox’s Major Nelson is one of the rare few who get it right and actually builds great affinity for the brand rather than just being a “corporate blog” (which is an oxymoron IMO, most corporate bloggers are dead boring and never reveal anything that is truly personal or worth re-reading).

And his tweets are always worth reading because he knows what he’s doing.

I often have to reserve my comments when people come and beat their chests and talk about social media marketing or digital PR. The truth is, the online space has millions of people but very few voices that actually matter. Unless you are willing to step in deep and present yourself as is, your voice will hardly rise above the din. Most people don’t dare to break that wall of privacy down and offer themselves to the masses.

There’s really too much information flooding everyone, and the scary thing is that we’re all contributing to the noise in increasing ways. 

Now here’s another irony I’ve begun to observe– With social media, more is less. The more friends or followers people have on their platforms, the less they’ll notice a particular post from you, no matter how important you think it is. Unless you’re a celebrity or big personality, this rule will apply more often than not.

That said, I think Twitter is a unique tool for generating conversations in real time for people who enjoy it. But I seriously doubt it’ll last as social media fatigue sets in for more people.

For me, I’m sticking to Facebook, where I pace the conversation on my own terms, and Live Messenger, where it’s an actual exchange of thoughts with no peer pressure or interruption.

And Google Buzz? No time, gotta buzz off.

I guess I need to reduce the amount of noise I’m generating too.

Related posts:

1. Do not pay to learn about social media!
2. PC Mag Vs Edelman
3. Don’t like your name?

After one week of use, I’ve come to some clear conclusions about the Kindle 2 that was not immediately apparent during the initial honeymoon phase.

Quick conclusion: I like it, and it’s become like a real book to me, with certain caveats.

Long answer…here goes:

The screen’s contrast level limits where you can read the Kindle.

Like I said in my initial impressions, the contrast level is not great, with a light grey screen and not-100%-black text. It’s bit like reading printed text on a grey cardboard box.

So while the Kindle is meant to be read with a light on like a normal book, I found that it’s best read in really good lighting when indoors – either next to a table lamp or next to a window. You’ll definitely get some eye-strain if you read under normal florescent or incandescent lighting. For outdoors, no issues at all.

While the Kindle indirectly promotes good reading habits (I probably became myopic because I always read under poor lighting), it does call for a better screen or improved font rendering. Here are some web posts on the font rendering issue:

WIRED: Kindle 2’s Fuzzy Fonts Have Users Seeing Red

Kindle 2 Screen Contrast – Light Text, Dark Background & Solutions

I do like to read in good lighting so it’s not a big deal. The test will come when I board a plane with the Kindle 2 next week.

It’s an incredible sleep inducer

Now I’m not sure if this is because of the screen contrast level. I’ve always fallen asleep quickly when reading books or the Bible, but the Kindle sends me off to dreamland within ten minutes if I’m lying on a couch. Luckily, I’ve yet to roll over and sleep on the Kindle.

Great for insomniacs, not so great if you’re trying to finish a long book.

What, only one font?

It looks like Rockwell, but I’ve learnt that the Kindle 2 screen font is known as Caelicia. And that’s the only font you’ll get unless you hack it. (Note: Font hacks don’t work with current 2.3 firmware)

I think one of the beauty of printed books is the wide range of fonts you get to experience on them. Each font family creates a different reading experience and emotional space.

Having only one font is not a deal breaker for the Kindle, but for book lovers, it does remove an element that you don’t realize is gone unless you’re from the graphics or books industry.

This is something that the iPad will fix, and I’m sure Amazon could do the same with a firmware update.

Watch the food and drinks

Be careful if you’re going to eat greasy stuff while reading the Kindle. The big page turning buttons do have small gaps where food or grease can get stuck in!

And who doesn’t read books and eat snacks at the same time? 

You can get really absorbed in a book

It seems like I’m ranting above, but those are small quibbles. This is where the Kindle really proves its worth:

With normal books that offer reams of pages and small fonts, I tend to skip over passages wholesale. However, with the Kindle, I’m reading more slowly and carefully, and getting more absorbed than ever before. Perhaps because I can now control the font size and column width to my needs.

The test of this comes with plot twists and kickers. I get the same literary impact from both the Kindle and a real book!

Battery life is as advertised

After a week of reading everyday (or the equivalent of a Dragonlance fantasy novel so far), I still have 75% battery life left.

More books need to be Kindled

Amazon advertises as having over 400,000 Kindle books, but when you realize there are several dozen versions of Pride and Prejudice, it’s an obviously inflated number.

And when I search for Michael Crichton, I get novels like Prey, The Lost World, Timeline and Airframe, but no Jurassic Park or The Andromeda Strain. This is probably a publisher issue, but you’d think that 3 years after the launch of the original Kindle, book publishers would have put more resources in digitizing books.

Plus the Harry Potter series is still in lucrative print format only

If you’re into newer books like Percy Jackson or NYT Bestsellers, the Kindle will serve you very well. For old skool guys like me, I’m just reading what ebooks I have now until the rest come online.

So should you buy a Kindle today?

It really depends on how much you’ve been wanting to move to ebooks. The commercial market is still in its infancy and ebook readers have plenty of room to improve. The Apple iPad will also be a disruptive force that might confuse buyers and publishers alike with its different approach to ebook technologies.

For me, I’m happy with the Kindle 2 because

1. It’s really re-Kindled my old love for reading and I love my HP Lovecraft collection though I’m now reading Asimov’s Foundation series on it.

2. I like to show off something different in an MRT full of iPhone-toting young punks and aunties. I’m the original Gadget Guy here, folks.

3. I paid alot of money (S$460) for it and it had better make me happy!

I’m a gadget lover at heart, but it doesn’t mean I buy every gadget out there. The true value of a gadget lies in how much you use it, and the Kindle is slowly, but surely usurping the time I previously allocated to my Xbox 360 . It now ranks up there with my other highly-utilized gadgets (iPod Touch, office laptop, Olympus Pen, Xbox 360, Onkyo receiver, Samsung HDTV) and does not belong to the low-utility gadget category(PS3, Wii, and Panasonic LX3).

Gadgets aren’t useful unless you use them, and by Jove, the Kindle demands to be used.

Related posts:

1. Kindle 2 first impressions
2. Some Feb Thoughts
3. Random thoughts to close 2008

I received my Kindle 2 two days ago, thanks to Borderlinx that managed to ship it from US to Singapore within a week. This is a product that I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating before buying (nearly a year actually), largely because I hadn’t seen one in person.

That is until my colleague Vicente showed it to me during our daughters’ ballet class a few Sundays ago. I took a look at it, flipped a few “pages”, and I knew it was worth buying.

Then I waited a while more until Apple announced their iPad, and then I knew the Kindle was more suited for my type of book-reading. The iPad’s power-sucking LCD screen is undoubtedly great for media viewing, but I have my doubts about using it for long periods of text reading. I can’t read the Bible for long on my iPod touch.

And what finally pushed me to order the Kindle?

Finding out that the entire collection of H.P. Lovecraft stories on Amazon was only US$0.99 for the Kindle.

This might seem like a silly decision, given that you can find the whole collection online for free anyway. But that is precisely the point – it’s one thing to read a book or novella on your computer screen.

It’s another thing to hold it in your hands, snuggle up on a couch and get absorbed within text floating across a 6” screen.

Perhaps Cthulhu called out to me across the twisted colors of space and warped my mind (that’s Lovecraftian prose for you, folks), but after years of trying to find cheap paperback versions of Lovecraft lore, this was my personal Achilles heel and I bought the Kindle 2. It’s not cheap at US$259 and US$30 for the leather cover. Including shipping it came up to about SGD$450 in all.

Now my wife says that I’m excited about the Kindle only because it’s a shiny new gadget. That’s also true, but the reason why I’ve stopped buying books over the past decade is simply because I don’t have enough space in our 5-room flat to keep books.

When Goy had chickenpox last year, I bought for her the Twilight series, and I can tell you they take up a ridiculous amount of shelf space. I don’t like to rent books either, because I always end up keeping the books instead and adding to the space problem. That’s why I haven’t really invested time in exploring new series like the Percy Jackson or Sookie Stackhouse novels.

And every time I go on long plane flights, I’d buy a novel and end up chucking it away after one read. That’s both a waste of money and real estate space. When was a kid growing up in Balestier Road, we had a big cardboard box full of books and we devoured library books at an incredible pace. Where did all that book-reading passion go? I blame it all on the space issue.

But writers (and I still consider myself one, even though I’ve crossed over to PR and marcoms from journalism) need to read voraciously. This is a basic requirement in keeping one’s writing ability in top form, and you need to read a wide range of books to gain enough knowledge to have a balanced opinion on all things important. I still read plenty of newspapers and websites online, but the writing in such media is often designed to be concise, but not deep. Books still offer the opportunity to fall into new worlds and get totally sucked up.

Enough of my ramblings, you want to know what I think of the Kindle right? So here goes.

The reading experience

This is the most critical bit for any e-book reader. At first I thought that the Kindle had too big a bezel in relation to the screen size, but after some use, I realized it was pretty good industrial design – you need plenty of “gripping” space when reading in a moving train. It’s not like an iPod touch which is small enough to hold in the palm, so the bezel comes in useful as an ergonomic feature for your hands.

The screen (apparently the same as those found on other e-book readers) takes some getting used to and honestly I think it could have been better.

As a photographer, my eyes are attuned to detecting contrast levels and this screen offers a contrast level that is probably 80% of what is really ideal. The background is of a light grey hue (like a piece of grey recycled cardboard) and the text is about 90% black.

Now this provides a eye-strain free reading experience, following the principle of how you should always tune down your PC monitor to be as bright as a piece of paper to reduce eye fatigue. But the Kindle screen background needs to be about 1 stop (in photographic terms) brighter to provide better contrast.

 Click on image for a clearer view of how sharp the Kindle text is. Read only the first three sentences because the rest aren’t in exact focus. This is at the third largest font size, or about 14pts from my estimation.

The Kindle’s fonts are displayed with a font-smoothing technology similar to Microsoft’s ClearType, but because the text is not 100% black (even in the non-dithered portions), you don’t get the same absolute crispness from an actual printed book. You can adjust the font sizes across 6 different sizes, but the smallest font at approximately 9 point size is really not crisp enough.

Other bigger font sizes are nicely rendered, whether in italics or different body font families (as dictated by the book publisher)

That’s not to say that the Kindle screen isn’t good – overall it’s good enough for reading for really long periods.

It’s just that imaging professionals like us will no doubt feel that the display maker Prime View International decided to stick to a “good enough” contrast level for the masses. Whether it’s actually possible for such a display to render a super “crispy”, higher contrast page is not something I’d know. But it does open up direct comparisons to why people should buy the iPad instead for reading e-books.

But what many people don’t know is that the Kindle’s display screen is incredibly energy-efficient. It only draws power when it draws a new page (or refreshes to show other new content). Once you have flipped the page, the image stays there. Sort of like a super-advanced Magna-Doodle drawing board. That explains the 2-week battery life of the Kindle, or even longer if you read very slowly!

And that’s why the iPad and its LCD-toting competition will occupy a different niche in the e-book reader market. Its LCD screen will no doubt drain power continuously, even when you aren’t flipping pages. It’ll be useful for multimedia books but for the millions of people content with just soaking in text, it’s not necessarily the best device. I’d get an iPad just to read digitized comic books though, once Marvel gets its online comics portal in order (it’s currently slow and cumbersome).

So far, I’ve been reading a few chapters of a sci-fi anthology and I’ve been absorbed pretty much into the stories. The Kindle as a device moves out of the focus, I stop thinking about the contrast ratio, and the book comes alive on its own terms.

That’s no small achievement, if you ask me – I’ve never had a good experience reading on any other monitor or handheld device as the technology was always distracting and in the way.

But it has no color!

Of course, with the announcement of the iPad, e-book makers are now scrambling to invest in color screens too. Perhaps I’m old skool, but I don’t think it’s necessary even in the long run. Books have a unique capability of transporting you to another universe with text alone, and images have been used as embellishments, not plot devices. There aren’t many examples of books that know how to wield images like Dr Seuss books or Alice In Wonderland, where it was critical to see the image of the Jabberwocky to understand what on earth was going on.

To put it more plainly, I’m happy just to discover and enjoy good writing. The pen will remain mightier than the JPG or Flash trailer in the long run.

The book buying experience

Before purchase, I read this local blog where it gives plenty of good advice to Singaporeans looking to invest in the Kindle. There are tips on hiding your IP address and other methods to getting your content. I had no problems buying books with a Singapore-based credit card and a US billing address. Just make sure you have the book downloaded to your PC instead of delivered wirelessly. Once in your PC, you can copy over the book document to your Kindle like a thumb drive.

And on my first night with the Kindle (sounds kinky eh?), I was stunned to discover it could access the Kindle wireless network known as Whispernet in Singapore! How this works is that the Kindle accesses a local telco’s 3G network and connects your Kindle to the Amazon online store to buy books over the air.

In the US, the cost of buying books wirelessly is built into the price of the e-book, but outside of the US, you have to pay USD1.99 extra per purchase.

I tested it, bought Foundation by Isaac Asimov and it downloaded within a minute. Then I logged on to the Amazon website on my PC and found that I was locked out of buying books because my country of use had switched from the US to Singapore, and there was no content available to Singapore buyers.

I regained access by changing my billing address back to the US and all was good again. Obviously, Amazon is doing trials with Singapore telcos, which explains the Whispernet access, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Singapore is just too small a country.

Despite what a lot of locals think – that we are the centre of the universe – our small population offers small potential revenue to many companies doing digital distribution. That’s probably why we haven’t seen an iTunes music store here after so many years. Hopefully, with more Singaporeans buying phone applications, we’ll see more digital downloads available here.

One last note on downloading books – Amazon’s servers are pretty slow at about 30-50KB a second. So a book is usually 500KB or more, and downloading seems crawling by today’s broadband standards.

The verdict so far

I’m not crazy about finding free books online, largely because I don’t care for the complete works of Shakespeare or other non-copyrighted literature. I’m willing to pay for books because good intellectual property isn’t always free and books offer a far different experience from what one gets online from websites.

That’s why I don’t mind that I’m locked into the Kindle’s proprietary ebook format (it does read PDFs and TXT files and some other open formats), because you can’t touch Amazon for the sheer range of books. That’s over 400,000 books for you!

Other geeks will say “Oh, you can’t transfer books like other e-book readers which use open formats.” That’ll be nice, but I don’t forsee myself devouring thousands of books as say, versus MP3s. I like buying songs from iTunes (a US account too) because the songs are DRM-free and I can do what I like with the files. But I’m okay with DRM in books because the usage model is just different.

A friend did point out that when the Kindle becomes obsolete, or if Amazon goes out of business, there goes my books too. I agree, there is a chance that instead of owning my Kindle books, I’m actually just temporarily owning them. That’s just a risk I’ll have to take until e-books achieve a global, archival and commercial standard that everyone can agree with.

Is the Kindle better than the iPad? I don’t know until I experience an iPad for myself. And I don’t care that the Kindle only does one job of reading. I have two iPod touch players in the house, but the family members use them for very different needs. I only listen to music on it 90% of the time, while the wife and kids use them heavily for games, not music or video. Multitasking is nice, but I do enough of that on my PC and at work, thank you.

So from what I know today of the tech landscape, and from my usage model, the Kindle is a great device that really meets my needs and solves the space problem in the house. It needs a screen with better contrast to make the reading experience go from “ok, not bad” to “pleasurable”, and I’m sure the Kindle 3 will have that (or even color).

But we buy what is available today, and what we have today is pretty darn good.

And for the record – the first e-book I bought from Amazon was the Lord Of The Rings trilogy for US$12.24, which I’d never have bought in the printed form. Have you seen how thick the books are?

Related posts:

1. Final thoughts on the Kindle 2
2. More manly stuff I’m reading
3. Jonathan Strange

I have to take my hat off to Olympus.

The Olympus E-P1 Pen camera was launched only about half a year ago, taking the photographic world by storm with its classic design, great image quality and realizing the big potential of the Micro Four Thirds standard.

It carved out a niche that pro photographers have been begging Nikon and Canon to do so for years, and basically bumped up the Olympus E-series from struggling SLR brand to a leader in a new market niche.

Panasonic quickly followed up with the GF-1 but in this crazy camera market, first mover advantage is critical – tens of thousands of consumers were locked down by Olympus by the time the GF-1 appeared. I’ve written plenty about the Pen (Review Part 1, Part 2, Using it with the 25mm, and plenty of images here and here). Oly later announced the mildly upgraded E-P2, which didn’t really warrant any existing owners to upgrade.

Now I was stunned last week to learn of the upcoming E-PL1, or what I’d call the Pen Junior. Now that was fast! Olympus has shown its cards on how it really intends to own the consumer market with this new segment.

I won’t go into the technical specifics here, but here’s what I know

It’s cheaper (USD$599 for a 14-42mm zoom kit, which translates to an SRP of S$845. When the E-P1 was launched in Singapore, the street price for the zoom kit was about S$1200).

It’s more plasticky, compared to the rock-solid metal housing of the original Pen. But then again, so are most digicams below S$1,000. It’s obviously not as retro-sexy too.

It comes with a flash. This is something photographers have all complained about not having in the original Pen, but it’s usually too weak to match with bigger lenses or large area subjects. Still, it’ll satisfy many consumers who don’t know much about manual photography.

It has no rear dials for manual operation, requiring you to press many buttons to adjust aperture and shutter speeds. This is a big downer for photography enthusiasts or pros, but we have to remember this camera is not marketed at us. The rear view (above) looks just like any ordinary digicam these days, which is a good thing for the average Joe.

Weaker optical stabilization (3 stops instead of 4 stops), but this is a small issue.

Smaller LCD (2.7” instead of 3”, but same number of pixels at 230,000 dots)

Lighter weight of 298g versus 335g for the E-P2.

Read more comparisons here from dpreview.com.

I have many friends who are very interested in the Pen but balk at the high price, for which they can buy an entry-level dSLR with better image quality and range of lenses. That’s missing the point, because the Pen and its brethren are not meant to compete directly with dSLRs, but provide a complementary alternative when you don’t feel like lugging around a lot of heavy gear.

For parents of young babies and toddlers, the Pen also provides image quality far better than those from normal digicams. In the past six months, I’ve almost stopped using my Canon EOS 5D for family photos, only because the Pen is so convenient to carry around in a small Domke bag with an additional lens and flash.

With the E-PL1, “near-dSLR” convenience and image quality is now within reach of many more consumers. In recent years, I’ve considered prosumer digicams (big and bulky digicams like the Canon G-series) that had tiny image sensors (as small as your pinky fingernail) a waste of money.

No amount of noise-reduction processing or fat zoom lenses could mask the fact that these prosumer digicams weren’t much better than a S$400 digicam. For S$800, you were better off saving a bit more for a dSLR or Pen. That is, until the E-PL1 came along.

If marketed right, the E-PL1 and upcoming peers can easily kill off prosumer digicams within the next few years. Photographers jumped onto the original Pen, but Olympus had difficulty convincing many consumers why they should get a Pen despite all the lifestyle advertising.

(Oly, you should have spent your money marketing the original Pen on existing dSLR owners, not women)

Now that Oly has dumbed down the features, removed the manual dials to lesser intimidate users, thrown in a flash, and most importantly, brought the price down to an affordable price point, I won’t be surprised if the E-PL1 becomes a big hit.

Dear Oly, here’s wishing you all the best, just don’t mess up the marketing please. And do release more pancake lenses!

PS: For those who think I’ve defected from Canon, you’re off the mark. If Canon ever releases a similar camera like the Pen, I’d buy it in a second because I’m a Canon fanboy. Unfortunately, Canon looks like it’s still monitoring the market and protecting its current 35mm/APS dSLR space. Seriously guys, this is a no brainer. Your G-series’ days are numbered and ought to have been replaced years ago. The only G-series camera I bought was the G3, and that was in 2003! The later G-cameras were all a letdown with unimpressive specifications.

Related posts:

1. “Which camera should I buy?”
2. Full Frame Fwah
3. Sony joins the prosumer bandwagon

The public saw only the poker face. " ‘Never let them see you sweat’ — you can put that above Gates’ door," says Richard Armitage, an old friend and colleague. Four years later, while serving as Deputy National Security Adviser under President George H.W. Bush, Gates was nominated again to be DCI. What followed was one of the longest and most bitter confirmation hearings in Senate records. CIA co-workers from the Soviet desk excoriated his character, his motives, his honesty. They called him a toady who’d fire dissenters and slant intelligence just to please his then boss, Casey. The hearings, which went on for seven weeks before Gates was finally confirmed, were even more bruising than those in 1987. They gave him perspective, Gates said, "so you don’t get too pumped up about things and too down about things. One of my favorite lines is, Today a peacock, tomorrow a feather duster."

How true.

For all the power-hungry, fame-aspiring and status-worrying people in the world, this is a great quote to remember. I’ve encountered quite a few people in my life whose insufferable ego bulldozes everything else in the room, and often, they will later fall on their butts.

So for those of you who have to endure such people, know that justice is usually served, but remember to stay out of the way when these guys fall lest you get crushed.

Related posts:

1. Chapter 3: It’s not easy being a critic

ON FATHERHOOD

I really feel like a father these days, because I come home every day and ask my son the same thing – “So what did you learn in school today?”. That’s because he’s finally in Primary One, a massive milestone for any human being growing up in Singapore.

Before this, I think I really treated my kids like they were my siblings. Now that they’re getting tested in school and all that nonsense, I have to actually behave like I have their future at heart

It didn’t seem so long ago that I was in Primary One myself, scrawling big words on a jotter book.

ON GETTING SOME STUFF DONE

In other aspects of my life, I’m quite thankful for the recession because it meant a big cut in the budget if where I work and much reduced travel this year. So I’ve been able to do several things that were KIV-ed for the longest time

1. Finish my motorbike Class 2B course.

I got my army licence in 1996, and started my civilian course in 2007. I can’t believe it took two years for me to get to the test and that I managed to pass it on the first try.

Of the 90 students taking the test at BBDC that day in Nov, I was actually the 9th oldest guy. The rest of them were hooting young punks below 20, ready to become hell riders. Sigh, if only they’ve seen the kind of road accidents I’ve seen. There’s a reason why I hardly drive above the speed limit.

Now onto Class 2A in November!

2. Concentrate on my violin

After a 3 year hiatus starting from Isabel’s birth, I returned to my violin class. The past year has seen a lot of effort put into rebooting my basic foundation (which was weak, no thanks to a weak teacher from 2001 to 2004) and relearning a lot of things. About six months ago, my teacher taught me how to enable the vibrato and it really makes the playing sound more bearable

But with every new piece, I keep learning about how weak my foundation is and it’s back to the drawing board again.

3. Begin golf lessons

With the completion of my Class 2B, I could finally find time to do something my team has been bugging me to do since 2007 – get onto the golf course. As a journo, I never had a need to learn golf and didn’t think much of it. But now that I’ve started lessons, I realize that it’s a really good sport to pick up.

Firstly, it requires a clear mind and good concentration. Plus a good effective swing requires one to be un-tense while being able to execute a clean stroke. I find this strangely therapeutic. Now I’m just frowning at all the extra, expensive gear I’ll have to buy soon.

I’m learning at JT Golf, which was in turn recommended by my colleague Joy. They’re a cool bunch of guys and are based at the Bishan golf driving range.

4. Reorganize this website

I did this a few weeks ago, and I’m most pleased with it. The new front page allows for very nice navigation and often throws up old posts randomly – stuff that I’ve long forgotten about. This was only possible because of the advancement in plug-ins and of Wordpress software itself.

Sometimes I ask myself why do I keep updating this page. The answer is simple, really – it’s a way of archiving my thoughts and sharing with friends that I don’t get to meet up with so much. It’s also a barometer of how much I’m maturing (or not) over the years. Where I used to be so cynical and angsty, I think I’ve graduated to being just sour and bitter these days

5. Writing The Book

I’ve been working on this for months, and I have a few draft chapters that are residing in the bowels of this site that I refuse to publish yet because I don’t think they’re ready to be public yet. For those who’ve been following my chapters, rest assured, it’s not a dead project. It just needs more thought and less random banging on the keyboard.

6. Reading the Bible

Yes, I know I need to do this more often, and I’m trying my best, God! Please know this may be the last entry here, but it’s not the lowest priority!

ON WRITING EMAILS

I’m sure all of us have sent out emails that we later regretted, right?

I find it amazing that after over 15 years of the Internet, there are some people who still don’t know the power of the written word. Since I started work, I’ve learnt that emails can cheer up, upset or disgust people with very little effort. And no matter what’s in the email, the minute it is penned down, it becomes a matter of record. Even if you lock the email, someone can always take a photo of it off the screen.

That’s why I don’t understand why many people exercise so little control over their emails and how they are written. Over the years, I’ve received some really nasty emails from certain folks (even people whom you’d think are mature or sophisticated enough not to write something like that), and they don’t realize I happen to archive everything because I have a poor memory.

As an ex-journo, I also tend to copy-edit nearly everything I write (yeah, even those seemingly hasty Facebook updates are written with much thought, believe it or not) with a fine-toothed comb.

What do you want people to think of you from the words you’ve written? What do you think is best not said or even implied? Who do you think this email might end up with? Personally, I have a very clear idea of the public persona that I want to project. It’s not very different from the real me, as my bros will attest (or make a joke out of). But that’s because I’ve been doing this in the media for a long time and it’s second nature.

But for everyone else, it’s worth thinking about the next time you intend to send out a strongly worded email. It’s not that I don’t send such stuff out, but I always think about the consequences and if I can afford to have any bridges burnt or people’s feelings hurt.

I guess we all want to be seen as nice people, so remember, hasty emails can do as much harm as a slip of the tongue.

Related posts:

1. The last thoughts of 2007
2. Don’t start your emails this way
3. Random thoughts to close 2008

This guy from Company X was asking me if my team would be interested to sign up for a 3-day social media event in March. He didn’t explain very clearly what it was, but I figured it was a workshop where marketing professionals can sit around and share best practices on how they use social media.

He did it all wrong though.

First, when you cold call someone to get some business, you should have some rudimentary idea what the potential customer is doing. Doing some background research doesn’t take up a lot of time.

But he had no idea what my Xbox team was doing on platforms like Facebook (we’ve got a fanpage that’s about 8500 people strong) or Twitter. A simple online search for terms like “xbox”, “singapore” and “twitter” would throw up immediate results of where we’re at in cyberspace.

Then he told me the cost of the event and I nearly fell off my chair – over S$2,000 per individual.

(At this point, I was wondering if he’d even attempt to offer a group discount or early-bird discount, but that didn’t happen. He was a really lousy salesman.)

The phone call ended there because I told him we weren’t interested. And if the call had gone on any longer, I’d have given him a piece of my mind, which is:

You shouldn’t have to pay to find out about social media. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, social media is free to use (most of the time) and is free to learn.

If you want to get someone else to do social media marketing for you, I’ve got no issue with that and it is often a viable solution.

But pay over two grand to listen to people tell you how to use a common feature on the Internet? That’s like paying someone to teach me how to send email or use instant messaging.

Of course, I’m sure there will be marketers who would gladly love to pay for this workshop and figure out what this social media thingy that everyone is talking about all the time.

How does it work? What wonders can it do for me? Can I save thousands of dollars with social media?

Unfortunately, if you need to pay to find out about social media, you might not really know what you’re doing. How can you be in marketing or communications if you do not take the time to find out about the constantly changing online landscape? How much will it cost you to set up a Facebook account? And WHY aren’t you on Facebook by now?

This also reminds me about a senior print journalist who wrote a commentary about how she’ll never be on Facebook. When print media moves into the next phase, I’d like to see how she copes. 

So if you’ve signed up for such a social media session already, I’d suggest you do the following.

1. Sign up for Facebook or Twitter now, the two most common social media platforms.

2. Add friends on this platform. Unless you have no friends that is…if so, skip to step 4.

3. Interact with friends on these platforms. See how people live, breathe and generally get overdosed on navel-gazing updates from anyone and everyone. Join fanpages or lists to see how others do it.

4. Search online for “social media marketing”. Plenty of articles to read there.

5. Voila, you’ve saved yourself or your company two grand and you’d know a lot more about what’s going on. 

Whether or not you want to get an agency or hire someone to carry out your social media strategy, remember that LEARNING in this area is FREE. My advice here is FREE too, even though I pay about $150 annually to maintain this site!

Don’t get suckered into paying for it and, might I add that many best practices that people share are also available for FREE online.

Edelman Singapore recently organized such a sharing session with IT industry folks too last Friday evening, and we had a good time sharing our successes or horror stories. It cost nothing to participants but was probably more useful than any 3-day session run by an agency with a clueless sales guy.

Oh yes, pssst – blogs and bloggers are social media too, but that’s a whole different kettle of fish. 

Related posts:

1. Mixed Media
2. The Age of Too Much Info
3. Henry Jenkins and the old media