DSLR with SpeedLight Flash

My sis bought a new Nikon Speedlight SB-600 to complement our Nikon D40X DSLR. Now we have a proper flash with a proper diffuser to capture our images. 

A lot of our photography takes place in indoor and night situations and the stock flash in the D40X just wasn’t good enough as the angle could not be adjusted to get the right bounce.

Was practicing at my cousin’s wedding over the weekend. Got a hang of the flash and its capabilities. 

But I’m still a long way to go from being able to do really high quality images. I think one thing that is limiting me is the use of the kit-lens. Somehow the glass not very good la. Images not sharp enough even with all the tuning.

Gotta save up for some power lenses. This is becoming expensive!

Outdoor WIFI continually evades me!

Wifi out of home is sometimes pretty difficult to get even in technologically advanced Singapore. Wireless@Sg sill logs me out every 15 mins. Today I thought I could get a nice cup of coffee at Coffee Bean and use the ACCESS-STARHUB but I was so wrong. DHCP totally didn’t work. Couldn’t get an IP at all. My Huawei E270 3G modem never works with my MAC OSX Leopard. Drivers fail! All the uninstall-reinstall cycles were to no avail. Let’s see if iPhone 3G or even a 3G MacBook (if it is on the cards) would be able to help with my external connectivity issues? 

Stacks and Stacks of Email

Been so busy with last week’s speaking engagement and the eBay event and post event reports and various what nots that I now have 620 emails stacked up in the various inboxes over the course of a few days. Die la!

IDC Asia/Pacific Web 2.0 Conference - Speaking there, See you!

Hey everyone! I’ll be speaking at the IDC Asia/Pacific Web 2.0 Conference next week.

My topic will be about the Web 2.0 landscape in Asia. The conference is pretty high-profile with the attendees mainly being CXOs ad information technology managers.

From the list of signups, it does seem as though Web 2.0 is really getting into the corporate meme as more executives are beginning to have the idea sink in that Web2 is here to stay and while there are many opportunities, there will also be many threats.

Nothing too insurmountable though

It’s not easy to prepare for a bunch of seasoned execs. The topic is just broad. With just 30 minutes to speak, I’ll probably have to laser speed my way through it. But I’ll make it fun.

I personally don’t like to sit through boring lectures so I’ll crack my head to make sure no one falls asleep!

In early April, I flew up to Hong Kong to speak to some corporate head-honchos about Facebook. The questions they shoot are definitely not the easy peasy kind but it was excellent opportunity to train up.

I live by the philosophy that the harder it is the better. The more I can stretch myself the better. Otherwise, no fun la!

Prof Wong’s Blog

Professor Wong Poh Kam has started blogging on his blog. (If you are not familiar with Prof Wong, you can read his intro post here.)

Prof Wong has been very supportive of us young people. In many ways I really admire his far-sighted vision.

He helped to formulate the NOC program which has definitely changed my life along with hundreds of others. It gave me the opportunity to see beyond the usual career choice to choose the path of entrepreneurship with gumption.

I don’t look back nowadays and put in my 120% week-in-week out. It stretches me but not a day has passed with out its challenging moments yet it’s still so fun.

Also, Prof Wong saw how important it was to really engage young entrepreneurs and provided us with the support to begin the Garag3.

So it’s really nice to have Zack from SgStartups write about the energy at the Garag3. We didn’t pay him to write about it. It’s 100% authentic. Many in part due to the young founders at the Garag3 and also the interns working there. Over 50 people work full-time in the startups at the Garag3 this summer.

It’s an electrifying experience to be there. So fast-paced, so intellectually-challenging.

But back to Prof Wong. He’s joined the Blogosphere only now, but being the Prof, I’m pretty sure he’ll have some interesting stories to share!

If you’re looking for angel investments, engaging Prof Wong through his blog could be a very good way to begin conversations. I’m not sure how many other angel investors or VCs in this region blog but it seems like Prof Wong is one of few. Bernie still blogs fervently of course

VOIP SIP Phone Systems

About 9 months after commencing operations, we decided to get our own phones in the office.

It’s been quite a journey researching and finding the best VOIP/SIP enabled phones. But I guess it’s pretty rewarding.

The call rates are very competitive and cheap. And if you don’t like just switch to another provider.

I bought physical phones that look like regular telephones so that the user experience is good. The latest one I bought is this: Prolink PIP 901. (S$49 only at the PC Show!)

I find that no matter what, people prefer to pick up a handset to talk to people and hear a ring-tone. Even techno-savvy people like me!

So with the first VOIP/SIP running with our Pfingo Line, we brought in the Australian PennyTel line to make international calls and then our Jakarta partners provided us with a SIP server so we now have our own internal phone extensions.

This is nirvana for a geek because finally, I can get away from PSTN.

Our entire phone system is IP based.

And everything can be controlled over a web browser, just like you would control a wireless router: login via an IP address and play around with the settings via a web-ui.

Also, if you’re wondering what’s the stage of SoftPhones, check out HUD. This is quite ultimate. The whole UI is linked to your IP phone network. You can drag and drop calls from one phone to another. You can immediately see which of your employees are on call and using what number. Voicemail notifications are built in. It’s crazy good!

Ultimate Business Phone System I Want To Have:

So after running through all the options available by researching Wikipedia. I now have enough info the architect a complete enterprise VOIP system. So this is my ultimate system:

1. Setup a IP-PBX at our Equinix Data-Centre: Will use an old P3 Server that we have to provision it. Will put in the TrixBox (Formerly Asterix@Home) system and set up the GUI.

2. Setup TrixBox: Add in IVR, extensions, call waiting, custom ringtones,  custom greets… blah blah.

3. Have one Hardware SIP Phone (Like the ProLink PIP 901 above)  in every office for the good ‘ole ringin.

4. Setup X-Lite softphone on every computer: Everyone can call using their computer. Laptops especially. Macbooks even better.

5. Pfingo Desktop provides an outgoing Fax Function: You can upload a .doc or .pdf to the software, type in a number and it wil fax out for you. (The Fax Machine is truly dead).

6. Setup Linux based softphones on our Linux desktops.

7. Setup Fring with SIP on iPhones or Nokia phones.

8. Incorporate 3G iPhones into the picture (through SIP).

9. Incorporate blue-tooth enabled SIP Phones for wireless walk around capability.

10. Video enabled SIP phones?

11. Build a Video enabled high-resolution telepresence conferencing set up.

12. Install greasemonkey scripts that detect phone numbers on web-pages and help to initiate calls.

13. Have BluePhoneElite SMS system for heavy SMS users.

Wow!

Nice right?

Finally a super full featured, ultra-comprehensive, seamless system that’s literally free. Amazing.

Why You Should Try It:

It just works. Once you get past the initial learning curve it just works.

Here we get our employees to participate in building out the IP Phone system so it’s an internal ‘hack’ project for everyone.

It saves you money.

You can have multiple lines: Singapore line, USA line, Japan line, Indonesia line.. blah blah.

It allows ultra-granular configuration. So much more settings you can play with.

Why don’t you set one up for yourself today? I’m so tempted to one day wire up my entire house with an internal IP-PBX even!