Posts Tagged ‘malaysia’

Who’s Your Hero?

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Yes, if you thought this had something to do with HTC’s first Android smartphone to come with HTC Sense, you were right!  HTC Malaysia has just set up a Facebook fan page, and is now running a competition to search for a hero.  The contest is really simple, and doesn’t involve writing silly slogans or anything like that.  Simply nominate a person whom you think is a hero to you, and why he/she deserves the HTC Hero.  The winning entry will win the nominated person an HTC Hero, obviously!  The contest runs from 12th March to 26th March.  So, get those entries in now!

Here’s the press advisory:

HTC’s “Who’s your HERO?”
Stand a chance to win a HTC Hero for you or your hero by participating in our Facebook competition

Bravery, courage, dedication, perseverance and selflessness- are only a few of the many words that describe the quality of a true hero. Yet, the tales of many heroes are usually never heard, so now HTC is giving you a chance to spread these tales of heroic proportions in our HTC “Who’s your HERO?” Facebook competition.

Starting from 12th March 2010 until 26th March 2010, HTC will be giving one lucky participant a chance to win a HTC Hero. Participants are required to write in to nominate ONE person who they believe is a hero to them and why that person deserves to have the HTC Hero. The entry with the best reason will win for their hero, the HTC Hero.

HTC in Malaysia is now on Facebook, and fans can get the latest information, find answers for all their queries, answer trivia questions and stand a chance to win prizes from HTC regularly.

Visit HTC’s Malaysia Facebook page here, become a fan of HTC and get ready to win attractive prizes!

As usual, with any contest, there are terms and conditions!

HTC’s Who’s your Hero? Terms and Conditions

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. To enter, participants must access and submit their entries via http://bit.ly/b8kWBT. No purchase is necessary to submit an entry. Any purchase will not increase your chances of winning. Use of automated devices is prohibited.

ELIGIBILITY: The competition is open to any individual over the age of 18 in Malaysia. Affiliates of HTC Corporation are not eligible. All federal, state, and local laws and regulations apply. Void where prohibited or restricted. By entering this competition, participants agree to be bound by these Terms and Conditions and the decisions of the Sponsor and/or its agents, including decisions regarding which entries are awarded prizes in this competition. Eligible entries must comply with all entrance requirements published by Sponsor in connection with this competition.

VOTING: Sponsor or its designee will vote to select the winners in their sole discretion.

PRIZE: Each week’s winner will be contacted via [facebook/email]. After a winner is announced, the winner will have 30 days to pick up the prize from ROOTS ASIA PACIFIC (MALAYSIA) SDN BHD, 507, Block B, Level 5, Kelana Square, 17 Jalan SS7/26, Kelana Jaya, 47301, Petaling Jaya, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. If a winner does not pick up his or her prize within 30 days, the prize will be forfeited.  The winners are responsible for all applicable taxes (federal, state and/or local) associated with acceptance and use of the prize. Once the prize has been received by the winner, all liability for any loss or damage, including any property damage, personal injury or death to the prize winner or any third party shall be the sole responsibility of the prize winner and the prize winner shall indemnify and hold harmless Sponsor and its affiliates for any claims. Prizes are not transferable. No substitution of prizes is permitted except at Sponsor’s option, including Sponsor’s right to substitute a prize of equal or greater value if the advertised prize is unavailable.

LIABILITY: By entering this competition, entrants agree that, and expressly consent that, except where prohibited, Sponsor may use each entrant’s name and likeness and each entrant’s submission and its likeness for publicity purposes (including advertising or internet usage) without compensation.

Sponsor, its affiliates and its promotional and advertising agencies, and all respective officers, directors, employees, representatives and agents of each, shall have no liability and shall be held harmless by entrants for any damage, loss or liability, causes of action, claims, suits, demands and rights of whatever kind and nature whether in law or in equity, arising out of or in connection with the competition.

Sponsor reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to cancel, terminate, modify, or suspend part or all of this competition should an unauthorized human intervention or any other cause beyond the control of Sponsor corrupt or impair the administration, security, fairness or proper play of the competition.

Sponsor and its affiliates and its promotion and advertising agencies, and all respective officers, directors, employees, representatives and agents of each, are not responsible for technical, hardware, software or telephone failures of any kind, lost, interrupted or unavailable network connections, fraud, incomplete, garbled or delayed computer transmissions, whether caused by the Sponsor, users, or by any of the equipment or programming associated with or utilized in the competition or by any technical or human error which may occur in the processing of submissions which may damage a user’s system or limit a participant’s ability to participate in the competition.

Sponsor reserves the right at its sole discretion to disqualify any individual that Sponsor reasonably believes to have tampered with the entry process or with the operation of the competition, or who is found to be acting in violation of these Terms and Conditions. This Competition is intended and limited for play in Malaysia and shall only be construed and evaluated according to Malaysian law.

SPONSOR: HTC Corporation, B-11-07, Plaza Mont Kiara, 2 Jalan Kiara, Mont Kiara, 50480 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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Malfreemaps Garmin Map Of Malaysia And Singapore 100308

Monday, March 8th, 2010

garmin-nuvi-gpsDated 8th March 2010, version 1000308. This is for the folks out there who can’t be bothered/don’t understand how to download the Mapsource version and generate the necessary .img file to be used with Garmin Mobile XT(GMXT)/Garmin Mobile PC (GMPC). Download it here, here or here.

Please note that this is the full map, with road POIs searchable,but no Chinese POIs included. If you want the “Lite” version or the version with the Chinese POIs, you’ll need to generate the IMG file yourself.

Extract the .img file from the archive and place it in the “garmin” folder for GMXT or the “GarminMobilePC” folder for Garmin Mobile PC (GMPC).

Credits as usual, go to malfreemaps. Please go to their site to contribute to make it a better map!   Contribute feedback for this map here.

According to the malfreemaps website, here are the improvements in the new map:

NEW IMPROVEMENTS ON MFM-GARMIN

  1. Link to Navnet map in Kalimantan
  2. Coverage of Southern Thailand
  3. Optional Chinese POI
  4. Improved SG Postal Code & Address map with instant search result
  5. New POI icons
  6. New POI categories with custom icons (soon)
  7. New MFM map generator with option to generate either Full or Lite version
  8. Topo contours are added into Full-version map
  9. New multi-language installer
  10. No more error when uploading map through Mapsource

Please refer to new features page for additional info.

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Am I The Only One…

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

…who thinks there is something not quite right about awarding prizes for best customer testimonials?  Isn’t this tantamount to bribery?  It’s like – “hey, write a really good piece about our product, and we’ll reward you with a nice prize of some value“.  I’m referring to Microsoft Malaysia’s decision to award an HTC HD2 Windows Mobile smartphone, worth a recommended retail price (RRP) of RM 2899 to a lucky “winner” every week, for testing out Microsoft’s upcoming Microsoft Office 2010 product, and writing an excellent testimonial on their experience.

So, I guess the gist of it is that become a fanboy and stand to win a prize.  Submit an idea for improvement by saying a feature sucks, and stand to win nothing.  Nice.

And if these people are gushing about a product currently in beta, and downloadable for free, why not award them a free copy of Microsoft Office 2010 when it becomes commercially available?  Would that not be a better way of rewarding people – by giving them something that they have thoroughly enjoyed using?  Unless that wasn’t the point in the first place.  You decide.

Source, and the Star’s picked up on it as well.

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Don’t Tease Us La…

Monday, March 1st, 2010

It’s Monday, so this means it’s whacking day.  Whacking as in teasing companies that don’t seem to have much of a clue of what they’re trying to do.  Today’s case in point – Nokia Malaysia.  On their product page, it says that the Nokia N900 is part of their stable of latest products.  The funny thing is, when I called up the Nokia Concept Store (why the h3ll do they call it a “concept” store anyway?  Why not just a “store”?  Does putting the word “concept” means that one can charge customers a higher price because it sounds posh?) I was told that it was not in stores yet.  Pre-sales/pre-bookings will begin mid-March, with an exact delivery date unknown.  Price unknown, although for budgeting purposes, I was told around RM 2,500.

Alrighty then, if something is not yet available, I think it should go in the “upcoming models” section, and not “latest models”.  Otherwise, get rid of that “upcoming models” category on the webpage – having the N900 appear in the latest models category just makes a mockery of the entire categorisation scheme and insults my intelligence, not that I’m saying I’m very intelligent to start off with, but I’m not *that* stupid la.

You know what?  I was on my way out to maybe buy an “approved permit” aka smuggled/underwater set when my puppy stopped me at the door and asked me the following questions.  My puppy is quite smart, you see, and she was not happy that I was sacrificing her dog food allowance to buy this gadget.

  1. how many apps and games has it got?  Does it have any “serious” apps apart from those produced by Nokia?
  2. is it upgradeable to MeeGo, now that maemo is dead?
  3. does it support MMS out of the box?
  4. can it play games like GTA:CTW, Gangstar, Flight Control, Plants vs Zombies, etc without having to resort to “cartoon-like” graphics?
  5. is it a requirement to know arcane Linux terminal commands in order to make full use of the phone?
  6. why is there so many sellers of the N900 in the biggest local forum – lowyat.net – people who had the phone less than 2 weeks and wanting to sell them off?
  7. is it sleek and slim by design?
  8. is it light?

I didn’t have good answers to the above, so my puppy is back to enjoying her holistic food.  Like I said, I have one very smart puppy.

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Papago Malaysia/Singapore For The iPhone

Monday, March 1st, 2010

Papago, a Taiwan GPS mapping and navigation company, recently released its M6 product for the iPhone and iPod Touch platforms.  If you own an iPhone and have been complaining to date that the GPS functionality on your iPhone sucks, this one is for you.  It’s better than Garmin Mobile XT, according to some.  Why?  One – it’s got 3D building views, which is extremely useful if you’re going to an area you are unfamiliar with, and need some visual cues as to where you are.  Second – it’s got a feature called junction view – which tells you which lane to use when you turn off at a junction – again, extremely useful, given the deplorable state in which our signboards have been haphazardly placed and sign-posted.

There are two versions – a lite and pro.  The former does not have the bells and whistles of the 3D building views and junction views; the latter has all the works thrown in.  One unfortunate thing about this software is that there is currently no easy way to update the maps – one has to depend on Maction (the sellers of Papago) to issue periodic updates for this.  But, if you’re jailbroken, you can update whenever a new map is released.  And the map is from none other than malfreemaps, which I consider to be the premier mapping community in Malaysia.  And like their Garmin maps, the Papago map is free – just download the Android version and you’re good to go – just connect the iPhone to your PC, and copy around 30 files over to the device.  Post a comment if you want to know how to do this.

The Papago M6 version for the iPhone costs US$19.99, approximately RM 68.  For some screenshots of this app in action, click here (thanks for malfreemaps as usual for sharing such a great Malaysian map with us!).  Because of the size of the map and associated files involved, the Papago version of the malfreemaps map is not updated as frequently, although it is still updated more frequently than most other competing maps.  So, do you use it?  How’s it working out for you?

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