Movie Review: Eagle Eye

Poster

My Rating: 4Stars

This evening I saw the movie Eagle Eye at AMC Theater, Pacific Place, Admiralty, Hong Kong.

Another highly anticipated movie from my Must See Movies list.

Another great movie with exciting special effects and spectacular stunts. The kind you expects from Die Hard franchise and more recently in Wanted. These recent movies has really raise the bar for all action movies to come.

The casting was almost perfect except for Michael Chiklis, which I just cannot rid him of his character, “Detective Vic Mackey” from The Shield. It is most likely the choice of the director, D.J. Caruso, who chose Chiklis for the Defense Secretary role.

The plot of this movie is not totally original, with The Terminator and WarGames both using the same theme. To avoid ruin the movie for my readers I will not review too much of the plot, which is reviewed half way into the movie.

Overall the dialogue is fairly weak particularly Chiklis’ character. The only memorable one was from Billy Bob Thornton where he turns to his team and say, “I hope you are all staring at me because I am the major suspect, if I don’t get some significant leads I will demote everyone of you to jobs that require direct contact of feces.”

If you enjoy action movies and a technology buff, this is definitely a movie not to miss.

Rating Legend:
5Stars Not to be missed
4Stars Wait for the DVD
3Stars Buy from iTunes Store
2Stars Rent it on iTunes
1Stars Waste your time elsewhere

Signage of No Significance


Today I observe what often happens in Hong Kong, where citizens simply ignore signage displayed and committing the acts right in front of the signs, which describe their violations.

iPhone 3G Officially Available Unlocked in Hong Kong… Good News?

Apple HK made the iPhone 3G available to everyone with a HK shipping address via Apple Hong Kong’s online store.

This made Hong Kong the hub (and “source”) of iPhone 3G that are free from the shackle of the money hungry, backward thinking mobile carriers. As of the writing of this post Apple Hong Kong’s online store shows a 24 hours delivery time and free shipping. I am certain when news spread of this availability, the inventory will go quickly.

I was always against the idea of having to commit to Three HK for a 2-year contract just to gain the privilege of purchasing an Apple iPhone 3G. Now I have less of a barrier to bring this great device to the mobile carrier of my choice (“Smartone-Vodafone”).

Ah… my first generation iPhone worth even less now. Them are the breaks, especially with technology devices.

Is this move by Apple a sign of things to come for other (47) iPhone selling countries? Is this Apple’s way of changing their strategy to put as many iPhones in the hands of consumers as possible? This has always been one of the pain points of critics.

Continue reading “iPhone 3G Officially Available Unlocked in Hong Kong… Good News?”

Bringing Mobile Broadcast TV to the iPhone

PV’s (PacketVideo) Telly pocket device brings broadcast TV services into the hands of new subscribers and current users with WiFi-enabled devices that does not support the service provider’s Mobile Broadcast TV.

This device is suppose to support the world’s Mobile TV Broadcast standards: DVB-H and MediaFLO. Both of which I believe are used by Hong Kong mobile phone carriers.

Since PV is not selling this device to consumers but only to OEMs and ODMs. I wish my chosen mobile carrier, Smartone-Vodafone, will hear this call and adopts PV’s device instead of forcing their customers to purchase a specific mobile phone. At the moment the list of supported mobile phone are short and 2nd generation.

Although the problem may be with the DRM that the carriers wants to impose on the content rather than choosing the correct device for the consumer.

read more | digg story

Bringing Mobile Broadcast TV to the iPhone


PV’s (PacketVideo) Telly pocket device brings broadcast TV services into the hands of new subscribers and current users with WiFi-enabled devices that does not support the service provider’s Mobile Broadcast TV.

This device is suppose to support the world’s Mobile TV Broadcast standards: DVB-H and MediaFLO. Both of which I believe are used by Hong Kong mobile phone carriers.

Since PV is not selling this device to consumers but only to OEMs and ODMs. I wish my chosen mobile carrier, Smartone-Vodafone, will hear this call and adopts PV’s device instead of forcing their customers to purchase a specific mobile phone. At the moment the list of supported mobile phone are short and 2nd generation.

Although the problem may be with the DRM that the carriers wants to impose on the content rather than choosing the correct device for the consumer.

read more | digg story

First Android Phone from HTC

HTC has finally made details of their first Android phone available to the public. It bares the moniker “HTC G1“, may be it implies there will be subsequent versions.

It will launch in the USA through the carrier, T-Mobile on October 22, 2009 for USD179.00 and a 2-years contract.

One thing that is interesting, as reported by Engadet, is T-Mobile view on unlocking the phone. They will allow the unlocking of the HTC G1 after the initial 90 days into the 2-years contract, giving the HTC G1 an unlocked price of USD399.00 price.

There are two videos in Engadet’s Hands-on review comparing the HTC G1 to the Apple iPhone and showing off some of the 3rd party add-ons to existing built-in application. The latter is something that the OpenSource nature of Android has over the Apple iPhone.

HTC did not implement any multi-touch technology into the HTC G1. The use of on screen controls and hardware buttons makes the phone feel 1st generation. Also, in my opinion the look is also fairly ugly, but looking at the other HTC models in the past, one cannot expect the elegance of Jonathan Ive (arguably the best industrial designer in the world).

So far no news as to how the HTC G1 will be launched in other geographic locations.

[Update: September 24, 2008]
It is reported that T-Mobile will give away all applications on their Android Market Place free to the early adaptors to the HTC G1.

Movie Review: Mamma Mia!

Poster

My Rating: 4Stars

This evening I saw the movie Mamma Mia! at AMC Theater, Pacific Place, Admiralty, Hong Kong.

I had not had much expectation for this movie. I didn’t even had it in my Must See Movies list. But I was presently surprised.

I believe much of my enjoyment was the direct results of the actors in the movie. They sure went all out and included some of the biggest in the industry: , and even Tom Hanks pitched in as one of the Executive Producer for the movie.

Reportedly the female lead, Amanda Seyfried had never heard any of ABBA’s songs prior to staring in the movie.

I went to the record store prior to going onto the theater to see if I recognize any of the songs. Since I was of that age (grew up in the 80’s), I did recognize most of the songs, but I did not find any of the songs that good. My opinions changed during and after the movie, where I found most of the songs to be catchy and enjoyable.

Like in Music and Lyrics and all musicals, the actors in this movie sang their own songs. Not that any of them were any good, but you will hardly notice as the lyrics become part of the dialogues.

Pierce Brosnan was surprisingly, at least to me, good. He wad kind of out of character. Not playing the typical Remington Steele, Thomas Crown or James Bond character.

The multiple Oscars awards actress, Meryl Streep was no exception. She was her typical but much much older self.

Overall this is a very enjoyable movie with a present mood throughout the movie, if you want to feel all happy coming out of a movie, then this is definitely the one to go see.

Rating Legend:
5Stars Not to be missed
4Stars Wait for the DVD
3Stars Buy from iTunes Store
2Stars Rent it on iTunes
1Stars Waste your time elsewhere

Androids Arrive at VerizonT-Mobile

Google softwareThere are now significant information to point to a first and new Android phone on Monday, September 22 on the VerizonT-Mobile network in the US.

The reported Android based phone will be manufactured by HTC, and implies that it will support both GSM and CDMA network. But 3G communication will only supports the CDMA network (EV-DO).

So stay tune.

[Updated: September 19, 2008]
Thanks to the reader, Travis, for pointing out my mistake. I stand corrected that it is T-Mobile in the US who will be releasing the first Google Android phone by HTC in early October to the general public.

Why Chinese Airlines Should be Avoided

I am now stuck in Beijing Airport. Air China has decided to cancel my flight to Shanghai, without giving any reasons.

There were just over 100 passengers for the original flight of a Boeing 777 aircraft, they probably thought it wasn’t worth it to operate such a large aircraft with so few passengers.

Canceling a flight because there are not enough passengers is something typical of US and “mainland” Chinese airlines, but not for Cathay and Dragonair or most large international airlines in Asia.

Another reasons may be because this is a domestic flight and they just don’t have a small aircraft available.

Will this happen to these large International airlines if they too operates short domestic flights like this one?

I guess we will never know.

[Update: Sep. 17, 2008 20:30]
It turns out the new gate is way on the opposite end of this huge airport terminal. We ended up having to take a bus to the plane. It was way out, parked in an area where they store planes that are used for flights on following day. The aircraft finally used was a Boeing 747-400 Combi.

Upgraded My 1st Gen. iPhone to 2.1

Pwnage ToolEven though I am not in Hong Kong and on vacation in Beijing I am blogging and keeping an eye on the iPhone hacking community.

In the past 14 months I had unlocked/restored my iPhone over 30+ times, and documented my experience and findings with fellow readers. Much of these repeated unlocking and restoring was because I was testing various “unauthorized” 3rd party applications (“hacks”) for the iPhone, and some of them were not as stable as they should be. Even with authorized 3rd party applications my iPhone was sluggish and crashes when I run some of the applications.

When Apple claims that the iPhone firmware 2.1, released on September 12th, will correct much of the problems I’ve been encountering, I was again excited for the possibilities of returning my iPhone (1st generation) to its efficient spiffy 1.x state. Unfortunately, since my iPhone is unlocked and jailbroken I had to wait for the iPhone Dev team to upgrade their hacking tool, Pwnage Tool.

Continue reading “Upgraded My 1st Gen. iPhone to 2.1”