Hakimism

silly things i say, silly things i see

BlackBerry Super Apps Developer Challenge - USD$1.5 Million

Over $1.5 million in prizes that will help build success for your app!

There are a wide range of prizes, available to be won at all levels. The first 400 selected will win testing services and a BlackBerry smartphone. Category Winners and Finalists can win application promotion, translation and go to market developer services from leading industry partners. There are feature placements on BlackBerry App World and RIM marketing program prizes to be won as well! Click for full prizing details.

Global submission deadline is September 6, 2010.

Submit and compete against apps in your local region

The challenge is open to new and existing applications in BlackBerry App World. Apps will be judged and recognized in North America, Latin America, Europe/Middle East/Africa and Asia Pacific regions. Regional judging and selection announcements will happen on the following dates:

Global submission deadline

September 6, 2010

400 Regional Selections announced

Week of Sept 27th (at the 2010 BlackBerry Developer Conference)

28 Regional Category Winners (7 per each region) announced

Week of November 1, 2010

Regional Finalists and Regional Winners (3 finalists, including 1 winner for each region) announced

November 18, 2010

 

 

For more information please go to www.blackberrydev.com

 

Please do keep us informed if you are entering as we wish to follow up – take care and all the best

 

#instwtup alternative venue.

Options are as follows. please comment on which you prefer

TGV
1utama :730pm

Sunway : 815pm

Sunway: 845pm

a not so short recap on what happened at #tcmeetupkl

attending the techcrunch birthday party yesterday was pretty fun. had a chance to meet some very interesting people doing some very interesting things.  kicking off things @cerventus got everyone introduced, as there were some new faces and even some guest from the Maldives. 

What followed next was a series of Lightning Talks that some of the participants decided to share about what keeps them excited about doing what they do - most of the lightning talkers gravitated around the startups that they are running which were really pretty awesome. 

 
Being the chatty person that i am i led the charge with a short story about #opendata and a possible future brought forth by making certain types of government data available to the public. affectionately called the Ah Meng story. 

(download)
 

For the benefit of those that we're not there and those that came in late this is the concept behind opening up data; in two Ted videos presented by the creator of the internet. 

Following my story Adrian Teh (@twittingdog) told us a little about his startup leanis.com.my and some of the tribulations and trials he faced getting it going. The discussion progressed to address how us urbanites dont really know and love our neighbors... and how there is an app for that. enter highrise.my 

"Highrise is a web-based collaboration and management tool for residential/strata communities which enables residents from the same condominium or community to connect, share and communicate privately online on important matters pertaining their building or residential area. HighRise is unique because it encourages active participation from the residents by rewarding them with loyalty points for their usage of HighRise"

A lot of folks immediately saw this as a perfect fit for their community and suggested a load of collaboration possibilities such as to work with Matthias Gelber to do condo recycling and many more immediately relevant mashups. 

At about this time everyone had already settled on the hashtag #tcmeetupkl and was busily tweeting when the internet kinda started to sputter and slow down. Perfect timing for our celebrity internet blogger (he blogs about the internet service providers and slow connections)  @scamboy and @danevo to share a plan they hatched o get Malaysian internet improved upon by matching up 3 groups with the power to solve it. the people, the ISP's and the Policy boys. Find out more at http://www.bugmy.org/

This sums up what happened 
"@Qishin: @scamboy and @danevo #bugmy got the crowd riled up about broadband services. Like poking poo with a flaming stick, always inflammatory.

@claytonnarcis jumped in to talk about iphone app development using JavaScript instead of Xcode i cant recall what the software. will ping him and ask later. 2 main take home 

1. dont wait for stuff to be built / hope that it will be built - use what is available now to develop what you need. 
2. ping him to be part of the elite awesome beta testers for his new iphone app (again @claytonnarcis)
By far the star of the show @tekong swooped in to save us non techies with something that was really well received by the whole audience. how to have an office everywhere and get the best price possible on coffee. 

with upwards of 190+ locations marked out to get work done in a mobile fashion awesome was the only word to describe the collection of tips and useful information available. Find a spot close to you today or contribute a spot of your own. #crowdsourced baby!

@rezarazali another startup hero. talked about his third venture (and he is only 26); having started his first startup in 2000 (i think) thats a good 10 years of experience being poured into @teratotech he also took the opportunity to show off a new game for the ipad/phone 6 months in the making qalvinius.com a side scrolling RPG. let me tell you the sound on an Ipad is amazing. 

Finally wrapping things off. our resident location man @lightyoruichi tells us to be responsible 4sq folk and help clean up the malaysian location scene. do this by checking out 4sqkl.com and recommending locations that are duplicates and redundant be removed and merged. 

Whats even more awesome if you are a business intending to reward your customers when they check in or event make badges for your location this can be done through our very own 4sq rep @lightyoruichi badges cost money but rewarding your customers is free baby!

All in all the event ended on a really high note. everyone was chatting till much later about this and that when the party finally moved down to tgif ( of course it was friday after all) 

so thats that. 

end. 

sweat the small stuff. it matters

checked out this ted talk earlier this morning by Rory Sutherland on how making small modifications to the usability of something can greatly increase its functionality, how to get a lot doesn't always have to cost a lot.
got me thinking on how we can use this "quadrant" (you will have to watch the video to see what i mean) to activate change in the government.. expecially now with the folks in PEMANDU heading up http://transformation.gov.my

finally i guess my word for the empty quadrant would be "Ingenuity"

@thisisbinding collaborates with UITM Tech Club to get #thesis bound

Recently started working with the folks in UITM Tech Club. together with @thisisbinding they area making it dead simple for UITM students to get their thesis hardbound. So if you are a UITM student feel free to drop by the student mall and find out more about getting your #thesis bound and say hi to the awesome guys in UITMTC.

Find out more about the UITM Tech Club and how to get involved at : facebook
Get your thesis bound http://thisisbinding.com/uitmtc

 

<br /><small>View thisisbinding partners in a larger map</small>

The dangers of leaving your thumbdrives at the print shop.

a friend of mine owns this printing shop and he is thinking of opening a gadget shop - specifically to sell crap that people leave behind when they are done printing. this is just what he gets in one month. pretty scary thought for all of you out there that have sensitive information stored away in those little pen drives of yours. 

word of caution don't leave them lying around, and you you have the tendency to just use http://thisisbinding.com la. safer way to get your thesis printed copied and bound. and you get to keep your thumbdrive after. 

 

 

How i got #datascrewed by @maxiscomms and what I'd like done abt it. RT if you feel the pain

i just got #datascrewed. My freaking bill was RM500 for a stupid access of 200MB. This is freaking scary wei, well i guess if they put it in the fine print i cant say much about it. but it just doesnt make much sense to me that this kind of thing doesnt see more people complaining and something done to help people from getting stuck in this trap. When asked their rep mentioned there was pretty much no way of monitoring my usage other than getting my bill (incidentally this means that my phone will get barred before hand) 

1- this is silly as im sure plenty of people exceed all the time. there should be some sort of warning that this going to happen, send me an sms or an email for crying out loud. at least when i exceed i wont feel like bashing some corporate douche bag into the ground for taking advantage of the fine print to screw me. 

2- rather than an app to get tickets to movies (which i hvnt had much luck using btw) why not create an app that can monitor your usage, and by that i mean everything even when you tether. 

3- i think the data charges are ridiculous.. anyone know how much it costs in other countries? id like to be able to compare. 

4- guess how easy it would be to chalk up this RM 250 additional charge : 
>RM 0.0005 per 1kbp. 
>Which means unless my math is off 50MB will cost you RM 250 and anything above and beyond that is not chargeable. 

5- why bother with an ivalue plan if you want me to get a RM99 data plan in the first place. and anything exceeding 3Gigs (which my misguided maxis fellows should be in addition to my allocated 1Gig, not 3Gig's just because its the way it is) which gets throttled when i exceed 3Gigs. 

What I'm quickly understanding is your choices are really as follows :

1. exceed by anything more than 50MB and get penalized RM250.
2. pay additional RM99 and don't worry about getting penalized. but stand to get throttled 

Which at the end of the day is i guess their business la. not really the main point im ranting here. Bottom line. as a customer i hope... no EXPECT my service provider to be straight with me from the get go. Not hide behind some confusing bloody garble to get more profits. I want you to suck it up and really help your customers - be someone they can trust, not someone they have to carefully scrutinize and worry they are going to get cheated. 

Cause you know what maxis : pulling a stunt like this wont earn you browny points. 

Get a clue : thats why the fellers in digi were able to angle to wrestle the status of sole provider of iphones away from you. *i dont use digi btw ... are they any better? i think even without knowing a lot of people will just choose then because they have been boinked by the guys in green. 

So ball's in your court MAXIS. I'm calling you out to make things better. show me that i made the right choice in selecting to use you guys. 

why RM6000? just so you can show off that you are giving me a rebate with a celling of RM250? this just hurts my intelligence 

I cant help feel that ive just been suckered into this. Thanks for telling me after the fact, cause this is what i really wanted. to pay an additional RM250