From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Fri Aug 1 13:15:02 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 1 Aug 2008 17:15:02 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 1, 2008 Message-ID: <20080801171502.26434.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Hello, I Am A Mac by Laura Sukowatey, Hodson Star-Observer **** iPhone 3G Tethering App Pulled By Apple by Jason D. O'Grady, ZDNet.com I wonder if AT&T pressured Apple into removing the app. See Also: Did Nullriver Slide The iPhone Tethering App Past The Goalie? , by MG Siegler. I wonder if the term "lawsuit" was used today? **** Apple Security Update Patches Critical DNS Flaw by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld Apple on Thursday released Security Update 2008-005, patching a critical DNS (Domain Name Server) flaw that other companies began fixing on July 8. The DNS fix is among 13 items updated in the security release. **** The Wrong Kind Of 1% by Giles Turnbull, The Unofficial Apple Weblog MobileMe account holders trying to contact Apple's email outage chat support service have been promptly and brutually cut off if they're not on Apple list of the "1%" of users affected — and in one case, even if they are. **** Woe Is MobileMe by Lucy Carrigan, The Guardian Dear Apple - I want to be me, not @me.com. But I wouldn't mind so much if it actually worked... **** It's 2018: Who Owns The Cloud? by ALlan Leinwand, GigaOM What will become increasingly critical is providing cloud consumers with a spectacular user experience, something nobody does better than Apple. **** Psystar Hires Attorneys Who've Faced Apple Before by Katie Marsal, AppleInsider A pair of attorneys representing Psystar in its legal bout with Apple are already famliar with the Mac maker, with whom they've clashed before and came out on top. **** Apple's Unforgivable DNS Delay by John C. Welch, Macworld Apple has been the only vendor not to release a patch or clearly communicate the reasons for the delay to its customers. There is no level on which Apple's conduct here is acceptable. It speaks of a security-vulnerability review process that is broken. It shows that either Apple is completely unaware of what is going on with the software it bases its OS on, or that the company knows, and just don't care. **** Apple's Stock Up Almost 1400% Over 5 Years by MacNN Apple's stock has seen significant growth and is almost worth 14 times what it was worth five years ago. **** Why Aren't Apple's Software Updates More Descriptive? by Jonathan Seff, Macworld Why, Apple, why can't you tell people what bugs you're fixing in your software updates? **** Make Captivating Charts And Graphs by Terri Stone, Macworld Simple ways to create engaging graphics that tell a story. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Xobni Can Make Good Old Email Even More Useful by Walter S. Mossberg, AllThingsD Xobni turned my Outlook experience from one that was organized by messages and dates into one that was organized by people, relationshiops and histories. **** Open Source And Cloud Computing by Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly Radar If you care about open source for the cloud, build on services that are designed to be federated rather than centralized. **** Yahoo Gives Delicious More Speed, Fewer Punctuation Marks by Stephen Shankland, CNET News.com **** It's The Software, Not You by David Pogue, New York Times The next time you're frustrated by software complexity, take heart; much of the time, it's not you. It's them. It's designers who have something on their mind other than software intelligence. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Getting Drunk With Ethan Canin by Paul Constant, The Stranger There's always something wonderful about getting drunk with smart people, especially authors. **** Malwebolence by Mattathias Schwartz, New York Times Measured in terms of depravity, insularity and traffic-driven turnover, the culture of /b/ has little precedent. /b/ reads like the inside of a high-school bathroom stall, or an obscene telephone party line, or a blog with no posts and all comments filled with slang that you are too old to understand. **** In Defense Of Casual Sex by Tracy Clark-Flory, Salon A new raft of chastity books laments a hookup culture that is hurting young women. As one of those young women, I beg to disagree. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Punitive Approach Not The Best, Says Drug Policy Advocate by Au Waipang, Yawning Bread An intelligent response to the drug problem required that we not only focus on the harmful consequencs of drug use, but also, we must think about the harmful social consequences of the policy we choose. **** Transport Operators To Press For Fare Hikes by Christopher Tan, Straits Times Transport operators SBS Transit and SMRT Corp are submitting applications for fare hikes later on Friday, but insiders are not holding their breath for any measurable rise. This is because the Public Transport Council (PTC) declared last month that fare adjustment this year were likely to be far smaller than last year's average 1.8 per cent increase. /Anyone even surprised?/ **** Starbucks's Demise: A 'Foreigner's' Take by Melbourne Metblogs **** Judging Temasek's Growing Role In Merrill Lynch by Joyce Koh, MarketWatch Views in Singapore varied as to whether Temasek was doubling down on a rare opportunity, or digging itself deeper into a hole. **** HDB Flats: Low Figure Is Building Costs Alone by Kee Lay Cheng, Housing and Development Board, Straits Times The total construction cost of flats includes other costs such as infrastructure, piling works, lift installation, consultancy and project management, financing and purchase of land. /HDB really should be more transparent — an itemised breakdown of costs and subsidies will be a good first step to take./ **** End Home Security Manpower Shortage by Kelvin Kwan, Straits Times There is no excuse for not solving this problem. **** PRs Are Not Our Enemies by Mollymeek If you do blame the PRs instead of the people who created the people behind the policy that causes you to lose something, the latter will be very, very glad. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Sat Aug 2 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 2 Aug 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 2, 2008 Message-ID: <20080802171500.86148.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Why Apple's MobileMe Launch Stumbled by Glenn Fleishman, Seattle Times For a company that has been long focused on what its customers need, Apple needs to take a long, hard look at how hard it's pushing its employees — and how little polish seems to be left on the company's image right now. **** Living With The MacBook Pro by David Alison, DigitalAppleJuice.com **** Apple's Patch Fails To Fix DNS Flaw, Researchers Claim by Gregg Keizer, Computerworld Tests by Andrew Storm, director of security oeprations at nCircle Network Security Inc., confirmed that even after Apple's update was applied, systems running the client version of Mac OS X were still incrementing ports, not randomizing them, as should have been the case if the fix had addressed the flaw. **** FileVault Is Flawed; And Apple's Not Talk'n by George Hulme, InformationWeek It's time for Apple to grow-up when it comes to security, especially if it wants to be an enterprise provider. The company needs to start talking more publicly about security, and maturing its security gme. Other software makers, such as Microsoft and Oracle have - years ago. **** iPhone Calendar Syncing by John Gruber, Daring Fireball MobileMe giveth, MobileMe taketh away. **** Apple Backs Out Of Black Hat Security Conference by MacNN The organizers of next week's Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas say Apple has decided to pull out of hte event at the last minute. **** Review: QuarkXPress 8 by Galen Gruman, Macworld XPress 8 should have been a significant leap forward in both functionality and user interface, but Quark unfortunately decided to do just half the job, though it is certainly a half-job well done. **** Dragoman File Converter Improves Music File Support by Peter Cohen, Macworld Dragoman helps users convert files between different formats. It supports images, photos, PDF files, music and archive files using a simple drag and drop interface. **** Dragster File Transfer Utility Improves Status Display by Peter Cohen, Macworld Dragster is designed to complement conventional FTP software applications on the Mac by providing streamlined connnectivity using a Dock icon. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** A Fuehrer Over Underpants by Gene Weingarten, Washington Post When people ask me if I have any rules for humor writing, I say: "Only one. I always try to put the funniest word at the end of the sentence underpants." **** Me, Myself And I by Caroline Winter, New York Times Why do we capitalize the word "I"? There's no grammatical reason for doing so, and oddly enough, the majuscule "I" appears only in English. **** Era With No Name by Nicholas Thompson, New York Times Yes, a lot happened in this era. But no one is exactly sure what it meant - or what it should be called. **** Famous Writers And Their Work Spaces Come Together In A Mural by Eric Konigsberg, New York Times The mural, "At Home With Their Books," measures 10 feet high by 30 feet wide and depicts, in six chronologically ordered panels, the writing spaces of six authors who spent some, if not all, of their careers in New York. **** What's Really Killing Newspapers by Jack Shafer, Slate They're no longer the best providers of social currency. **** Pubs Are The Last Place I'd Want To Drink In by Andrew O'Hagan, Telegraph George Orwell once described a warm beer and a country pub as being among the essential flavours of England. Nobody would claim that now: perhaps a blood red pair of Mad Dog 20/20s (two for the price of one) would more accurately summon the present atmosphere. **** Literary Doubles by David Jenkins, The Guardian I'm having an identity crisis, because there's a new David Jenkins on the block, journalistically speaking. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** PAP's Monopoly On Political Space And Political Ideology by Ng E-Jay, Sgpolitics.net We do not ask our political opponent, the pAP, to grant us more space. We create that space for ourselves. **** High Tea And Great Expectations by Kathryn Heyman, The Age I'm in Singapore with a novelist friend, both of us are here to write and to give a book reading at Singapore's Arts House. With Raffles' history of famous writers, perhaps some of the ambience will rub off on us. **** Bankrupt Singapore Politician Stopped From Leaving by Saeed Azhar, Reuters **** GRCs: 20 Years On by Lydia Lim and Zakir Hussain, Straits Times **** Just One MP A Poly Grad: Is There A Ceiling, Student Asks by Kor Kian Beng, Straits Times What is important is a good heart and the ability to get things done. But educational qualifications are no less important, George Yeo was quick to add, noting that they give an indication of the candidates' abilities. /It's not a ceiling: it's an echo chamber./ **** Singaporeans Should Vote For New Party If PAP Is No Longer Capable by Ng Wei Keng and Wong Siew Ying, Channel NewsAsia Singaporeans should support a new political party if the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) is no longer the best vehicle to take the country forward, says foreign affairs minister George Yeo. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Sun Aug 3 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 3 Aug 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 3, 2008 Message-ID: <20080803171501.4165.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Apple Pulls Box Office From App Store? by Rene Ritchie, The iPhone Blog **** Apple Extends AT&T Exclusivity To 2010 by Mat Lu, The Unofficial Apple Weblog This extension is part of the iPhone 3G deal that eliminated revenue sharing with Apple, but has AT&T paying about $300 per phne up front. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Yahoo Is Still Searching For, Well, Yahoo by Miguel Helft, New York Times The question remains whether Mr. Yang is the right man for the job. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** When A CHild Vanishes, Ghosts Follow by Richard Eder, Boston Globe Childhood: not just another country or even another planet, but, in Catherine O'Flynn's delicate wilderness of a first novel, a tiny asteroid on collision course with our bloated planet. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** NDP Preview 2008 by Why Should We Go Into The Tournament Fearing Anyone? **** Singapore's Direct Approach by David Perera, GCN Singpore pushes ahead with WiMax, faster broadband and a standard desktop environment. **** Singapore's Discomfort Zone by George Wehrfritz and Snoia Kolesnikov-Jessop, Newsweek Four directors discuss the evolving role of theater in exploring sensitive issues like sex, race and politics. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Mon Aug 4 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 4 Aug 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 4, 2008 Message-ID: <20080804171501.16460.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Apple's Chatswood Store A Burden For Local IT Retailers? by Lilia Guan, CRN Australia Hardware vendor Apple has just announced that it plans to open a new Apple Store in Chatswood. **** iPhone To Go On Sale In Russia In 2009 by Kommersant Apple iPhone 3G will officially go on sale in Russia in 2009, Vedomosti reported. The Apple representative didn't comment on the news. **** Transmission 1.22 by Dan Moren, Macworld **** Not There Yet: The iPhone Has Some Growing To Do by Eric Lal and Matt Hamblen, Computerworld >From a corporate iT standpoint, the 3G hardware and its companion iPhone 2.0 software remain less functional and mature than their BlackBerry and Windows Mobile counterparts. **** Update: Apple Resurrects iPhone Tethering App, Then Kills It Yet Again by Gregg Keizer, Computerworld Developer Nullriver Inc. had no idea why its software had been reposted to the App Store on Friday, or why it had been removed later in the day. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** How Cloud Computing Is Changing The World by Rachael King, BusinessWeek **** Video Microblogging Has Arrived by Kate Greene, MIT Technology Review A San Francisco-based startup called 12seconds is a video version of Twitter, but how useful will it be? **** Taking Social Networks Abroad - Why MySpace ANd Facebook Are Failing In Japan by Serkan Toto, TechCrunch MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Superbugs by Jerome Groopman, New Yorker The new generation of resistant infections is almost impossible to treat. **** Trouble by Matthew Dickman, New Yorker **** The Dinner Party by Joshua Ferris, New Yorker On occasion, the two women went to lunch and she came home offended by some pettiness. And he would say, "Why do this to yourself?" He wanted to keep her from being hurt. He also wanted his wife and her friend to drift apart so that he never had to sit through another dinner party with the friend and her husband. But after a few months the rift would inevitably heal and the friendship return to good standing. He couldn't blame her. They went back a long way and you get only so many old friends. **** Attabled With The Spinning Years by John Ashbery, New Yorker **** Perspire To Retire! by Heather Havrilesky, Salon I was all fired up to svae for the future. Then I found out I was a day late and about, um, $90,000 short. **** Why Won't You Blurb Me? by Rebecca Johnson, Salon I had an agent and a book deal for my first novel. All I was missing was quotes for the back cover. Next time, remind me to suck up to more famous writers. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Malaysia And Singapore To Study JB-Singapore City Rail Viability by Zakaria Abdul Wahab, Bernama Malaysia and Singapore today agreed to carry out a more detailed study on the commercial and legal aspects of the rail linkages plan that will smoothen travels between Johor Baharu and the city-state. Malaysia and Singapore now have three options in the rail plan, with the first one being a dedicated shuttle rail link, the second is that the train ends in Singapore and the third, the train stops in Johor Baharu. **** M1 Enters Home Broadband Arena by Alfred Siew, Straits Times The new entrant is offering lower prices - a boon for home users looking for better deals. **** Singapore Dissident Goes Awry? by My Thoughts It is very highly probable that Mr Nair would not have been arrested had the officers recognised who he was. I am certain that he was not single dout and had, on his own accord, invited trouble by banging on the bonnet of the police car... These officers are restircted by the OSA (Official Secrets Act) and will not be able to defend themselves directly unlike Mr Nair who can post everything on his blog. Although I am not fond of things are they are in Singapore, I refuse to just stand by and watch my friends and ex-colleagues, who are honest tax-payers themselves, and who perform their jobs with dignity and honour, be subjected to such unfounded accusations and baseless distortions of the truth. **** Why Law Society Should Not Join Political Debate by S. Radha, Press Secretary To The Minister For Law, Straits Times To argue for the Law Society to join the political debate is to misunderstand its nature and role. The society is a statutory body created by Parliament for a specific purpose, namely to oversee the governance and discipline of the legal profession. There is no reason to give it a special status beyond this to play a political role, especially when no other professional body has such a right. **** Bandwidth Hogs May Force ISPs To Adopt Volume-Based Charges by Chua Hian Hou, Straits Times Such charging is already in force overseas and ISPs here studying that. /There is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth today - the amount of 'stuff' you can download and upload is already capped by the speed of the connection. ISPs are bascially caught in a situation where they can't provide the level of service as advertised, and they're just trying to find scapgoats to blame on./ **** Library Staff More Customer-Focused Now by Veronica Boudville, National Library Board, Today **** Tortured By Bloc Head Bullies by Elgin Toh, New Paper In the wake of the Laguna Park incidents, Singaporeans living in other private estates are coming forward with similar horror stories. **** Temasek Aims To Join MBK Bid For HKT Stake: Report by Jeffrey Hodgson, Reuters Singapore's Temasek Holdings plans to join MBK Partners in a bid to buy a 45 per cent stake in PCCW Ltd's media and telecoms unit HKT Group Holdings, the South China Morning Post reported on Monday. **** Where Culture, Cocktails And Chicken Collide: Singapore Dining by Adam Majendie, Bloomberg The National Museum, a neo-classical building dating from 1887, provides the three ground-floor restaurants — Novus, Muse and Chef Chan's — with attractive high-ceilinged spaces. Yet the building is removed from the shopping, dining and business areas that supply walk-in customers. **** Building Bridges: Indignation 2008 by Selene Cheng, The Online Citizen **** More Changes To Electoral System In The Offing? by Au Waipang, Yawning Bread We shouldn't be fooled into thinking that GRCs are the only way to be sensitive to minority-race citizens. It's only one of the many possible ways, but also, it's one with very deleterious effects on the health of a democracy. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Tue Aug 5 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 5 Aug 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 5, 2008 Message-ID: <20080805171500.34879.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Getting At Apple's Core Problems by Bill Thompson, BBC News Apple's unwillingness to divulge details of security flaws or even the specifics of how flaws are fixed leaves customers confused, ignorant and possibly exposed to attacks that could be avoided. **** Review: CrossOver Mac Professional 7 by John Brandon, Macworld Unfortunately, its performance did not match our expectations. **** Review: Firefox 3.0 by Nathan Alderman, Macworld For speed alone, Safari's still the king. However, users more concerned with a polished interface, handy features, unmatched extensibility, and sterling standards compliance will find Firefox 3 a worthy alternative. **** Make Leopard Leap: Time-Saving Tips For OS X 10.5 by Ryan Faas, Computerworld Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is filled with new ways of getting things done. That's where these tips come in. They're all about learning to make better and more productive of use of what's already there. **** Join Together 5.2 by Christopher Breen, Macworld iTunes lets you ripd multiple tracks from an audio CD as a single track. But what do you use if you want to combine tracks that have already been ripped? Why, Join Together 5.2.1, of course. **** Consumer Group Urges Mac Users To Ditch Safari by Gregg Keizer, Computerworld Mac users should scrap Apple Inc.'s Safari and replace it with a browser that offers anti-phishing protection, such as Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox or Opera Software ASA's Opera, /Consumer Reports/ said today as it unveiled its annual internet security survey. **** Steve Jobs: MobileMe "Not Up To Apple Standards" by Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica In an internal e-mail sent to Apple employees this evening, Steve Jobs admitted that MobileMe was launched too early and "not up to Apple's standards." The entire MobileMe team will now report to Eddy Cue. Cue will now lead all Internet-related services at Apple—including iTunes, the App Store, and now MobileMe—and will report directly to Steve Jobs. **** The Apple Mac Cost Misconception: Macs And Their Prices by Tuan Nguyen, Tom's Hardware **** Apple Releases iPhone, iPod 2.0.1 Software Updates by AppleInsider In a scant set of release notes, Apple said iPhone Software 2.0.1 and its iPod equivalent deliver "bug fixes." **** Welcome To iPhone: Your Crappy Mac Of Tomorrow, Today! by Michael Tsai I think the bottom line is that, because of the way Apple has behaved, people don't trust it as much. This makes them less willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. **** Review: Teleport For iPhone by Rob Griffiths, Macworld Teleport is a virtual network computing (VNC) client for the iPhone that allows you to see and control Macs and PCs on your network. **** Mac Clone-Maker's Lawyer Hints At Antitrust Defense by Gregg Keizer, Computerworld "The case has been mischaracterized," said Colby Springer, one of the three lawyers from Carr & Ferrell who will represent Psystar. "There are a lot more complicated issues than just copyright or trademark. There are more complex issues in respect to the end-user licensing agreement. And antitrust issues come into play, too." **** Virgin Mobile Becomes Fourth Australian iPhone Provider by Dan Moren, Macworld The land of Oz now allows its citizens to choose from four different providers, giving them the undisputed crown of "most iPhone providers in a given country." **** The DNS Vulnerability: What You Should Know And Do by Glenn Fleishman and Rich Mogull, Macworld Although Apple released a fix for all Mac srunning OS X 10.4.11 and 105.4 (Server and desktop, Intel and PowerPC, Leopard and Tiger), the fix only repaired the most vulnerable part of DNS, the server software, even on systems that don't use it. Client DNS software, used by an operating system to request a DNS lookup from a full-scale DNS server, is still at risk, but at a lower level and under more limited circumstances. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** A Ruling May Pave The Way For Broader User Of DVR by Brian Stelter, New York Times MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** The Intention Of Things by David Ferry, Slate **** The China Problem by King Kaufman, Salon We have the IOC to thank that if we're going to enjoy the running and jumpig, we'll have to ingore what's going on outside the venues. Just what China's government wants us to do. **** Inside Story Of The Telescope That Nearly Wasn't Built by Dennis Overbye, New York Times Behind every pretty picture of the universe there is a lot of dirty work that had to be done to capture it. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** US Blogger To Be Tried For Insulting Singapore Judges by AFP A US national said Tuesday he will be tried in SIngapore next month for allegedly insulting two judges who had presided over cases involving an opposition leader. **** The State Should Pay For Maternity Leave And Provide Childcare by Au Waipang, Yawning Bread If Singapore wants extended maternity or paternity leave for its social objectives, the state should pay the cost. The employer should neither have to pay the salaries of people who aren't there at work, nor have to guarantee a job for these individuals to return to. /And while you are on maternity or paterntiy leave, maybe you can consider doing volunteer work at the pre-school and primary school, eh? :-)/ **** Competition Watchdog Wants Fees Guidelines For Property Agents Removed by Jessica Cheam, Straits Times **** On Learning To Be Grateful by The Boy Who Knew Too Much Far from looking down on the foreign workers in Singapore, I value their presence and contribution and respect the courage they show in their daily work. Perhaps their working lives would be a little less hard if such a welcoming attitude were universal among Singaporeans, too. **** Singapore's 'Gateway To Asia' Tag Takes A Beating by Straits Times A recent poll of global investors shows Singapore is not considered the great gateway to Asia it is often said to be. The Business Times reported on Tuesday that investors put Singapore behind Japan, Hong Kong and China in that role. **** SingTel To Laucnh 3G iPhone In August - Source by Jennifer Tan, Reuters Singapore Telecommunications Ltd, Southeast Asia's largest telecoms firm, will launch Apple Inc's third-generation iPhone in Singapore before the end of August, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. **** Why Chee's Sister Denied Stanford Visit by Malcom B.h. Tan, Assistant Official Assignee for Official Assignee, Straits Times Ms Chee was under a legal duty to cooperate but quite cynically refused to do so. Thus her application to travel was rejected. **** Drop In Number Of Suicide Cases, But... by Jessica Jaganathan, Straits Times Lower rates of unemployment and a booming economy could well be reasons for a drop in suicide cases here. But what remains disturbing is the rising number of suicides for one group: the elderly. **** An Accident Waiting To Happen by Andrew Loh, The Online Citizen From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Wed Aug 6 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 6 Aug 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 6, 2008 Message-ID: <20080806171500.32925.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** iPhone App Store Proves The Smartphone Is The Computer by Alexander Wolfe, InformationWeek **** Macs Are PCs, Dammit! by Lance Ulanoff, PC Magazine I'm not saying that Macs are not wonderful products. We almost always love them when we test them here at PC Magazine Labs. Apple is, without a doubt, the most consistent company in computerdom. But Steve Jobs is not God, and his products are not grown on trees and picked by loving workers who let them ripen on cotton sheets by the window sill. **** Former Apple Employee Sues For Violation Of Labor Code by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld Filed in the United States District Court, Southern District of California, the complaint focuses on the fact that employees were required to work more than 40 hours a week or eight hours in a workday. David Walsh's suit says that Apple then denies the employees proper compensation for that work. **** Switching To The Mac: Problems And Solutions by Shuman Ghosemajumder, Shumans.com OS X uses a different mosue pointer "acceleration curve" than Windows. Windows uses a flatter curve, which makes the mouse respond more naturally, whereas OS X's curve accelerates quicker for speed but slower for smaller, precise movements. **** Multiple Docks In Mac OS X by Cybernet You can create up to five different Docks that you can switch between right from the menubar. Or, what's even better is that you can assign Docks to certain Spaces. **** Why Switch To The Mac? Five Top Reasons by Samuel Dean, Web Worker Daily An actual file system, much better video and graphics, cooler looking machines, true plug-and-play, more reliability. **** MobileMe Problems Show Apple Needs An Infrastructure Lesson by Om Malik, GigaOM Apple's problem is that it doesn't seem to have recognized the fact that it's in the business of network-enabled hardware. **** Steve Jobs On MobileMe: The Full E-Mail by Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica "The MobileMe launch clearly demonstrates that we have more to learn about internet services. And learn we will. The vision of MobileMe is both exciting and ambitious, and we will press on to make it a service we are all proud of by the end of this year." **** Can The iPhone Rule Gaming? by Anita Hamilton, Time It's already a groundbreaking phone and digital music player, and now Apple's iPhone is emerging as a popular gaming device as well. See Also: iPhone Games: Ars Staff Favorites , by Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica. /Apple should add a speaker to the next iteration of iPod Touch to take advantage of the new games coming soon on the platform — even though it will probably anony the heck out of me if the young punk sitting next to me on the bus starts playing games without headphones./ **** How Sound Is Consumer Reports' Safari Advice? by Rob Griffiths, Macworld Should Safari have anti-phishing features? Sure, it should. Should you stop using it today because it doesn't? Not at all—as long as you're willing to exercise "safe clicking" practices. **** DiskWrangler File Launcher Improves Leopard Support by Peter Cohen, Macworld DiskWrangler helps you keep your hands on the keyboard instead of reaching for the mouse when it's time to launch applications, documents, mail and web URLs. **** iTunes Maintains Stranglehold On US Music Sales by MacNN The NPD Group says that iTunes maintained an existing lead, despite competition from major, firmly established corporations. /And we are talking about all forms of music sales, online and offline. Wow. Who'd imagine this ten years ago, when Apple was shopping (or rather, begging) for a new OS./ The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Compressing Light by Lauren Rugani, MIT Technology Review A new way to compress light could make optical communications on computer chips more practical. **** IBM, Linux Dealers Seize Chance To Market 'Microsoft-Free' Desktop by Chris Premimesberger, eWeek **** Designers On Quest To Build $12 Computer by Jerry Kronenberg, Boston Herald "My generation all had Apple IIs that we learned to type and play games on. If we can get buy-in from programmers, we can develop these devices and give (Third World) schools Apple II computers labs liek the ones I grew up with." MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** In Changing Harlem, Soul Food Struggles by Timothy Williams, New York Times Soul food is dying in Harlem and elsewhere in the city. The reasons can be chalked up to the vagaries of contemporary city life: Changing tatstes; health consciousness; the fast-food culture; and an influx of wealthier young adults — including African-Americans, long a customer base for soul food restaurants — who are more comfortable eating Indian or Thai dishes. **** The Coffee Fix: Can The $11,000 Clover Machine Save Starbucks? by Mathew Honan, Wired The Clover coffeemaker debuted in a handful of cafes in 2006 and was promptly hailed as the best thing to happen to coffee lovers since the car cup holder. **** Paying Homage To What's Vanished In Beijing's Race To Modernize by Michael Kenney, Boston Globe By the time Michael Meyer arrived in 1997, Beijing's old neighborhoods were being gutted and rebuilt skyward in the run-up to this summer's Olympics. **** Sunday Morning Lifeblogging: Adventures In European Subtitling by Guy La Roche, A Fistful Of Euros Subtitlers do everything in their power to make sure people do not notice all their billiant solutions to difficult problems. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** 1 In 2 Singaporeans Would Vote A Female President by Ansley Ng, Today One in two Singaporeans would vote a female president into the Istana, and four in five would accept a woman cabinet minister, if a recent survey is anything to go by. /Of course, the role of the president in Singapore government is still mostly a ceremonial one, while most Singaporeans don't see how they can have a choice in deciding who will be cabinet ministers. (Heck, most Singaporeans don't even have any choices when it comes to MPs.)/ **** A Ploy To Launch Volume-Based Pricing By ISPs? by Waleed Hanafi, Straits Times So "No", Straits Times and local ISPs, the problem is not "insatiable bandwidth hogs", the problem is the failure to provide sufficient international network bandwidth to handle the traffic you have promised subscribers to carry. **** Right-Size GRCs Back To Their Original Spirit And Intent To Spur Political Growth by Jacob Tan, Straits Times The dominance of super-GRCs today has retarded political progress, and bred cynicism and apathy. **** Are Maids Human? by Glass Castle Blog Why did the Straits Times choose to publish this patchwork of stereotypes? And to do so, moreover, under a headline that feeds into all the sexist, infantilising themes that already feature far too frequently in conversations about FDWs. **** The Straits Times And The Online Competition by Blowin' In The Wind The Straits Times is the authoritative source of news about Singapore. It has good journalists whom we have come to trust and respect. But it has to raise the bar online. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Thu Aug 7 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 7 Aug 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 7, 2008 Message-ID: <20080807171500.86923.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** What It's Really Like Working Inside Apple On Its Intenret Projects: Really, Really Tough by Charles Arthur, The Guardian Eddy Cue's real speciality is to be able to take what Steve asks for, imlement it, hit the target dates, make it work, and /keep the damn thing a secret until Steve announces it/. **** TubeTV 1.0 by Roman Loyola, Macworld **** Softbank Adds Most Mobile Users In 4 Months, Helped By iPhone by Pavel Alpeyev, Bloomberg Softbank Corp., Japan's third-largest mobile-phone company, added the most users in four months in July after starting to sell Apple Inc.'s iPhone 3G in the country. The increase is its biggest since March when it introduced free calls between family members. **** The $1000 iPhone App by Jason Kottke, Kottke.org Excluding I Am Rich would be excluding for taste... because some feel that it costs too much for what it does... Imagine if Apple chose which music they stocked in the iTunes store based on the company's taste. **** The Opaque Side Of Apple by Rob Pegoraro, Washington Post Don't-look-behind-the-curtains tactics don't work when customers just want to know that their purchase will work as advertised, or when would-be customers want reassurance that they're not buying into a failed experiement. **** Mac Laptop Prices Steady As Windows Prices Fall by Tom Krazit, CNET News.com Speculation that Apple might be slashing Mac prices in the coming weeks could get a boost from new data released by The NPD Group. **** Personal Shopping At The Apple Store: Mac Addict Goes Undercover by Blake Schnitkey, The Windy Citizen The beauty of a personal shopping appointment at the Apple Store was the simple pleasure of knowing that your questions, no matter how ridiculous, would be answered thoroughly. **** MacBook Air Is Light, Yes, But It's No Lightweight by Steve Casimiro, National Geographic Adventure Of course the Air is sexy and of course the Air is imperfect—but it's far more versatile than most believe. The Air is designed to be a leading edge, attention-getting product. By that measure, it's a smashing success. The surprise is that the deeper, more fundamental qualities—computing, usability, comfort—also make it a smashing success. **** Apple's Ability To Deactivate Malicious App Store Apps by Arnold Kim, MacRumors.com Apple could presumably deauthorize applications already installed on every iPhone. **** "I Am Rich" iPhone App - A Steal At $999.99! by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, ZDNet.com Update: And it's gone. **** What's In A Name? by John Gruber, Macworld Apple has been making it easier for its customers to understand its Mac offerings. The trade-off, though, is that Apple's product lineups are deliberately sparse. **** More Ways To Protect Yourself From Phishing Scams by Rob Griffiths, Macworld OpenDNS is an alternative "phone book," and it's one that comes with many features (most are optional) that you probably won't find in your ISP's DNS servers. One of those features is phishing protection, based on OpenDNS' PhishTank project. **** OpenCL: What You Need To Know by Peter Cohen, Macworld Graphics technology is at the center of Apple's Snow Leopard efforts. **** More Countries Due To Get iPhone 3G In August by Dan Moren, Macworld We're now just starting to get wind of which of those countries will make the cut on August 22nd, a mere sixteen days from now. **** PlayFirst Offers Cooking Dash Game by Peter Cohen, Macworld PlayFirst on Wednesday announced the release of Cooking Dash, a new spin-off of the eronomously popular Diner Dash series of causal games. **** Review: PersonalBrain Pro 4.5 by Lee SHerman, Macworld Mirroring the way a human thinks is a tough job for software, but PersonalBrain 4.5, a powerful brainstorming and knowledge management tool, falls just shy of artificial intelligence. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Flock Web Browser Eases Multitasking But Has Drawbacks by Walter S. Mossberg, AllThingsD MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Unholy Saturday by Philip Levine, Threepenny Review **** Why The World Needs Quantum Mechanics by Michael Nielsen Conventional wisdom holds that quantum mechanics is hard to learn. This is more or less correct, although often overstated. However, the /necessity/ of abandoning conventional ways of thinking about the world, and finding a radically new way - quantum mechanics - can be understood by an intelligent person willing to spend some time concentrating hard. **** From A To Zyxt by Nicholson Baker, New York Times Ammon Shea, a sometime furniture mover, gondolier and word collector, has written an oddly inspiring book about reading the whole of the Oxford English Dictionary in one go. Shea's book offers mor ethan exotic word lists, though. It also has a plot. **** Journalist Seeking Paycheck? Try India by Arun Venugopal, Salon As U.S. newsrooms shrivel, India's are booming. And they're hiring, not firing reporters and editors. **** Roadside Americana by Emily Nunn, Chicago Tribune The farm stand has a place in our hearts—and, we're happy to report, on MapQuest too. **** The Power To Say No by Steve E. Landsburg, Wall Street Journal If you need both an operating system and a browser to get on the internet, would you rather acquire them from a single monopolist or from two competing monopolists? **** Struck By Lightning by Jill Frayne, The Walrus It's random and electric, and we are forever drawn to its deadly charms. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Malaysia-Singapore Technical Committee Resolving Issues by Bernama The Malaysia-Singapore Technical Committee has begun cooperating to resolve issues arising out of the International Court of Justice (ICJ)'s decisions made on the two countries' overlapping territorial claims recently, including over South Ledge. **** Others by Joanne Leow, Channel NewsAsia It's hard to find a country that accepts biracial or multiracial kids with no questions asked, with hardly a second look. **** Maintaining Law & Order A Balancing Act For Home Team: Minister by Bertha Henson, Straits Times Deputy prime minister and home affairs minister Wong Kan Seng acknowledged the anxieties officers now face: that rules and regulations will be tightened even further, leving little room for judgment calls. Another worry: That penalties for mistakes will be so harsh that officers focus on avoiding errors, rather than do the job of arresting and detecting. **** National Day Or MP Day? by Gerald Giam, The Online Citizen PAP and its town councils immediately stop the use of public funds to promote their partisan causes. For a start, all the spotlights for the billboards should remain off at night to save electricity. **** You May Be Facing Jail In Bhutan And Iran by Lionel Waxman, Flashpoint No blogger should be exposed to worldwide jurisdiction. On the other hand, each country is at liberty to criminzlise and punish any activity which offends them. **** Singapore's Model For Success Was Philippines by Dante "Klink" Ang, The Manila Times In 1965, the Philippines was one of the most promising countries in Asia. Today, Singapore leads the pack. **** Of Fliers, And The Freedom Of Speech by Heng-Cheong Leong, MyAppleMenu I am of two minds about people distributing fliers into my face, as described here by Delphine Tan . It is an annoyance, no doubt about it. Especially since they almost always block traffic (read: make me reach my destination many precious seconds late). On the other hand, do we really want a society where you have to register your name and IC number with the police, swear that you are not distributing religious or 'senstiive' materials, and stand at destinated spots or parks, before you can distribute your fliers? Freedom of expression is important, and we should treasure whatever we have, even though it means some annoyances along the way.

Permanent Link to This Post From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Fri Aug 8 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 8 Aug 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 8, 2008 Message-ID: <20080808171500.58131.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Regarding iPhone Application Pricing by Dan Benjamin, Hivelogic I believe that there's a shared responsibility here. Apple shouldn't restrict application pricing or availability (for non-malicious apps). Users need to be careful about the purchase they make - and Apple makes provisions for this. At the same time, developers should be conscientious, considerate, and kind when creating and pricing an application. **** Review: Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 by Rick LePage, Macworld What's most impressive about the update is how smoothly it works with you to organize and edit your photos; by focusing on improving the little things, Adobe has made an already good program even more usable. **** TypeCast by Jason Snell, Macworld **** It's A Core Location Blacklist by John Gruber, Daring Fireball An informed soure at Apple confirmed to me that the "clbl" in the URL stands for "Core Location Blacklist", and that it does just that. It is not a blacklist for disabling apps completely, but rather specifically for preventing any listed apps from accessing Core Location - an API which, for obvious privacy reasons, is covered by very strict rules in the iPhone SDK guidelines. **** Apple Prices Are Just Peachy by Christopher Dawson, ZDNet.com As Apple keeps cranking out high-quality, durable ,user-friendly, innovative products, I have to remember the words my old economics teacher used to ask: "How much should a company charge for a product?" We would all answer in unison, "As much as the market will bear." **** How To Fix The DVD Drive by Heng-Cheong Leong, MyAppleMenu This is new to me: turn your MacBook sideway to fix the DVD drive.

Permanent Link to This Post **** Is The iPhone NDA About Patents? by John Gruber, Daring Fireball "Maybe lawyers believe there are patentable inventions described in the iPhone SDK and they are telling Apple to keep everything under NDA until they know provisional patents can be filed within a reasonable amount of time." **** Much Ado About The iPhone's 'Kill Switch' by Tom Krazit, CNET News.com Until Apple explains why it has included this function, or an application appears on the blacklist and is wiped from someone's phone, it's all just the usual leaping to conclusions on a sleepy Thursday in August. **** Developers To Apple: Be More Transparent On App Store Standards by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld Wondering what goes into the process of determiing what iPhone applications make the grade for Apple's App Store? You're not alone—the developers who write those programs sometimes find themselves wondering the same thing. **** The iCal Challenge by William Porter, Macworld Eight calendars and organizers compete with Apple's scheduling app. **** New iPod, Old Firmware by Jeffery Battersby, Macworld If you're planning on buying a touch, it may be a case of buyer beware—that "new" hardware may not be as new as you thought. And the price tag may be a few dollars more than what you thought you were going to pay. /There's no 2.0 software on iPod touch, even if you buy it today from Apple Store./ **** Driving iTunes Daffy by Christopher Breen, Macworld The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Net Address Bug Worse Than Feared by Maggie Shiels, BBC News **** Words The Internet Killed by Jeremy Toeman, LiveDigitally We are currently in the midst of a transformation, caused in a large part by the evolutoin of social networking sites. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Demons Inner And Outer by Adam Kirsch, New York Sun Almost seven years after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, readers still display a surprising hunger for the definitive "9/11 novel." **** A Literature Of Our Own by Julie Bindel, The Guardian Eighty years after Radclyffe Hall wrote the radical novel The Well of Loneliness, is there still any need for novels to be categorised as lesbian? SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Connect Singapore Was A Waste Of My Time by Theawesome Classblog Of The Year 4132008 Thanks for totally destroying National Day for me. **** Johor To Draw Up Masterplan For Pulau Pisang by V.P. Sujata, The Star "We must be proactive in terms of its development and draw up a masterplan for the sake of our future generation," said foreign minister Datuk Dr Rais Yatim, adding that as Pulau Pisang fell under the jurisdiction of Johor, ideally the state government should plan its development. **** Katong Laksa: Will The Original Katong Laksa Please Stand Up? by ieatishootipost There is Laksa and then there is "Katong" Laksa. **** Swede Quality Of Life by Jan Sundstrom, Straits Times Nine in 10 Singaporeans merely lease their homes. (HDB flats are typically 99-year leaseholds). Freehold ownership is higher in Sweden: Forty per cent live in landed property, 20 per cent in freehold condos and 40 per cent in rental flats. Swedish rental flats are akin to HDB flats. The main differences are that there is no downpayment, and the rental contract does not expire. The United Nations' Human Development Index, based on 350 indicators, tracks 'a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent standard of living'. Sweden ranks sixth worldwide, while Singapore trails at 25th. **** DBS To Give New Push To POSB by Gabriel Chen, Straits Times DBS Bank's new boss was certainly not mincing words when he spoke about the way the bank has run POSB: "We've disappointed Singaporeans and we plan to turn it around." **** Singaporeans Pragmatic? Not Always by Adrian Tan, Today I am not ridiculing our pragmatic asipirations. Rather, I want us to celebrate the fact we have ethical, unqunatifiable principles and that we are prepared to suffer the economic consequences of these principles. This is nothing to be ashamed about. /One man's principle is another man's prison. If my principle is that green is ugly, will you stop wearing that ugly green dress tomorrow?/ **** Economic Growth May Remain Weak: Tharman by Today "The situation now is different from what it was three months ago. The American economy is in a much mor eperilous state now and the risks facing the financial system, which is a global system and not just an American system, are still very substantial." **** Chee Siok Chin Vs Official Assignee: Let's Judge For Ourselves Who Is Telling The Truth by Ng E-Jay, Sgpolitics.net "How have I refused to verify the information requested?" **** Why Are They Staring At Me During The Ghost Festival? by Feed Me To The Fish Dear PAP MPs, for the prevention of nausea and for the sake of sanity, please get your faces off! Who's money do you use to glorify yourself? **** Only Half Think Singapore A Good Place For Kids by Veena Bharwani, New Paper The education system here was cited as a major reason for Singapore being unconducive for raising kids. Another reason was the difficulty in striking work-life balance. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Sat Aug 9 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 9 Aug 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 9, 2008 Message-ID: <20080809171500.68635.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Control Everything On Your Mac With Your Keyboard Using Quicksilver by Jesse Kirdahy-Scalia, Open Media Boston OS X's Spotlight feature is a great search tool, and is fast enough to use as a keyboard-based application launcher, but that's about where its usefulness ends. Quicksilver picks up the slack by allowing users to control nearly every aspect of their computer without ever touching their mouse. Once you use it, you'll wonder what you did without it. **** Apple Reviews NetShare; Permanent Ban Likely by Brian X. Chen, Wired Nullriver's short-lived iPhone application NetShare, which turns your iPhone into a wireless modem for your laptop, might not be returning to the App Store after all. /Can Nullriver sell the privelige, at a probably-rather-higher-price to U.S. iPhone customers, of being a "beta tester" for Netshare?/ **** Sour Apple: How An Apple Ad Sets The Wrong Expectations by Jason Fried, 37signals Unslow is about selling speed. Speed that isn't for sale at any price. It sets the wrong expectations. **** ScreenFlow 1.2 Improves Copy/Paste, Adds Fixes by MacNN Vara has released a v1.2 update to ScreenFlow, its screencast creation and editing program. **** Another iPhone Application Slashed From App Store by Dan Moren, Macworld **** Moneydance 2008R2 Finance Software Released by Peter Cohen, Macworld Moneydance features online banking support and online bill payment, investment management, budget tracking, transaction scheduling, check printing, graphics, reports and other capabilities. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Paris Match by Maureen Orth, Vanity Fair Just months after his May 2007 election, French president Nicolas Sarkozy faced growing criticism over his stalled reforms, flashy style, and stormy divorce. The last straw should have been his whirlwind remarriage, to an Italian heiress, ex-model, and singer who had past liaisons with Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, among others, and nude photos all over the internet. But the lady in question, Carla Bruni, is proviing an unexpected asset. **** Clarke And Pohl's 'The Last Theorem' by Michael Berry, San Francisco Chronicle Completed only a few days before the death of Arthur C. Clarke, "The Last Theorem" is a paean to the elegance of mathematics and th epower of the scientific method. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Straits Times Redesigned by Au Waipang, Yawning Bread After all the thought that went into the redesign of the print version, the management seemed to have let the internet boys do whaever they wanted. The result is something like what your home will look like after you have permitted your teenage sons to host a party. /Straits Times' online revamp is now in a horrible mess. Navigational and content architectural nightmare. Rather evolve from its previous version, the online team seemed to have re-done everything from scratch — without any evidence of usability and technical testing at all./ **** Hard Time Making Ends Meet by Seah Chiang Nee, The Star Few Singaporeans take pride at the republic being ranked Asia's fifth-most expensive city. And don't even talk about The Singapore Dream to the deprived, for they are finding it tougher to cope with the higher costs of living. **** Singapore Cuts GDP Forecast S Asian Nations Face Slower Growth by Shamim Adam, Bloomberg Singapore cut its 2008 growth forecast for a second time this year, joining its Asian neighbors in signaling a deeper slowdown. The island's economy will expand between 4 percent and 5 percent, from an earlier estimate of 4 percent to 6 percent, prime minister Lee Hsien Loong said yesterday. Growth was 7.7 percent in 2007. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Sun Aug 10 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 10 Aug 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 10, 2008 Message-ID: <20080810171501.91518.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** MobileMe: Apple Promises, Then Forgets To Post An Update #4 by Palluxo! **** iPhones-Macintosh Computers Become Apples Of Hackers' Eyes by AFP Security specialists said Saturday that hackers are taking increasing aim at iPhones and Macintosh computers as the hot-selling Apple devices gain popularity worldwide. Macintosh computers have been gaining market share and catching the interest of hackers, according to Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) security vulnerability analyst Cameron Hotchkies at a notorious annual DefCon gathering of hackers in Las Vegas. **** Apple Displaces Microsoft In Patch Reports by Darren Pauli, Comptuerworld Australia Apple has taken the place of Microsoft for disclosing more vulnerabilities than any other vendor, according to an IBM security report. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Tape Delay By NBC Faces End Run By Online Fans by Brian Stelter, New York Times **** AntiPod by Rob Walker, New York Times Who is buying Zunes, and why? MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Paul Auster's 'Man In The Dark' by Stephen Elliott, San Francisco Chronicle Paul Auster has captivated generations of readers with his expansive imagination and style - a style that could be called lazy, in the best sense of the word, like a dog with his tongue out, rolling in the sun. But this, his latest novel, is something else. **** The Future Of Crossing The Street by Billy Baker, Boston Globe Boston drivers are bad, but Boston pedestrians might be worse. Now some very smart people think they've got the answers to help everyone play nice on our roads. **** A Glimpse Into The Thoughts Of George Orwell by David Mehegan, Boston Globe It may be hard to imagine that any of George Orwell's writings would be unread 58 years after his death. Generations of readers have been gripped by such classics as "Down and Out in Paris and London," "Homage to Catalonia," "Animal Farm," and especially "1984." However, most of even the most devoted aficionados haven't read Orwell's diaries. **** They May Not Mean To, But They Do by Caryn James, New York Times Like so many adolescents, Doris Lessing swore never to be like "these sick and half crazy people, my parents." Unlike most, she became a brilliant Nobel Prize-winning writer, and in "Alfred and Emily" offers them the greatest gift she can: the lieves they might have had. **** 'Punk Half Panther' by Stephen Burt, New York Times Herrera's worst poems seem disorganized, excessive, frantic; his best seem disheveled, excited, uncommonly free. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Singapore Air Says Offer For China Eastern Expired by Daryl Loo, Reuters Singapore Airlines the world's biggest airline by market value, said on Sunday its offer to buy a stake in China Eastern expired on Aug 9 and that it will now seek other ways to build ties with the mainland carrier. **** Chinatown Retail Sales Drop By Up To Half Since Start Of ERP by Hoe Yeen Nie and Lian Cheong, Channel NewsAsia In a recent survey by the Chinatown Business Association, some shopping centres reported their sales fell by up to 50 per cent. Ho Nai Chuen, vice-chairman of the association, siad: "If you talk about the long run to smoothen the traffic conditions, it's good for Singapore. On the other hand, for small and medium-sized businesses, short-term sustainabilty is even more important than the long-term. If they cannot sustain in the short-term, I think there's no future for them." **** Pontian MP Wants Government To Probe Singapore-Built Structures On Pulau Pisang by Mohd Haikal Isa, Bernama Member of Parliament for Pontian Ahmad Maslan has called on the government to investigate the construction of a store and jetty by Singapore's Maritime and Port Authority (MPA). Ahmad also uged the government a claim that Singapore had trespassed fruit orchards belonging to local residents to build a new fence around the lighthouse. **** Time To Tolerate Political Diversity by Cherian George, Straits Times Singaporeans have been accustomed to asking ourselves whether we can afford to tolerate political differences. Our experience in dealing with other types of differences - ethnic and class - should give us hope that we can try. Our complex and unclear future tells us we cannot afford not to. **** Rejecting The Universal by Beautiful Monster Should Singapore pursue liberal democracy, she will survive the polarization of interests and might even become stronger (towards a linear teleological end), but perhaps, just perhaps, it might be better the way it is today. **** Myanmar Activists Face Visa Problems In Singapore by Reuters At least three Myanmar activists were forced to leave Singapore after authorities decided not to renew their visas in an apparent attempt to stop the group's pro-democracy work, another Myanmar activist said. **** Architect About Town: A Little Bit Of Home In Singapore by Joyce Owens, The News-Press How fortunate we are to have the architecture of this region influenced by one of the greatest modern designers of the second half of the last century. **** Feng Shui Masters Turn 'Wheel Of Fortune' In Singapore's Favour by AFP Officials in Singapore have changed the direction of the world's biggest observation wheel because feng shui masters said it was taking good fortune away from the city, a report said on Saturday. **** Singapore Has No Right To Expand Area Around Pulau Pisang, Says Johor MB by The Star Singapore has no right to expand the area around the lighthouse on Pulau Pisang as an agreement signed more than 100 years ago had clearly stated how much space was allocated for the building. "Actionc an be taken against Singapore if allegations that the republic is expanding the demarcation area around the lighthouse were true," Johor mentri besar Datuk Abdul Ghani told reporters. **** National Day's Tak Boleh Tahan Campaign @ Toa Payoh Central by Kengho Yap, News Release By UncleYap **** A Nation Without Empathy & Identity? by Goh Meng Seng, Singapore Alternatives The erosion of our national identity is now hastened by PAP government's lack of empathy towards our citizens. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Mon Aug 11 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 11 Aug 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 11, 2008 Message-ID: <20080811171500.82735.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Apple's Jobs Confirms iPhone 'Kill Switch' by Claudine Beaumont, Telegraph "Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull." **** Black Ink 1.1.2 by Jonathan Seff, Macworld If you're a fan of crossword puzzles, like I am, then you should definitely consider adding Red Sweater Software's Black Ink to your software arsenal. **** Doctor Campaigns For iPhone Drug Application by Victoria Colliver, San Francisco Chronicle **** iPhone Software Sales Take Off: Apple's Jobs by Nick Wingfield, Wall Street Journal In the month since Apple opened an online software clearinghouse called the App Store, users have downloaded more than 60 million programs for the iPhone, chief executive Steve Jobs said in an interview at Apple's headquarters. While most of those applications were free, Apple sold an average of $1 million a day in applications for a total of about $30 million in sales over the month, Mr. Jobs said. See Also: iPhone App Downloads Are Up. What About Their Usage? , by Om Malik, GigaOM. **** Apple's Great Customer Service: The $249 Difference by Dilbert Is Funny For A Reason One of the reasons Apple has legions of devotees is their extraordinary customer service. Their retail store employees are given wide latitude to do whatever it takes to delight the customers. **** Many Fail To See The Humor In 'I Am Rich' For The iPhone by Eric A. Taub, New York Times Created by a German software developer, Armin Heinrich, it was written pretty much as a joke. "I found that some users complain about prices for iPhone applications above 99 cents," Mr Heinrich said. "I regard it as art. I did not expect many people to buy it and did not expect all the fuss about it." **** Apple Store Chatswood: This Time It Is Just A Store by Seamus Byrne, APC Apple tried to recreate the fanfare that accompanied the opening of the Sydney CBD Apple Store, but in a suburban mall it all felt out of place. See Also: Chatswood Apple Store: Massive "Door", Launch A Bore? , by Alex Zaharov-Reutt, iTWire. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Why Microsoft And Intel Tried To Kill The XO $100 Laptop by Bryan Appleyard, The Times For three reasons the XO turned out to be a gross provocation to the big players in the computer industry. **** Salon Builds It — But Will Anyone Come? by Mathew Ingram **** Uncommon Knowledge by Kevin Lewis, Boston Globe Surprising insights from the social sciences. **** Is Google A Media Company? by Miguel Helft, New York Times While Knol is only three weeks old and still relatively obscure, it has alread rekindled fears among some media companies that Google is increasingly becoming a competitor. **** Why Laptops Will Kick Desktop PCs To The Curb by Don Reisinger, Ars Technica SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Chee's Sister Seeks Court's Okay To Go To US by Jeremy Au Yong, Straits Times Opposition politician Chee Siok Chin has taken to court her tussle with the Official Assignee's office over permission to leave the country. **** Why They Like Singapore by A Xeno Boy In Sg Waltzing on a glass floor, looking down on the rest of the country, the rest of the world. **** Employers Say Job Creation In H2 2008 Likely To Slow Down by S Ramesh, Channel NewsAsia Expect a slowdown in job creation and hiring in the second half of this year, said manpower planners and employers in view of mixed economic signals and a general global slowdown. **** Nurture Locals With Foreigners Or Import Foreigners And Make THem Local? by Nicholas Lazzarus, Young PAP Blog I feel a little pity for our local athletes who would definitely feel that they were not supported entirely by their nation. /But, fundamentally, why chase golds and metals and records?/ **** My Thoughts On Chua Lee Hoong's Article "Why They Hate Singapore" by Sgpolitics.net Singapore succeeded economically not because it lacks basic rights, but in spite of the fact that it lacks basic rights. There is a crucial distinction here. **** Singapore's Q2 GDP Shrinks, Exports To Weaken by Saeed Azhar and Charmian Kok, Reuters Singapore's economy contracted at a annualised rate of 6 percent in the second quarter after seasonal adjustments, and the government now expects key exports to shrink this year as a global downturn bites. The government said on Monday it expects full year growth at the lower end of a 4-5 percent forecast, as it sees the city-state's non-oil domestic exports shrinking 2-4 percent this year without any pickup in major economies anytime soon. **** The POSB Ticket To DBS' Expansion by Goh Eng Yeow, Straits Times To many investors, the DBS chief executive's admission marked a refreshing change from the traditional stiff upper-lipped boss whose default setting is to maintain a stony silence over any mistakes - past or present. **** Singaporean Tourists Flocking To US by Jessica Lim, Straits Times Singaporean tourists are heading to the United States in the largest numbers since the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. **** Singapore Prisons: Spartan, With Humane Touches by Teh Joo Lin, Straits Times There seems to be little dispute that prisoners in Singapore have it tougher than their western counterparts. **** Let's Not Call It Racial Discrimination by Heng-Cheong Leong, MyAppleMenu Racial discrimination? Racists? Such big words. Let's call it positive discrimination , or preference instead. Some people don't even know they are racist...

Permanent Link to This Post From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Tue Aug 12 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 12 Aug 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 12, 2008 Message-ID: <20080812171501.16892.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** It Took Me 30 Minutes To Purchase A MacBook by Phil Shapiro, PC World The store was just too franctic for me to be able to think clearly when I was making my order. The whole experience was un-Zen. **** Simple Comic 1.6.1 by Jason Snell, Macworld **** Is There Room For Culture In An iPhone World? by Elliott Riebman, New York Times To maintain culturally elite status today, one is better served studying the works of Steve Jobs than Soren Kierkegaard. **** Laptops Distributed To Farmington Middle Schoolers by G Jeff Golden, The Daily Times **** MailSteward 8.05 Archives Email For Mac Business by MacNN **** Closed Platforms Could Ruin The Web by Josh Catone, SitePoint Blogs As the computing moves off of our computers we're increasingly moving toward an environment where a few platform providers are the ultimate gatekeepers brokering our experience. **** I Hate That I Like Apple Products by Savio Rodrigues, InfoWorld I'm pulling for RIM to offer mobile application developers with an open development platform without restirctions on the applications that developers can build an dusers can freely choose to run. **** TextExpander 2.4: Speedier Abbreviations On The Fly by MacNN Those who have a lot to do in a short time no doubt appreciate how text "shortcuts" for frequently used text strings and images can speed things up. **** iPhone As Advertising Platform by Richard Waters, Financial Times It seems a safe bet that most of the money made by the iPhone appliction developers will come in the form of advertising. That is the overwhelming lesson from the PC-based internet. **** MobileMe Mail And Gmail Go Down Simultaneously by Adam C. Engst, TidBITS For a period of several hours on 11-Aug-08, both MobileMe Mail and Google's Gmail were both inaccessible for many users. **** A Missed Marketing Opportunity: Free iPhone Apps by Arik Hesseldahl, BusinessWeek More than 80,000 people are downloading this game every day. And rather than look at your logo, dear corporations, they're looking at nothing. **** Phishing Scam Targets MobileMe Users by Peter Cohen, Macworld An e-mail purporting to be from Apple laerting users to a billing problem is, in fact, a phishing scam that's targeting users of Apple's online service, /Macworld/ has learned. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Commanding Your Browser by Kate Greene, MIT Technology Review A new interface bypasses the mouse for some complex tasks. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** A Bristle Of Wings In The Ivy by Teresa Cader, Slate **** Bizarre Death Of The Man Who Talked Too Much by Joseph Weisberg, New York Times In "The Terminal Spy" Alan S. Cowell, a veteran foreign correspondent for The New York Times, gives an absorbing account of Mr Litvinenko's life and bizarre murder. Along the way he explains how Russia lost and got back its tremendous energy resources after the fall of the Soviet Union, describes how wealthy Russians have turned London into "Moscow-on-the-Thames" and tries to determine if the Litvinenko murder is the harbinger of a new and especialy dangerous kind of terrorism. **** While A Magician Works, The Mind Does The Tricks by Benedict Carey, New York Times "Here's this art form gooing back perhaps to ancietn Egypt, and basically the neuroscience community had been unaware" of its direct application to the study of perception, Dr Marthinez-Conde said. **** Condolences, Felt But Not Expressed by Kent Sepkowitz, New York Times I think doctors have a strange way of grieving their patients. **** Britons Abroad: Speaking In Tongues by Michael Church, The Independent Each language represents a particular kind of society, and a particular way of feeling and thinking. For those who speak it, it's the sum of human intelligence. We should all take note, and cherish our little grammar books. **** 'Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do (And What It Says About Us)' By Tom Vanderbilt by Mathew DeBord, Los Angeles Times An encyclopedic look at traffic woes. Unfortunately, it goes nowhere. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Singapore Airlines Voted World's Best Again by Miral Fahmy, Reuters Singapore Airlines was voted the best in the world for second cnsecutive year by an annual survey of passengers which was dominated by Asian and Gulf Arab carriers, including Australia's Qantas. **** Secularism And Women's Education by The Agonist When you free half your soceity and free your entire society to worship or not worship as they see fit, you create the necessary conditions for prosperity. **** Impact Of Drive Burning Out by Judith Tan, Straits Times During the past 35 years, wider bans and gory anti-smoking campaigns have managed to whittle away the number of smokers. But recent evidence suggests the drive may have lost its momentum. /Let's turn up the knob: smoking ban in all places in Singapore, except in private homes and destinated public spots./ **** SingTel To Launch iPhone In Singapore On Aug 22 by Jennifer Tan, Reuters Singapore Telecommunications, Southeast Asia's largest telecoms firm, will launch Apple Inc's third-generation iPhone in Singapore on Aug 22, the company said on Tuesday. **** P. Pisang Lighthouse Expansion Began In 80S, Say Heir by Mohd Haikal Isa, Bernama Singapore is believed to have been expanding the compound of a lighhouse operated by its Maritime and Port Authority on Pulau Pisang since early 1980s. **** Need To Refine Deferment Policy? by Siew Kum Hong, Today Is this policy outdated, in a globalised world with a growing Singaporean diaspora? **** On Shit And Prostrating Prostitutes by Mollymeek **** Screwed Again! by Feed Me To The Fish We pay our conservancy charges, taxes and GST and they use it to glorify and advertise PAP MPs? Have they no shame? From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Wed Aug 13 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 13 Aug 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 13, 2008 Message-ID: <20080813171501.18108.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Data Backup 3 Vs Time Machine 1 by Neale Monks, MyMac Magazine Time Machine is a great application that does precisely what it promises with minimal fuss. Youf want to backup only certain files, or use a wider range of media, or need to configure your backups around a specific schedule, Data Backup is an infinitely more flexible alternative. **** Fire At Apple Campus In Cupertino by Pete Mortensen, Cult Of Mac Multiple Bay Area news outlets report that an Apple research and development facility located at 20605 Valley Green Drive in Cupertino was set ablaze late Tuesday night, with NBC affiliate KTVU blaming a malfunctioning air conditioning unit. **** 'Slow' iPhone 3G Glitch Blamed On Secrecy by Asher Moses, Sydney Morning Herald A source at an Australian telco who did not wish to be named said Apple - paranoid about keeping the device under wraps - only provided the iPhone 3G to carriers the day before it went to market, leaving them with no time to test it thoroughly on their networks. **** Best Buy To Sell iPhone In U.S. by Mark H. Anbinder, TidBITS **** MobileMe: iPhone Push Lacks Mail Status Changes by MacNN A forum post on Apple's discussion boards revealed that "read" message status changes, delete, reply-to, and move commands do not function with Push, with a technical document indicating that suers must manually check their mail in order to receive updates. **** The iPhone Kill Switch Is Innovative by Bove's Blips Apple can claim the ethical high ground in protecting its platform, as its platform is not a monopoly. I would argue that the kill switch is an innovative approach to protecting a platform in this age of criminal conspiracies to steal your personal information. **** Killing Apple's iPhone Kill-Switch by iPhone Atlas Requires jailbreaking. **** T-Mobile Netherlands Puts Reception Issues On Apple by Tom Krazit, CNET News.com In a company blog posting Tuesday morning, T-Mobile Netherlands threw the iPhone 3G under the bus, blaming Apple for the problems its customers have been experiencing connecting to 3G networks in that country. **** Why Your Student Should Take A Mac To College by Bob LeVitus, Houston Chronicle **** NetNanny's Parental Controls Come To The Mac by Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica Being able to schedule when kids have access and even keep logs of what they're doing can be a major help if you're not able to sit right next to them at all times. **** Why Apple Doesn't Do "Concept Products" by Counternotions Real artists ship, dabblers create concept products. **** Launchpad Chicken: MobileMe And Sync Trouble by Jean-Louis Gassee, Monday Note Simple is hard. Easy is harder. Invisible is hardest. **** Vetting The App Store Approval Process by Rob Griffiths and Dan Frakes, Macworld Here are five issues that have gotten attention in recent weeks, along with our proposed solutions. **** Microsoft Updates Office 2004 And 2008 by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld Taking a page from Apple's most recent updates, Microsoft said "this update contians several improvements to enhance stability and performance." **** Access Your Bonjour Services Anywhere With ShareTool by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld **** Entourage Email Archive Supports Latest Version Of Office by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld Entourage Email Archive is a utility designed to allow users to archive emails and attachments from Entourage. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Yahoo Unveils Platform For Location-Based Services by Miguel Helft, New York Times MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Harvesting The Waste Land: An Anthology Of New Criticism by Adam Kirsch, New York Sun The New Criticism is too good and too serious to be dismissed as advertisement. It deserves to be remembered, instead, as the scaffolding on which the monument of modernism was raised. **** This Is Not My Beautiful Wife by Laura Miller, Salon Meteorology meets conspiracy in Rivka Glachen's exquisite first novel about a man who mistakes his wife for an impostor. **** Louis Owens And John Steinbeck's Ghosts by Tony Ortega, Village Voice A mystery solved with the help of a professor and a mobster's musician. **** Down With The Perfect 10! by Jordan Ellenberg, Slate A mathematician explains the genius of the new gymnastics scoring system. **** God And Jerk At Yale by Rachel Toor, Chronicle Of Higher Education The difference between having a college degree and not having one is far greater than where you go to college. But where you go can determine, to a large extent, who you become. Some of us become jerks. And others spend our lives trying to figure out what it meant to have been there — and how to get over it. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Sim Lim's Black Sheep Causes Worry by Tan Wei Zhen, Straits Times The reaction of many retailers at Sim Lim Square to the increasing number of complaints being made against them is a shrug, followed by a resigned "what to do?" **** LKY Do A "You Can't Handle The Truth!" by kelvintan73 "You weep for liberal democracy and you curse pragmatism; you have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that authoritarian democracy, while tragic, probably saved jobs and that my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves jobs." **** Southern Islands At Crossroads by Serene Goh, Straits Times The vision of the southern islands as an eco-paradise hangs in the balance with the departure of their champion, Mrs Pamelia Lee. **** From Jams To Judiciary by Loh Chee Kong, Today >From missing factory rooftops to the perennial Causeway crawl, businessmen from both sides voiced their concerns over doing business across the Causeway. **** Flicks For Free by Today We have provided you with our cheat... erm, cheap sheet on free movies to help ease the rising cost of living, eye-bulging oil pries and that shrinking discretionary household income. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Thu Aug 14 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 14 Aug 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 14, 2008 Message-ID: <20080814171501.58089.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Apple Faithful Snared In Phishing Scam Targeting Mac.com Users by Dan Goodin, The Register Data obtained by CardCops, a credit protection service owned by the Affinion Group, shows sensitive information belonging to several hundred people with Mac.com email addresses being traded in underground forums frequented by identity thieves. **** Apple's Crap Store by Sascha Segan, PC Magazine If this is the state of software development today, we should all worry. **** The Really Annoying iPhone App Update Behaviour by Thomas Fitzgerald When you go to update an application, rather than replacing the existing one, the iPhone deletes them and downloads the updated version, putting it at the first available free spot on a page. /From the OS X Finder to iPhone, spatial representation seems to be an lost art at Apple./ **** 'It Has Certainly Changed The Game' by Matt Hartley, Globe And Mail Apple has scored a $30-million hit with its App store as iPhone users embrace personalization and developers reap the benefits. With such a head start, can the competition catch up? **** Box Office Returns To The App Store by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld **** Chandler 1.0 Is A Serious, But Rough, To-Do Manager by Lifehacker There's a lot of neat ideas in Chandler, implemented in rough ways, and if you're a serious to-do hound, it ust might find a place somewhere in your work flow. **** Talking Points: The iPhone's Impact In Japan by Kenji Hall, BusinessWeek The fact that Softbank was willing to sell the iPhone suggests that Softbank wants to be an agent for change. **** Apple Now Worth More Than Google by Thomas Claburn, InformationWeek At the close of the stock market on Wednedsay, Apple's value as a company surpassed Google's. Apple's market capitalization reached $158.84 billion; Google's settled at $157.23 billion. **** No One Hurt During Last Night's Apple HQ Fire by Jeff Smykil, Ars Technica **** First Look: Headline 1.0, RSS Feed Reader by MacNN **** When Apple's Reach Exceeds Its Grasp by Jason Snell, Macworld So the question is, what does Apple do now? There are a couple general paths it could choose to go down. It could aggressively step up its growth and recruitment efforts, so that it has enough people to implement all of its great ideas (a plan that risks diluting Apple's carefully selected pool of talent). It could stay the size it is now, more or less, and execute well on somewhat less ambitious plans. /I would like to see Apple forge more meaningful partnerships. MobileMe could well be a joint effort with Google or Yahoo, for example./ See Also: When Apple's Reach Exceeds Its Grasp , by John Gruber, Daring Fireball. I think Jason Snell overemphasizes the importance of Apple's "size". The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Is The Kindle EBook Reader Becoming Amazon's iPod? by Jack Schofield, The Guardian Yes, but perhaps only after it becomes a newspaper reader. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Scratches by Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic The view that everything is changing for the better is marketing propaganda—Google progressivism. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Education Must Evolve by Amelia Tan, Straits Times In a speech at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy on Thursday, education minister Ng Eng Hen spelt out new challenges for the system. Top of the list, he said, is raising the number of teachers, and getting more with higher qualifications, to develop students. **** More Cycling Signs Put Up by Christopher Tan, Straits Times More signs alerting drivers to cyclists on the road will be put up from next Monday. Avid cyclist and Safe Cyclists Task Force member Leo Tan said the signs 'stand as symbolic recognition by the state that motorists must share the roads with cyclists.' **** The Culture Openness Of Singapore by Malcolm Cook, The Interpreter The more often I heard these culturalist argument the less convincing they sounded and the more I thought they told me more about the observer than the observed. **** The Singapore-Donald Duck Axis by Sam Roggeveen, The Interpreter 'Disneyland with the death penalty' does get across some of the sheer creepiness of Singapore — its sense of officially enforced good cheer masking a slightly sinister authoritarianism. **** Moronism Part 132456565477976876.................. by Empty_vessels What Singaproeans should start scrutinising is the one thing that they /do/ have a problem with and ask ourselves if we do too. **** Metered Internet, According To SPH by Heng-Cheong Leong, MyAppleMenu It will be interesting for the coming months to watch how SPH — through Straits Times and Business Times, for example — report on the issue of unlimited bandwidth and metered internet by our local ISPs. Why? Because SPH now has a stake in the issue: it will want unlimited bandwidth so that you and me will go onto the internet and watch Razor.tv instead of Channel NewsAsia.

Permanent Link to This Post **** Inflation Should Be Main Focus For Singapore - IMF by Lesley Wroughton, Reuters Containing mounting inflation pressures should be a priority for Singapore's authorities as economic activity is slowed by a global downturn, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday. **** Who's Hardest Hit In Heartlands? by Today When it comes to money woes, the hardest hit are those living in four-room HDB flats. Senior minister of state for trade and industry, Mr S Iswaran, noted that the Housing Development Board now conducts credit assessments, "something we should have done from the start." /It was the government's decision to stop building 3-room flats earlier on. Is it any wonder that many people, who are 'forced' to go for a 4-room flat may have money trouble?/ **** MM Lee Says Singapore Has Shock Absorbers To Buffer Setbacks by Imelda Saad, Channel NewsAsia "We have an economy which is diversified. We have a workforce that we have upgraded year by year, better educated, better able to earn more because we are connected with the world and our incomes can rise because of our higher skills and higher technology." **** Separating The Wheat From The Chaff by Ng E-Jay, Sgpolitics.net In my view, the PAP does not treat citizens as shareholders or partners, but as mere employees in a corporation whose sole purpose is to beef up the company's profit statement and balance sheet. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Fri Aug 15 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 15 Aug 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 15, 2008 Message-ID: <20080815171500.30554.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Why Not Make The iPhone More Accessible? by Peter Abrahams, IT-Director.com How could the iPhone be made more accessible without a complete redesign? **** iMac Performance Evolves Through The Years by James Galbraith, Macworld Just how much has it evolved? In honor of the iMac's 10th anniversary, we decided to use Macworld Lab's collection of older iMacs to find out. **** Eight Ways The iMac Changed Computing by Benj Edwards, Macworld Initially marketed as an easy-to-use gateway to the internet, the iMac transcended that simple role and redefined the desktop PC market—not to mention consumer industrial design—forever. **** Sega Eye Off iPhone by Mike Bantick, iTWire "Direct consumer devliery is where it's going, as Apple has prove," said Sega of America president Simon Jeffery. "We're in a really good position and see it as a viable platform." **** A Nice Tidy End To The Options Backdating Scandal by Peter Burrows, BusinessWeek What is clear that everyone directly involved in this scandal is probably having a celebratory drink tonight. **** 10 Years Of Cuddly, Friendly iMacs by Benj Edwards, Wired Apple released its first iMac on Aug. 15, 1998. The cute, translucent blue, all-in-one PC was easily the most influential personal computer of the 1990s, heralding a return to simplicity and ease of use and briefly sparking an industrial design fad around clear, colored plastic. **** Review: Parallels Server For Mac Underwhelms by Tom Yager, InfoWorld **** Imagining A New iTunes by Christopher Breen, Macworld iTunes has moved to the point where it could present a formidable challenge to a non-technical user. **** Former Apple Executive Settles Backdating Charges by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld The Securities and Exchange Commission said on Thursday that it had reached a settlement with Nancy Heinen, former general counsel of Apple. **** WireTap Anywhere Lets You Redirect Mac Audio by Peter Cohen, Macworld WireTap Anywhere enables you to take the audio output from any Mac application or hardware input device and redirect it to your favorite audio recording application. **** Swift 3D V5.0 Adds Universal Binary, Rendering Speed by MacNN Electric Rain has released a universal binary of Swift 3D 5.0 and also added performance gains to the 3D-rendering application. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Open Source Copyrights Legally Enforceable, Appeals Court Rules by Paul McDougall, InformationWeek **** A Brilliant Idea At Harvard by Dave Winer, Scripting News What if you couldn't see what other people said for 24 hours. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** The Man Behind Woody Allen by Lennard Davis, The Common Review Can we really think seriously about the bespectacled, neurotic schlemiel who stumbles through /Take the Money and Run/ (1969) or /Bananas/ (1971) as the true heir to the Western intellectual tradition? **** Ever Thine. Ever Mine: How Romantic Are Today's Authors by Emma Hagestadt, The Independent The latest collection of historical love letters show sthat authors were a romantic lot. But are today's writers as handy with a pen? **** Literary Soul Mates Or Authors Who Were Polar Opposites? by Michiko Kakutani, New York Times David Lebedoff attempts to argue that George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh, apparently polar opposites, were in fact soul mates. **** The Cities Of Our Dreams by Thomas Meaney, Wall Street Journal In a world where cities are on the rise, where the world is, in many respects, becoming a city, it behooves our leading architectural critics to structure our pressing needs into a solid argument. But Mr Kingwell has given us sketches when we need blueprints and reveries when we need concrete. **** Facial Frontier by Robert Fulford, National Post The human face can reveal much about a person—whether they like it or not. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Singaore's Floating Football Pitch by The Times **** Lost In Singapore by Chris Guillebeau, The Art Of Nonconformity This is the story in which I am provided a geographical tour of Singaporean prostitutes, reflect on the biggest travel month of my life, and sleep in Changi airport prior to heading back to Hong Kong on the ultimate no-frills airline. **** The Devil, Chua Lee Hoong & Harry Lee by Mr Wang Says So Do "they" really hate us? Is anyone really out to "do us in"? Is there really a "conspiracy" going on? **** Educating The Next Generation by Lee Song Kwang, The Online Citizen **** Education - The Government Still Doesn't Get It by Mr Wang Says So It really doesn't take a genius to come up with a plan like "hire more teachers" and "hire better people". My grandmother could have thought of that. **** All Foreigners Entering Malaysia Must Fill In Immigration Cards by Chan Eu Imm, Channel NewsAsia All foreigners entering Malaysia must fill in immigration embarkation cards starting Friday. This includes Singaporeans who're entering Malaysia via the Causeway and Second Link. **** Meritocracy's Hidden Danger by Zakir Hussain, Straits Times If those who have gained from this system turn up their noses at those who lag behind, meritocracy as we know it today will not be the only victim. Disdain for the poor is the hidden danger that lurks in meritocracy. **** Don't Sniff At Our Education System by Clarissa Oon, Straits Times Singaporeans tend to see only the flaws in our system, says Kishore Mahbubani. NUS is now a 'world-class university'. **** Singapore-KL Express Buses To Offer Airline Food by Karamjit Kaur, Straits Times Get ready to dig into airline food on the road. Express bus travellers will taste the benefits of competition as Singapore-Kuala Lumpur coach operators prepare for battle with budget airlines. **** NMPs Table By-Election Debate In Parliament by Ansley Ng, Today Law professor Thio Li-anna nd Raffles Medical Group CEO Loo Choon Yong want a writ for by-election to be issued if a minority MP in a Group Representation Constituency (GRC) vacates his or her seat, or if half or more of the GRC members do so. **** Now Showing (On DVD And A Sinema) by Mayo Martin, Today While some of Singapore's film-makers are enjoying a regular run in the big cinemas this month, others are moving on to Plan B. That means (a) releasing DVDs and (b) screening at an indie theatre. **** Payback Time? by Leong Sze Hian, The Online Citizen Are we not, in a way, telling the whole world that we support the military junta? Are we the only country to penalise Burmese protestors in such a manner? **** Of Eggs And Baskets by Gerald Giam, Singapore Patriot Amidst all the fear-mongering about the opposition bogeyman, there was a silver of hope in what he said. **** Walking The Line Between Stating The Obvious And Fear-Mongering: MM Lee's Favourite Propaganda Technique by Ng E-Jay, Sgpolitics.net From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Sat Aug 16 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 16 Aug 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 16, 2008 Message-ID: <20080816171500.15656.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Goodbye, Eudroa; Hello, Apple Mail by Jeff Carlson, Seattle Times This shift is more than just substituting one piece of software for another. **** Microsoft Gold by Heng-Cheong Leong, MyAppleMenu John McKirdy : Microsoft achieved a marketing coup today by sneaking the most recognisable symbol of their Windows operating system into the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics...

Permanent Link to This Post **** Tape Deck 1.1 For Mac Includes Bevy Of Import/Export Options by Jeff Smykil, Ars Technica **** New Logic And Puzzle Games Come To Mac by Peter Cohen, Macworld The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** OOXML Gets Final Nod After Standards Body Rejects Appeals by Paul McDougall, InformationWeek Office Open XML is the basis of the format that lies behind Microsoft's Office 2007 and Office for Mac 2008 desktop application suites. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** A Teachable Moment by Paul Tough, New York Times Hurricane Katrina wiped out the New Orleans public schools. It also created a rare chance to build a system that might solve the biggest problem in urban education — how to teach disadvantaged children. **** A Not So Common Reader by Walter Kirn, New York Times This old-fashioned primer on literature from the esteemed critic James Wood concentrates on the art of the novel. **** Judgment Call by Alexander Star, New York Times Our justice detectors are not fundamentally defective. They are suited to the task of setting things right — approximately. **** He Blurbed, She Blurbed by Rachel Donadio, New York Times Blurbings LLC traffics in "blurbs," the often hyperbolic declamations on book covers alerting readers that they're holding the greatest single work of literature since the Bible — or perhaps since "The Da Vinci Code." **** The End Of Aviation by Bradford Plumer, The New Republic What will happen when America can't afford to fly? SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** On Political Diversity by Ho Peng Kee, People's Action Party, Straits Times On important political issues we cannot just agree to disagree, and treat all views as being equally valid. We have to debate the issues thoroughly, to reach a conesnsus and make the right choice for the country. **** Why Let Losers Share Podium? by Paul Jacob, Straits Times Shouldn't the onus really be on the opposition to raise the level of their game - and compete on the basis of ideas and a vision for the country rather than acquiesce to a scheme like the NCMP which gets them into Parliament as also-rans? /One way to think about this: ask yourself, how does the PAP benefit from NCMP and NMP schemes?/ **** Kuan Yew Still A Force To Be Reckoned With by Seah Chiang Nee, The Star Lee's forceful character and his historic role in Singapore has marked him as the real power, whatever the title he chooses to call himself. Lee's hold on power — especially the nation's finance, military and the mainstream media — is almost unbreakable and his authoritarian leadership, a little softened through the years, is still evident. **** Broadcast Of National Day Rally English Speech Postponed To Monday by Imelda Saad, Channel NewsAsia The English language telecast of the prime minister's National Day rally, scheduled for Sunday night, will be postponed to Monday, a statement fromt he prime minister's office said. This is so that Singaporeans can watch the women's table-tennis team take on China in the finals at the Beijing Olympics. **** MRT Rides Surge To A High by Yeo Ghim Lay, Straits Times Efforts to get drivers to ditch their cars for public transport appear to be working. /More work, of course, still awaits us to make Singapore greener *and* commuter-friendly./ From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Sun Aug 17 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 17 Aug 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 17, 2008 Message-ID: <20080817171501.29562.qmail@voot.pair.com> The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** P2P Vs. The Cloud by Bytepawn MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Green Sahara by Peter Gwin, Photograph by Mke Hettwer, National Geographic Magazine How a dinosaur hunter uncovered the Sahara's strangest Stone Age graveyard. **** The Chances Are That Gordon Brown Is A Loser by David Smith, The Guardian Mlodinow's telling central permise is that our desire for control leaves us in denial about how important randomness is. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** PM Highlights Inflation, Foreign Workers, Birth Rate Concerns by Channel NewsAsia Inflation, foreign workers and parenthood issues featured prominently in prime minister Lee Hsien Loong's National Day rally speech to the Chinese community on Sunday. **** Nets Fee Applies To Cabs, Bets by Esther Teo, Straits Times Ang Mo Kio GRC MP Inderjit Singh said: "Net has enjoyed a near-monopoly and it will be good for the government to actively look for new players so that competition will bring costs down for businesses and consumers." **** Hue And Cry Over Tiong Bahru Paint Job by Hong Xinyi, Straits Times A proposed paint job for Tiong Bahru estate's iconic art deco flats has upset some residents, some of whom feel the area will look too loud or cartoonish. **** The Education System Will Not Change by Mollymeek Let's not harp on the point that minister is merely saying something a few million others could have said. What "more" does he think that the education system can do? From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Mon Aug 18 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 18 Aug 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 18, 2008 Message-ID: <20080818171500.19816.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Review: ContentBarrier X4 by Roman Loyola, Macworld ContentBarrier X4 offers several valuable tools that Parental COntrols lacks, such as hour-by-hour scheduling, an IM anti-predator filter, media stream blocking, and keyword filtering. If you have a hard time keeping up with your kids and maintaining Parental Controls, or if you have a small business where you want to cut down on non-work-related surfing, ContentBarrier X4 can be a big help. **** MobileMe Webmail Security - There Is None by Jens Alfke, Thought Palace MobileMe's web apps are quite insecure — they won't protect you against DNS forgery or phishing attacks, and they leave your email traffic wide open for others to read. **** Wow: Apple's MobileMe Going Third Party?! by Stephen Withers, iTWire Just as Apple sells third-party software for the iPhone and iPod touch trough the App Store, it could offer MobileMe add-ons that were created outside the company. **** Get The Most Out Of iPhoto 08 by Brendon Chase, CNET.com.au We'll move right on to some of the more advanced features of the program that will help you get more out of the program and make it a stablemate on your Mac dock. **** Signal Gripes Mount Over New iPhone by Kevin Allison, Financial Times The ranks of unhappy iPhone users continued to swell at the weekend as Apple customers complained about problems maintaining a signal on the company's new 3G handset. **** Push Mail Is The iPhone's Most Pressing Achilles Heel by Paul Glazowski, Mashable It has underperformed, plain and simple. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Amid Conference Halls And Keynote Speakers, A Rivalry Forms by Brad Stone, New York Times **** Click To Translate by Matthew Battles, Boston Globe Millions of people are deciphering vintage texts without knowing it - and forging a new path for computing. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Isola Bella by C. K. Stead, New Yorker **** Here The Birds' Journey Ends by Mahmoud Darwish, New Yorker **** Awake by Tobias Wolff, New Yorker **** Confidence Game by Drake Bennett, Boston Globe How imposters like Clark Rockefeller capture our trust instantly - and why we're so eager to give it to them. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Singapore To Ease Bans On Political Films And Demos by Neil Chatterjee, Reuters Singapore, which currently bans political films and demonstrations, may ease curbs on both to keep up with the spread of video and other free expression on the intenret, its prime minister said in remarks released on Monday. "We've got to allow political videos but with some safeguards," said prime minister Lee Hsien Loong in a televised address recorded on Sunday. "I think some things should still be off limits... there will be grey areas." **** Singapore's Main Exports Decline Again: Government by AFP Singapore's main exports tumbled for the third straight month in July, hurt by weak demand for electronic goods in key markets including the United States, the government said Monday. **** $700M New Deal by Straits Times Another $700 million will be spent on new ways to encourage Singaporeans to marry and to have babies. In all, the government will spend $1.6 billion a year, announced prime minister Lee Hsien Loong. **** KL's Warning On Pedra Branca by AFP Malaysia said on Monday it has issued an official warning to Singapore over its territorial claims surrounding a disputed rocky outcrop, in the latest quarrel between the neighbours. "Singapore's claims of up to 12 nautical miles of their maritime borders and an EEZ for Batu Puteh is unacceptable and unreasonable and contradicts the principles of international law," foreign minister Rais Yatim said. **** 50% More Growth Dividends by Goh Chin Lian, Straits Times The higher-than-expected inflation and uncertain economic outlook have made it necessary for the government to give $256 million more in aid, said prime minister Lee Hsien Loong who announced the higher payouts at the National Day rally at the University Cultural Centre on Sunday. **** LTA To Review ERP Rates For Gantries Around Singapore River by Lian Cheong, Channel NewsAsia The Land Transport Authority (LTA) will review the rates for the five Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) gantries around the Singapore River in October - a month ahead of its usual quarterly review. The ove came in response to recent feedback that busineses in nearby Chinatown have seen a slump in sales since the ERP charges were introduced in July. **** Commuters Think SMRT Should Improve On New Initiative by Channel NewsAsia /My gut feeling is that we will be seeing higher peak-hour fares soon./ **** Singapore's Temasek Courts Disaster by Asia Sentinel The bull market tide goes out, leaving the lion city's sovereign wealth firm gasping on the shore. **** Portable Peace Of Mind For Older Workers by Alicia Wong, Today **** Overcrowded Maid Shelter To Close by Tan Wei Zhen, Straits Times **** The Dangers Of Insensitivity by Today Chinatown Complex needs to be more disabled-friendly. **** 35,000 Jobs - Or 20,000 Jobs? by Andrew Loh, The Online Citizen Why the discrepancy? What happened to the 15,000 jobs? Was the projection wrong? From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Tue Aug 19 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 19 Aug 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 19, 2008 Message-ID: <20080819171500.33436.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Apple Announces Magsafe Out Of Warranty Replacement Program by Danny Gorog, APC In a rare turnaround, Apple has acknowledged in a tech support article that some Magsafe adaptors may be faulty, and users 'may notice a separation of the white insulation on the magnetic end of the MagSafe adapter. Under continued use, the cable may discolor and the rubber molding may become deformed.' **** Apple Is Flailing Badly At The Edges by Michael Arrington, TechCrunch.com My obvious enthusiam for Apple products is fairly evident to readers of this blog. But recently I've had a string of bad apples come my way, so to speak. It's time for Apple to stop screwing around and start paying attention to product quality. **** Avid Media Composer 3.0 by James Morris, Australian PC World Instead of resting on its laurels as the standard professional video-editing tool, Avid is now taking up potential challenges from Apple's Final Cut Studio and Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium. That's great news for independent videomarkers, as there are now more options to choose from. **** MobileMe Final Post by David G., Apple This will be the last MobileMe Status posting. We've created a new place for regular posts about all parts of the service. **** Apple Customer Satisfaction Scores Gain At Rivals' Expense by Tom Krazit, CNET News.com Apple blew away its PC industry peers in this year's American Customer Satisfaction Index, perhaps because it was the only company that didn't release a Windows Vista PC. **** Comparing Apple's MobileMe Contrition With Google And Netflix by Adam C. Engst, TidBITS Apple isn't denying problems or pretending the entire situation will just blow over, and that's good. But at least to my ears, the blog and email communications from Google and Netflix sound significantly more contrite - these people really are sorry for having inconvenienced me. **** First Look: MacGourmet Deluxe, Recipe Management by MacNN With so many ways to sort, organize, and search for recipes, MacGourmet Deluxe is invaluable for anyone who loves cooking and collecting recipes. **** OS X: Why It "Looks" So Different by Greg Ferro, My Etheralmind I have personally found that I prefer the font and colours on the Mac. I have to use Windows machines at work occasionally, and they just don't look so appealing. **** Apple Provides 60 Day Extension To All MobileMe Subscribers by Arnold Kim, MacRumors.com Apple has sent out emails to MobileMe subscribers tonight revealing that they are extending all MobileMe subscriber accounts by 60 additional days. **** Mac Spyware Hijacks Clipboard by Jason Lee Miller, SecurityProNews **** iTunes App Store Comments: A Broken System by OneInfiniteBlog **** Get Satisfaction. Turning Customer Service On Its Head. by Apple "We get things done faster, cheaper, and more entertainingly, too." **** iPhone Sheds Light On Weakness Of Japanese Handset Makers by Toshiyuki Oomori, Nikkei Tech-On! The iPhone has shown that it is not impossible for manufacturers to take the initiatives, even in the mobile phone business. **** Apple Offers iPhone 2.0.2 Update Via iTunes by MacNN As is usually the case with iPhone updates, Apple provided few details, saying simply that the update contains "bug fixes." **** Analysis: How Jobs' Profile Impacts Apple by Lisa Schmeiser, Macworld Even asking the question "Can Apple survive without Steve Job?" is testament to the strength of the perception that Apple's fate rises and falls with Steve Jobs—and raises the question of whether Apple should begin debunking that idea. **** Six Apple Executives You Need To Know About by Macworld A complete list of the people critical to Apple's success would fill page after page. We've focused on just a half-dozen executives—if you don't already know their names, you probably should learn them now. **** Keep Your Word Builds Custom Dictionaries by Peter Cohen, Macworld Keep Your Word lets you build a custom dictionary that lets you classify and group words how you want to. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** A Closer Look At Dell's Digital Entertainment Ambitions by Peter Burrows, BusinessWeek **** Is Linking To Yourself The Future Of The Web? by Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly Radar **** Why 'Cloud Computing' Is For The Birds by Mike Elgan, Internet News The "cloud computing" buzzword has got to go. It's simply too confusing, misleading, redundant and dangerous. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Hermit by Gail Mazur, Slate **** Notes From A Barbarian by Morgan Meis, The Smart Set The idea of a "canon" is in tatters. A canon needs an established cultural authority, and there is no guiding authority in culture anymore. **** Cinema Stole My Favorite Books by David Barnett, The Guardian I expended time and imagination to absorb these stories. Why should people be entitled to think they know them without puttting in any effort? **** Did Doctors Remove Babies' Hearts Too Soon? by Rahul K. Parikh, Salon Colorado doctors are under fire for performing infant organ transplants prematurely. But they made the right call. **** The Great Lobster Mystery by Daniel Gross, Slate Food prices are soaring, so why are prices for the delicious crustacean falling? **** The Other Darwin by Mark Czarnecki, The Walrus Evolutionary psychology takes evolution one step further: not only the body of /Homo sapiens/, but the human mind as well has been shaped by this process. How we think and feel has evolved over millennia, stretching back to our prehistory on the African savannah, and those ancient patterns stay with us, despite the cultural overlay of recorded history nd the wide spectrum of individual difference. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Where Is The Dividing Line? by Benjamin Cheah, The Lionheart **** Deal In Caning Error Case by K. C. Vijayan, Straits Times Settlement has been reached on the amount of compensation for an ex-inmate who got three more strokes of the cane than he was supposed to. A brief statement issued by the Tan family's lawyer oseph Chens aid both parties were bound not to divulge details of the settlement and sum agreed on. /Should the government be able to make secret deals like this?/ **** The Ball Is In The Opposition's Court by Andrew Loh, The Online Citizen While we may be skeptical of or criticise the government's foray onto the internet, the more important question I feel is directed at the opposition parties; what are they going to do now to engage the new generation of potential voters who haunts cyberspace? **** Lees Meaningless Concession On Protests Fool No One by Singapore Democratic Party Singaporeans must always remember that our right to protest peacefully is not for the government to give but for the citizens to exercise, and not just at a pathetic little corner on the island but also on the busiest thoroughfares of the country. Now is not the time to celebrate or gloat. Now is the time to press ahead with our demands for our fundamental freedoms of speech and peaceful assembly to be fully returned to the people. TOkenism and meaningless concessions get the PAP nowhere. **** Singapore Considers Organ Trade by Peter Ritter, Time Like every nation in the world apart from Iran, Singapore law forbids the buying or selling of human body parts. But with an acute shortage of donated kidneys and hundreds of ill people stuck on waiting lists, that could change. **** Demonstrations To Be Allowed In Hong Lim Playpen by Au Waipang, Yawning Bread The right solution isn't allowing the "letting off steam" at the playpen that is Hong Lim Green. It should be a more liberal granting of permits for outdoor festivals, demonstrations and marches anywhere in the city subject to genuine considerations of obstruction and chaos. THe default should be to permit unless there are clear reasons why not. **** Li Jia Wei Is A Singaporean by Deadpris The sin is not on them, but on us. We elected our government and gave them the authority to make these choices. Don't push the blame on these people that are here for the exact same reason why you and I are here. **** 7 Government Sites For Foreign Schools by Jane Ng, Straits Times To help ease the shortage of places in interntional schools due to the booming expatriate population here, the government has set aside seven state buildings and land parcels for use as foreign schools. **** The Singapore Prime Minister Dishes Out Dating Advice by Lioness In Japan Because we are /just ordinary people in life/. **** Oops, We Were Too Restrictive : PM Lee by Martyn See, No "Partisan Stuff" Political Films Please, We're Singaporeans Since the debate over the Films Act began with my film /Singapore Rebel/, I will seek to end it by re-submitting /Rebel/ and /Zahari's 17 Years/, both offiically banned, to the censors for re-appraisal. If it is not sheer stupidity to continue enforcing bans on these films when they are viewable at a click of a mouse, I don't know what is. **** Education And The Great Pain Of Rather Useless Things by Mr Wang Says So I think that our education system still heavily emphasises regurgitation over real undertanding. /Real understanding does *not* mean no memorization./ **** PM's National Day Rally by The One Dimensional Island **** Obituary Of A Ban: Political Films May Get A New Life by Lin Junjie, Journalism.sg Strangely the one challenge that remains for the PAP government—that it would not be able to refute misinformation as easily as it could with the print media—which it has consistently highlighted in its arguments against allowing political films, received no attention in the prime minister's address. Could the PAP have found a solution to it when the prime minister said political films will adopt censorship and classification standards by a panel, just as how they have been dealing with non-political ones? Would this then mean that the government will remain the arbiter of political films? **** National Say Barely Speech 2008 by Groundnotes Commercial? Partisan stuff? Slanted impression? That's pretty damn big and potentially covers anything and everything! **** Me-Lee by Word Of The Cze **** Singapore's PM Lee As Tech-Savvy As Obama by Blowin' In The Wind One suspects Lee Hsien Loong will do even better if he allows critics to speak up and engages in debates with others. **** Singapore To Allow More Freedom Of Expression by Bernama Learning from the recent political experiences of many countires including Malaysia, Singapore has decidd to remove some of the shackles that have restricted freedom of expression of its citizens. **** Double Standards: What Nets Says by Ani Dinasan, Nets, Straits Times In line with the prevailing market practices, the arrangements that Nets has with its merchants could vary in some instances according to the buisness environments in which the merchants operate, hence making comparisons less meaningful. /In other words, "we can do what we want, because you have no bargaining power."/ **** Singaporeans And Singapore Citizens: There's A Big Difference by Mark Wong, Straits Times It is time to put forth the argument that being a Singapore citizen is not the same as being Singaporean. /This, to me, is a very dangerous argument to make. There are some Singaporeans who is more Singaporean than other Singaporeans? How Animal Farm this is./ **** Car Owners Not Worse Off by Yeo Ghim Lay, Straits Times Car owners are not losing out despite paying higher Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) charges, said prime minister Lee Hsien Loong, who backed this up with figures. On balance, motorists in fact gain because a recent cut in vehicle road taxes outweighs the extra that they have to fork out in higher ERP charges. **** Side-Stepping The Death Penalty by Au Waipang, Yawning Bread As an opponent of capital punishment, I should be pleased if it's true that the government is stepping back from its longstanding policy in favour of it, but hte way it is going about it leaves me more concerned than ever. Are we doing the right thing in the worst possible way? /Is the PAP government afraid of 'losing face' if they do an U-turn on the death penalty issue, or are they more afraid of losing votes?/ **** Good Effort, But Much More Substance Needed by Choo Zheng Xi, The Online Citizen Instead of being lulled into complacency by the siren song of multimedia slideshow and Mr Lee's jovial smile, it is all the more imperative that we seize the advantage to broaden the platform for civil and political rights, continue to bring into focus strong and principled arguments for freer information, and highlight the relevance of these issues to improving the lives of ordinary Singaporeans. **** Once Again, Fathers Do Not Exist In SG by Ian Tan, Empty Vesel "Oh yes, don't forget to turn up for reservist where you won't see your wife and newborn for the next month or so." /Reservist duties is going to be a sore point in many of the nation's debates, from immigrants to, well, babies. The National Service issue is ripe for exploitation by oppositions. It's just a matter of time./ From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Wed Aug 20 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 20 Aug 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 20, 2008 Message-ID: <20080820171501.6262.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** iTunes Blocked In China After Protest Stunt by Stephen Hutcheon, Sydney Morning Herald Access to Apple's online iTunes Store has been blocked in China after it emerged that Lympic athletes have been downloading and possibly listening to a pro-Tibetan music album in a subtle act of protest against China's rule over the province. **** Mac Conversion by Brian Jarrett I love this thing! I like so much about it it's tough to know where to begin. **** Joe Nocera Of The New York Times On Steve Jobs, Talking Business And His Blog by Kyle Austin, RaceTalkBlog "I think was trying to turn a potential adversary into a potential ally-by whispering in my ear, he would be co-opting me, and in so-doing, turn the argument I was going to make in my column in his favor." **** Australians Switch On To Apple Macs by John O'Brien, Courier Mail Australians are switching to Macs at a faster rate than almost anywhere else in the world. **** What Apple Can Learn From Microsoft by Tim Beyers, Motley Fool Following the leader is easy. /Being/ the leader isn't. Apple is finally getting a taste of what Microsoft has had to live with for years. Welcome to the big time, Mr. Mac. Innovate aggressively, course-correct often, and place customers above all else, and you'll enjoy a nice, long — though probably not-so-relaxing — stay at the top. **** Apple's Biggest Innovation For 2008? The iPhone App Store by Seth Weintraub, Computerworld Apple looks to have moved up the value chain in software distribution and revolutionized the software industry. /Is the App Store as revolutionary as when Bill Gates started charging real money for software? I don't think so, but I'll be interested in what lessons Apple has learnt and will apply to the Macintosh market./ **** iPhone Shortage Lingers At Apple, AT&T Stores by Anastasia Ustinova, San Francisco Chronicle More than a month after the rollout of the iPhone 3G, Apple and partner AT&T are still scrambling to keep the hot gadget on store shelves, but analysts predict the shortage might ease with the phone's premiere in Best Buy stores Sept. 7. **** Jobs Personally Acknowledges iPhone Third-Party App Bug And Upcoming Fix by Jeff Carlson, TidBITS Jobs clearly isn't bound by the secrecy he's imposed upon his employees, and, frankly, it's refreshing. **** Why Apple's "Push Notification Service" Is Not Enough To Replace Background Processing by Thomas Fitzgerald Apple should look into at some kind of limited background processing, or better still, have a built in notification service, running on the phone rathe rthan a server, that developers can tap into. /But, nevertheless, polling for data is expensive, and it may well be better for Apple to run a reliable service on a remote server that developers can rely on./ **** Hope You Didn't Plan To Actually Make Calls On iPhone 2.0.2 by Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica We were able to confirm that the update addresses a few 3G-related issues (but not some of the major 3G problems people are having quite yet), and overall, users are reporting apparent improvements to signal level and the ability to make calls. It's that last part—the ability to make calls—that is tanking for some /other/ users, however, thanks to the iPhone 2.0.2 update. **** Delicious Library 2 Review by Macworld UK If you're looking to clear out and sell the clutter from your shelves, this'll make a long and tedious job fly by in no time. It will also appeal to folks who just like to know where everything is. **** Apple Blames Scorching iPods On Battery Problem by Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service Apple is blaming a problem with overheating iPods in Japan on faulty batteries, the company said in a statement Tuesday. This problem, which Apple said is extremely rare, causes "failure and deformation of the iPod nano." **** AudialHub 1.07 by Dan Frakes, Macworld The folks who brought us VisualHub, Techspansion, have applied their cosiderable talents to the field of audio. The result is AudialHub, a similarly-easy utility for converting audio files. **** Review: KidsGoGoGo 12.6 by Roman Loyola, Macworld I'd really like to say that there's a lot of potential in KidsGoGoGo, but this Mac-only program, at version 12.6, has been around for years. You'd think that over that time KidsGoGoGo would've evolved into a more sophisticated program. But it hasn't. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** For Sale: Your Browser History by Farhad Manjoo, Slate Behavioral ad targeting, web companies' favorite new way to invade your privacy. **** NewsCred Goes Public With Credibility-Based News Source by Jason Kincaid, TechCrunch NewsCred allows users to rate each story, author, and publication's credibility, which is then plugged into an algorithm to determine the site's prominent headlines. **** Keeping Innovative Alive At Microsoft by Victoria Ho, ZDNet Asia As managing director of Microsoft Research Asia, Hsiao-Wuen Hon leads a 10-year-old organisation that is the software giant's flagship research arm in the region, responsible for some 350 researchers and engineers. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** The Battle For A Country's Soul by Jane Mayer, New York Review Of Books Seven years after al-Qaeda's attacks on America, as the Bush administration slips into histroy, it is clear that what began on September 11, 2001, as a battle for America's security became, and continue to be, a battle for the country's soul. **** How Utterly, Splendidly Ripping by Lucy Mangan, The Guardian Blyton's gold medal positio in this table is evidence that it is the books we read, wholeheartedly, passionately, uncritically, in childhood to which we remain most firmly and irrevocably attached. The flaws we see in them as adults, the criticisms - and some pretty hefty ones, in the shape of accusations of sexism, racism and class snobbery have been flung Blton's way over the years - do not weaken those bonds. **** Why We Love Doing The iPod Shuffle by Naomi Alderman, The Guardian Whether listening to music on our iPods, surfing the net, shopping or travelling, there's something seductive about randomness. **** How To: Solve The New York Times Crossword Puzzle by Will Shortz, New York Times A crosssword puzzle is a battle between the puzzle maker and editor on one side and the solver on the other. But unlike most battles, both sides here have the same goal — for the solver to win. A perfect puzzle may put up lots of resistance. It may, in fact, seem impossible at first. Ideally, though, in the end the solver should triumph and think, Oh, how clever I am! SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Recommendations On Managing New Media To Be Posted Online by May Wong, Channel NewsAsia Recommendations on how new media should be managed would be posted online for public feedback. According to the Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society, this will be done later this month on its new website. The council was appointed in March last year. **** Consumer Confidence In Singapore Falls For The First Time Since 2005 by Nicholas Fang, Channel NewsAsia Singaporeans became less positive about spending because of soaring inflation and rising prices of basic necessities. **** Government To Co-Fund IVF Treatment As Part Of Enhanced Parenthood Package by Hasnita A Majid, Channel NewsAsia >From next month, the government will co-fund half of the treatment cycle in public hospitals, for up to three cycles. **** Singapore Hangs Out Jobs-Vacant Sign by Megawati Wijaya, Asia Times The government of this island state, seeking to keep the economy globally competitive, is driving a shift in the country's population make-up. This carries with it the political risk that locals will object to the influx of white-collar foreign workers who in droves are taking up the island state's highest-paying corporate jobs. **** Employers Have Mixed Reactions To Enhanced Marriage And Parenthood Package by Chan Eu Imm, Channel NewsAsia A survey by the the manpower ministry has found that more employers have embraced pro-family policies. But some employers have concerns about how the enhanced package will impact their operations. **** Many Want To Retire Abroad by Theresa Tan, Straits Times Two-third of Singaporeans surveyed have considered moving to another country to retire. A slower pace of life and the lower cost of living are key reasons why they have thought of moving. /And you won't easily get kicked out of your apartment by the government or your neighbours./ **** Patriotism, Singapore-Style Leh! by Astron's Notebook If free speech must be sacrificed for the sake of national unity, then hurrah for patriotism, Singapore-style. **** National Day Rally 2008: Political Liberalisation, Really? by Random Thoughts Of A Free Thinker I cannot help but feel doubtful that political films critical of the local political establishment would be easily allowed. **** SingTel Dangles 'Free' iPhone 3G by Chua Hian Hou, Straits Times The Apple iPhone 3G, which goes on sale this Friday, will be given out free to those willing to commit to a two-year, $205-a-month SingTel contract. **** It's A Matter Of Trust, Really by Zuradiah Ibrahim, Straits Times You can't vote for an avatar, said Mr Lee Hsien Loong at the National Day rally on Sunday. "He has to be here in real life and you have to feel the person and then you will know. So that's how poltiics has to be done." /Well, he did eventually showed up, but where was our prime minister when an alleged terrorist escaped from our prison?/ **** Mistake To Ignore Stay-Home Mothers by Lee Sui Yi, Straits Times I urge the government to consider a two-pronged approach to boost birth-rates. It is already bending over backwards for the working mums and should consider stay-home mothers too. **** How To Boost Singapore's Birth Rate by Edmund Ng Say Eng, Reform Party, Today Small and medium enterprises will probably be hit hard as they would need to cater for a replacement for another month. **** Many Eagerly Await Outcome Of Relaxed New Media Rules by May Wong, Channel NewsAsia Many are anxious to see how rules on new media such as podcasting will be relaxed. They said it defeats the purpose if the committee studying this comes up with another level of restrictions. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Thu Aug 21 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 21 Aug 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 21, 2008 Message-ID: <20080821171501.37783.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Lessons To Learn From Apple's App Store by Telecoms.com The rest of the mobile industry could learn a valuable lesson from newcomer Apple, as the App Store takes the mobile content and apps market by storm. **** Welcome, Freshmen. Have An iPod. by Jonathan D. Glater, New York Times Taking a step that professors may view as a bit counterproductive, some univeristies are doling out Apple iPhones and internet-capable iPods to students. **** New York Neighborhood Group Complains About Bad 'Apple' Store by AFP A lower Manhattan residents' group has lodged a lengthy complaint against a neighbor over screaming parties, loitering crowds and late-night disturbances, said a letter published in U.S. media Wednesday. The offender is none other than the Apple Store on the corner of Greene and Prince streets in Soho, one of Manhattan's most posh boutique streets. **** iPhone 3G Owner Sues Apple Over Dropped Calls, Slow Speeds by Gregg Keizer, Computerworld An Alabama woman filed a lawsuit yesterday against Apple Inc., claiming that the company's iPhone 3G drop calls, has trouble connecting to AT&T's network, and is slower than advertised. **** Record Any Sounds by Kirk McElhearn, Macworld How to capture streaming radio, internet phone calls, DVD audio, and more. **** Apple's MobileMe Lacks Key Security Feature by Nancy Gohring, Computerworld The lack of SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) or any other form of encryption means that if a MobileMe user is connected to the internet via a Wi-Fi hotspot, someone else connected to the same hotspot could relatively easily see all the data that the MobileMe user sends. **** Macs In The Enterprise: A Question Of Emphasis by Paul Rubens, Server Watch It should be cause for concern to enterprise customers that Apple has demonstrated that its computer business is not always its main focus, and that at times it lacks the resources it needs to devote to computers and "non-computers" at the same time. **** Looking For A Fix For Apple's iPhone Fix by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld This is driving me crazy. **** Speed Testing Data Leaves 2.0.2 Effect On iPhone Unclear by Lonnie Lazar, Cult Of Mac **** Television Broadcasts Limited: Highlights From Beijing by Noah Kadner, Apple **** Wine With Bento by Charles Maurer, TidBITS As it stands, Bento is not so simple that your grandmother will be able to start using it without help, but setting up and using a data-entry form in Bento is hardly more difficult than customizing and using Address Book and iCal. **** VirtualKeyboard 3.5 Supports Spaces, Zoom by MacNN The software's main aim is to provide a point-and-click keyboard interface for users with disabilities. It can also be used as a teaching tol, however, and for kiosks. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Microsoft Live Labs Creates Web 'Synth' For 3-D Photo Tour by Walter S. Mossberg, Wall Street Journal MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** In Praise Of Melancholy by Eric G. Wilson, Chronicle Of Higher Education American culture's overemphasis on happiness misses an essential part of a full life. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** GIC Continues Stake Building In British Land by Deirdre Hipwell, Property Week **** Singapore Fund Would Consider Bigger Merrill Stake by New York Times Temasek, the investment fund run by the Singapore government, is nursing a big loss so far on its investment in Merrill Lynch. But the fund, already Merrill's largest shareholder, might consider buying even more, Temasek's chairman said Thursday. **** 1St In Line For iPhone 3G by Chua HIan Hou, Straits Times Mr Pan, who works for an American technology firm had taken half-day leave, arriving at SingTel's Comcentre building at about 12.30pm in hopes of being the first in the queue. See Also: Not Quite A Gold Medal , by The Panegyrist. Follow me via Twitter if that's your thing. I bring you a covert photo from the iPhone queue at SingTel ComCentre. **** Suffering And Struggle As The Hallmarks Of A True Singaporean by Mr Wang Says So We might summarise as follows - the hallmarks of a Singaporean are /suffering/ and /struggle/. /By Mark's definition, males are more Singaporean than females. And those who failed Chinese are more Singaporean than those who aced it./ **** Singapore's Temasek Says Assets Worth $131 Bln by Kevin Lim and Saeed Azhar, Reuters Singapore sovereign fund Temasek's assets were worth S$185 billion (US$131 billion) at the end of March, Temasek's chairman S Dhanabalan said on Thursday, up 13 percent from a year earlier. He said Singapore and Asia account for nearly 75 percent of Temasek's investments, down from 78 percent reported a year earlier. **** New Media: Government's 'Lighter Touch' Gets Even Lighter by Gerald Giam, Straits Times It remains to be seen whether the government will continue to meet citizens on its own terms using portals such as Reach (the government feedback unit), or venture into engaging citizens on their turf by responding to articles on blogs. Should they choose the latter, it will signal a higher level of political openness and engagement that many Singaporeans, both young and old, have long been hoping for. **** Motorists Change Driving Habits by Christopher Tan, Straits Times Higher pump prices, Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) rates and parking charges have persuaded motorists to ease off on the throttle, going by how much fuel is being guzzled. **** Chee Siblings, 5 Others Charged by Elena Chong, Straits Times **** Breakfast With Orangutans by Rosie Milne, Telegraph The Banker, the Little Darlings and I have just had breakfast with a pregnant organutan - and that's not something you can say everyday, is it. **** Singapore Gets iPhone, But No Visual Voicemail Or iTunes by Sumner Lemon, IDG News Service Singaproe Telecommunications (SingTel) will start sales of Apple's iPhone 3G handset at midnight local time Thursday, but users who buy the phones won't get support for visual voicemail or access to videos and music sold on the iTunes Store. **** Pro Family Policies: As Good As It Gets by Aaron Ng, Hear Ye! Hear Ye! The bottom line is that while there are no financial disincentives, there are other personal reasons not to have kids. **** Elitist Danger In Singapore Education by Muhammad Farouq Osman, Straits Times This is a manifestation of greater elitism being built into the education system, where the same elite minority continue to receive value-added education throughout their schooling years at the expense of vast amounts of public funds. /There is no doubt that a high colleration exist between household income and academic results. That is only natural. But to burden the scholarship system to also target closing of income gap and increasing social mobility will ultimately fail the scholarship system./ **** Complex Problem Of Low Birth Rate Requires More Than Just Throwing Money At It by Ng E-Jay, Sgpolitics.net The government's singular focus on economic progress without adequate attention paid to nurturing a more open society, and a society that pays attention to the intangibles in life such as culture, values, and a community spirit, is also to blame for the current state of affairs. **** More On National Day Rally 2008 by Siew Kum Hong There is no paradigm shift. So even though we inch a little further up, we still fall very far short of what I believe the ideal position to be. **** FDW Shelter Under Threat: Please Help! by Glass Castle Blog The neighbours who complained should be given a special prize for blinkered selfishness, in valuing the "ambience" of their neighbourhood over the provision of a safe housing space for victims of rape and employer abuse. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Fri Aug 22 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 22 Aug 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 22, 2008 Message-ID: <20080822171500.26561.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Apple's MobileMe Plays Into Hands Of Spammers by John Leyden, The Register The email harvesting issue arises because every MobileMe user gets a public iDisk file-sharing site. These sites have an address tied into a user's email username. A user can't hide or delete their public folder and there's no way to choose what the name will be. **** Music Subscriptions Coming To iTunes Next Month? Nope by Peter Kafka, Silicon Alley Insider We've checked with a variety of music executives at major labels, and none of them have heard about it. Not happening. **** Search For iTunes Music By Star Rating by Kirk McElhearn, Macworld **** Macs, Aperture A Big Hit At The Beijing Olympics by David Schloss, Macworld In the digital photo editing area of the Kodak Photographer's Center, hundreds of photographers at a time assemble to file their images using high-end workstations and tech-support supplied by Apple. **** People Keep Buying Apple Products Despite Recent Headaches by David Zeiler, Baltimore Sun How can Apple commit so many wrongs and yet continue to enjoy record customer satisfaction numbers and booming sales growth? **** Apple Slips Out One More Get A Mac Ad, New iPhone Spot by Jeff Smykil, Ars Technica Mac goes on to explain that, when you buy a new Mac, a Genius will transfer your files for free from the PC. **** MacJournal Adds Three-Pane View by Peter Cohen, Macworld Mariner Software on Thursday announced that it is shipping MacJournal 3.1, a new version of its journal and blogging software for Mac OS X. **** Timeline 2.1.3 by Dan Frakes, Macworld If you ever have the need to make a visual timeline—for a presentation, as a teaching aid, or for use in a home movie—you'll want to check out Bee Documents' Timeline. **** RapidWeaver Updated To 4.1 by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld Web site building application RapidWeaver 4.1 adds some useful new features like the ability to have images resized automatically when dragged into styled text areas. **** Funtastic Photos Lets You Edit Photos Non-Destructively by Peter Cohen, Macworld The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Words From The Woz by Sam Diaz, ZDNet.com MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Title Inflation: For Books, The More Words The Better In The Era Of Google by Ian Williams, The Guardian Think of what would have happened to George Orwell's snappy title. 1984: One Man's Discovery that Big Brother is Indeed Big but Hardly Fraternal and that Sex with Comrades Can Have Torturous Consequences. **** White Moon by Wang Xiaoni, translated by Pascale Petit, The Guardian **** I'll Have The Banana Pancake Flambe Stonehenge by Paul Collins, Slate A cookbook titled /A Treasury of Great Recipes/ sounds innocuous. What's frightening about noodle casserole? Why, nothing... /except when it's cooked by Vincent Price/. **** Joseph Moncure March: Poem Noir Becomes Prizefight Film by Jefferson Hunter, The Hudson Review As unlikely as it seems—in the long history of the cinema, how many pictures, let alone boxing pictures, can have been based on a /poem/ ?—the line is perfectly accurate. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Singaore PM Raises Stakes In FEER Defamation Case by Daryl Loo, Reuters Singapore's prime minister Lee Hsien Loong has raised the stakes in a libel suit against the Far Eastern Economic Review, now saying an article in the magazine implied he was corrupt, court documents show. The amendment this week by lawyers representing Lee adds a more serious charge to an earlier claim that FEER implied the prime minister was unfit for office because he had condoned corruption by his father, former premier Lee Kuan Yew. **** Seven Charged In Singapore Over IMF-World Bank Protests: Activist by AFP **** I Went For The iPhone Launch... by The Sometimes Damsel In Distress Some photos of the madness... **** Why Is ST So Anti-Biomedical Treatment For Autism? by Richard Seah Why is /The Straits Times/ waging a vociferous campaign against alternative therapies for autism - and singling out biomedical treatment? **** Trusted Channels In The Age Of New Media by Derrick A Paulo, Today The only blogger in Singapore's cabinet gives the thumbs up for media diversity from the new media, even if it means there could be more 'false truths' out there. It simply makes it more important for the government to react quickly to rumours, which "can happen anywhere" and in any medium, foreign minister George Yeo told Channel NewsAsia in an interview. **** Online Contest Of Political Ideas Most Welcome by Straits Times Online political discourse will benefit from a significant if measured relaxation of rules governing such content. **** Second Change For Singapore To Save Its Rare Species by Kimberly Spykerman, Straits Times The rediscovery of 'extinct' wildlife serves to motivate nature enthusiasts. **** Queueing For Kindergarten At Age One by Judith Tan, Straits Times A check with six private kindergartens and nurseries reveals that hundreds of one- and two-year-olds have already been 'booked' for the headstart in education. **** Baby Perks Start Now by Lee Siew Hua, Straits Times The government has brought forward the start date for the new parenthood perks, in response to parents-to-be who appealed for the change. **** Government Continues To Rain Down Charges Against Human Rights Defenders by Singapore Democratic Party Even distributing flyers are now not allowed. **** Not Really The Apple Of Their Eyes? by Chua Hian Hou, Straits Times I think there might be more burly security men than customers. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Sat Aug 23 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 23 Aug 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 23, 2008 Message-ID: <20080823171501.22258.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Apple Makes iPhone Available In 22 More Countries Today by Chris Foresman, Ars Technica **** Apple Investigating As iTunes Appears To Be Blocked In China by AFP Apple Inc. Friday said it is investigating why access to iTunes appears to be blocked for users in China after a pro-Tibet album became a hit on the online music store. **** Apple Releases MacBook Air Update by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld According to the notes provided by Apple, the update addresses issues with video playback and processor core idling. **** Review: MacCourmet Deluxe by Rick Mansfield, Cooking In Cast Iron The program is so sophisticated, it might be reason enough to switch from Windows. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Cellphones May Make Wallets Obsolete by Joseph Menn, Los Angeles Times The financial functionality of mobile phones is poised to explode. **** How To Launch Software by Aaron Swartz, Raw Thought MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** The Theory That Ate The World by George Johnson, New York Times Hawking's information paradox opened an arena in which two great theories of physics — general relativity, describing gravity, and quantum mechanics, describing everything else — duked it out. **** A Long, Strange Trip by Steve Coates, New York Times Is there anything in the Western literary canon with more abundant, potent or frolicsome offspring than Homer's "Odyssey"? **** My Long War by Dexter Filkins, New York Times What it's been like reporting a conflict that never seems to end. **** The Shape Of Music by Dmitri Tymoczko, Seed How do harmony and melody combine to make music? SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Despite Its Diminutive Stature, Singapore Booms by Robert Such, Architectural Record **** A 'Secret' Screening by Tan Pin Pin, Notes From Serangoon Road The re-look into the Film Act wouldn't have happened if the filmmakers hadn't persisted. My hats off to Martyn for being so /steady/ throughout the whole police interrogation process. There is definitely a place for civil disobedience in Singapore. **** Giving People Space To Let Off Steam by Seah Chiang Nee, The Star The surprise is even greater when measured against the strong criticism levelled only five days earlier by Lee Kuan Yew at the younger generation's enchantment with "multi-party democracy". Now his 56-year-old son has announced moves that could — if properly implemented — lead to more active multi-party politics or even loosen the ruling People's Action Party's hold on power. **** Changi Prison: Did It Have To Go? by K. C. Vijayan, Straits Times The recent decision to shelve construction of two new clusters at Changi Prison Complex raises a question: Was the decision to tear down the historic Changi Prison a mistake? **** Lights, Politics, Action? by Jeremy Au Yong, Straits Times PM Lee has indicated that the latest trio of changes will not mark the end of the political liberalisation proces, pledging to 'progressively open up our system even more'. But those in charge of Singapore will 'continue to feel our way forward', not copy others blindly, he added. The pace at which such change will come remains to be seen, even as conservatives and those who hanker for greater freedom continue to pull in different directions. **** The Night It First Went Live... by Peter H L Lim, Today Back in 1971, it was only after Mr Lee Kuan Yew had finished talking that we were able to receive urgent messages from our respective newsrooms that the entire speech had been telecast live. **** MHA Clarifies Its Stance On Myanmar Work Permit Rejections by Esther Ng, Today In response to queries, the Ministry of Homse Affairs said that the police and the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority have "no objection to members of the Myanmarese community in Singapore pursuing their political activities so longa s they abide by our laws." However, it said that, unlike other groups which have conducted their activities in a lawful manner, the "OBP has chosen to do so in open and persistent defiance of our laws." /In other words, before we welcome you as Foreign Talent, you must agree with PAP's policy of restricting freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. Otherwise, I let you in, and you vote for Chee Soon Juan, how can?/ **** Time For A 'Singles' Neighbourhood? by Mohd Yazid Sallim, Today Perhaps the government through the Housing and Development Board could provide rented studio apartments in a purpose-built singles commune. /I don't think this is a good solution, but this does highlight that every single piece of additional policy implemented by the government will have many unintented consequences./ **** Singapore Shows Burmese Dissidents The Door by Au Waipang, Yawning Bread By putting their lives at risk, the Singaore government is as callous as the junta when they blocked foreign aid to Cyclone Nargis victims. By penalising anyone who has spoken out against generals, the Singapore government is aiding and abetting those generals in their continuing crime against humanity. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Sun Aug 24 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 24 Aug 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 24, 2008 Message-ID: <20080824171501.11000.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** iTouched - Do Not Disturb by Mark LaFlamme, Sun Journal If you get past her faults, she's quite alluring. How do I get room service? **** Crowds Greet The Opening Of Fort Worth Apple Store by Andrea Ahles, Star Telegram Gap khakis at University Park Village have been replaced with iPhones and Macbooks. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Turning Point For Touch Screens by Michael Fitzgerald, New York Times Breakthroughs often beget other breakthroughs, and Apple's slick use of touch technology on its iPhone has set touch-screen makers to salivating. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** The Butterfly Effect by Dan Southerland, Washington Post I paid the bill at exactly 5.52 p.m. (I've kept the receipt as a souvenir) and decided I might as well call it a day and head home — with the butterfly. I phoned my wife, Muriel, to ask her to put off the movie she had planned to go to and wait for me, because I'd be bringing a butterfly home. **** Sex And The Olympic City by Matthew Syed, The Times I am often asked if the Olympic village - the vast restaurant and housing conglomeration that hosts the world's top athletes for the duration of the Games - is the sex-fest it is cracked up to be. My answer is always the same: too right it is. **** Please Put A Sock In It - This Is A Library by Hephzibah Anderson, The Guardian Once as essential to libraries as books themselves, silence is now as elusive as that stolen copy of Lord of the Flies - except it hasn't been pinched, it's been driven out. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Singapore Eases Censorship Of Arts, With Limits by Associated Press The biennial Singapore Theatre Festival, which wraps up Sunday, showcased how artists here are taking advantage of relaxed government censorship to explore once taboo subjects — even, to some degree, the highly charged issues of race, religion and politics. **** Lighter Touch Does Not Mean No Touch: Mah by Goh Chin Lian, Straits Times Rules on what can and cannot be said and done at Speakers' Corner in Hong Lim Park will be made public tomorrow. Besides those typically imposed at parks in Singapore, the list will also include rules to ensure the country's multiracial and multi-religious society is not put at risk. This was disclosed by national development minister Mah Bow. **** Finding The Equilibrium by Singapore Life And Times Frankly, if you want to do something that will make a difference, it is no point taking 'baby steps' by just upping by a month more. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Mon Aug 25 13:15:04 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 25 Aug 2008 17:15:04 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 25, 2008 Message-ID: <20080825171504.67313.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Is Apple The Fashionable Whipping Boy? by Stephen Withers, iTWire Taking potshots at Apple - specially over security issues - seems to be the flavour of the month. But while such criticisms are sometimes deserved, are they often simply cheap shots? **** My Switch To A Mac: 3 Things I Find Most Useful As A Grad Student by Grad Hacker Using Mac's built in Preview app is like driving a Ferrari after riding a bike. Adobe does a lot of good things, I'll admit, but making programs that takes an eternity to load is certainly not one of them. **** iPhone Software Developers Stifled Under Apple's Gag Order by Michelle Quinn, Los Angeles Times Programmers remain bound to not discuss how they create applications, potentially restraining innovation. **** Greatest Mac Moment #23: Quick Look by Craig Grannell, Cult Of Mac Quick Look. Two words that brilliantly sum up one of the most important and yet least celebrated additions to the Mac experience. **** MobileMe by MildMannered Industries The problem set for ubiquitous syncing is just very very hard, and the consequences of failure, in terms of user dissatisfaction are too high. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** An Open-Source Approach To Tracking Stolen Laptops by Daniel Terdiman, CNET News.com The idea behind Adeona is to give people a method for safeguarding their laptops that relies neither on proprietary commercial software nor the centralized servers of the companies that provide such software. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** We Did Not Make Ourselves by Michael Dickman, New Yorker **** Reunion by Jeffrey Skinner, New Yorker **** Gorse Is Not People by Janet Frame, New Yorker **** Haiku Nation by Jeremy Caplan, Time Short is in. Online Americans, fed up with e-mail overload and blogorrhea, are retreating into micro-writing. Six-word memoirs. Four-word film reviews. Twelve-word novels. Mini-lit is thriving. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** New NCS-SCS 'A Force' In Singapore by Vivian Yeo, ZDNet Asia SingTel will strengthen its foothold in Singapore's IT services market with a controlling stake in Singapore Computer Systems (SCS), but it remains to be seen if SCS can lend weight to the telco's regional expansion plans, according to analysts. **** Not Guilty = Innocent? by News Clips At some point, when due process has been exercised, there must be resolution, and there must be closure. And all that should matter is that factually, guilt was not proven and so he is not legally guilty. And that's a fact. **** Voting For Singaporeans Abroad by Zakir Hussain, Straits Times Some 150,000 Singaporeans abroad could potentially be eligible to vote in the next General Election, under changes to the law passed on Monday. **** Productivity Decline In 2007 Not Due To Influx Of Foreign Workers by Satish Cheney, Channel NewsAsia Acting manpower minister Gan Kim Yong on Monday said that the decline in productivity in 2007 is partly due to the record employment growth of 234,900 jobs - and not due to an influx of foreign workers. **** House Probe Sought Vs Filipino Trafficking In Singapore by Maila Ager, Inquirer.net A congressional inquiry into the worsening cases of Filipino trafficking in Singapore has been sought by a lawmaker at the House of Representatives. **** More Changing Headlines: Inflation Hits Poor Harder by mrbrown Maybe the headline too long for the revamped ST font, so must change. **** Olympic Medal, Singaporean And Typical Singaporean Mentality by Alice Cheong In Wonderland We have cultivated new generations of apathy locals, whom many are often self-centred, while lamenting the lost of their "birthright" to better things and environment without lifting a finger to work for them. **** Changes Planned To Allow 18 Year Olds To Go Into Busienss by Channel NewsAsia Plans have been laid out to make it easier for young entrepreneurs to go into business. **** Not Guilty = Innocent? by Straits Times Acting law minister K. Shanmugam in Parliament on Monday said: 'It is entirely possible for a person to have committed acts which amount to a crime and yet, there may be no conviction. No serious lawyer will question this possibility." /This is a dangerous statement from the government, and, no matter how K. Shanmugnam defends it, definitely undermines the principle of "innocent until proven guilty."/ /Look, it's "innocent" until proven "guilty". If the procesecution cannot prove "guilt", then it must be "innocent". It's a binary concept: Either one is innocent or one is guilty: there can be no in-between./ /I definitely do not want the government to start drafting laws for people who are not "legally guilty" but "guilty in fact". We do not want the government to start, for example, lock up people who have not been proven guilty in the courts./ /(I am not denying the fact that people do get away under the legal system, escaping the consequences of committing crimes. But it is *not* up to the government to claim "guilt in fact". As far as the government is concerned, if it cannot prove the guilt in a person, then the person must be innocent in the government's eye.)/ **** Singaporeans Can Demonstrate At Speakers' Corner From Sep 1 by Imelda Saad, Channel NewsAsia Singapore citizens may organise or participate in demonstrations at the Speakers' Corner without having to obtain a police permit from September 1. The demonstrations may relate to anything except matters concerning race and religion. **** SingTel Makes Bid For Singapore Computer Systems by Jan Dahinten, Reuters Singapore Telecommunications said it has bought a 60 percent stake in Singapore Computer Systems for S$140 million as it seeks to boost its IT business. **** Singapore's H1 Inflation Up 7.1% On-Year by Channel NewsAsia Singapore's inflation rate in the first half of 2008 increased 7.1 per cent compared with the same period a year ago. Food, housing and transport and communications were the three main groups contributing to the surge in inflation for income groups across the board. **** Why Now? Ask Officials by Marc Lim and Shing Huei, Straits Times Team Singapore officials in Beijing told The Straits Times that while Ms Lee Bee Wah may have the interests of the players at heart, they questioned the timing of her revelation that team manager Antony Lee's services were no longer required by the Singapore Table Tennis Association (STTA). See Also: Ms Lee Bee Wah: A New Broom Sweeps Indiscriminately , by The Online Citizen. The lesson for our political leaders is this: due process in ascertaining guilt or exoneration matters more than well-publicized fist thumping. Something Is Seriously Wrong Indeed , by Yaw Shin Leong. It is most disturbing for fellow Singaporeans to hear the STTA president does not want to disentangled in 'this whole issue', when 'this whole issue' was started by the very same person in the first place. Her action speaks volume about her leadership precepts. Singapore Table Tennis Break Up - Management Vs Team , by Saga's Den. If a MP can turn around her words, I will not have confidence in her at all. **** Give Up Citizenship? Brothers Must Do NS First by Amelia Tan, Straits Times Three brothers, born to a Norwegian father and Singaporean mother, want to give up their Singapore citizenship. But the Ministry of Defence has said no. Not until they do their national service. **** Scholarships, An Uneven Playing Field by Nazry Bahrawi, Today More early intervention schemes needed? **** Babies Wanted, But Only In Traditional Families, The Traditional Way by Au Waipang, Yawning Bread In every one of these issues, the stumbling block is not concern for the wellbeing of the child, but luddite moralism, plain and simple. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Tue Aug 26 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 26 Aug 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 26, 2008 Message-ID: <20080826171501.87509.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** China Lifts iTunes Block But For Tibet Album by Verne Kopytoff, San Francisco Chronicle Apple Inc.'s iTunes online music store is back up and running again in China after it was apparently blocked last week by local authorities. However, the web page for downloading a pro-Tibet album, which is suspected of prompting the crackdown, remains unavailable on the service. /Well, iTunes is not a web site, so I don't really understand what the author means when he wrote that the "web page" for downloading the pro-Tibet album is still blocked./ **** Steve Jobs Still Parking In Handicapped Spaces - The Pictures by Leander Kahney, Cult Of Mac Steve Jobs is still parking in handicapped spaces at Apple, according to a new snap posted to Flickr. **** Adium 1.3 Is Better, Faster, Stronger, But Not Harder by Thomas Gagnon-van Leeuwen, MacUser Version 1.3 of the multi-protocol chat client introduces an all-new Contact Inspector, adds contact search, better MSN support, and Facebook chat support for the first time. **** OmniFocus For Mac And iPhone - A Perfect Task Management Solution by Brandon Eley, The Apple Blog **** A Tale Of Two Tetrises by Jason Snell, Macworld When it comes to software, sometimes simplicity rules, less is more, and a free clone fashioned by a college student can teach a few things to a $10 program generated by a company that generated four billion dollars in revenue in its most recent fiscal year. **** MathMagic 5.8 Adds QuarkXPress 8 Support by MacNN The update allows the Pro edition of the software to create and edit equations within the QuarkXPress 8 graphics suite. **** Survey Says Slow iPhone 3G Speeds May Be Due To Carriers by Dan Moren, Macworld **** TickerMenu 1.0 Offers Stock Tracking In Menu Bar by MacNN Users can choose which stocks to track by entering a stock's symbol, and the display is color-coded to instantly show a gain (green) or decline (red) in stock value. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Moving Security To The Cloud by Kate Greene, MIT Technology Review Combining scanning approaches could keep PCs safe from viruses. **** Amazon May Enter College Textbook Market With New Kindle by Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica If true, it will have to compete with a number of other digital textbook options, but has the potential to win students' affections by changing the textbook market for the better. **** Darling, It's Over: Has Technology Made It Impossible To Have An Affair? by Nick Harding, The Independent Mobile phones, BlackBerrys, emails, social networking... Never before has it been so easy to cheat on a partner. But has technology made it simply too difficult for philanderers to cover their tracks? MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** 'Burn Notice.' The Novel by Tod Goldberg, Los Angeles Times Does a real writer accept a gig doing books spun off from films or TV shows? A real writer found the answer to his own question. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** HDB Lease Buyback Scheme Could Be Implemented In January 2009 by Julia Ng, Channel NewsAsia The Lease Buyback Scheme to help low-income households monetise their flats for their retirement needs could be implemented as early as January next year. **** Can A Person Or A Government 'Not Corrupt' In Law Be 'Corrupted' In Fact? by Feed Me To The Fish **** Temasek's Profit Rises On Asset Sales As Shares Drop by Jean Chua, Bloomberg Temasek Holdings Pte, Singapore's $130 billion sovereign wealth fund, said full-year profit doubled as sales of energy and Chinese banking assets countered slowing returns from stock market investments. Net income rose to a record S$18.2 billion in the year ended March 31, up from S$9.1 billion a year earlier, Temasek said in its annual report released today. The company sold Tuas Power for S$4.24 billion in March. **** On Trial: New Ez-link Card by Christopher Tan, Straits Times Besides train and bus fares, the new ez-link card can be used to pay for electronic road-pricing (ERP), carparks, cabs as well as a meal or merchandise. The Land Transport Authority (LTA) said there is little to prevent a card issuer from giving the card free of charge. **** Single Intake For Junior Colleges And Millennia Institute From 2009 by Lee Siew Hoon, Channel NewsAsia >From next year, all junior colleges and the Millennia Institute will start the school term for Year 1 students with a single intake in end January or early February. To facilitate the single-intake, the 'O' level results, which are currently released late January, will be released early January. **** Only Fruitcakes Demonstrate by Carpe Diem Demonstrations are in essence anti-establishment activities. To then obediently follow the rules that are aimed at controlling scope and nature of such activities revolts against every notion of a demonstration. **** Singapore Consumer Price Index For Households In Different Income Groups, January - June 2008 by Department Of Statistics, Singapore Government During the first half of 2008, the inflation rate for households in the lowest 20% income group was 7.4 per cent while the CPIs for the middle 60% and highest 20% income groups rose by 6.9 per cent each. (Note: Link goes to a PDF document.) **** Minister Wants Full Review by Jeanette Wang, Straits Times Sports minister Vivian Balakrishnan yesterday promised a full review of the episode that has left the fate of two Singapore table tennis officials in the balance. **** Singapore Sovereign Wealth Fund Is Outpacing The Country ETF by Carl T. Delfeld, Seeking Alpha The lesson is that it pays to play as a big boy with lots of cash and negotiating leverage. **** Handouts Will Not Be Pegged To CPI by Neo Chai Chin, Today Minister of state for community development, youth and sports YuFoo Yee Shoon said the ministry already keeps a close eye on Public Assistance (PA) rates. "We will monitor the cost of living, we will monitor every item... We should also bear in mind that we should not overdo it." /This from the person whose salary is automatically pegged to the richest people in Singapore./ **** Lost Neighbourliness by Lim Wei Chean, Straits Times Neighbourliness has evaported at Laguna Park, the East Coast condominium now split by the prospects of a collective sale. **** First Time Live For N-Day Rally Speech by Ananda Perera, Straits Times After the broadcast I rushed back to meet Mr Lee in the make-up room. He asked if the broadcast went live without any technical hitches. I said it went flawlessly. He said good and I lived to tell the tale! /I am curious on what was originally scheduled for channels 5, and 8, and what was the 'competition' on channels 3 and 10../ **** Poor Worry About Food; Others About Transport by Bryan Lee, Straits Times Inflation hit low-income families hardest in the first half of the year although richer households were barely better off in the face of a global onslaught of surging prices. /Barely better off? I don't think so. Forced to skip luncheon meat for lunch is a totally different deal between low income and higher income folks./ **** Can Or Not? by Low Ching Ling, New Paper Is it time to say goodbye to some other sacred cows? **** Kids And Arts Central To Be Relaunched As "Okto" by Hoe Yeen Nie, Channel NewsAsia The opportunity came in March when Parliament decided to expand Vasantham Central into a standalone Tamil-language channel. /Hopefully, it will not have a big and ugly bug on the top right of the screen. (And I have no idea how to pronounce okto. Okay-Too?)/ **** The First Fruits Of Civil Disobedience by Au Waipang, Yawning Bread On all these fronts, the government was faced with an embarrassing gap between what the law said and what was do-able without losing moral force. And that was the whole point of civil disobedience: to create a gap that can only be closed by the government making an accommodation. **** Of Concessions And Tokenism, Worrying Trends In Policy Making by John Ang, The Online Citizen If we take this round of liberalisation as a victory and grow comfortable walking hand in hand with the government down the path of being liberal in spirit but not in our laws, we could end up losing more freedom than we've actually gained. **** Liberalization Of Speaker's Corner: Let's See Whether The Authorities Truly Use A "Light Touch" by Ng E-Jay, Sgpolitics.net Let's see whether the authorities will be truly unbiased and transparent about the whole process of applications, approvals or rejections, and their conduct towards peaceful demonstrators at Speaker's Corner. **** Flip Flop By The Police: Are Burmese Activists In Singapore Keeping Within The Law Or Not? by Sgpolitics.net From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Wed Aug 27 13:15:02 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 27 Aug 2008 17:15:02 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 27, 2008 Message-ID: <20080827171502.48405.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Password Protected iPhones Can Be Unlocked Without A Password by Peter Sayer, IDG News Service Private information stored in Apple's iPhone and protected by a lock code can be accessed by anyone with just a few button presses. **** Mystery 'iPHone Girl' Generates Internet Intrigue by The Canadian Press Pictures of an Asian factory worker found on a new iPhone sold to a British customer have generated keen discussion on the internet about her identity - and her fate. **** Apple's Corporate Food Court O' Plenty: Reviewed! by Jon Philips, Mac|Life Caffe Mac—legend or fact? Does this Shangri-la of no-compromise corporate consumables actually exist? And if Caffe Mac does exist, does its menu roundly trump the "food" we /Mac|Life/ staffers must hunt and gather within the hostile-to-haute-cuisine hinterlands of our own corporate HQ? **** The Cute "iPhone Girl" In Apple iPhone 3G! by LiewCF.com **** After The Core 2 Duo Chip, What's Next For Apple Laptops? by Dan Turner, Computerworld Hitting the sweet spot between too slow and fast enough is critical. **** iTunes App Store: Mobile Revolution? by Kathleen Richards, Application Development Trends Could the App Store do for mobile software what iTunes did for music and video? **** Why Does Apple Get A Break? by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, Computerworld In a way, these most proprietary of all platforms, Macs, iPhones and iPods, are also the most successful of all open-source platforms. **** Call For Content Ratings On Apple's App Store by Stephen Withers, iTWire Apple already tag tracks in the iTunes Store that are unsuitable for children and it sells R rated movies, so why isn't there something similar for content such as books and comics in the App Store? /Or maybe Apple is preparing for a e-book store, so the 'problem' will be sovled come September?/ **** 'Think Different' Is What Makes Apple Stand Out by Michael Lee Stallard, Wall Street Journal Apple stands out in a world of bland corporate identities and product designs. Its visual identity, store design and product design are inspiring. They touch people on an emtional level when most products fail to inspire. **** Apple Misled iPhone Users Over Web Access, Says Watchdog by Martin Hickman, New Zealand Herald The Apple iPhone fails to give users complete access to the internet, the British govenment's media watchdog rules today. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said the combined phone, music player and computer is flawed because of the absense of two common websit eprogrammes, Flash and Java. As a result, the ASA said Apple's claim that the iPhone gave access to 'all parts of the internet' misled customers about its power as a web browser. **** Business Suddenly Discovers The Mac by David Zeiler, Baltimore Sun Somewhere along the way the efforts to win over consumers, particularly its emphasis on ease of use, began to sway opinions in the enterprise. **** Mac Clone Maker Sues Apple, Plays Antitrust Card by Gregg Keizer, Computerworld The Mac clone maker sued by Apple last month fired back Tuesday with a countersuit charging Apple with restraint of trade, unfair competition and other violations of antitrust law. **** Apple Bans Murderdrome iPhone App by MacNN Apple has banned the comic book iPhone app Murderdrome, its creators claim. **** Whipping The Apple TV Into Shape by Christopher Breen, Macworld **** Sound Studio 3.5.7 Released by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld **** Promising Prospect: FlexCal 1.0 by Dan Frakes, Macworld Since installing FlexCal, I find myself rarely opening iCal to create events and tasks; I look forward to future versions for bug fixes and new features. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Next Steps For E-Texts by Andy Guess, Inside Higher Ed Developments in hardware accompany a batch of new initiatives and partnerships from colleges as well as stakeholders not popularly associated with radical change in the industry: textbook publishers themselves, and independent bookstores. **** How Hard Could It Be?: How I Learned To Love Middle Managers by Joel Spolsky, Inc I hoped to create a utopian workplace. Instead, I caused an employee revolt. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** The Anti-Restaurants by Melena Ryzik, New York Times Mainstream it's not — and that's just how the organizers like it. **** Love Food? Think Twice Before Jumping In by Micheline Maynard, New York Times Running a restaurant has perhaps never been so tempting, thanks in part to the Food Network and celebrity chefs, but statistics show it is still very easy to fail. **** Spell It Like It Is by Frank Furedi, Spiked Celebrating variant truths, like variant spellings, is presented as a pluralistic gesture of tolerance. **** First, Crack Them Open (Like Americans Do!) by Jennifer 8. Lee, New York Times The instructions on the red wrapper are very explicit: (1) Open the packaging. (2) Use both hands to break open the fortune cookie. (3) Retrieve and read the fortune. (4) Eat the cookie. In China, such details are necessary, it seems. **** Why We Shouldn't Still Be Learning Catcher In The Rye by Anne Trubek, Good Don't some of Holden's younger siblings deserve the end-of-the-year spot in sophomore English? **** Yom Kippur by Philip Schultz, Slate SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Parliament Rejects Motion To Fine-Tune Electoral System by Channel NewsAsia Parliament has rejected a motion tabled by Nominated MP Thio Li-Ann for amendments to the Parliamentary Elections Act to allow by-elections to be called in a Group Representation Constituency (GRC) when a member vacates his or her seat for any reason. Prime minister Lee Hisen Loong, who joined the debate in Parliament on themotion, stressed that there are no practical problems with a vacant seat in Jurong GRC and that the party, which the poeple had voted for, will still take care of residents - a benefit of the GRC system. /However, Jurong GRC citizens will have one less voice in Parliament. More seriously, one less vote in Parliament./ **** No Change To 24-Week Limit For Unrestricted Abortions by Lynda Hong, Channel NewsAsia Health minister Khaw Boon Wan on Wednesday said that one less abortion does not mean one more baby for Singapore. **** MOM Rejects Call For Parent-Care Leave by Valarie Tan, Channel NewsAsia Giving employees additional days off on top of their annual leave to care for sick parents will increase business costs and discourage companies from setting up in Singapore, said senior parliamentary secretary for manpower Hawazi Daipi. **** Free Fruits In Singapore: Yishun Park by Seen This Scene That The most difficult to lay hands on at Yishun Park are the durians. **** Of Dual Citizenship, National Service, Exemptions And Your CPF Money by Simply Jean **** The Condescension Of A Ruler Towards His Peasants by Chia Ti Lik **** Temasek Loves Wall Street by John Carney, Dealbreaker Temasek probably has too much money to invest. It has far more assets than is necessary for hedging government portfolios against cyclical downturns. It would arguably do better to return a large portion of its wealth to the people of Singapore as a dividend, where indivduals at different stages in their lives could spend and invest the dividend to suit their needs. **** Ring In The Rise Of The 3G by Grace Chng, Straits Times Not only does Apple's 3G iPhone have 100 new features, the craze over it will also up mobile data usage. **** Passed, But Passed Over by Koh Hwee Choo, Straits Times Do not blame them or call them 'quitters' for not coming back to Singapore, as they were rejected by our local universities first. See Also: Local Universities, Not Students, Decide , by Lim Hui Chin, Straits Times. Not all of us decide against an education in NUS. It is NUS who decides against us. **** Brains And Batteries Included by Xtralicious The trust, relationship, partnership, faith, goodwill and morale in question have already been destroyed. **** The Ever Redundant Opposition by Nicholas Lazzarus, Young PAP Blog The opposition seems to have no part in this interaction between the people and their govenment. And there is no need too. /This is an extremely shortsighted view of the role of oppostion, the role of Parliament, and the role of the democratic process./ **** Life As A Competition by Mr Wang Says So In the psychological landscape of Singaporeans, parenthood has become the equivalent of "CCAs". It's the thing you might really, really love to do. But your kiasu instincts are telling you that you can't take the /risk/; you might not have the /time/; you might not have the /money/; and it's much safer to just concentrate on your final-year exams career. **** K Shanmugam's Remarks On Acquittals In Law Could Open A Pandora's Box by Ng E-Jay, Sgpolitics.net The Law minister's rehashing of the subject could open a pandora's box in which the public is given free reign to speculate on cases already closed and openly challenge verdicts. THat would wreck havoc on the lives of those who are factually innocent but had to endure a trial to clear their name. **** Dr Lily Neo Speaks Out Vociferously Over Aid For Poorest Households by Ng E-Jay, Sgpolitics.net It is sad that amongst all the voices in Parliament, Dr Lily Neo's is only one of the very few who speakout vociferously on behalf of the poor and lower-income families who have been marginalized by the "growth at all costs" policies of the PAP government. **** For Lack Of Databases by Joel Tan, Daily Backtrack It's just so bizzarre that with all the personal data we have to submit to /various databases/ over the course of our lives, something as simple as proving your student status eludes the power of MINDEF and inter-ministry data sharing. /On the other hand, data privacy is also very important; we really should think carefully about maintaining our privacy before bitching about doing something as simple as asking a document from one body to submit to another./ **** Cepas-Compliant Ezlink Card 'Test-Rid' Volunteers Wanted Or Unwanted? by Alice Cheong In Wonderland I really wonder why is there a need to make volunteering so difficult. /I blame this on PR. This 'test-ride', to me, more like a test, not a PR exercise. And any test will need to have selection criteria so that the test is complete. (For example, you'd want commuters on both trains and buses.)/ **** No, LTA Did Not Say That by Heng-Cheong Leong, MyAppleMenu When I first linked to this Straits Times article , the article said: "The LTA said there is little to prevent a card issuer from giving the card free of charge." Now, the article has been edited to, instead, say: "Observers said there is little to prevent a card issuer from giving the card free of charge - like credit cards."

Permanent Link to This Post From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Thu Aug 28 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 28 Aug 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 28, 2008 Message-ID: <20080828171500.54834.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Apple's iPod Touch Can Act As Remote For Music System by Nick Wingfield, AllThingsD For people who already own an iPod touch or iPhone, Remote is a good reason to buy an AirPort Express, and fill your home with music. **** Students Will Help Save Apple by Arik Hesseldahl, BusinessWeek The tech company may look vulnerable to an economic downturn, but back-to-school shoppers should help it keep up a strong financial performance. **** Bloomberg Runs Steve Jobs' Obituary by Gawker More interesting are the accompanying notes for Bloomberg reporters. **** Back To School: An Apple For The Teacher by Steve Sande, The Unofficial Apple Weblog What can make life easier on the poor teacher? Great Mac software! Read on for information on a grab bag of Mac and web apps to help out your favorite educator. **** The Battle Of Ideas by Tom Gara, The National As computing becomes a more fragmented, customised, web-based experience, with new markets emerging on a monthly basis, who would you place your bets on: a perfectionist firm that apologises for - and learns from - their errors, or an overreaching empire? **** Record Labels Skip Apple's iTunes by Ethan Smith and Nick Wingfield, Wall Street Journal A growing number of record companies are trying to steer clear of Apple's behemoth music store, because they think that in some cases it's crimping overall music sales. Label executives, managers and artists chafe against the iTunes policy that prevents them from selling an album only as a single unit. **** An iPod Touch For Each Student? by Matt Dees, The News & Observer A Chapel Hill middle school could become the first in the country to give an iPod to every teacher and student, an experiment that would challenge teachers and administrators to ensure the hand-held devices are used as learning tools, not toys. **** Apple Imperfect by John Markoff, New York Times The flaw in the "Apple is not living up to some ideal of technology perfection" theme is that it neglects history. **** Ambrosia Updates Apeiron X And Bubble Trouble by MacNN The games had a few minor bugs fixed and a couple of features polished. **** Coda Updated With Fully Integrated Source Code by MacNN Panic this week update to Coda, its web development application. New features includes fully integrated source control with Subversion, find and replace across multiple local files, easer-than-ever text clips with groups, a user-customizable bookshelf and improved AppleScript. **** Tinderbox 4.5 Receives Graphical Update by MacNN Eastgate has announced an update to its Mac OS X application for storing and organizing notes, plans, and ideas. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** More Seniors Finding The Internet Too Powerful To Ignore by Wailin Wong, Chicago Tribune MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** The Road To Wikipedia by Laura Miller, Salon How do we know what we know? A new book takes a long view of knowledge, from ancient oral traditions to the rise of universities and the internet. **** 'Year Million: Science At The Far Edge Of Knowledge,' Edited By Damien Broderick by Brett Levy, Los Angeles Times Ironically, our future is expected to bring the descendants of mankind back to coping with the same issues we face today: environmental problems, high energy prices and a shortage of raw materials. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Put The 'Eco' Back In 'Economics' by Jessica Cheam, From The Ground Up We need to first question and redefine this endless pursuit of economic growth. **** Laws Need To Be Updated To Help Fight High-Tech Crime by Hoe Yeen Nie, Channel NewsAsia Fighting crime in today's world has taken on a new dimension because of the use of technology by criminals and terrorists, said Singapore's deputy prime minister, S Jayakumar. **** Part 3: Singapore's Uncertain Energy Policy by Renewables Report 2008 is the start of a long-term energy crisis. Singapore is completely unaware of it until it is sucked deep into it from next year. **** Once Bitten, Twice Shy For Wealth Funds by David Rothnie, Evening Standard There's a Chinese proverb along the lines of 'a fall into a ditch makes you wiser'. Ho Ching, chief executive at Singapore's giant sovereign wealth fund Temasek will know it well. But has she acted on it? **** Seeking The Stork In SIngapore by Jed Yoong, Asia Sentinel **** ST Reviewer Blasted For Watching Only 10 Minutes Of Musical And Writing Scathing Review by mrbrown **** The Stillbirth Of Democracy In Singapore Parliament by Groundnotes **** Car Numbers Up Despite Driving Costs by Christopher Tan, Straits Times Singapore's car population continues to rise, although higher fuel prices, parking charges and road tolls were expected to have put the brakes on growth. **** Temasek Gets US Antitrust Approval To Raise Merrill Stake by Rita Raagas De Ramos, FinanceAsia.com The approval involves $3.4 billion already committed by Temasek in July. It does not involve any fresh capital infusion. **** National Reserves Affected by Barry Porter, Today Although she revealed no numbers, senior minister of state for finance Lim Hwee Hua said yesterday that Singapore's national reserves have been impacted by the recent volatile global markets. **** Good Government Needn't Fear Demos: SM by Li Xueying, Straits Times If a government is incompetent and corrupt, senior minister Goh Chok Tong said, people are not likely to confine their demonstrations in the park. Instead - never mind what the laws are - they would march down to Parliament House to change the government. **** A House Enthralled by Jeremy Au Yong, Straits Times Arguments and barbs fly in by-election debate; an attempted hijacking of motion and failure of equipment also add spice. **** Foreign Workers Do Depress Local Pay At The Lower End Of Salary Scale by Ng E-Jay, Sgpolitics.net I think Mr Gan should pay careful attention to what Sylvia Lim was saying. She was referring to wages at the lower end of the pay scale, not to overall wages. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Fri Aug 29 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 29 Aug 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 29, 2008 Message-ID: <20080829171501.82049.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** The Mac At 25: Andy Hertzfeld Looks Back by James Turner, O'Reilly News Andy Hertzfeld is one of the original designers of the Macintosh and author of the book, /Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made/, which chronicles the efforts to create the Mac. **** Apple Updates Final Cut Express, Releases ProRes QuickTime Decoder by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld According to the notes provided by Apple, Final Cut Express 4.0.1 addresses compatibility issues with AVCHD camcorders, improves stability when using third-party FxPlug plug-ins, and addresses a number of other minor issues. **** Bare Bones Releases BBEdit 9.0 by Jim Dalrymple and Jason Snell, Macworld Bare Bones Software on Thursday released BBEdit 9, a major update to the venerable text editor. This new version adds several significant features, including a rewritten project manager, improvements to its search and document-comparison features, and a new text-completion interface. See Also: BBEdit 9.0 Adds Something For Everyone , by Adam C. Engst, TidBITS. **** Permanently Delete Mail Messages by Rob Griffiths, Macworld **** BeFit Helps Track Nutrition Patterns by MacNN A new application for tracking nutritional intake has been released for the Mac, BeFit. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Does Silicon Valley Face An Innovation Crisis? by Claire Cain Miller, New York Times MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** The Expatriate by Michael Donohue, The National Around the time of the Chinese Revolution in 1949, a small crowd of foreign sympathisers came to help build the Maoist dream. Sixty years later, one of them is still there. **** Rumors About Me by Yasutaka Tsutsui, translated by Andrew Driver, Zoetrope SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** 3 Ways To Tackle Section 33 by Jeremy Au Yong, Straits Times The current wide-ranging ban on party political films stifles expression. It also stands in the way of works that could contribute to well-informed, rational and insightful debate on issues. That is the iew of the Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society (AIMS), which says the outright ban must go. **** MCYS Says Table Tennis Saga Is Over by Valarie Tan and Patwant Singh, Channel NewsAsia In a special media conference on Friday evening, the Ministry for Community Development, Youtha nd Spots announced that team manager Antony Lee will continue for another three months, to finish up his Olympics reports. He will then move to the Singapore National Olympic Council in November. President of the Singapore Table Tennis Association, Lee Bee Wah, apologised for causing grievances and stress. **** Ok Online, Not Ok Offline by Jeremy Au Yong, Straits Times While rle changes may eventually allow Singaporeans to put political films online, that should not translate into leeway for such films to be screened in public without a permit. Aims deputy chairman Tan Cheng Han on Friday exlained why a distinction should still be made between what is permissible online and offline. **** National Solidarity Party Says Government Can Do More For Singaporeans by Lee Siew Hoon, Channel NewsAsia The National Solidarity Party (NSP) said the government could do more to liberalise the political landscape by expanding the platform for greater public participation in politics and parliamentary elections. **** Council Suggests Distribution Of Political Films And Lifting Ban On Websites by May Wong, Channel NewsAsia The Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society has suggested that the making and distribution of political films be allowed and also to lift the ban on 100 websites in Singapore. **** ASEAN Again Seeks Funds For Eight-Nation Rail Link by AFP The ASEAN blog will try again to spark investor interest in a much-delayed railway link from Singapore to the Chinese city of Kunming, officials said Friday. **** Advisory Council Proposes Further Liberalisations Of The Internet by Gerald Giam, The Online Citizen Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society (AIMS) sought to walk the middle ground by providing alternatives to an outright repeal of section 33 of the Films Act, which prohibits party policial films. These included narrowing the scope of the law to ban only films which make "scurrilous and false allegations that undermine respect for the government", appointing an "independent advisory panel" to decide on political films, or a classification system for political films. AIMS also pushed for internet election advertising regulations to permit videos or recordings of election rallies and the use of blogs and social networking tools during the election period. However one of its recommendations to allow party political films, but restirct their release only during a "blackout period" during an election campaign. This is likely to invite the most debate. See Also: Engaging New Media, Challenging Old Assumptions , a consultation paper by the Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society (AIMS). (Note: PDF document.) **** Limit Protection For Content Hosts by Chua Hian Hou, Straits Times Give limited protection to those running blogs, forums and other publicly editable content sites from defamation lawsuits to help free and responsible speech flourish online. This is the same protection internet service prodiers already get. Such protection, said the Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society (Aims), will at one stroke solve two problems: unmeritorious lawsuits against content hosts who are not responsible for the defamation to begin with, and overzealous censorship by content hosts worried about such prosecution. /Can we also extend this to the 'real' world, so that printers will also not get sued?/ **** By-Election Denial A Sad Case Of Irony by Andrew Loh, The Online Citizen When the people of Jurong GRC, and the people of Bukit Batok in particular, feel they are not being adequately represented and wants a by-election, is it right for the government to dismiss their call? **** Government Doesn't Get It? Don't Be So Fast To Judge by Heng-Cheong Leong, MyAppleMenu As a software developer, I've learnt that whenever there is a bug, always assume it's my fault, and start debugging there. If one starts by assuming the fault lies in the operating system or the compiler, one will almost always lose a lot of time and effort chasing down the wrong path. Similarly, in a debate, whenever you start by assuming that it is the other party that just "doesn't get it", then you're bascially starting to dig a hole to bury yourself. All your arguments, most likely, are simplying attacks on strawmen, and you are, most likely, totally missing out on the other points of views. In other words, your words will simply indicate that it is /you/, instead, that just doesn't get it. We see this self-destructing behavior in a lot of pre-internet-crash internet companies, who blamed everyone but themselves of just "didn't get it." Today, I see this self-destructing behavior in this article , accusing the Singapore government of just "doesn't get it." But read carefully, and you'll discover that it is the anonymous writer who simply didn't get it.

Permanent Link to This Post **** 'No Whale Sharks' by Ang Yiying, Straits Times Nature and animal welfare groups in Singapore have banded together againt to oppose the move by the integrated resort on Sentosa to bring in whale sharks for its oceanarium. **** What People Of Bukit Batok Say by Arul John, New Paper The majority of parlimentarians voted one way, and heartlanders the other. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Sat Aug 30 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 30 Aug 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 30, 2008 Message-ID: <20080830171501.76914.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** The Life Of A Jellyfish by Constance Casey, Slate A profusion of jellyfish is often described as an invasion or an attack. Which is laughable, given the guiding principle of jellyfish behavior—"whatever." SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Don't Ban Websites, AIMS Panel Advises Government by Cherian George, Journalism.sg The paper does not say whether AIMS wants the government to do away with the regulation allowing it to ban sites, or merely to stop using those powers. Keeping these powers in the books would allow a future government to engage in the kind of political censorship that has just been witnessed in Malaysia. **** Ping Pong Saga At Olympics Stirs Up Controversy by Seah Chiang Nee, The Star In Singapore today where diversity is growing and young Singaporeans are becoming more opinionated, almost everything touches on politics, including table tennis. **** On The Opposition's Redundancy by Lim Jialiang, The Online Citizen The incumbent party will only engage the citizens if and only if it is beneficial or along the party lines. **** Vivian Must Be Annoyed by Mr Wang Says So The Olypic silver medal is an important showcase for the PAP government's broader foreign talent policy. But now that Bee Wah has gone and mucked it all up. No, her political bosses won't be pleased at all. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Sun Aug 31 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 31 Aug 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Aug 31, 2008 Message-ID: <20080831171500.23648.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** 'Don't Feel Like Dancin' by Catherine Amos, Culpeper Star-Exponent When the realization hit me that my musical companion was missing, my typically cheerful disposition darkened and a fog seeped into my brain. I felt incomplete, like a best friend had moved away. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Helping The Stars Take Back The Night by Joe Sharkey, New York Times It's easy to forget, 130 years after outdoor electric lighting first case its glow through the night, that the sky is actually full of stars. **** James Wood's 'Fiction' Is About Making It Real by Charles Matthews, San Francisco Chronicle "How Fiction Works" is an audacious title, not only because explaining the mechanisms of fiction is a large task, but also because fiction doesn't seem to be working as well as it used to, if you take the decline in book sales as evidence. But if any contemporary critic is up to the task, it's James Wood, who has read more and better than the rest of us. **** Carry On Laid Bare? You're Having A Laugh by Elizabeth Day, The Guardian The world divides broadly into two types of people. THere are those who believe that the resemblance of sausages to male genitalia is a fund of endless ribaldry. And there are those who don't. **** Solzhenitsyn The Stylist by Michael Scammell, New York Times Most of the recent tributes to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who died earlier this month, have concentrated on his titanic struggle against the Soviet regime, and rightly so. But what seems to have gotten lost is the reason he was listened to in the first place — namely, his virtues as a writer. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** 2 Demonstrations In UK At Junta's Embassy And Singapore Embassy (Next Stop - Thai Embassy Soon) by Ko Htike's Prosaic Collection "Support the people not the dictators... right now." **** Plight Of Malaysians From Singapore by Hawkeyejack Both the Malaysian government and the Singapore government should look into resolving the ordeal of these people who contributes to both the economy of this two countries. **** Speaker's Corner: 1 Registered by Jeremy Au Yong, Straits Times The first day of a freer Speaker's Corner looks set to be a quiet one with no one having registered to stage a protet and only one person signed up to speak. **** Just A Sorry Excuse? by Mavis Toh, Straits Times All kinds of claims are made in mitigation pleas but the jury's out on who should ensure that whatever is presented is not made up. **** Orientation - Just Fun Or Plain Lewd? by Shuli Sudderuddin, Straits Times Students, academics, freshmen and others weigh in on the sexual slant. /Singaporeans have no creative ideas on how to make orientations meaniful and memorable./ **** Gong Li A Singaporean? Why? by Jamie Ee Wen Wei, Straits Times Singaporeans are divided over news that famous China actress Gong Li has apparently become a Singapore citizen. **** Answers Needed On Twins' Fund by Salma Khalik, Straits Times It's time the committee set out its purpose clearly and unambiguously so its duties and actions are transparent to all.