Musings

An old friend Cecilia Pang has retired after spending 19 years at HP. When I knew her years ago, she was a PR executive in HP’s depot road office. She was then doing PR for HP Singapore together with her colleague Loretta Song.

Cecilia was head of PR for HP in Asia-Pacific for a number of years when she decided that it’s time to say goodbye to corporate life and take things a little easier.

To me, Cecilia and Loretta were the best in PR. They knew about HP the company and its products, they were on their toes and quick to respond to press queries. I would mention at an event that I would be interested in doing a certain story. The next day they would call to follow up and sometimes even lined up someone I could talk to already. And always, always, the stories were good. I never had an interview I couldn’t use immediately.

PR wasn’t just about products. It’s about people, processes and utimately the company that makes the products. What makes the company tick, what are its values etc. So we’d plenty stories about the wonderful HP canteen, one of the first air-con canteens, with a qualified chef and nutritionally balanced food on the menu. They also had floor to ceiling glass windows overlooking lush greenery. The story was so early in my career as a tech journalist yet I can still remember it.    They understood that journalists want stories that sometimes have nothing to do with technology nor products but would publicise the company.

They knew how to tip off without spilling the beans. They were aggressive without being nasty nor rude; yet friendly and professional. Over the years, we’ve become good friends. Pity, too few PR people today are like Cecilia and Loretta. I will miss Cecilia at HP.

It’s been a week since I got my iPhone. It’s a nice gizmo, feels good in the hand and useful. I’ve been putting in small notes in the notepad, like to do list. Usually when I’ve been given a registration number for a movie booking, I’ll use a stickie and paste that in my wallet. So young boy at GV theatre in GWC must be really shocked when I whipped out my iphone and read the number to him. He was incredulous for a moment, before he reacted. Ha!

But I haven’t bought anything from Apps Store, not that I don’t want to , but I havent’ been to any wi-fi hotspot yet. Trying to surf on 3G is a no-go. Yes, after 7 days, I still can’t on the Web on 3G. It should have been painless, but while other people gripe about the slow data download speed, I can’t even get on the Internet. Will try solve this weekend.

At the stroke of midnight (alright, it was 12.10pm…) on Aug 22, I bought my iPhone 3G – white, 16GB. It’s great fun to use it. Of course, after using the first generation for nearly 8 months, I’m quite used to the navigation. So the 3G version was not alien to me.

I like the 3G because I don’t have to wait for a wireless hotspot before I can surf. I tried it out this morning – just too tired to play with it last night – in a no place with no wireless and it works! Bondage released!

BUT … it’s not so simple. Tonight I was at at the third story of Wheelock, too far up for the wireless@sg signal to travel all the from Starbucks three levels up. So getting online was no go. 3G – I couldn’t even sign up but my friend could – and she’s using also iPHone 3G.

This is what puzzles me: the iPhone’s don’t  work well with SingTel wireless@sg in STarbucks. I’ve tried dozens of times at the Starbucks outlets in Raffles City, Holland Village and Tanglin Mall and I’ve never been able to get in. Melvin of CNA confirmed it too. He had similar problems.

But this morning at Tanglin Mall I discovered I had access to 2 wireless@sg networks – SingTel and Qmax. The latter worked wonderfully.

But at Wheelock tonight, I failed to get into both wireless@sg and 3G networks. The phone worked, but Internet, nada! Quite frustrating. Have to solve this problem.

Couple of new and neat features: I like best: the GPS locator finder is awesome. So is the calculator turned scientific calculator in landscape mode.

Stay tuned as I use the iPhone 3G further.

Friend Jennifer Phang in HKG got her iPhone 3G last Saturday and was she wowed over. Had some problems using the touch screen but she’s learning.

The great news is that the phone is not sim-locked which means it can be used here. She tried her S’pore pre-paid sim card and it worked. Trouble is it’s going to cost an arm and leg to buy it and use it here.

Developer Paddy Tan walked around HKG and found the price of the handset is about S$2000 which is really expensive. But I’m sure there’ll be a few fans who’ll dish out the money.

The iPhone frenzy is striking the world again. To be expected. One question nags the jail-broken iPhone users. Can their SIM cards be used in iPhone 3G?

Perhpas it can. If the 1.14 version of the iPhone OS is upgraded to 2.0, then it can be used on the iPhone 3G. Some brave soul will have to try this method by upgrading his iPhone OS on iTunes.

Apple Singapore has remained silent on this. So is SingTel. Apple Singapore says that any issue arising from jail broken iPhone users will have to be dealt with by the telcos. No one is saying anything at this moment.