The Straits Times Blogs » Evelyn Yap

Living with the iPod generation

Evelyn Yap — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 06:55:00 +0000

CREDIT should always be given where it is due, and for next week’s Tip of the Week in Digital Life, I have The Children to thank.

I had asked The Daughter for a shortcut which she uses "for computing or surfing or managing your music files – anything cool." She suggested this: Click the scrollwheel on a link and it immediately takes you to the article in a new tab.

I tested it, clicking on several links – from those for articles to login boxes – and it worked. When I thanked her for it, she said, "Kor-kor taught me." (Kor Kor is Hokkien for "older brother".)

When I thanked The Son for it, asking him how he knew the trick, he merely shrugged and said, "I just discovered it on my own."

Welcome to the iPod generation. Where picking up surfing shortcuts is as natural as breathing.

For someone who grew up recording music on flimsy tapes, compared today when children record audio on swish music players, the middle-clicking tip is also a metaphor for not ruling teenagers with an iron fist.

But later on the metaphor; first, the iron fist bit.

Much as I loathe admitting it, I guess I was rather strict with my now teenagers when they were little.

Thanks – or no thanks – to the parenting stories I had to do in my days as a reporter in Life!, I decided that firm was what I would be. From constantly hearing from the counsellors and psychologists I interviewed that parents must have a grip on their kids before they get into their "terrible twos", I was determined that my children would not become brats – you know the sort who kicks and screams at the mall until he gets his go at the video arcade machine.

The Father and I used to have a little chart titled, Time For Crime, stuck on the refrigerator. I thought the rhyme was neat. Can’t remember the exact details, but essentially, it was a little table listing things like "lies equals no computer games for the day" and "slow eating equals 10 minutes off video games time".

Hey, they did take an hour for meals, you know. But you are probably going, "Boy, I’m glad I’m not your child."

Well, The Son, 17, had a thought in similar vein a few months ago. When ticked off for something (the specifics are private), his retort was: "I used to obey all that you both said, but now I shall decide on what to listen to."

I was flabbergasted. For the first time in my life, this Mother could not think of a retort.

Which may be a good thing because the personal pondering made me realise that things like the Time For Crime table must have been suffocating. Sorry, teens.

That said, I think some of that strictness matters: I thank God that The Children, though independent thinkers now – and that’s the way it should be – still have their heads firmly screwed on their shoulders. (I am sure Sunday School played a great part too.)

But back to the middle-clicking metaphor bit. What the tip brought home again to me was that the middle path lets me into a new tab in my children’s lives. Ruling with an iron fist will only shut me out.

For example, rather than ban them from drinking, they were allowed wine from three or four years ago, beginning with occasions like birthdays (though my father frowns on me for this). The reasoning is that they would not go overboard on their own.

And I ask The Son to, please, tell me before he has a tipple with friends – and "only on occasion, okay?" (The Daughter, at 16, is under-aged, so she cannot buy her own.)

Also, rather than ban them from having Facebook, e-mail and instant chat on, and the music player in their ears while they are doing homework, I keep asking, "You sure you can study with all this going on?"

The Son, with typical word economy, says, "Yah, yah."

The Daughter chirps, "Of course."

"How come, tell me."

"Because I’m cool."

Here's to living with the iPod generation.

Mr Internet competing for 2010 Nobel Peace Prize

Evelyn Yap — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 01:34:00 +0000

STRANGE things have happened on the Internet.

People have auctioned themselves, used servers to erase their virtual lives (accounts) in order to quit their addiction to social utilities like Facebook, and sold their grandmother for a song – well, not quite, but you get the idea.

But the strangest thing yet will happen if the Internet wins this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

That’s right: The Web is among a record 237 individuals and organisations nominated as a potential Nobel laureate for peace. It had two proposers: the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi and the founder of the $100 laptop project Nicholas Negroponte.

Meanwhile, the Italian version of Wired magazine is championing the choice, saying that the Net has had a hand in advancing "dialogue, debate and consensus", the BBC News quoted it as saying last Wednesday.

Hmmm.

Let’s throw political correctness out the window for once, and give the gut reaction: “What!”

And that’s putting it mildly.

What was Wired thinking? Is it not aware that for every ounce of healthy discourse held in cyberspace, there is an ounce – probably much more – of diseased vitriol?

Whereas Nobel laureates have won for their far-reaching impact in chemistry, literature, physics, physiology or medicine and, of course, peace – the Internet can be cited for a list of counter virtues. Pornographic smut, money scams, paedophilic preying come easily to mind – and that’s just for starters.

Also, how do you reconcile the fact that the Net is a harvest ground for terror cells and networks? People go online to learn to how to make bombs with which to blow up themselves and others. Or has the irony been lost on those who have supported the proposal too?

Yes, the Web is a neutral tool, and it’s up to the people who use it to make good or bad of it. Yes, the largely uncensored nature of the Web has levelled the playing field – and created brave new winners.

For instance, once unknown artists – indie bands like the Arctic Monkeys – have put their recordings online and become famous.

But the Infobahn has also given room for cowardice which, to me, is its greatest letdown.

I’m talking about blogs, personal walls and portals – or any hate site – where people do not own up to who they are but assume anonymity under a pseudonym.

At these sites, the fraidy cats – masquerading as free-speech machos – leave their paw prints of sarcasm, slurs and smears. To add insult to injury, their rants are often just nitpickings or baseless, but foment discord all the same.

So, to award the Internet the Nobel Peace Prize? Good grief.

Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that it does win. Who from the amorphous, 40-year-old entity will take the limelight on prize day, marked for Oct 8?

Will it be the Father of the Internet, Dr Vinton Cerf? Or will it be Mr Leonard Kleinrock, a computer science professor at UCLA, whose team – in October 1969 – sent the first computer-to-computer message on the Arpanet, now known as the Internet.

Last year, US President Barack Obama took the 10 million Swedish kronor (S$1.97 million) prize. It is likely the amount will be about the same this year.

Well, Mr Internet has seven months to prepare for the big night. I wonder what he will look in a tux.

There are friends and 'friends'

Evelyn Yap — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:24:00 +0000

WHERE the intensity of posts are concerned, Australians are the world’s biggest social butterflies.

Figures released from research firm Nielsen last week found that the folks Down Under led the hook-up-with-friends craze – posting and poking nearly seven hours a month, ahead of people in the United States, Britain and Japan. For the record, the global average is five-and-a-half hours a month.

For those who are old hands at playing the social utility games – Facebooking, Twittering and, um, MySpace-ing? – allow some spelling licence here – please stop reading. Lest you think that in your networking smarts, you have seen it all.

For the rest who would take this journey with me and, perhaps, offer a tip or two, please be my guest.

So, back to Facebook: What do I care about it? After all, I’m not thrilled about following the crowd. And with 400 million active members – half of whom log on to the site on any given day – that’s a whole lot of crowd to follow.

Well, I'm in two minds about relaunching into the world of pithy postings. Things like these: "Cool, you look good" or "I'm tagging you, yo!", or "So and So has just commented on So and So’s wall."

Though I shunned Facebook in its early years, I find myself drawn to it again. It's partly because my colleagues who send succinct postings on Twitter and Facebook via their smarphones look so smart.

So, though I shunned a smartphone – after an infuriating experience with a lemon, a long-dead O2 Xda Atom – I'm dithering about buying one again.

So I, too, can make up-to-the-minute updates to Twitter or Facebook via my smartphone – and, yes, look so smart.

But like the low risk-taker that I am, I shall approach with caution. Specifically, in specifying who to let in within my social circle. (The people who are already on my pages, thank you for being there.)

No illusions here: Ordinary as they come, I don't expect people beating a path to my Facebook door. (Confession: I had to persuade my daughter somewhat vigorously to admit me as her Friend.)

Certainly, there won't be a similar case of FannWong1971 – a fan who set set up a phony site, pretending to be the Mediacorp artiste last month.

But so what if the number of friends I list on my Facebook account can be numbered – rather than run into the hundreds.

Better to go with a few who can be trusted than have a statistic for a boast.

Certainly, I don't think that the former Singapore Airlines stewardess, whose sex video clips were circulated online early last month counted on someone finding a link to that clip through a Facebook friend’s profile.

Truth be told, I can see the ego value of Facebook. Post a question and friends reply. Feels good to be read. It's an extension of what journalists call "byline ego".

So, ordinary folk "broadcast personal information – like we're our own celebrities," said Michael Stefanone, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University at Buffalo.

Commenting in an article titled The Evolution of Social Networking on the campus’ e-newsletter of March 3, he added: "This is consistent with the celebrity culture we live in now."

But here's the kicker.

"But don’t forget – only a small fraction of your Facebook network are actually friends of yours."

I am glad I have chosen wisely.

Med tech blues

Evelyn Yap — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 04:07:00 +0000

SLEEPLESS in Las Vegas will be the theme for gizmo lovers in the desert city this week.

Sleepless in hospitals would, possibly, be the continuing nightmare of patients who have to endure batteries of test via medical monstrosities.

But more on that later. For now, the fun tech stuff.

Over 110,000 people from 140 countries will descend on venues like the Hilton hotel and the city’s Convention Centre. They will gawk at 1,000s of gadgets at CES, short for Consumer Electronics Show - the mother of all gadget and home appliance events - that runs from tomorrow to Sunday.

Digital Life will, of course, track what’s trotted out at the show. (Read it in our Jan 13 issue.)

For now, just going by the list of what organisers call Best of Innovation Honorees, makes you wish you were there trawling the halls, checking out the cool gear – the way you unwrap presents as a child on Boxing Day.

The first present I’d get my hands on is Nikon’s CoolPix S1000pj. The world’s first digicam with a built-in projector, this little guy lets you throw 40-inch images on the wall.

Also drool-worthy is Genesis’ home theatre speakers, the G7.1f – meant to make audio worthy of eye-popping visuals in TV programmes and in games.

But the one thing that really tickles my fancy is a ring to rule them all - communications, that is. Hail the O.R.B.

Made by Michigan-based Hybra Advance Technology, it’s really a Bluetooth headset that folds into a ring.

It vibrates to show the caller ID, text messages and appointment reminders, using electronic ink to show these details. To turn it to a headset, simply twist it out to fit the ear.

Med tech malady

So much has changed in the tech space – influencing everything from car tech to home theatre – to make things smaller, smarter and cosier to use.

You wonder why medical machines have been left trailing in the dust.

The point hit painfully home when my father was hospitalised the week before Christmas. Before the diagnosis came - pneumonia - he had to go through a series of uncomfortable tests.

One of it was an MRI or Magnetic Resonance Imaging scan to rule out any serious brain condition because of high fever and the severe pain in his head.

Kudos to Patient who survived the 40-minute ordeal. I would have died.

Never mind that he had to stay absolutely still in the machine’s claustrophia-inducing tunnel, he also had to endure eardrum-bursting sonics.

"It was like the sound of a motorboat engine at first. Then, it became like piling noises. Very loud," said Patient, shaking his head.

Why do you need a magnet weighing 30, 40 tons to look deep inside the brain? Surely, someone should be able to come up with a helmet-like gear that uses quiet-sound technology to do all that medical peering.

If there is now know-how that allows doctors on one shore to operate on a patient half the globe away, surely it is not too much to ask for good minds to come up with machines that do not intimidate by sheer size alone.

Even X-rays are bulky and blocky by tech’s miniaturiaation standards. And don’t get me started on the Jurassic thing they call a mammogram.

Laptops should be better

Evelyn Yap — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:20:00 +0000

TWO days ago, I went shopping for doodads on company time. No, I wasn't skiving. The trip was to source for gadgets for an upcoming issue.

But the contraption I was really looking for was nowhere to be found. It was an under-desk keyboard tray.

I found lots of models online in earlier searches but none of them were sold here.

You see, my search for the tray was to alleviate the tightness in my severely knotted shoulders — ligaments and muscles all tensed up from hours of daily hunching.

I sorely need my tui-na lady who will not only tug, stretch and unkink the kinks in the sinews but pinpoint the agony spots, too.

"Ah, here is pain, right?", she'd say in Singlish before I even gesture where they are.

Anyway, back to the under-desk keyboard tray.

Having one would mean a more ergonomic incline for me — forearms parallel to the floor, forming a sort of 90-degree angle at the elbows.

But then again buying the tray would simply mean treating the symptoms rather than addressing the source of the problem.

Yes, the fount of all aches and pains, as far as I am concerned, is the laptop. And the fact that from the first laptop to the current one, no one has thought to break the mould. (At least, I don't think so.)

The wrong mould: a base with non-extendable "legs".

Like how people tell bigger and bigger lies to get themselves out of the original one, a whole industry has come up to "support" the wrong cause.

There are laptop consoles that elevate the appliance so you don't develop a turtle syndrome (stick your head forward when you type); fan bases to whirr under the machine to prevent it from overheating; and cooler balls to stick to the corners of the notebook to tilt it for a better typing angle.

Wouldn’t it be simpler if, instead of fixed studs at the four corners of a notebook PC, there were extendable bumps instead?

The bump would look like a Magic Glide patch but it would be anti-slip instead.

Tapping twice on a pad would release a catch and you could then pull out the bumps and adjust each until the tilt angle was just right for your wrist.

Done for the day? Simply give each bump a light tug, and it retracts into its slot in the base.

Also, you could shape these retractable legs — made of flexible yet sturdy metal (that's for rocket scientists to invent) — to resemble the legs in the Fountain of Wealth structure at Suntec City.

That way you could place the laptop over your lap — finally, giving some true meaning to the word — with no fear of singeing the thighs (or other body parts for the guys).

So, that is my idea for the Worlds' Most Ergonomic Laptop for now. Anyone out there with suggestions to make it even better?

E-mail Eve Yap with your ideas for a better laptop computer or leave a comment below.

Touch me not

Evelyn Yap — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 12:15:00 +0000

BLAME it on the now dead O2 Xda Atom smartphone that has made me dead to the touch – of touchscreen gadgets, that is.

They are everywhere, these peck-it pleasers: cellphones, netbooks and desktops too. And don’t forget the touch-smart interface of Microsoft’s newest operating system, Windows 7, launching next Thursday, Oct 22.

Windows 7 has neat pluses that make everyday computing easy. (Read Digital Life’s cover story on Oct 21.) But I won’t, er, touch any of the other gadgets with a 10-foot pole.

Not least, as I said, because of history. Four years ago, (2005) I bought my first smartphone – the Xda Atom – for about $1,000 but it turned out to be a horrible thing. The phone would hang, the screen freeze, and just getting to applications like the To Do liststook forever on the Windows platform.

True, these could be software setbacks rather than a hardware hindrance. Or that the particular piece I bought could have been a lemon: one colleague, who had the same model, had similar woes but they went away when he downloaded a software patch to his handset.

True, too, such bugs in smartphone software have by and large been fixed. But even now I wonder about the phone that started the whole tap-happy trend – the iPhone. Or rather, I wonder about at its adorers. And the adorers of other finger-navigated handsets for that matter.

How do they use these cellphones without throwing up their arms in frustration at the bother of surface upkeep? Two women I know (identities withheld for my safety) polish their handsets – on their pants or a piece of sunglass wiper – after almost every other call or text message they make.

And when they need to compose a text message? They hold the handset in one hand, and with a dainty index finger, go peck, peck, peck. Mamma mia.

If I already find it easier to flip than to scroll (easier to read a newspaper in print than on screen), then I will certainly find it easier to press buttons than peck at a screen. Texting on, say, a Blackberry is okay but doing finger calisthenics on an onscreen keyboard is not.

Worse, I imagine, when you transpose all that "caressing" to a bigger appliance like a touch-smart all-in-one (AIO) desktop. If typing on a keyboard already induces wrist ache, what would stretching out your arm for hours in a day – to get around all the applications like browser, Word document or PowerPoint slide – do to your poor limb?

There will soon be more touchscreen buzz when telco M1 when starts selling the iPhone later this year.(2009) SingTel, which had the first bite at selling rights, has already sold "tens of thousands" of the handsets since August last year. (2008) But I doubt that M1 can count me as one more digit to this tally.

On the matter of avatars

Evelyn Yap — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 07:52:00 +0000

IF YOU ask me, the good folk who created avatars must have been baby boomers.

They must have been born sometime between 1946 and 1964, and they must have played with paper dolls. Must have. How else do you explain the close similarity in concept between paper dolls and today’s avatars?

Paper dolls were those sheets of paper you bought for a few cents when you were little. You then pressed out the doll cutout and hung clothes and put bracelets and shoes – via tiny fold-back tabs – on the dolly.

An avatar is your digital likeness of being. And you also tog her out.

But there are big differences.

It used to be that playing with paper dolls was a girl thing. Today, playing with avatars is a geek thing – that brotherhood of guys who shoot, slay and strum in game genres from first-person-shooters to music bands.

Also, the old inanimate dolly was just that – a hard copy Barbie. But today’s avatars represent you. And that’s the thing, I’ll wager, that hooks people into the avatar craze: vanity fuels the desire to make these mirror images of you look good, so you feel good.

Why, some avatar merchandise are highly sought-after items. For instance, as of Oct 8, you can buy NFL jerseys on Avatar Marketplace, the Xbox Live’s online mall.

Some people even spend real money buying an online wardrobe – from tops to tattoos and all sorts of headgear and footwear in between. (Read about it in Digital Life’s cover story on Oct 14.)

If it seems somewhat pointless - all this serious activity - just to soup up a visual icon of yourself, it probably is. Other than the kick you get from kitting out your likeness, I don’t see much else of worth to it.

But truth be told, I have an avatar too. Courtesy of Yahoo. It lets me dress me in my choice of a pale green polo T-shirt, white biker pants, a pink bicycle and a wink. For the background, I chose my most favourite place in the whole world – the seaside.

It’s been at least six months ago that I created my avatar; I had stumbled on the free service when I signed off from my Yahoo e-mail account. But after the initial experimenting, I got bored and forgot all about mini me.

Now, avatars seem hot once more: even staid British newspaper, Guardian, is asking its online contributors to use at least an avatar, if not a real photo, when posting articles.

So, I may visit my avatar again. Head to an Avatar Town (like a mini mall), and click on skirt or surfboard for a change of clothes or a new prop. Give myself a make over.

What can I say? Vanity calls.