| The Ultimate Business Machine Technology, business And, not least, about by: Bernard Teo
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Sat 12 Jul 2003 The Circle LIneCategory : Commentary/circleline.txt Every morning that I come to work, I pass by the enormous construction along Dhoby Ghaut and Bras Basah, caused by the building of the Circle Line. It's now reached Phase 3. Phase 1, 2, and 3 are being built simultaneously. The last known station is at Marymount, near where I live in Upper Thomson. I believe it's the Circle Line that will make the public transportation work really well in Singapore. Take the case of the journalist who lives in Sengkang. To get to her office in Braddell, she needs to go all the way down the North East Line to Dhoby Ghaut and then back-track up the North South Line to Braddell. With the Circle Line, she'll get down half of the way in Serangoon, switch to the Circle Line to move sideways to Bishan, and then get down south one more stop to Braddell. It's a zig-zag pattern. But, at about three minutes per stop (about eight stops in all plus some allowance for changing lines), she may get to her office in half an hour. That should cut the time lost to travel by half. It's like the spider's web. The Circle Line ties everything together. It's the piece that will make all the other lines jive. I'd like to see the Circle Line pass by Coronation, Holland Village, and Buona Vista, on its way to Alexandra and the Harbour Front. How many of these guesses will be spot-on? Time will tell. iUse iSync and iChatCategory : Technology/iUse.txt iSync and iChat are a couple of things I had paid very little attention to on OS X. But, the other day, Timmy from Mean needed to get in touch with me and he asked me to turn on iChat. Believe it or not, that's the first time I've ever really used it. I've got a .Mac account (bernardteo@Mac.com) and so I guessed (correctly) that it goes into the Screen Name field for setting up iChat on my iBook. (Now, what if I didn't have a .Mac account?). I entered Timmy's ID and typed "hello", or something, and promptly forgot about it. A few minutes later I saw a commotion on my dock. It was the iChat icon jumping up and down for attention. So I brought iChat up in front and there was Timmy and we're off "chatting". I sent him a file (by dropping it into the text box I used to type my messages - it was so intuitively obvious) and we concluded business in five minutes. After that, I really understood how iSight is going to be a big, big thing. The biggest drag I had was to type my messages because I'm a one-finger typist. When I get iSight - notice it's when not if - I'll just look the other guy in the eye and say it like it is. I believe I've seen the future and it doesn't include the telephone system as we know it now. What about iSync? I used to think that I'll get into iSync when I have a Bluetooth phone. But iSync 1.1 introduced support for some models of Motorola mobile phones (including the V.66 that I'm using) via USB. So I got the USB cable and ... it just works. iSync did a scan and soon a picture of the V.66 appeared on the iSync bar. I hit the Sync button and I've got my phone numbers from the phone onto my address book and vice versa). And, one more thing: the entries I made into iCal appears on my phone's Date Book. Suddenly, my iBook is so much more the center of my life (though my wife would dispute that - she's sure it's our son who's the center of my universe). It now makes sense for me to focus on the things I'm putting into my iBook - the dates and events in my calendar, and the name and numbers on my address book. Because, now, I know I'm only going to enter it once, and I get to use it everywhere. Even when I change phones. I used to lose numbers when I change phones because I can't quite figure which ones are in the phone and which are on the SIM card. So I'm saying goodbye to all that. Gladly. I want simplicity in my life. My friend, Hai Hwee, has an older model Motorola C330. The USB cable I got didn't fit. Then I realised the C330's connector is shaped like the one on the Canon USB cable, which I got with the IXUS 400 digital camera. So I plugged that in ... and guess what? The C330's icon soon appears on iSync's devices bar. So we've got another happy iSync camper. |
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