Want a Blackberry but don't want to pay for a contract? On prepaid but can't get the full service from the Blackberry Internet Services? Well don't fret! With Maxis' prepaid offering Hotlink, you will be able to enjoy the convenience and affordability of daily prepaid Blackberry data plans for just RM2.50 per day! In conjunction with the launch of this daily prepaid plan, Maxis is also offering the Blackberry Curve 8520 at RM1099 (Or RM95 per month over 12 months) enabling customers to enjoy the Blackberry experience at affordable rates.

T. Kugan, Maxis’ Vice-President and Head of Product, Device and Innovation said, “Maxis has a track record of not only being the first to bring the latest advanced devices to our customers, but also to offer value in our bundled propositions for smartphone devices for our 12.7 million customers nationwide. Today we are pleased to extend our BlackBerry offerings to daily prepaid data plans to enable more customers to enjoy the BlackBerry experience. The plans present a perfect affordable solution for customers who love to chat online, are active on social networking sites and who would like to work and play on the move. We intend to continue to be a leader in offering content, applications and service innovations which enable our customers to use their devices for personal expression, business convenience and opportunity and for connection to the rest of the world.”

For everyone waiting with baited breath for the announcements for the new products from Nikon, you may exhale ever so slightly now. Nikon are planning to announce the successor to the entry level D3000 - aptly called the D3100 - on August 19th along with 4 new lenses.

According to Nikon Rumours, the D3100 is expected to have a 10 megapixel sensor, shoot at 3fps and be able to shoot HD video with continuous autofocus. Whether or not this will be any competition to Canon's EOS 550D, we can't say for certain, but the D3100 may be just the start of Nikons future interesting unveiling. D90 successor on the horizon perhaps?

The 4 lenses expected to be revealed are:

1. 85mm f1.4
2. 24-120mm f4
3. 18-200 f3.5-5.6 FX
4. 55-300mm f4.5-5.6
   

Looks like we'll have to wait until August 19th to see if the D3100 will live up to the long wait Nikon have given us for something new! I for one am waiting for the successor to the D90, but oh well I may just have to wait until Photokina for that one!

(Source: Nikon Rumors via Petapixel)

In this day and age, no screen is safe from advertising. First it was the TV, and then it was the barrage on computer screens. Today however, the trend has moved to a much smaller screen, but as the age old phrase goes – it’s not the size (of the screen), but how you use it.

That’s right folks, the plague that is advertising has hit the screens of mobile phones the world over, but whilst the vast majority of the ads served up on your mobiles may consist of shameless promotions that don’t tickle your interests and thus rub off as extremely annoying spam, one company is trying to break the hate with a novel targeted approach.

InMobi was formed in 2007 with the vision of serving up relevant mobile ads to targeted audiences, and have been successfully courting the dollars from the big boys ever since. Most recently, it was reported that InMobi secured a whopping US$8 million in funding from new investors, so you know that they’re raking in the big bucks.

After the jump is a short interview with InMobi spokesperson, Emmanuel Allix, who gives us a better idea on the mobile advertising business, and also how the company plans to change the way ads are served up in Malaysia.

It looks like 3D is getting way more mainstream than anyone anticipated. First with the firmware update to let Sony NEX cameras shoot 3D panoramics, a 3D camcorder and now Panasonic have announced that they are going to be putting out an interchangeable 3D lens for the Lumix G-series mount. Since it's going to be for the Micro Four Thirds format of cameras, I don't see why without a proper mount convertor it couldn't be used with an Olympus EP2 or something. I'm not sure how this new lens will work, but it's good to know that if we wanted to shoot in 3D goodness, we won't have to pony up a chunk of live savings to get a whole new kit.

There is no availability details as yet, but we do know it will be coming by the end of the year. Wonder if this will make 3D photography the next big thing even with the cost of the glasses and tv's/monitors. What to you guys think? Is 3D the new 2D?

(Source: Engadget & Gizmodo)

Acer isn't exactly a household name when it comes to mobile phones, let alone the ones of the smart variety. It was nice to see them taking the two footed leap of faith into the murky waters of the smartphone market with the launch of 4 new Android powered devices yesterday.

“The new range of Acer smartphones has been rolled out to meet the increasing consumer demands of wanting to access the Internet in style, at anytime and anywhere. Users look for mobile devices that use the easiest way to navigate while having the latest multimedia applications. The new range of Acer smartphones shouts versatility, performance and stylishness,” said Mr. Ricky Tan, the General Manager of Acer Sales and Services Sdn Bhd at the press briefing for the launch.

Hit the jump to find out more about the new offerings from Acer

“While Semantic Web is proving itself as a commercially competitive technology and actual adoption and investment in Semantic Web applications is fast gaining momentum worldwide, the challenge now is in taking Semantic Technology to the masses and making lives on the Internet easier,” – MIMOS President & CEO, Dato Abdul Wahab Abdullah.

The agreement will see MIMOS and IIUM to co-develop Islamic Finance contents and education system while ePulze will develop a Semantic-based Sentiment Analytics System through MIMOS Semantic Technology Platform. ePulze’s system will be using the Internet as its knowledge base.

On another separate deal, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak has entered into agreement with German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence and University of Kaiserslautern for research in Artificial Intelligence together with exchange of students and also staff in the said area. For more information about Knowledge Technology Week 2010, log on to the event’s official website (http://www.mimos.my/ktw2010).

With the help of Epson, Microsoft and Sony, a bunch of Hungarians have created the world's highest-resolution 360 degree panoramic photo to date. The stunning photo was shot from the highest point in Budapest; The stitched panorama is over 590 000 pixel wide and 121 000 pixels tall. To put that into real numbers that mean something to you, at 300DPI (the standard for print), the photo in its entirety would be 156m wide by 31m high. That longer than a bloody football field!

The incredible picture was achieved with 2 Sony A900 bodies with Minolta 400mm f4.5 APO G lenses with a 1.4x teleconverter mounted on a sturdy stand and custom-designed robotic head. Despite the setup, the whole project took over 3 hours to complete and processing on a Dell T7500 with 2 quad-core Xeon processors, 24GB or RAM and 6TB of HD Space, resulted in a 200GB file after 2 full days of processing. Can you imagine how long the photo retouching took?

In all seriousness, Epson could not possibly have printed the WHOLE thing, although it would be a whole new kind of epic, they scaled it down to a 15m wide print from a downsized, 1.5-gigapixel copy, which is sitting pretty at the Erzsébut lookout station in Budapest. PPFFFFT! 1.5-gigapixels ONLY?

See the epic bajillion pixel image for yourself here!

(Source: Photography Blog)

If you haven’t heard of the news, jailbreaking your iPhone is now legal (according to United States law, at least) , thanks to a new ruling by U.S Copyright Office but don’t be too excited. Apple still considers jailbreaking as one of those activities that would void iPhone’s warranty, according to this short statement:

“Apple’s goal has always been to insure that our customers have a great experience with their iPhone and we know that jailbreaking can severely degrade the experience. As we’ve said before, the vast majority of customers do not jailbreak their iPhones as this can violate the warranty and can cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably.”

So, you still have to exercise caution when you decide to "free" your iPhone. Trust us, you would not want to end up with a shiny glossy brick.

[Source: Cult of Mac. Image: Fire!, used under Creative Commons license.]