i.justrealized

The difference between Japan and United States Navy:

Navy Recruitment Commercials: USA vs Japan

Seamen. For love. For peace.

Skype goes IPO.

Skype Files $100M IPO

Skype S.à r.l. filed a registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an Initial Public Offering of its American depositary shares, or ADSs. The proposed maximum aggregate offering price is $100 million. The company intends to list the common stock on the NASDAQ Global Market. (Source: Street Insider)

Doesn’t this look like a huge Playstation 2?

An IBM employee prepares the new zEnterprise System Mainframe for shipment in the company’s Poughkeepsie, N.Y. plant. IBM added a new, 56,000-square-foot, $30 million production floor to its Poughkeepsie plant in 2010 to manufacture the new computer. Altogether the zEnterprise System represents $1.5 billion in R&D investment for IBM and a three-year, 24-hour development cycle that spanned three continents and involved more than 5000 staff working a total of 31 million hours. (Image and description source: ComputerWorld)

Steve Wozniak on iPhone antenna issues, Google taking over, and Steve Jobs. (via Jeremy or @echoz on Twitter)

Steve Wozniak talks iPhone problems, Apple, Google, Steve Jobs and youthful idealism

Always like Steve Wozniak. Seems like one of the nicest people in the tech industry. When placed next to Steve Jobs, he seemed extremely humble.

Google announces that Google Wave is to be no more, amongst reasons cited are that it hasn’t gain the traction Google has hoped for. This is hardly surprising for me, Google Wave is just too complex for most. It tries to be everything and failed to stand out.

(It’s time to wave goodbye.)

Update on Google Wave

Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.

Wave has taught us a lot, and we are proud of the team for the ways in which they have pushed the boundaries of computer science. We are excited about what they will develop next as we continue to create innovations with the potential to advance technology and the wider web. (Source: Google Blog)

RIP. And thank goodness I didn’t explore the Google Wave API much.

Likely for censorship reasons. BlackBerry devices does some encryption that has been deemed as a obstacle toward censorship and surveillance practices.

Saudi Arabia to Ban BlackBerry Service on Friday

Saudi Arabia has ordered the suspension of Research in Motion’s BlackBerry service as of Friday, as it does not meet current regulations, according to the country’s telecommunications regulator.

The suspension will cover all services, including e-mail and instant messaging, said an official from the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC), who requested not to be named. He did not specify what were the current local regulations that BlackBerry did not comply with.

BlackBerry’s service is to be suspended in neighboring United Arab Emirates (UAE) from Oct. 11 because it does not fall in line with the country’s regulations, the UAE telecommunications regulator said on Sunday.

RIM is also in negotiations with the Indian government over the country’s demands that security agencies should be able to intercept BlackBerry data.

In a customer update earlier this week circulated to the media, RIM said that it does not possess a “master key,” nor does any “back door” exist in the system that would allow RIM or any third party to gain unauthorized access to the encryption key or corporate data. The symmetric key system used in the BlackBerry security architecture for enterprise customers ensures that only the customer possesses a copy of the encryption key. (Source: PC World)

I’m standing on the BlackBerry side for this one.

Singapore youths are quite attached to their mobile devices, according to a recent survey by research agency Synovate. This article is from this Channel News Asia article.

Some statistics:

• 28% indicated they couldn’t live without their handphones – highest group among Asian youths.
• When it comes to having the most number of contacts, Singapore youths are second with 108 contacts – after Indonesia.
• The average number of contacts across youths surveyed in Asia is 77.
• As for laptops and smartphones, Singapore youths have the highest ownership in the region.
• 43% of Singapore youths blog.
• 36% read a blog without making comments.

It’s time to make mobile applications.