Facebook Mystery Event

Update: So now we know! You can record and share 15 seconds of videos in Instagram. Not even an original idea! 

The last time there was a mystery Facebook Event, the social networking site's stock price popped! But it turned out to be a failure (at least for me!) Android App called Facebook Home. A lousy one that makes Facebook your "Homepage" in your mobile phone or that's what I heard, as I didn't even take a look. There's too much Facebook in my life already I want to get rid of it!

However, it has become an effective tool for me to communicate with family and friends that it's almost impossible to drop it altogether. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way.

Now there's another Facebook mystery event on June 20! I wonder what that will be. I'm not counting on it to be earth shattering. I'm guessing it's the same as the previous one. The style to hype an event up has become jaded I guess. It doesn't help that what they deliver are boring (that includes new announcements from Apple and other technology companies.  Google actually has not shied away from new things. The recent internet using balloons and the Google Glass are quite ground breaking.).

These companies spoiled us bad with new gadgets and ways to do things (interface) that when iterations come, we're not as excited as before!

Yes, I'll be watching out what Facebook will ship in a few days, but the excitement level has definitely died down for me.

Overkill Backup

A 3-Terrabyte backup disk is too much space!

I thought I needed a good backup system which could handle data from two laptop computers so I went to my friendly neighborhood computer shop and searched for the cheapest I could get. There were disks that cost 700HKD for 2-Terrabytes and 899 for 3-Terrabytes while other brands of the same capacity were from 100 to 300 HKD more.

I only need 1.5 Terabytes of backup space (one laptop has 1-tb disk space, and the other has 0.5, so a 2-Tb disk should have been okay. However, if you compute the amount per terabyte, it seems like adding an extra terabyte of space was a steal, right?

After backing up my data from the 1-tb laptop, I only used up 300 GB (0.3tb) of space! So I over-bought space that I may not need after all. What a waste of money. That's because I ended up buying a 3-tb Seagate Expansion disk for 899HKD.

Now, the disk itself was fine. The transfer rate of raw copying of files (no compression) was from 85 to 100 mb/s using USB 3 interface. I got what I needed: a lot of space and fast I/O.

If you want backup software instead of using windows explorer, you need to get one of those disks that come with backup software.

One thing I wasn't able to do was make a system backup using Lenovo Onekey Recovery software that's already in my laptop. I've set it up to the point where you click the "Start" button to start making the recovery disk but it just wouldn't budge. The start button was not clickable (not a processing option at that stage). I wonder why...

In all, I'm again happy with my purchase albeit a little bit overkill for my needs.

#WhatsUp with Tags?

It's the in thing I guess, but what's the big deal? It must be to many as so many are using it and having fun, and it suits them. Again, we'll charge it to "to each his own" meme.

Sure it serves the purpose of aggregating like ideas or what not, but does anybody agree with me that they look ugly? Think about it, one guy posts a photo of a newly bought red shirt and tags it with #red #shirt #new #mall #etc and you call that pretty? Not to me, but as said, to each his own! Enjoy hash tagging guys, peace.

Still Waiting for Something New from Apple

So far it's quite disappointing. Apple hasn't really given anything new! Sure it's new revised software and user experience. But isn't it an oxymoron? You know, new and revised, but presented as new? To me that's old! Can't spin it differently...

Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is Good!

iPad 3 side by side with Note 8

I had the chance to use this new Samsung tablet and I was quite impressed by it. It felt slick, literally, from the box.

I'm not going to go back and discuss the technical details of this gadget, there are lots of websites that do that already. Let's just list the things that I like about it.

Oh, Amazon.com's service needs to be mentioned too. I placed the order on May 25, and it arrived on May 31! If I was from the US, that's too slow, but I live in Hong Kong and that is awesome speed!

Why Amazon and not Hong Kong's famous gadget shops? It's solely because of the price. The Wi-Fi version of Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is cheaper by about 500HKD after adding the shipping cost. I said before that it is expensive, but the offer from Amazon was a good one that made the decision to buy easier.

Size difference with iPad is not too big, I think.

Note 8 is light and easy to handle, it doesn't make your hands tired holding it for longer periods. The screen is so clear and bright even with the brightness set at half the brightest it can be. We've learned not to set it that way as the brighter it goes, the more power it uses. Just set it to the brightness level you're comfortable with.

Response to touch is so quick, there's almost no lag. Well, I set the animation settings from 1x to 0.5x and I know that setting helps. However when you do so, you're sacrificing some silkiness in screen presentation. Again, this is a personal preference: I prefer speed. If you set the animation settings to 0, it's faster but a bit jerky already. That is why 0.5x is a good compromise.

I suggested to my wife not buy a folding case for it as it really feels good without anything covering the device. But then again, she's right that a beautifull piece like this needs some protection especially if you're prone to dropping stuff!

Everything else is fine: It connects to Wi-Fi and therefore the internet very well, it takes fine photos and renders them well, plays music and video, yadayada...Tablets are everywhere, makers must be juggling their engineers' brains a lot on how to create stuff that is different from others. The Samsung Galaxy Note, as mentioned, is a fine tablet that is enjoyable to use. I recommend it.