Say goodbye to getting fragged by lag. Yesterday, SingNet launched its new low latency broadband service called PINGpower at a popular youth hangout Far East Plaza. There, to the tune of noisy gunfights and "counter-terrorists" taking out the ski-masked "terrorists," Counter-Strike style, SingNet officially launched its new service. The gunmen repelled down from the fifth story and even appeared to be firing blanks. I say appeared because it was so noisy and crowded I couldn't hear much of the action!

Latency is basically the time taken for data packets to travel from the gamer's PC to the game server and back. The longer this time takes, the higher the latency. To gamers, high latency is hell as it means getting slowed down or worse get frozen in the middle of battle and losing the war.
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Jajah lets you make free calls between any landline and phone numbers in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, the US and Canada. Other destinations have a low-cost rate.

How it works is simple. Go to Jajah.com, register, enter the telephone number of the person you are calling, then wait a few seconds. Jajah will call your phone, then your friend's phone, then connect both of you together, like a callback service.

So what happens if you are away from your desk? No problem. I used my Sony Ericsson M600i to activate the call via the Mini Opera Browser. It just takes a little more time.

The company is from Austria, and it seems the free calls are subsidized by the paid calls.

Gamers rejoice, SingNet is launching a new low latency broadband service this Saturday. Here's what its media invite says: "Experience the superiority of online gaming in a brand new way."

Maybe now World of Warcraft fans can truly get that under 100ms latency paradise! Will check it out and keep this site updated on Saturday.

So many tech toys and gadgets, so little cash. Wouldn't it be great if Dad could give you a supplementary credit card so you can go on a shopping spree? Thing is, you need to be at least 21 years old to get that in Singapore. The good news is the minimum age will soon be lowered to 18.

It's wonderful to be able to buy all that you desire, and someone else called Dad picks up the tab. But here's a twist that many people don't know of. If your Dad doesn't pay, the banks can go after you. Worse, if Dad himself gets laden with huge bills and can't pay. the banks can go after you, too.

This is because banks have a standard contract term that states that both the main and supp card holder are liable for both their individual debts as well as each other's. So the next time someone offers you a supp card for free, think twice about it. Your Dad could make you a bankrupt!

Creative's TV ads have always sucked, big time.

I remember about two years back when Mr Sim decided to set aside US$100 million marketing bucks to unseat Apple's leadership. It failed miserably. Apple's ads projected a super-cool lifestyle of having all your music in your pocket, of inanimate posters coming to live with the magical tunes of iPod. Creative's ads boasted of longer battery life, better sound and other features that did little to sell the soul or the Zen of its MP3 players. It's about the fuzzy feeling, not about who has more colors or battery power. Since then, it has been downhill all the way for Creative.
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