Singapore's media giant SPH has acquired Hardware Zone, lock, stock and barrel, for an unbelievable S$7.1 million. SPH is the main newsprint company in Singapore and owns just about very major newspaper except for Today, which SPH also has a susbstantial stake in. HWZ on the other hand was built ground up from a humble computer hobbyist portal to the most popular online forum for all things IT in Singapore.

Update: Sorry for not posting thie earlier. Here's the link to the official press announcement. Some members of the social sub-forum at HWZ have also left to start an alternative forum here

When I first became an IT journalist in 2000, my blood was pumping with adrenaline everyday. It was the height of the dotcom boom and money was aplenty to fund Jeff Bezos and Jerry Yang wannabes. Heck, all you needed was a decent idea and a .com and watch your shares soar like the wind. Even Li Ka Shing wanted to be part of it, and he saw his shares in tom.com hit the roof. In fact, tom.com had nothing more than a .com in its name and the reputation of Hong Kong's most famous tycoon.

In my team of six at the then Straits Times Tech & Science Desk, I was initially disappointed that I would not be reviewing the cool gadgets (that went to Steve Dawson, who now is with ESPN) nor the software (that was Francis Chin whose teenaged son had a ball of a time with those free games!). Nope, I was tasked by my boss, Tarn How (famous playwright who wrote the screenplay for the first two seasons of Growing Up and now with some think tank organization) to cover the dotcommers.
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Hi Gin Lee,

We have just received the review unit of the device. However, to our DISMAY, there is no box package (inclusive of installation disc and manual) as the condition that we sent to you earlier.

This was the email message which I received from a tech PR exec in Singapore. I read it, and read it again. Then I started laughing. I am no English language guru, but to feel dismay is to feel despair and desolace, of extreme sadness, fear or worry over a particular matter.

Dismal or dismay evokes a strong feeling of hopelessness, like how the humans must have felt when the 12 colonies were destroyed by the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica, perhaps how Jack Bauer must have felt when his wife Teri was killed by Nina Myers, of how my Human Paladin must have felt while traversing the charred lands at Burning Steppes or the barren lands of Desolace.

But it certainly does not apply to a PR exec who receives a product back from the journalist, only to find that the plastic box which comes with it is missing.

In fact, DISMAY is when a journalist takes your review unit and decides not to run a story. JOY is when the journalist actually does write one, even if the cheap plastic box that comes with the device goes missing.

Push mail has been the privilege of enterprise users and high-net-worth individuals who can afford the additional S$30-S$60 subscription every month and the high cost of BlackBerry devices. Not anymore. This morning, SingTel quietly launched its new Mobile Mail service which charges a mere S$1.99 per month for its customers get push mail on their mobile phones. And if you sign up now, you get to trial it free for three months!
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If you are a business traveler, it now seems you have to choose your laptop and airlines carefully. Qantas and Korean Air have reportedly banned the use of Dell and Apple laptops in the air. According to The Korean Times the ban for Korean Air has been in place since August 30. The airline prohibited all models of Dell laptops and Apple Powerbook and iBook series, while users can still carry them if they separate the batteries into checked baggage, the report added. Similarly, The Sydney Morning Herald had a similar report for Qantas.
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