review

Mar 30, 2013

Mobile scanner app showdown: Scanner Pro vs DocScanner

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IMG_1830

I’m making it a point to go paperless. Instead of keeping piles of dead trees lying around, I’ll convert them to digital scans and make them available to me through the cloud. The first step is converting my paper documents to digital format. For full page documents, a dedicated scanner is the best solution but for receipts, business cards and small slips of paper a mobile scanner app is better.

I tested 2 scanner applications for the iPhone – Scanner Pro by Readdle and DocScanner by Haave Oy. Scanner Pro is the market leader and costs $6.99 (iTunes link). Unfortunately, that app really sucked. Luckily I found a great replacement – DocScanner, $4.99 (iTunes link). Here is a quick review if you are looking for a good mobile scanner app too. Continue Reading

Sep 8, 2012

Amadeus Bistro & Wine Bar – where good music and food meet

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Green Peppercorn Steak

My friend Dina recently opened her 2nd restaurant – Amadeus Bistro & Wine Bar – in Jalan Sultan Ismail, Kuala Lumpur. I’ve been eager to visit and have a taste of the food for myself, especially after getting lots of “OMG my mouth is watering!” comments on the photo above that I posted to Facebook

Dina invited me to a meet and greet dinner with some bloggers and I gladly accepted. The bistro has an understated and elegant interior decor. There is a sitting space inside and a bar at the front, making Amadeus great for both sit down meals and just to have drinks. Oh yes, they have Guinness on tap ;) Amadeus also has Enomatic wine dispensers so you can enjoy fresh wine by the glass instead of by the bottle.

Dina demonstrates the Enomatic wine dispenser

The food was also really good. The chef definitely has both talent and experience. The menu he and Dina have put together seems well balanced and the dishes we tried tasted as good as they looked. The lousy photos I took from my phone doesn’t do the food justice, so here are some that I’ve “borrowed” from their Facebook page. Continue Reading

Jul 27, 2012

Sennheiser PC36 review: High quality mid-range USB headset with microphone

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I make quite a bit of Skype calls for work, and I occasionally make podcasts and screencasts which require me to record audio. I need a good multipurpose microphone headset that’s affordable, and having used the Sennheiser PC 36 for 2 weeks, I’m glad to say that it fits the bill. Here’s my uneducated and imbalanced Sennheiser PC36 review.

Summary: At USD60, this headset is an excellent mid-range USB headset with microphone for making VOIP calls, recording audio and listening to music. Highly recommended if you’re not a fussy audiophile.

Sound Quality

It’s not the best quality headset mic you can buy, but it’s not the cheapest either. The Sennheiser PC 36 holds it’s own against the other microphones that I have – a Logitech Clear Chat Pro, a MXL USB.006 condenser microphone and my MacBook’s built-in mic. Listen to how it sounds in this 5-minute audio clip I made.

Continue Reading

Jul 19, 2012

Fantastical vs Quickcal

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I’ve been evaluating Fantastical and Quickcal side by side for the past week. I would have gone with the cheaper Quickcal, but Fantastical’s CALDAV syncing won me over. I might switch to Quickcal when they do add CALDAV syncing.

Jun 11, 2012

Check out our new design! And a review of the Minblr WordPress tumblog theme by Themify

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blogjunkie.net is sporting a new theme! What do you think?

The new theme is Minblr by Themify. Despite the somewhat awkward name, I’m very pleased with the theme.

Although there’s no shortage of great-looking WordPress themes, it’s tough finding ones that are high quality and have excellent support as well. I’m glad to say that Themify got things right with Minblr.

First, a quick overview of its headline features. Continue Reading

Jun 28, 2011

[Book Review] The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer

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I’ve never read any biographies before, but I’m glad that the 1st one I picked up was The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer by Philip Carlo. The book follows the life of Richard Kuklinski, a contract killer for the New York Mafia.

Kuklinski earned the nickname “Iceman” because he experimented disguising the time of death of his victims by freezing their corpses in an industrial freezer. Yep, real life CSI stuff.

According to Kuklinski, he killed over 200 people over his career. He used guns, knives, his bare hands and even cyanide to kill his victims. All the while, his neighbors and even his wife had no idea that he was a serial killer.

Yes, it sounds too crazy to be true but it is! Kuklinski is one of the most famous serial killers in the world (if you’re into that kind of stuff).

The author Philip Carlo wrote the book in a journalistic, documentary style. Although it wasn’t a very exciting or suspenseful book, I couldn’t help reading page after page after page because Kuklinski’s story is just so out of this world. If you’re looking for something different to read, I highly recommend this book.

Unfortunately, searching the websites of MPH, Kinokuniya and Times it seems that the book is not available in Malaysia. I got my copy from the iBookstore on my iPad, and you can also order the paperback or Kindle edition via Amazon. Happy reading!

Dec 8, 2010

Quick review of the Proton Persona

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I recently bought a car

It’s the 1st car that I’ve owned and so far I’ve been very happy with it. This is my unsolicited, layman review of the Proton Persona. Continue Reading

Aug 19, 2010

[REVIEW] P1 W1MAX-1NSiDE 4G devices

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Back in June, I was lucky enough to be invited to P1 and Intel’s launch of their embedded WiMAX devices at Sunway Lagoon Resort Hotel. The event, officially dubbed the Launch of Malaysia’s First WiMAX-Inside 4G laptops, felt more like a disco than media event.

They dressed up the hotel’s ballroom and had 3 giant laptops in the front, and there were slick, dressed-up hostesses with face paint who were taking pictures with guests. Continue Reading

Jul 29, 2010

Reading on the iPad: iBooks vs Kindle

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So I’ve had my iPad for a little over a month now. By far the thing that I do the most on it is to read ebooks. In fact that was one of my main motivations of buying the iPad in the first place. In this past month, I’ve read at least 3 whole novels on my iPad and this blog post aims to share my experience of using the iPad as an ebook reader.

Books on the iPad comes in many forms, from PDFs that you read with a PDF reader, to apps that only contain a single book, to library-style apps which allow you to download and manage entire book collections. The reading experience depends a lot on what you use to read the text of the book and my review is based on 2 library style apps – Apple’s iBooks app and Amazon’s Kindle app.

(Click on the images for larger versions)

iBooks

Kindle

Continue Reading

Jan 25, 2010

Book Review: Career Renegade by Jonathan Fields

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Before you say anything, yes I know I wasn’t looking directly into the camera. I was looking at the preview, which was just to the left of the lens and didn’t think it would be so obvious. Besides that, I would love any more feedback you may have about the review.

Book Info

Author: Jonathan Fields – read his blog, or follow @jonathanfields on Twitter

Book Website: CareerRenegade.com

Buy the book from Amazon.com

Career Renegade by Jonathan Fields

When you buy the book with the link above, I get paid a small commission by Amazon–thanks!

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