Sung News

$100 Credit to the Apple Store

After the 8GB iPhone price was dropped from $599 to $399 just two months from the product launch, the return rate on the iPhone started to increase dramatically. Even Nokia went ahead and stuck it to early iPhone adopters and Apple with the Google Adwords ad below.

Nokia sticks it to Apple

Immediately, Apple annouced that if you bought an iPhone within the last 14 days you can receive the $200 difference. Well, you are allowed to return it and buy a new one for the new price. There might be a restocking fee. Some say they were able to get away with it even though it had been a month since they bought it.

Yesterday, Steve Jobs announced that you would receive a $100 credit for the Apple store for anyone with an iPhone. It’s an unprecedented move in the personal electronics market, especially from Apple. Personally, I think that the $200 should be an early adopter’s tax. I know this is a good thing for consumers but I’ve paid a lot of early adopter’s tax in the past and I’m bitter about it. Grrr.

Sung News

DDR for Your Calculator

DDR for your calculatorxLIB xLIB Revolution is a clone of the Dance Dance Revolution game using xLIB flash APP by Patrick Prendergast (hence the name). Unlike most other calculator clones this one features crazy graphics and run pretty fast. It also includes a level editor that will allow infinite possibilities for the game. You can even have background images in songs or even animations! Probably one of (if not the) best DDR clone for calcs. Enjoy and have fun!

Download the File

Sung Technology

DigitalLife 2005

Xbox 360 Circle Friday I went to DigitalLife at the Jacob Javits Center. I wasn’t sure what it was. I read that there was going to be keynotes from the consumer electronics industry leaders, so I thought it might be a non end-user type of deal. I also knew DigitalLife was a show hosted by Patrick Norton, who was a co-host on the Screensavers when G4TV was TechTV.

Norton and the rest of the cast from The Screensavers was pretty much kicked out when Comcast merged G4 and TechTV together and moved the set from San Fransisco to Los Angelos. Norton left before the move but a few other stayed, like Kevin Rose, Sarah Lane and Yoshi. Although the show got weird and they eventually changed it to the Kevin Pereira show…I mean Attack of the Show. I’m guessing they changed the name to “AOTS” to show that it’s a different show even though they keep pretty much the same format. I guess the main difference is that the show is no longer helpful. Even though the technical content of the Screensavers was the entertainment part of the show.

Anyway, back to DigitalLife. On the website for the show, they showed how there would be lots of celebrities and athletes. It was mostly a video game show so I guess celebrities and athletes had to be there to promote games. When I went, no one was there. I guess I went on an off day. I did manage to see a couple of people that made me feel star-struck. The Pac-Man and the giant robot.

I also got to see some demos of the Xbox 360 in person. I think the graphics are impressive from what they show. People have been critical, but as long as everything was rendered real-time, it’s leaps and bounds above regular Xbox graphics.

Sung News

New Laptop

So my desktop died and I had to get a new computer. I’ve been planning to buy one eventually but I wanted to save up and buy it cash. But I needed something to work on until I can get parts to fix my computer.

So this is what I chose. The Toshiba Satellite M55-S135. This is my second Toshiba laptop. The other was a monster desktop replacement that had a desktop Pentium 4 processor that sucked up battery life, generated a lot of lap-burning heat and was really slow for what it did. Despite my poor decision to buy a Toshiba laptop, I bought this one. This one at least has a Mobile processor so it means it’s actually designed to work in a laptop. Unfortunately, it’s a Celeron. I would’ve liked to have bought a Centrino but this is all I could afford.

Some highlights of this laptop includes a dual-layer DVD burner, built-in wifi 802.11b/g, 80 GB HDD and Toshiba display which I consider one of the better ones out there. So far I’m satisfied with it. Zipping files up take longer than I expected with no other programs running and minimal processes running. Overall, I’m happy with the purchase. It has a lot of features and I like features.


Sung News

Experimental Interface

This is an experimental graphic user interface that someone in Sony’s labs has created. It’s almost Minority Report. Not as big. I’m still frustrated that technology is taking so long. I just want personalized mall advertisements. Am I asking too much?

Here is another link to download the video (29.6MB).