Google StreetView comes to Thailand

During a press conference this afternoon, the Governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) and Google announced a partnership for “Promoting Thai Tourism through the use of Google Street View”. Street View in Google Maps lets you explore places through 360-degree street-level imagery, whether you’re looking at locations in your town or across the globe. With Street View, you can check out a restaurant before going there, find beautiful places around the world to visit on your next vacation, or check out neighborhoods when you’re looking to move. For Thailand, they are hoping that the street view pictures of tourist attractions will help boost tourism.

A fleet of specially equipped cars will soon be heading out onto the streets of Bangkok. The Google cars have 15 lenses taking 360 degrees of photos. It also has motion sensors to track its position, a hard drive to store data, a small computer running the system, and lasers to capture 3D data to determine distances within the Street View imagery. It normally takes at least a few months to process the collected images before they appear online. It is estimated that it could even take two to three years to have a comprehensive map of Thailand with street view coverage. More information and samples of street view can be found at google.co.th/streetview.

Google+ Invites

Follow the below link to be able to sign up for G+ if you haven;t done so yet. It's great: https://plus.google.com/_/notifications/ngemlink?path=%2F%3Fgpinv%3DOIGjlX-E_aA%3AMon16mlalSY

Google brings games to Google+ -- Engadget

Google brings games to Google+ -- Engadget Luckily Google lets you completely remove any game related updates from your main stream. Great decision. I hated that on Facebook.

Is Sony Releasing the PlayStation 4 in 2012? [RUMOR]

The net is abuzz today about rumors of the Playstation 4 being produced in 2012 already. Sony has always stated in the past that he PS3 will be their top product until 2014 or 2015. The guess here is that another rumor was recently posted that said the next XBox will be introduced at next year's E3 exhibition. So Sony surely has to follow as they will be last in the Next Gen game again. Nintendo already annonuced their next system this year at E3. After how the Wii crushed the competition last time while being released much earlier will for sure alse be something Sony will not want to have happening again:

Is Sony Releasing the PlayStation 4 in 2012? [RUMOR]

Official Google Blog: Introducing the Google+ project: Real-life sharing...

Official Google Blog: Introducing the Google+ project: Real-life sharing...: "Update : For our international readers, this post is also available in French , German , Italian , Japanese , Portuguese , Russian and Span..."

Cool Android HTC Advertising in Belgium

HTC put up an army of tiny Androids in Antwerp, Belgium as advertising. Prettty cool if you ask me.

E3 2011: Hands-on with the Nintendo Wii U Hardware

Nintendo has introduced its Wii U console, the next generation Wii so to say that features some crazy controllers that are sort of tablet computers by themselves:

E3 2011: Hands-on with the Nintendo Wii U Hardware

March of Heroes - iPhone/iPad/Android Game using the Unreal Engine

Hard to believe that his is running on a phone. Amazing how quickly smartphone processors and games are progressing, much faster than PC games right now. If they keep up the pace it won't be long until smartphones will run very similar stuff than a PC.

Google +1 could be pretty good if people start using it

Since yesterday Google has opened up the new "Google +1" to all websites online, not just their search results like before. I started using it now, I also saw it popping up as an option here on my blogspot Blog. So the fight has started to take over what the Facebook Like button started. But I think Google could turn this into something just as big or even bigger.

One of the advantages I think Google has is that they can deeply integrate it into their Android mobile OS which is now the most popular smartphone OS in the world. Also, they can integrate it into Chrome. Here is an extension that one can use in Chrome:

http://goo.gl/A91Im

Chrome is quickly gaining popularity and is already one of the biggest browser platforms, for good reason. It is quicker and more minimal than IE or FireFox and significantly faster. I am really curious how the Google +1 project will turn out. I hope it will do well so we do have an alternative to Facebook Like.

The purpose of all this of course are customized social search results. If you +1 any website and your friends search for this topic they will see the pages the you +1 before before other results. Over time this could be very useful.

Sony's Managers apologizing for stolen Playstation network user info

I had to post this apology from Sony's top managers. Just look at he image below:

I think that is pretty funny. Not that it helps the victims much but at least they apologized. And I heard that there will be additional presents made to all affected users that will give them free access to the Playstation network or specific content. Le's see how that plays out.

Having said that, it is pretty unbelievable that after this went down, today it was just announced that the Sony network has again been breached. Apparently Sony Online Entertainment networks were hacked and credit card information was stolen from more than 12000 members. Sony definitely has a security problem when this can happen 2 times within such a short time period.

Pissed off at HTC (at least in Thailand)

Today I went on a journey to Fortune Town in Bangkok to service my HTC Desire HD. All I wanted to do was exchange the volume button, a tiny piece of plastic on the side of the phone.

I had to find out that the spare part costs 117 Baht and the service charge to install it 1300 Baht!!!! Absolutely ridiculous. And also they didn't want o just sell the spare part to me. Because my phone was bought in Taiwan, not Thailand. This is bullshit. I am very disappointed at this.

Other companies, such as Sony, i could go to any Sony shop everywhere in the world and they would be able to  send it in and have it repaired for the same local rates as anybody else. That is good service. HTC still has ways to go, no matter how successful they are at the moment with their smartphones.

Commodore 64 and Tron Legacy DVD Cross Promotional Video

Yeahhhh! The new C64 is finally out. Wonder how many geeks will pre-order it today...

The C64 Reborn??

Commodore USA's all new C64 shown looking more real than ever - http://pulsene.ws/1bKdy

Lego Camera from Pentax

Pentax is about to release this oddity of a photo camera to the public...at least in Japan. It is a 14 Megapixel camera and it lets you create Lego style art on its surface. It is supposed to be released in October. Let's hope somebody imports this to Thailand :)

No 3G in Thailand for another 2 years??!!

It is really a shame that the "economic leader" in South East Asia, Thailand, has no 3G service when everybody else seems to be having it already. And now it looks like it might be another 2 years ahead. Funny thing is that in 2 years, 3G will not be very relevant anymore as 4G is already starting to take its place elsewhere. Below is an article from Newley that sums up everything very good.

Arguments over stipulations in the Thai constitution. Court rulings. Frustrated investors. Beguiled local people.

Sound familiar?

No, this isn’t the Map Ta Phut industrial estate case. It’s a different snafu entirely — but one with certain similarities.

This high-tech imbroglio has to do with Thailand’s lack of a so-called 3G mobile network. In short, 3G — or third generation — technology allows cell phones to use more bandwidth. This is useful — and some would say necessary — as people increasingly use Web-capable smartphones like the iPhone and Google’s Android phone for work and play.

Most of Thailand’s Southeast Asian neighbors already have 3G capabilities, and4G is already being used elsewhere in Asia.

But on Thurs., Thailand’s Supreme Administrative Court ruled to halt planned bidding for 3G licenses, resulting in a major setback in efforts to bring a faster mobile network to the country. The Bangkok Post has the details, and Thailand’sofficial MCOT news agency says:

Thailand’s Supreme Administrative Court on Thursday upheld the Central Administrative Court’s injunction to suspend distribution of the third generation (3G) wireless service, saying the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) was not authorised to award the 3G licence.

…

The Supreme Administrative Court reasoned that the NCT’s criteria for granting 3G licences was illegal and the auction process, if continued, could cause severe damage.

It also pointed out that the 3G service which was in its first phrase could be offered to a small, limited network and that it takes at least four years to cover the whole country, so that suspending it currently will not be an obstacle to the future use of the technology.

The court ruled that the 3G auction should be held after the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) is set up.

CAT Telecom filed a complaint against the NTC to block its 3G auction last week. The three bidders–Advanced Info Service (AIS), DTAC and True Move–have been informed of the court’s decision.

The Central Administrative Court earlier handed down an injunction to halt the 3G licence bidding process until the NBTC was established as prescribed under the 2007 Constitution, saying the NTC was not empowered to allocate the frequencies.

Got that? Indeed, the issue is complex.

As Bloomberg explains, the current impasse — like the Map Ta Phut situation — reflects, to some degree, the ongoing unintended consequences of the 2006 military coup:

Thailand’s failure to auction licenses for high-speed mobile-phone services this week may have been sealed four years ago, when the military ousted Thaksin Shinawatra from power and began drafting a new constitution.

The nation’s highest administrative court yesterday said a constitutional review is needed to decide whether regulators have authority to conduct a sale, causing phone company stocks to fall on concern revenue from new services will be delayed. Last year, shares in industrial companies slumped after a similar decision halted 76 projects approved by the government.

And:

“This just highlights the economic cost of the coup and the legacy of military rule that the country is still paying for,” said Andrew Yates, head of foreign sales at Asia Plus Securities Pcl, Thailand’s third-biggest brokerage by market capitalization. “The biggest loser is the customer.”

And finally:

“The problem is that the laws to implement the constitutional arrangements haven’t been passed,” said Alastair Henderson, a Bangkok-based partner at Herbert Smith LLP. “The broader impact is foreign investors looking at Thailand and saying these legal uncertainties make me wonder whether that’s the place I want to put my major Southeast Asian investment.”

Some estimates indicate that at this point, 3G may not be implemented in Thailand for another two years.

Ironically, Apple’s new iPhone 4 — the successor to the iPhone 3G — went on sale here in Thailand on Thursday night, and eager consumers snapped up the new gadgets.

For further reading on 3G in Thailand, there’s this Bangkok Post story from Sept., 2009; this Bangkok Pundit post that explains the situation and the players involved; and this Reuters story.