If you're like me who's got a mobile phone that's got either an unlimited data plan from the telco or WiFi built-in, you would have had moments where you crave for YouTube on your mobile.

Go to www.youtube.com on your mobile browser and sure - you'll find EVERYTHING on YouTube. Problem is you won't be able to play any of the videos because either your mobile phone doesn't support Flash (a technology YouTube uses) or the Flash version on your mobile is too 'lite' that it doesn't support advanced video playback.

YouTube saw this problem a couple of months back, which is why they launched YouTube Mobile which can be accessed via http://m.youtube.com. Great IDEA! BUT FLAWED. The mobile version only has limited selection of videos from YouTube as each video needs to be converted to a mobile compatible format.

With all these problems, I was on a hunt and FOUND GOLD! TinyTube! It's BETTER than YouTube mobile through many folds... here's why...

• It converts videos to a mobile compatible version on the spot - allowing you to view literally EVERY YouTube video
• It searches not only YouTube but loads of other online video providers
• It's FREE! (okay, YouTube mobile doesn't charge as well ... but it's worth mentioning :P)

Check-it-out at www.tinytube.net

It doesn't use fire power BUT the power of $$$!

They are generally grouped in various colours - red, purple, yellow...


And now... brace yourselves... a brand spanking new competitor (well kinda)

Happy mobile prepaid!

The colour however is not exactly defined considering the fact that it changes colour all the time! Maybe it's white - to remain neutral and not be in the telco war.

So here's the story, if you've been in Malaysia long enough, you'll know that telcos, Hotlink (Maxis), Fu-Yoh (Digi) and Xpax (Celcom) has been at it for sometime. One started with 1 sen sms (with tonnes of terms and conditions of course), everyone followed. Another started super low call rates (others followed).

I still remember the time when it cost something over RM 120 for 1 Prepaid Pack. Today, it can be bought for as little as RM 8.50 ~ that's a good 93% reduction!

Then there's a 60 cents per minute call charge to the same region (ie. KL to KL) - now some charge as low as 36 cents NATIONWIDE!

So here's a new competitor in town - using the 014 prefix (a prefix that's used by Digi) called Happy! Why the name happy and who in the right mind would choose a name such as "Happy" is just weird. That aside, what does the new Prepaid competitor offer?


1 TRUE LOW RATE - FOREVER (and I mean FOREVER)
Every call is charged at 1 sen per second - which on the surface looks REALLY expensive - if I were to speak for a minute - that's 60 cents! A 10 minute call would cost 6 bucks! BUT wait... here's the BIG FISH (why fish I don't know - just sounds good), it's capped at 99 cents! - ANYWHERE (in Malaysia of course) and ANY OPERATOR.

So what does this mean? 99 cents for as long as you want... talk more and pay a heck of a lot less - talk less and pay perhaps a bit more. So you either keep your calls REALLY short or REALLY long.

Sounds like a good deal to me.

SMS - second most important cost...
Happy makes it plain and simple - 10 cents to ANY network operator nationwide.

Services
Every service you need (well almost is here - with the exception of 3G) and it's all FREE!

• GPRS / MMS
  
• Call Waiting
• Call Conferencing
• Caller ID
• IDD (International Direct Dial)
  
• International Roaming
• and more!

Want more info, checkout - www.happy.com.my

It all sounds really promising. In fact, at the end of the day, the people who are fighting are HUGE corporations - while WE as consumers get to profit from it. Lower cost + greater value sounds like a brilliant idea to me :) I'm not complaining... ;D

What I'm waiting for is that 1 low flat monthly fee for unlimited phone calls + sms. Now that's gonna be hard to beat. It's definitely coming - just give it time :)

Wassup! Been MIA for awhile... yes, I've got absolutely no reason behind and so I'm not going to give any ;) BUT something triggered me to blog about it and the word is SHOZU!

'Sho' WHAT? - Well, if you own a mobile phone that's got a built-in camera - this is a MUST HAVE and the best part is it's FREE!

Before I talk about it, (yes, I've got to give you a little history on my discovery ;P) I've got a brand new phone! It's a Nokia N95 8GB!
It's a baby... takes amazing photos and just works wonders - anyway, enough of plugging the phone. So there I was, sitting down and thinking. I've got tonnes of pretty good pictures taken from a camera phone and I'm just too eager to get online - what to do?

Did a bit of Googling and found ShoZu! It's a combination of both a web application and an application which you get installed into your phone.

ShoZu allows you to upload images and videos taken on your phone to multiple locations on the net EASILY. I'm the KIASU type (btw, kiasu means 'cannot lose') so I've got to have every free online community based thing, from Friendster to Facebook to FREE online sites for photo storage such as PicasaWeb, Flickr - then there are blog sites like Blogger... you get the idea - I've got it. Problem with being so kiasu is that I've got to manage all of them and obviously, it'll be quite troublesome to send the pictures from my phone to my notebook and have them individually uploaded to all the sites.

This is when ShoZu comes in. Just sign up - It's FREE! (even better), select what websites you want ShoZu to integrate with and that's it. Once you've taken a picture, go through the freshly downloaded ShoZu mobile software (which is also free), hit upload to whichever site you want it, and VOILA! It's DONE! Coolest bit of the software is that you can get it to CC (Carbon Copy - same concept as e-mails) all uploaded images / videos to various sites. So, just upload it to one site and it'll be copied to the rest!

It works with most if not all mobile phones - check it out - www.ShoZu.com