The cover of local computer magazine PC Market undoubtedly caught my attention and HK$15 from my pocket today. It is Apple’s iPod mini on the cover and the story inside across 15 pages!!! I have been a reader of this consumer computer magazine for more than 7 years and I guess this is the first time I see such an extensive coverage of a product from Apple - which reportedly has less than 5% market share in Hong Kong. The story itself is comprehensive and worth reading, you are going to feel that there is really an iPod phenomenon locally and globally.

I already own an original iPod 15G, so there is no replacement need. I love my iPod even I am not fully utilizing it. For all my friends using Windows, I highly recommend you get iTunes even if you are not getting an iPod. I am not exaggerating, you can safely trash your copy of WinAMP or MusicMatch or Windows Medida Player to your Recycle Bin afterwards (btw, how to remove WMP from Windows, any expert?)

On the right is a snapshot of the new San Francisco Apple Store taken by Arnold on his arrival for the RSA Conference 2004. I wish I were there to get the first touch of the new iPod mini and try to sneak into the new store …

Ladies & gentlemen, I am going to Portugal this summer to watch Euro 2004! Wow!!! I can’t believe I finally have the chance to watch a world class football match live in Europe - and it is in Portugal, a place I have never been to before, oh man, this is so exciting, I am really looking forward to June!!!

The match I am going to watch is the group match between Denmark vs Italy at Guimaraes, Dom Afonso Henriques, on 14 June 2004, Arnold got two tickets for the best seats [category 1] directly from the official website, fantastic! Too bad all tickets of England’s matches were sold out for a long time and they cost a fortune to get from elsewhere, if you know any way of getting tickets for any of England’s matches, let me know please!

After checking out various Bluetooth mobile phones available in the market, I finally got a T630 (black) tonight for HK$2,680. Before that, I considered Sony Ericsson’s P900 seriously for its all-in-one features as a PDA phone. I almost bought it tonight, thinking that SmarTone’s special price $4,200 was quite attractive (retail $5,600), however this price is only offered to customers using the expensive plan, which does not give even half of the minutes my current plan got. More surprisingly, there is no stock and no one knows when will there be! So I left there happily and went straight to a small shop in Jaffe Road to buy the T630 special black edition. I don’t like the original white version, this black one is cool! I love the keypads! Although it is a parallel-imported one without local warranty and there is a T-Mobile logo printed on it. Oh, there is one more flaw: only English and Simplified Chinese menu available. But I’ll use English menu anyway.

Upon returning home, the first thing I do is turning on iSync and have all my contacts, calendars and to-dos synchronized with the T630 using Bluetooh. It’s completely hassle-free and I can start playing with personalized pictures and sounds in 15 minutes! As you may have also noticed from this screen cap, I got .Mac! Just purchased it yesterday for fun and research purposes. Will share about it in details later!

It’s time to get a new mobile phone for myself! For so many embarrassing occasions like cutting off sudddenly when talking to my clients and missing calls due to mysterious freezes, I start to feel that this T68i is going to impact adversely on my business very soon. There are very few choices out there, unfortunately. Bluetooth is a must, I use it to sync with the Address Book on my Bluetooh-ready PowerBook, I would never go back to the old days when I had to input every entry again when switching phone. Other requirements include: speed (fast menu & key response), good reception and reliable. I don’t need a camera when I have my pocket-size 4.0 megal pixels with me any time. So what models are left?

Anything above HK$3,000 doesn’t make sense, I could buy a decent new PC box with that money. Also considering those PDA phones after I sold my Sony SJ-30 last month and have been much disappointed by Palm OS. With this in sight, I guess I need to forget about waiting for the Treo 600 coming to Hong Kong, not sure if it will anyway.

If you are interested in the “technie” part of my blog, you may have long noticed that I am using pMachine as the blog program. I checked out their website from time to time and just found out that they released a new product called ExpressionEngine - a more powerful web publishing software, the features are so powerful that I am tempted to give it a try by paying US$10! Well, still a public beta 1.0 … keep my fingers crossed!

First, happy birthday to my dear friend Melody (5 Feb)! The past week has been very tough, I got lots of work to do, messed up with my bio clock again and were frustrated at times, hopefully next time I could get others’ help and sort out the important matters myself.

It’s so cold lately and even started raining - and on Saturday! No tennis game again! My mood is as blue as I could be, turning on iTunes for some cheering music … with dozens of past deadlines hanging over me, next week would be miserable!