Apple fans get ready, our world will evolve again on Wednesday, September 5th with rumours of the next-generation iPod:
“The beat goes on” on September 5 in San Francisco, where Apple will hold a “special event” presumably to introduce new iPods.
As usual, Apple avoided directly stating what’s on tap, but the use of the Cover Flow album artwork and Apple’s latest iPod ads rather heavily suggests that we’re in store for an iPod/iTunes-related event. Ars Technica reported last week that Apple was planning an event for the 5th, and several reports have surfaced in recent weeks implying that Apple’s about to refresh its iPod lineup.
We’ve read rumors for wireless iPods, the touch screen iPod; like the iPhone but without the phone and all kinds of other crazy goodies but we’ll wait till next week to cover the reality of it. Until them watch this fan-made video of what the new iPod might look like:
PCCW revenues surge in part to climbing broadband TV subs.
It’s just happens to be NowTV week here at Butterboom, since PCCW just released their interim results for 2007. So to not bore you through that, we picked out the cooler nuggets of interest for you:
Now TV’s Installed Base as of June 2007 is 818,000, up 35% from last year. Thanks to a little football action.
Of those, there are 560,000 people actually paying for the content and interactive services. The question is what do the other 258,00 people do with the box? Doorstop?
Netvigator broadband service is still the Hong Kong market leader which has risen 18% from last year to a total of 1,176,000 subscribers at the end of June 2007. I guess hanging out in front of every MTR station in town will help!
There are 3,000 PCCW Wi-Fi hotspots across Hong Kong. Usage has since tripled since it was launched in January of this year.
There are 119,000 3G mobile subscribers, which is double what it was last year and there are 957,000 2G mobile subscribers.
Of course take all their numbers with a grain of salt but this should be a pretty close snapshot of what PCCW is doing in the Hong Kong market right now. We can only see more growth in NowTV subscribers and 3G users throughout the year and as long as PCCW keeps innovating and giving this techhead town what it wants in terms of flexible ways to do business from a coffeeshop or cha chan teng then more power to them.
First, Hong Kong had movies inside a place we call “cinemas” then we have the new “Drive-In” movies where you can watch a movie from the comfort of your car - and now Open Air has decided we don’t need any kind of roof over our head while watching a movie and is launching a daily film festival outdoors at the Cyberport Plaza.
Tickets are on sale NOW from HK Ticketing for a different movie every night from October 9-20th and kicks of off with Chariots of Fire and includes Butterboom.com favorites like Wall Street, Dodgeball, Something About Mary and what could be the best outdoor-screened movie of all time: Braveheart!
Sit on a beanbag or on the grass, either way tickets are going to cost HK$200 but you can chow down on food from Cafe Deco and booze from The Dublin Jack. Watch the trailer below and I’m sure you’ll agree you probably don’t want to be outside in a closed off area, above ground level, with a bunch of people who could be intoxicated after watching this:
Get all the details from the Moonlight Movies website here.
Our friends at Akihabara News are reporting that Sony has unleased their new “iMac Killer” computer the VAIO LT-19U. Some interesting sounding specs as well, the key one being a built-in Blu-Ray disc burner:
* 22-inch widescreen LCD (1,680×1,050)
* 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 CPU
* 2GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
* 500GB 7,200 rpm hard drive
* 256MB Nvidia GeForce 8400 GT graphics chip
* Windows Vista Ultimate
* 802.11n wireless networking
* Built-in ATSC and NTSC TV tuner
* Built-in 1.3 megapixel Web cam
* 3 watt stereo speakers, and built in 5 watt subwoofer
* various USB, Ethernet, removable media, and audio
We just recently indulged in the new iMac (this post is being typed on the brand new keyboard) and we have to say, like some commenter’s at Akihabara News, its not so much the casing that makes the Apple product so good, its actually their operating system and in this case the futuristic/Minority Report-ish feeling OS X. It is just amazing and we challenge casual PC users to go to an Apple shop in Hong Kong (3 shops on the 11th floor of Windsor House in Causeway Bay) and test it out. It is a multimedia maniacs dream come true. And we’ll be putting these new found capabilities to the test on Butterboom.com in the near future!
Yes, a lot of talk of Elvis these days with the passing of the 30th anniversary of his death in 1977. We mentioned a couple of weeks back about the Hong Kong Elvis Fan Club having a commemorative event this past Sunday. We decided to attend and you know what? It was amazing.
he most amazing part of the entire event was the amazing performance of Elvis-impersonator Stephen Kabakos (from Canada and a really nice guy). You may think it’s cheesy Vegas-style shenanigans, but this guy is the real deal (ironically so). Not only does he sound and look like Elvis Presley, but during his entire stage routine he never drops out of character as he does 3 costume changes to walk you though Elvis’ musical career from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s,belting out the tunes and doing the moves.
We cannot recommend this highly enough, even if you only know Elvis from songs like “Don’t Be Cruel” or “Hound Dog” - you will be converted into a full-fledged fan on Thursday night. Click here to download the event detail flyer here for Thursaday night at the Intercontinental Grand Stanford in Tsim Sha Tsui at Tiffany’s New York Bar at 9:30pm. It’s something you don’t usually get to see in Hong Kong and with the real King dead for 30 years this is as close as alot of us will come to see why Elvis has endured all these years.
Call 1010’s new service to get info and reservations.
Oh finally someone can tell us where to find a restaurant that serves Foie Gras Ravioli in Hong Kong! If you are a CSL 1010 customer, you can now dial 171010 and have someone help you find restaurants, book show tickets, airline tickets and all kinds of stuff a concierge would do.
It’s a free service if you are a subscriber, and is perfect for the typical 1010 user which tends to be more businessperson related who would need a service like this. But, we have immediate visions of CSL operators with browsers open on Google, Centamap and YP.com.hk while talking to you.
Yes, that kid from Transformers is on his way to Hollywood superstardom. Disturbia which finally opens in Hong Kong this Thursday is what made Shia LeBeouf the leading man star that got him into Transformers and to play Indiana Jones’ son in the upcoming 4th movie due out next year.
Disturbia came out earlier this year in the U.S., and is already on DVD by the time it hits the theatres here. We are giving it a C+ grade because it is a fun little movie for the highschool set, but if you’ve seen Rear Window then you’ve seen this movie. In a nutshell, Shia’s character gets imprisoned at home with one of those ankle bracelet things, and of course bored out of his mind he turns his binoculars across the street to see something very bad happening at his neighbors house. All hell breaks lose and lots of cat-out-of-the-cupboard type scenes that will keep you jumping. It reminded us of the Scream movies; so if you like that kind of stuff then this will be your cup of tea. Definitely not worthy of the praise it got in the US for director D.J. Caruso, but Shia LeBeouf makes a great teenage leading ‘boy’ as he proved again in Transformers. It’s also weird to see Trinity from The Matrix in here playing his mom.
Its a rental, unless you really have to go to the cinema this week because it is slim pickings in this last weekend before we strap down for September.
Motorola has launched a new smartphone called the MOTO Q in the U.S. and it takes their original model and slims it down and makes it more ergonomic. This one is coming from US mobile-operator Verizon as all mobile markets heat up in the smartphone war as it looks pretty close to the Dopod 730. While hackers in the US have cracked the iPhone (HK-people did it last week already), we think the smartphone should get a bigger chunk of the market in Hong Kong by mid-2008.
The new phones being introduced by the big guys aren’t that exciting and I think people are sick of SMS’ing without a keyboard. Although there is a software out there that brings a full QWERTY keyboard to your touch-screen HTC, its still the feel of the keys, even at this small size, that we think will still win the day.
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