Today I finally got the time to muck around with Windows 7 Beta. Since I use a MacBook Pro, I decided to install Windows 7 as a VM in VMware Fusion. I followed to simple guide from VMware and it installed pretty smoothly without too much trouble. The only troublesome thing faced was that my initial installation didn't allow me to install VMware Tools, but upon a reboot it worked. Do note that by installing Windows 7 on VMware, 3D is not supported meaning you can't get the pretty transparent windows and taskbar previews which comes with the Aero Glass. According to my friend Perry, it is the same on Parallels VM. My set up is given 1 CPU, 1024MB of memory, and 20GB of storage. That's the same I use for my Windows XP VM and it runs pretty well. Looks like Microsoft did improve on Windows 7 as its been reported. I'm loving it so far and I'm really impressed with it especially since its only a beta. No bugs to report yet, but here are some screenshots of what took place this morning. [gallery orderby="post_name"]

We're in TODAY! Also in the story are my friends over at buUuk. Here's also a shoutout to Hedirman who wrote a this fantastic page on Singapore startups.

I'm so proud. This is the first media coverage of JamiQ and we haven't even put out a press release. I'm glad Irene decided to focus on sentiment analysis because that's what we're all about and that's what's really exciting. To have computers come in and do the "intelligent" things that humans are required for is definitely something to be excited about. And a little side note on the power of PR: Before I even saw the article, I had two friends send me text messages about it and a prospect email in to ask for an intro to JamiQ. =) And now that its online, let's see how far this will go.

Sony has come up with yet another great looking VAIO. The VAIO P Series made the press at CES go gaga this week and I had a hands on session with it at the Singapore launch. I held it, opened it, pressed it, tried to flex it, typed on it and the VAIO P felt rock solid. Even the slim LCD screen doesn't flex a bit. For a tiny thing like the P, it sure has amazing built quality. My friends at Sony say it isn't a netbook, but how can you launch a small-ish notebook today and expect it not to be a "netbook"? I think the only thing that qualifies it as "not a netbook" is its price. It costs S$1,299 (more than double my Eee PC 901) but in the photo below it does make my Eee PC look like it was from the stone age.
Sony VAIO P next to my Asus Eee PC 901
The thing I liked best about the VAIO P is the screen. Absolutely brilliant when you play a HD video. But I was truly disappointed to find out that the Singapore version does not come with the built in 3.5G option. The ability to put a SIM card into a notebook is one of the best ideas in mobile computing ever. So while the US market gets that option, we here have to stick to good'ol Huawei USB modems.

This is a follow up form my previous post on finding conversations on the social media. Since posting that up I was sent and stumbled upon many more social media search engines. Yes, not just blog search engines like Google BlogSearch or Technorati, but social media search engines that attempts to index the conversations on all as many social media sites. Working backwards from today we have Artiklz which was featured on TechCrunch and sent to me by Kelvin. It seems to keep going down, probably the load from being featured on TechCrunch. Found daymix on Pat Law's blog. This is the funkiest looking search engine of the bunch. Got to know about Samepoint and Serph from Rod who posted a comment on my blog. Can't remember how I stumbled across Social Mention, but I quite like it. And then there's WhosTalkin which I blogged about previously. This is an interesting trend we're seeing. Once upon a time it was web pages that gave birth to search engines like Yahoo, then blogs were important enough to warrent Technorati, and this week I find six new search engines all racing to be the chief gateway to finding conversations on the social media. I absolutely love where this is headed.

All social media practitioners need to monitor the Web for conversations made about their brands and products. Most don't want to pay for it. While Google is the almighty, it returns a lot of non-conversational result such as corporate websites and even splogs. Here's a list of new, and some obscure, specialised search engines that you can use to better track online conversations for free.

1. WhosTalkin is something I recently discovered. Their goal is to "deliver the most relevant and current conversations happening in the world of social media." This is a very interesting service in my opinion and has the potential to be very huge. I know it tracks Twitter and some blogs (not sure how many) from my test, but I'm not sure what their complete indexed universe looks like.
2. Ask.com's Q&A Search is still in beta but is already one of my favourites. It indexes questions and matches it to the best answer it can find. While it obviously indexes Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers very well, I was blown away when it picked up a question on a local tech forum and tried to find an answer to it.
3. While Web 2.0 has given much prominence to conversations on blogs, Web 1.0 discussion forums still hold most of the gems. BoardReader is my favourite forum serch engine. Not that I'm in the movie business, but I like how it has an IMDB search.
4. Twitter Search very simply searches Twitter. But seeing how fast Twitter is growing, this is definitely a must have for any practitioner.
5. It's been argued that Google BlogSearch is the #1 blog search engine. But Icerocket is the one I like. Works really fast, is evolving quickly with RSS feeds and trending tools, and I'm a real fan of its timeline interface.

Now with these in your war chest, you're all ready for an exciting social media-filled 2009!