The end of Papago! GPS support for X3 / X5 / X6 / Reality 7 / OEM and final MalFreeMaps for those versions

Maction has forced an end support to all earlier version of their X-Series Papago! GPS by end of August 2011, which include the hardware and software (Android, iPhone, Win CE, ...) version of X3, X5, X6,  Reality 7, and OEM versions. Those will be replaced by the new X8 version using a new map format with no backward compatibility.

They have also officially requested MalFreeMaps (MFM) to cease providing map updates to all earlier versions of Papago! by end of August 2011, and only provide future map updates for Papago! X8.

As such, MFM-PPG-110823 is the final MalFreeMaps map release for those earlier versions of Papago!.

I can understand their move, which I believe is a bold business decision to fight against piracy to their software. The pirated Papago! GPS software had been used in some China-made GPS gadgets and also embeded GPS in car audio-visual devices, selling at cheap price. Beside that, cracked versions of Papago! for Android, iPhone, Win CE, Symbian, etc. are not difficult to be found, downloaded and installed from the Internet.

In fact, Garmin GPS also faced the same software piracy problem before, until they ceased the production of software version of Garmin Mobile XT GPS navigator.

Anyhow, this is a very risky move of Maction. Regardless whether it is legal and/or ethical to do so, for sure they have lost in customer satisfaction, loyalty, and brand reputation. But this will also kill off some of their competitors who pirated their software and produce cheap GPS gadgets.

Existing users of genuine Papago! are told to bring their devices to Papago! service centres for upgrade to version X8, either free or at cost, based on the terms and conditions.

Are you a Papago! user? What do you feel about this drastic action?

Live traffic condition updates in Twitter by Malaysian Highway Authority (Lembaga Lebuhraya Malaysia, LLM)

In this festive season, a lot of us are taking a long break and travelling back to hometown or going on vacation. It is anticipated that the traffic volume on PLUS highway will increase tremendously.

Do you know that you can check the live highways traffic condition updates in Twitter by Malaysian Highway Authority (Lembaga Lebuhraya Malaysia, LLM)? The landing page is http://twitter.com/#!/LLMinfotrafik.

Its gonna be very handy and convenient for you if you can access Twitter with your smartphone, like this:

Also, Twitter loads much faster than the LLM Traffic website (http://www.llmtrafik.gov.my/), another place for you to check the highway traffic conditions.

You can also make a call to 1800887752 (7am - 10pm) for live traffic update.

May your journey be safe and smooth. Enjoy your holiday!

(Click the share button below to share this info with your friends...)

Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple

The day has come, and Steve Jobs had officially tendered his resignation to the BOD of Apple as CEO and recommended his right-hand man Tim Cook as his successor.

Well, he is still with Apple, as the Chairman of the Board, and very likely to continue his contribution as the mastermind of innovative Apple products that make significant impact to the world.

Steve Jobs has a legendary life. He was a dropped out student of Oregon's Reed College just after 1 semester. He made his girlfriend pregnant when he was 23. He is a natural food lover who embraced Buddhism and New Age philosophy, and had once been in a spiritual trek to India. He met Wozniak during his summer job in HP. He and Wozniak then built Apple 1 in the garage, and made a fortune with the next version of this computer, namely Apple II. He made another hit with Macintosh, the 1st computer with mouse and GUI OS. That made him a multimillionaire by age of 25. He brought in John Sculley from Pepsi to Apple, who then made him ousted from his own company in 1986. He then founded NeXT and bought Pixar from George Lucas. Pixar then got famous with Toy Story and continued to produce great animation movies one by one. NeXT was bought over by Apple and Jobs was back to revive Apple with iPod, followed by iTunes, iMac, Macbook, iPhone, iPad, etc. He was hit by cancer and after treatments, still survive until today.

In Apple, Jobs is well-known to be a boss that is extremely harsh, and yet people in the world love this perfectionist for pushing his engineers to produce great products one after another.

Apple never invent computers, digital music players or smartphones, but Jobs successfully reinvented them to be trendy gadgets. "It's more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy", said Jobs in a retreat in 1982.