Jeweler to stars, Ben Baller, whose client list includes celebrities like Justin Beiber, Pusha T and Kanye West, tweeted to Jay Park: “You better bring me one to LA or get you know what broken in half.”

The souvenir Baller was referring to are the limited edition Jay Park x X-mini Capsule Speakers, which the K-pop singer-rapper from Seattle came to Singapore on May 21 to launch.

While he was here, the 26-year-old also showed up for an exclusive showcase at Zouk for the media and 10 lucky fans who won passes from Xmi , where he performed his new single “Joah” from his upcoming yet untitled second studio album, his cover of American hip hop artist, B.o.B’s “Nothin’ On You”, previous single “Girlfriend” and “Body 2 Body”. Did I mention Jay Park flashed his abs? Cue fan girl screaming.

The Korean-American singer is the first international star to collaborate with Singapore-based company Xmi Pte Ltd to produce a special edition speaker for its X-mini Capsule Speakers line. The speaker and its packaging box were designed to reflect Park’s style. Park himself designed the full metallic look for the product. Founder and CEO of Xmi, Ryan Lee, told UrbanWire that Jay Park was their choice of celebrity to work with because “he’s freakin’ cool” and also “very different from the other Korean artistes”. Lee presented Park with the first prototype of the speaker as a gift for their collaboration.

The X-mini Capsule Speakers have won multiple awards, including the prestigious Red Dot Design Awards in Germany and the Singapore National Infocomm Awards. X-mini is also the best-selling pocket-sized portable speaker in the world with over 4 million capsules sold in 80 countries.

Despite their popularity, Park confessed that he’d no knowledge of the speakers prior to meeting with the Xmi team through a mutual friend. In fact, he’d had initial doubts over their capability due to the diminutive size, but he was really impressed by the power and sound quality after trying them. Now, they’re practically inseparable.

Like the potently fiery chilli padi that has become synonymous with our tiny country, the X-mini punches way above its own weight, and is able to produce volume and bass sounds more than 10 times its own size. “I have nothing but good things to speak about the speakers,” Park added. He wasn’t the only one full of praise for the gadget. The speakers also received good response from Park’s staff and dancers. Park even said that they wanted more.

“(With the speakers) you can vibe out with people,” said the ex-leader of K-pop boyband 2PM. The singer has incoporated the minis into his daily life by plugging several of them to his laptop to watch television shows like The Simpsons. The lightweight minis also came in handy for the smoove dancer’s Bboy and dance practices and songwriting.

The limited edition metal speaker, stands head and shoulders above the previous plastic ones, and is sleek and “clean looking” as Park says. Its slightly heavier weight eliminates the common problem of the speaker hopping and vibrating around which its previous models faced.

With just 500 of the speakers scheduled to be released worldwide, Jaywalkerz, Jay Park’s fans better prepare for a tough fight to snag an exclusive piece at the price of US$99 (around S$145).

The release date is still unannounced and plans are “top secret”, said Darelle Eng, the company’s Head of Marketing and Communications.

“This was just something I wanted to do for them (the fans) so that they would feel like they have a part of me wherever they are while they listen to my music,” said Park.

Technical Specifications

Model: Jay Park x X-mini Capsule Speaker

Dimension (LxWxH): 60mm x 60mm x 44mm (closed resonator)

Net Weight: 120g

Speaker: Magnetism Prevent D40*H20mm (4 Ω)/2W

Loudspeaker Output: 2.5W

Rating Power: 2.0W

Frequency Response: 100Hz – 20Khx

Signal-to-Noise: ≥80dB

Distortion: ≤1.0%

Playback Time: Up to 12 hours

Battery Voltage/Capacity: 400mAh

Battery Charging Voltage: 5V/+0.5V

Battery Charge Time: 5V input – 2.5 hours

Fast-forward to 2012, and Lomography has taken it upon themselves to breathe new life into the 110 film format. Last May, the global organisation launched Orca B&W 100, a black-and-white film for 110 cameras. Since then, Lomography has introduced another 110 film, alongside a range of 110 film cameras that include the Fisheye Baby 110.

With its own substantial following, the fisheye camera is no stranger to Lomography enthusiasts. The Fisheye Baby 110 joins the Lomography family as the third camera with a 170-degree perspective lens, after the Fisheye and Fisheye 2.

For this review, UrbanWire gave the Fisheye Baby 110 a whirl to see how it would fare against the Fisheye 2.

Design

At just 7cm high and 8cm wide, the Fisheye Baby 110 ($60 to $85) trumps the Fisheye 2 ($148) in terms of portability. The Fisheye 2 weighs in at 230 grams, while the Baby 110’s weight is so insubstantial that Lomography excluded it in the model’s specs.

Both cameras are compact enough to be held in your hand, but the itsy-bitsy Baby 110 slips into pockets and purses, making it a better travel companion than its older brother.

One thing that can be improved in the smaller footprint is the fact that there’re currently only 4 designs, next to 9 for the Fisheye 2 (that’s if they’re not already out of stock). With the latter you could be owning a camera with a luxurious faux snakeskin finish!

Specifications

The toy cameras have lenses with a fixed aperture of f/8, which means that pictures taken indoors without a flash may look underexposed. To counter this inconvenience, the Fisheye 2 comes with an inbuilt flash that’s fuelled by AA batteries. But if you find that insufficient, you can also opt for an external flash that can be connected to the camera via a standard hot shoe connection.

On the contrary, the basic Fisheye Baby 110 has no inbuilt flash or sockets for an external flash. Only the Bauhaus, metal and gold versions have PC-sockets, compatible with Lomography’s Fritz the Blitz flash and an adaptor ($99 and $19.90 respectively). This makes the entire outfit cumbersome and costly, since the flash and adaptor put together are larger and at $118.90, are more expensive than the camera itself.

The cameras are also limited to only 2 shutter speeds – Normal mode (1/100) and Bulb mode, where the shutter opens for as long as you hold the shutter button down. Switching modes is an idiot-proof manoeuvre on both cameras. You just have to flick the button in the centre of the camera left or right to the corresponding mode.

With your camera on Bulb mode, you can hold down the shutter button for long exposures at night. You’ll be pleasantly surprised to see the spellbinding effect of light streaking across your photos.

Like most Lomography cameras, the Fisheye Baby 110 and Fisheye 2 can take multiple-exposure (MX) shots. To take a MX shot on the Fisheye Baby 110, all you have to do is press the shutter button again without advancing the film. To take a MX shot on the Fisheye 2, switch a button at the top of the camera to the MX mode before shooting.

Image Quality

Despite having similar specs, the images from the cameras are considerably different.

The Fisheye 2 yields sharper and smoother images compared to the Fisheye Baby 110. Less film grain can be detected on images from the Fisheye 2, so those who have a penchant for grainy photos might want to use a film with higher ISO.

Photos from the Fisheye Baby 110 are grittier than those from a Fisheye 2, even when shooting on ISO 200 film. The captured image bleeds out of the characteristic fisheye circle occasionally, which may be an annoyance to some.

In addition, the Baby 110 is such a lightweight that even minuscule movements can cause the camera to shake when a photo is taken. This results in nebulous, lo-fi pictures, not unlike the effect of a primitive pinhole camera.

The Verdict

If you’re young at heart, the Fisheye Baby 110’s for you. The camera reflects the spontaneity of youth and the fun it pursues. Ready yourself for the chorus of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ from envious friends and passersby when you whip out this little charmer.

But if you’re an old soul and you’ve weighed the pros and cons of both cameras, the Fisheye 2 is undoubtedly a more sensible choice. It costs at least $60 more than the Fisheye Baby 110; but with so many winning qualities, you can be sure you’re getting more bang for your buck.

[Images courtesy of Lomography, Tong Jia Han and Anna Belle Tang]

-

Get your Fisheye 2 or Fisheye Baby 110 online, or go ‘fishing’ at:

Lomography Gallery Store Singapore

Location: 295, South Bridge Road
#01-01
(S) 058838

Opening Hours: Mon – Sun, 12:00 – 21:00

Aesthetics wise, the Sony Vaio S is one of the nicer laptops UrbanWire has seen, sporting a full-flat body design with sharp edges that Sony seems to love on previous models. The saying “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it” certainly holds true here, with the 13.3 inch laptop looking especially sleek in matte black. Weighing in at just under 1.6 kg and with a total thickness of 22.8 mm (lighter and thinner than its 13 inch Macbook counterpart), the laptop looks and feels good, and lugging it around the whole day is anything but a chore.

You really can't get more stylish than a full silver body.

The Sony Vaio S comes with an Intel i7-3612QM Processor, running at 2.10 GHz (with Turbo Boost up to 3.10 GHz) thanks to its 4 cores as well as 4 GB of RAM (upgradable to 12 GB), making processing pictures in Photoshop or rendering a video a snap. The review model UrbanWire was given had the maximum 750 GB worth of storage space, which is more than enough for anyone, unless you happen to be an avid TV/Movie buff who carries over 800 shows with you. The Sony Vaio S also has a slot-in optical drive, which isn’t seen in many ultra-portable laptops due to space constraints. Often taken for granted, this feature was much appreciated during the installation of several pieces of software and the reading and writing of CDs, instead of the painstaking process of copying the files from a CD onto a portable hard drive and installing it from there.

Weighing just under 1.6 kg, this ultra-portable laptop even manages to read CDs.

While the specs are quite impressive for the laptop’s size, a key factor for mobile warriors when choosing laptop models is battery life. No matter how good the specs, they all amount to nothing if the laptop runs out of juice 30 minutes after unplugging it from the charger, or being unable to find a power socket. Not only does the 4400mAh battery inside solve most of the battery life issue, Sony has included a switch to combat the problem, with users able to toggle between “Speed” and “Stamina”, which drastically extends battery life for everyday usage by switching between graphic cards. A nifty feature, UrbanWire found this very useful when on the go, allowing me to get the most of out the battery depending on the situation.

Another interesting feature the Sony Vaio S has is it’s Rapid Wake technology, which claims to be able to resume the laptop from sleep mode in under 2 seconds. After testing, UrbanWire got an average of 1.7 seconds, well under the 2 seconds Sony promises.

The Stamina/Speed function is undoubtedly one of the best features found in this laptop.

UrbanWire put the Sony Vaio S to the test, playing 2 full-length 2-hour movies while streaming Wifi data – all in all, the laptop still had some battery life to spare, lasting about 6 hours in total before finally needing to be plugged in. An extended battery can also be bought, doubling battery life for a anyone who needs heavy usage.

The Verdict:
The Sony Vaio S Series is a good laptop for students and people who get a lot of work done on the go. With a stylish exterior, excellent battery life, great portability, as well as coming with much appreciated features like the optical drive and “Speed/Stamina” toggle switch, this sexy notebook promises and delivers accordingly.

Shaped slightly larger than a can of sardines, Lomography’s latest offering, the La Sardina, feels sturdy and alluringly simplistic in your hands.

Design

Staying true to Lomography’s branding, this camera comes in a multitude of delightfully vibrant colours and bold patterns (check them out here), but the specs remain the same.

 Only a handful of the La Sardina collection

Forget the standard DSLR that weighs your bag down like a ton of concrete. Summer calls for effortless style, and it’s way more chic to be seen with a lightweight, cheerful accessory, instead of a drab black brick.

With an ultra wide-angle lens (22mm) for encapsulating scenery, and a fixed aperture of f8.0, the La Sardina ensures you’ll capture every last detail in your surroundings. Unlike a fisheye camera however, it will not warp the perspective of the photo.

Close up of the La Sardina

Should you desire, Lomography gives you the option of also purchasing a ‘Fritz the Blitz’ flash in a matching color to your camera, ensuring you never miss a shot due to gloomy skies or underlit rooms. Unlike previous models, the ‘Fritz the Blitz’ flash has 3 different power settings to be tweaked in accordance with distance from subject, allowing users to adjust the light intensity, preventing overexposure and overblown highlights.

Controls

If any of you are apprehensive regarding using a film camera, fret not! This camera has an elementary learning curve. Forget about tweaking a barrage of settings. All you have to do with the La Sardina is: frame the shot, click the shutter and wind the spool.

With just a flick of a switch to “MX” mode, you can create artsy multiple exposure shots. A multiple exposure shot involves overlaying objects and produces a lo-fi surreal image all Lomography users are hopelessly enamoured with.

Lomography Singapore’s friendly store manager, Hakimbo, advises beginners to limit the number of exposures to 3, or you’ll end up with a chaotic amalgam of dissected objects (unless of course, that’s what you hope to achieve).

Focusing is done via adjusting the lens element. For a macro shot, twist the lens element to the fly symbol. Like most film cameras, the viewfinder doesn’t indicate focus, so you might want to cross your fingers and hope for the best.

But if you prefer tack sharp photos 100% of the time to the dreamy and radiant vibes many have come to associate Lomography with, this probably isn’t the camera for you. We at UrbanWire, on the other hand, love the end result of psychedelic images produced with one simple click of the shutter.

Image Quality

As expected, the La Sardina matches up to the Lomography brand heritage of grainy, raw images so reminiscent of an age of film. For such a wide-angle (22mm) lens, the images do not undergo much distortion. Hakimbo tells UrbanWire this is where the La Sardina differs from traditional fisheye cameras already offered by Lomography. If you are looking for an alternative to the wide bulging effects of a fisheye lens, do consider this.

A fixed shutter speed of 1/100 paired with the fixed exposure of f8 means this camera should be used in bright daylight, if you don’t intend to pack a flash in your bag. Overall, the La Sardina produced soft images squeezing in lots of details (like a tin of sardines, literally).

Conclusion

In a increasingly digital world, where a trip to any camera store warrants gargantuan megapixel counts being shoved in any consumer’s face, a week with this uncomplicated and “no frills” camera was indeed, a liberating experience.

More often than not, we scramble to get noise-free images, correct lighting and colour balance and amidst all that hastiness, we forget to revel in the process of creating art. The La Sardina changes that, tying in perfectly with Lomography’s motto of “Don’t think, just shoot”.

UrbanWire doubts they mean to use film blindly and burn a hole in your wallet. Rather, it’s a gentle reminder to even the most seasoned photographer: catch your breath and really, enjoy all that you’re taking in with your brand new La Sardina.

[Images courtesy of Lomography]

—

Get your La Sardina online here or try it out physically at:

Lomography Gallery Store Singapore

Location: 295, South Bridge Road
#01-01
(S) 058838

Opening Hours: Mon – Sun, 12:00 – 21:00

Sporting the signature Lumia Live Tile interface that allows one to pin applications or webpages to “tiles” on the home screen for easy access, the Lumia 610 is designed for convenience ad ease-of-use. Adding, rearranging or removing tiles is a simple 2-second process – pressing and holding until an option menu pops out. Customising the colour of the background and tiles is possible too.

However, what UrbanWire found was most impressive was the inbuilt People tile, which allows you to add your social media accounts – be it Facebook, Twitter or Windows Live – together, giving a constant, updated feed of all the different platforms on a single stream. Compared with the Iphone, which needs different applications to view the various feeds, the Lumia pulls ahead as a clear winner.

Signature applications such as Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive are also included in the phone, as well as an Xbox Live application that syncs your achievements and avatar from your Xbox at home to the phone through one’s Windows Live ID. UrbanWire tested the applications and was not disappointed with what we found. The Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive applications provided clear and straightforward directions in both 2D and 3D, while the Xbox Live application easily synced and brought up our familiar Xbox avatar and achievements.

The Lumia 610 comes in 4 different colours: black, white and the funky cyan and magenta. Running Windows OS 7.5 and sporting 256MB of RAM, the Lumia 610 is perfectly capable of running several applications like the popular Angry Birds game and the inbuilt Microsoft Office smoothly despite only having a single processer clocking at 800Mhz.

With a 3.7 inch display screen, surfing the web and watching videos on the Nokia Lumia 610 is slightly easier on the eyes than if you’re using an Iphone, which comes with a 3.5 inch screen. However, the Lumia only has 8GB of storage space, and Micro SD cards are not supported, limiting the amount of media you can fit into the phone. For those without extensive music or movie collections (1GB can store around 220 songs), the 8GB will be more than enough space.

The Nokia Music application on the Lumia 610 lets you browse through music online and immediately purchase the desired track, or listen to a 30-second preview of it before purchasing. The Lumia 610 also allows one to listen to music tracks being broadcasted in the nearby vicinity – though they may be free to listen to, one doesn’t have control over which song is broadcasting. Furthermore, only 6 tracks can be skipped every hour, which results in even less control of what one wants to listen to.

One other capability that users might find handy is the flip-to-silence function – it allows one to instantly and intuitively put the phone into silent mode by literally flipping the phone face down.  Another useful feature that UrbanWire tried was Contact Transfer, which transferred all the contacts from my old phone to the Lumia 610 via Bluetooth in under 2 minutes.

Despite heavy usage of 3G web browsing, music, and calls, battery life was better than expected and the Lumia 610 lasted a night (on standby) and the entire day without a need for charging. Nokia touts the phone as having 10.5 hours of talk time, 35 hours of music playback and an impressive 670 hours of standby time before needing to be charged.

The Verdict:

The Lumia 610 is a phone that packs a punch for its specs and price ($379 w/o contract), offering an excellent social networking platform, convenient interface, stylish exterior and good battery life. A worthy pick for anyone who wants a decent smartphone with a sleek design and good features.

The lineage is impressive to say the least, as the Tribes game Starsiege: Tribes (1998) that started it all was the first-ever game with vehicles, huge maps, as well as jetpack and skiing mechanics. All these elements can still be found in Tribes: Ascend to retain that emphasis on speed that the Tribes series is well known for.

Many conventional FPS games focus on combat in or near buildings and structures – taking cover inside buildings, so you can jump an enemy as he rounds a corner and eventually storm the enemy base. However, in Tribes: Ascend, there are times you’ll want to forget about cover and just leg it. After all, a fast-moving target is a hard-to-hit one, and it takes some skill and experience to accurately anticipate where target will be when the shot lands.

Launching explosive discs with the iconic weapon of the Tribes series, the Spinfusor MKD, is a blast, in more ways than one.

Indeed, taking the fight outdoors might afford you a better chance at surviving than holing up in a cramped indoor area, where a grenade or two could spell your end. Buildings and structures are strategically significant as houses for objectives and as vantage points, but they are few and far between because indoor skirmishes are not the main draw of the game.

The maps and environments in this free-to-play multiplayer game are designed to provide you with plenty of space to zip around, along with numerous rolling hills you can duck behind or weave around for protection. Skiing down slopes to build up speed or using jetpacks to zip around in the open are two ways to experience the speed that’s the best thing about the game.

In an interview  with Metacafe, Todd Harris, Chief Operating Officer of Tribes: Ascend, said he wanted the game to feel “like I’m not just running around the map with a gun, but there’s a skateboard attached to my feet”.

Weapon loadouts vary according to the classes you pick. Lightly-armoured classes have weaker weapons but make up for it by being speedy and hard to hit. The heavy classes have the most damaging weaponry in the game, including homing missiles and chainguns, and over twice as much health as light and medium classes, but present slower and larger targets for their foes. Heavy classes are generally better suited for combat, but have a harder time in capturing flags or chasing enemies.

For a multiplayer-only game with speed as its core gameplay mechanic, it’s little wonder why its Capture-The-Flag game mode is so popular. Snatching the flag from your enemies’ base under their noses at over 200 kilometres an hour isn’t something you can do in other FPS games, and the ensuing high-speed chase to capture or retrieve it is even more exhilarating, with volleys of projectiles, plasma fire and grenades traded back and forth.

Other game modes, such as Deathmatch and Capture-And-Hold (point defense), are available, should you desire matches that don’t entail chasing or absconding with flags, although UrbanWire feels that Capture-The-Flag mode makes the best use of the extreme mobility allowed by the game.

The graphics of Tribes: Ascend is definitely not lacking in quality.

Tribes: Ascend’s setting and combat system are similar to games like Halo, Unreal Tournament and Planetside, except that things move a lot faster. Some practice is required to get used to the high speeds and fluidity of movement, but once you do, you will understand what separates it from your typical FPS game. In between getting used the high mobility and trying not to crash into things, Tribes: Ascend might look like it has quite the steep learning curve, but UrbanWire feels anyone with experience playing FPS games shouldn’t have a problem in learning the ropes.

In the graphics department, Tribes: Ascend has good backdrops and texture work; it’s almost on par with games like Halo: Reach and Unreal Tournament 3. Character and weapon models have interesting designs; clean and futuristic, but definitely nothing that looks too much like alien technology.

The sound department is not lacking at all; the background music tends to create a feeling of high energy and tension, perfect for the fast-paced environment of the game. The guns sound realistic, and not too thunderous or too devastating. Subtle sounds of wind blowing past you when you’re going fast make it that much more thrilling to speed.

Tribes: Ascend is free to download and play, so there’s no chance of getting buyer’s remorse, which you’ll likely not get anyway. It’s well worth your time, or at least a try, if you’re into FPS gaming. It’s only available for the Windows platform, and full technical specifications are available here.