Saw this at the Ang Mo Kio Hub Fairprice Xtra butcher counter and thought it was hilarious.

First of all, don't buy this app. No amount of software wizardry can turn the 2 or 3.2 megapixel camera on your iPhone into a 5 megapixel one. Even if the photos do come out at the claimed resolution, it's probably digitally manipulated and upsampled. You won't gain any image quality here; in fact, your images will probably turn out worse. This is the same reason I don't recommend people to use so-called zoom apps.

This also really makes me wonder how Apple's app review policy works, or doesn't. There's clearly a case of misrepresentation here: the iPhone camera can't be magically transformed into a 5 megapixel one with just a "unique algorithm". Any Apple employee worth their salt should have caught on to and killed the app in the approval stage. Unfortunately, the app did get approved and is now the 13th top grossing list in the Singapore store at the time of writing.

By most accounts, the iPhone app reciew process is an arbitrary one that often delays or blocks legitimate apps even as dubious apps such as this one are allowed to be sold. Apple has long resisted calls for it to reform the review process, refusing to publish clear guidelines despite a number of controversies raised by errant apps. I believe that until a viable competitor to the iPhone emerges and gets the support of a large number of developers, this lack of transparency will continue to be Apple's policy.

See the screenshot above? Many of you will recognize it as the terrifying blue screen of death, or BSOD. That's when your Windows PC inexplicably crashes and your hours of hard work since the last save goes down the drain. Yikes!

Ever since M1 and Starhub announced that they would start carrying Apple's iPhone beginning from this month, breaking Singtel's 18-month monopoly over the handset in the process, all three telcos have been engaged in what some are calling a "price war".

This price war is nothing but a sham. Those who are familiar with Apple products will know that Apple zealously controls the price of its products and will definitely not allow telcos to undercut each other on handset prices. Others, such as Daphne Maia (@daphnemaia), have also astutely pointed out that the price of the plans have remained the same; the only thing that has changed is the amount of data offered.

This brings us to another point. Some, such as Daryl Tay (@uniquefrequency), believe that since the telcos are able to increase the amount of data provided seemingly at will (10GB initially, then 12GB at last check), this must indicate that the margin on Sintel's and Starhub's original 1GB data plan was ridiculously high.

I believe that the truth behind the matter is that all three telcos are merely overselling their available resources. Overselling occurs when a business or individual offers more of a product or service than they currently have. How can this be possible you ask? How can you sell something which you don't have the capability to supply? The math behind it is actually fairly sound. Take a look at this hypothetical example:

Let's assume that a telco has 500GB of bandwidth available for sale per month. From statistics gathered from their current data plan customers, the telco estimates that about 80% of users do not exceed 1GB of data usage each month. Say that this telco has 200 customers. This means that 160 customers consume only 160GB a month, leaving 340GB available to the other 40 customers. 340GB divided by 40 yields a maximum of 8.5GB of data available for each of those 40 customers. The telco now proceeds to announce that it is increasing it's data plan from 1GB to 8GB, knowing full well that a significant proportion of the 80% of users that only use 1GB of data are unlikely to change their consumption habits in the near future.

The point of this? With the additional cashflow gained from new customers, the telco is able to buy up more bandwidth, hopefully at a rate faster than its customers are able to consume. Those familiar with the web hosting industry will know what I'm talking about; Dreamhost even openly admits to overselling.

There are, of course, dangers to overselling. If the telco cannot keep up with demand, the result is degraded service for all users. A recent report by the Wall Street Journal indicates that only 3% of smart-phone users are driving 40% of AT&T's data traffic, resulting in problems and slow service for the other 97% of users. (As you can see, 97% of users only account for 60% of data traffic, validating the reasoning behind overselling, if you were skeptical before)

Anyway, back to the main point.

The real story is that the vast majority of consumers will not benefit from this so-called price war. Those that will benefit are heavy data users, not only from the additional data but also from the $30 bill cap that all three telcos have implemented. I believe only Singtel has gone one step further with their $20-per-month flat-fee data roaming value added service, but I have to confess I have not investigated further beyond a glance at their marketing collaterals.

If you are the average user who does a bit of surfing, checking and sending emails and using Twitter while on the move, you're not likely to benefit. If you make heavy usage of internet tethering or watch tonnes of videos on your phone, then this development is probably good for you.

Oh, and one more thing. The changes only affect those who are buying an iPhone with a new contract. If you are looking to extend your contract or are not getting an iPhone, tough luck for you.

My curiosity was piqued by Mr Stephen Crean's letter to the Straits Times in which he stated that the "prize money for women who take part in the Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon is less than that awarded to men". A quick check on the Singapore Marathon website corroborates Mr Crean's claims, but reveals that it's only the case for the Open Category of the Full Marathon. You can see the breakdown below:

So why the difference in prize money awarded between men and women? From my understanding of how events and corporate sponsorship work, there are three possible reasons:

One, that the organisers are sexist. I find that rather unlikely, though, as the organisers are the Singapore Sports Council and the Singapore Athletic Association. I doubt a government agency and the national athletics governing body would have gender-discriminatory policies in place.

Two, that the sponsors are sexist. Ultimately, it's the sponsors that provide the prize money. Once again, however, I doubt that this is the reason. Why would companies sponsor events with any discriminatory intention in mind? They'll just be shooting themselves in the foot with the subsequent bad publicity.

Or three, that there are simply more male runners than female runners. In my opinion, this is the most likely reason. It could boil down to a question of numbers at the end of the day. With more male runners than female runners, and more competition, perhaps a higher prize pot was justified. However, I was not able to find any gender breakdown of this year's participants to support this hypothesis, and a quick inspection of the photo carried by the Straits Times doesn't reveal any significant skew in the proportion of males to females.

Whatever the case, I'm sure we'll hear a response from the organisers within a couple of days. The onus is on them to explain the discrepancy now that someone has brought it up in the newspapers.

Can you spot it? ;)