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For the upcoming 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, Maxis is going to offer live streaming for all its customers, free.

The stream will require speed of at least 400Kbps for Maxis Broadband customers, and slower speed(s) on mobile phone. Data chargers apply for those without an unlimited data plan.

With the sponsorship deal, Maxis will have the exclusive right to deliver live coverage of all the 64 matches and all related content to customers in Malaysia from 11 June to 11 July 2010.

A World Cup application will be available for the iPhone, BlackBerry and the Android platform.

According to one of their message on Twitter, Maxis has also signed Frank Lampard, Lionel Messi as their ambassadors.

(L to R) Michael Chan, Jean-Pascal Van Overbeke and T.Kugan showcasing Maxis’ content offerings for the 2010 FIFA World Cup

Full Press Release

Maxis Berhad (‘Maxis’), the country’s leading integrated communications provider today reinforced its commitment to over 12 million of its customers with the announcement of the mobile Transmission and Content rights for the 2010 FIFA World CupT in Malaysia. With the sponsorship deal, Maxis will have the exclusive right to deliver live coverage of all the 64 matches and all related content to customers in Malaysia from 11 June to 11 July 2010.

Announcing the sponsorship and acquisition of FIFA mobile content rights at a media conference today, Jean-Pascal Van Overbeke, Maxis’ Chief Operating Officer, said: “Maxis is proud to bring Malaysians the world’s single biggest sports event in its full glory. We promise our customers that they’ll never miss a match, that they will know of every goal the minute it happens and that they will experience the biggest event on the planet like never before. Maxis is pleased to be able to deliver another thrilling series of coverage of the most illustrious football title, the 2010 FIFA World CupT, to their homes on television and on their mobile and broadband devices.

“The broadcast sponsorship of the 2010 FIFA World CupT supports our aspiration of being the biggest converged company and content player in the country. We are investing significantly in terms of sponsorship and technology to deliver an unprecedented 2010 FIFA World CupT experience to Malaysians. In addition, the investment of RM1.2 billion in 2009 to upgrade and modernise our network will enable, and facilitate, the quality and seamless delivery of content to our customers.”

Maxis content offerings
Maxis customers will enjoy access to an exceptional range of exclusive 2010 FIFA World CupT services online, on their mobile and also enjoy a range of applications specially designed for the event.

Online, customers enjoy streaming of all 64 matches and 26 live matches exclusive to Maxis and Astro subscribers only. Maxis is the first in the world to offer full match replays online. In addition, we offer live commentary, the 2010 FIFA World CupT countdown, polling and games such as Fantasy Football.

On the mobile platform, Maxis customers enjoy exclusive streaming of all 64 matches and news features such as alerts (encompassing video, MMS, SMS), downloads of official games, caller ringtones, wallpapers, themes and videos of 2010 FIFA World CupT golden moments.

Maxis has also designed special 2010 FIFA World CupT applications for the iPhone, BlackBerry and android phones allowing customers to receive seamless alerts on daily news, fixtures, results, country profiles, venue information, hall of fame and historical data.

Van Overbeke continued, “With all that we have in store, undoubtedly the 2010 FIFA World CupT will be the most memorable and exciting event for Malaysians yet.”

Maxis 2010 FIFA World CupT Brand Ambassadors
In conjunction with the broadcast sponsorship of the 2010 FIFA World CupT, Maxis today announced the signing of international and Malaysian football legends as its brand ambassadors. They included Frank Lampard and Lionel Messi; Dato’ Soh Chin Aun, Santokh Singh, James Wong and Hassan Sani. Jean-Pascal Van Overbeke said, “Maxis is pleased to live the glory of football in our campaign through these football luminaries. We identify with their high performance culture which motivates us to strive for excellence in our product and service delivery.”

A peek into the future
At the media event today, Maxis gave a sneak peek into the future of its home offerings. Van Overbeke said, “Maxis intends to offer customers products and services which will transform the family dimension, turning their homes into safe and enjoyable hubs from which they can experience next-generation broadband, IPTV, and family oriented voice and data packages. The Home unit will give customers a full suite of services and content which will be seamlessly connected and provide families with experiences to share, from inside the home to anywhere they roam.”

For more information on Maxis’ 2010 FIFA World CupT broadcast Content offerings, please visit www.maxis.com.my

Recently Facebook just announced Facebook Zero or better known for 0.facebook.com. This basically is a lightweight text only version of Facebook which aims to allow Free access to mobile users on supported telcos. It was launched with more than 50 telcos worldwide.

This is great news if you’re a facebook addict who doesn’t want to get on an unlimited data plan just to update your status messages or check what your buddies are up to on the go. The tie up between Facebook and DiGi will allow all DiGi subscribers to enjoy cost-free access to the wildly popular social networking site.

There are a few catches however. The new site is designed to be faster then Facebooks core website as well as its traditional mobile site, but will not display photos by default. Clicking on an external link will bring up the pictures, but these will cause data charges to be turned back on. A popup confirmation will be displayed before you are allowed to leave the cost-free Facebook site.

Lowyat has reported that DiGi too is in the running to implement Facebook Zero. Once this is implemented, DiGi users can access Facebook for free with this light version. Free Facebook access, who would complain? We tried now with our DiGi SIM but the site says that our current network is not supported yet.

Facebook is promising to get more mobile carriers onboard their cost-free mobile edition, so watch this space for updates. Let’s hope this will come true soon even if it means DiGi willing enough to sacrifice some of its revenue on its Facebook SMS Service.

[source]

TM Tower

KLCC

Now you can use Earth view to see maps in 3D on Google Maps!

According to Google Lat Long Blog,

Earth view uses the same technology that powers the Google Earth desktop application. It allows you to view the same high-resolution imagery, terrain, and 3D cityscapes, all from right within your browser.

Here is the video introduction to Earth view.

To activate the Earth view, you need to have Google Earth Plugin installed. Most modern web browsers are supported, Windows and Mac.

Click here for Google Maps earth view

If you are still wondering which is the best Twitter Application for your Android, Richard from Engadget has a detailed comparison of 8 Twitter Apps.

Twitter’s official app may be one of the better looking ones but it still lacks other neat and commonly used features found on 3rd party apps. In the end, beauty is only skin deep and Engadget lists its top 3 favourite apps with breakdown comparison of tweeting features of each app.

Some nifty non-standard features include replying to all mentions, saved timeline position, ability to post videos and more.

Head on to engadget to read more about it.

Google just announced the integration of three new ’sharing’ buttons on their online photo site Picasaweb (which is richly integrated with the free image editor from Google, Picasa).

Embracing Twitter, as well as Google’s own Buzz and Blogger, the new buttons let you instantly share individual photos. Notably absent is Facebook, which I suppose, is no surprise.

Google’s software engineer Ping Chen wrote in a blog post that sharing couldn’t be simpler:

To share a photo or album from Picasa Web Albums straight to any of these sites, just click the appropriate icon to the right of your photo, customize your message, and post it.

Picasaweb (or Picasa Web Albums) competes most directly with Yahoo’s Flickr, which by any measure is HUGE …. although recent studies have Facebook now exceeding both services in photo (and video) uploads.

Regardless, the social ecosystem of Google just took another step. So, starting now onward, Picasa Web Albums allowing you to post the images to those service with a single click via new share button for Google Buzz, Blogger, and Twitter.