OpenRice.com Now in English

Hong Kong’s popular restaurant review site launches “gweilo” version.

…and all the expats let out a huge sigh of relief, and probably tons of upscale Hong Kong island restaurants as well!

Openrice.com, the mega-popular Top 10 Hong Kong website for finding and reviewing restaurants, just launched in English and is decidedly more upper class looking than the Chinese version. Since a fair percentage of reviews in the Chinese version were in English, they had instant content to pull over to the all-English version, so you get a good look at restaurants like Cova from 2006.

With more focus on Western and European restaurants, the English version still brings you location-based dining by district, reviews and lots of photos. Sure, it’s not as eloquent and Web 2.0 as some of the ones in the U.S., but it’s still the best we have for now! You’ll also find coupons, reviews, recipes, forums and food news as well.

And yes, they have an iPhone and Android enhanced version of their site, so you can check out the higher-rated restaurants based on district when you are actually standing on the street with your mobile phone.

Hey, they know who’s reading their site when the 3 main categories are: French, American and Central!

Acer Launches its Liquid Android Smartphone Exclusively with 1O1O in Hong Kong

1O1O and Acer team-up to bring you a new Android smartphone.

When Google said there would be a ton of Android phones out before the end of 2009, they meant it. Acer, famous for laptops and Windows Mobile smartphones, have jumped into the Android ring with the Acer Liquid.

Sleek and sexy like you would expect from a smartphone made in 2009, the Liquid looks as good as the models that presented them at yesterday’s launch event in Hong Kong. If you know Android, you’ll know it’s got all the same fixings on the new Donut 1.6 system with its 5 mexgapixel camera, and the ability to shoot HD video makes this a sweet phone for 1O1O customers.

Its stylish white casing kind of makes it look like it comes in its own protective case, but that is the entire phone! It’s lightweight and as responsive as most of the Android phones we’ve played with. The Acer Liquid is available exclusively at 1O1O for HK$3,380 for the handset straight up with no contract.

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3 Offers Unlimited Music Downlaods to Hong Kong Mobile Phone Subscribers

For HK$49 a month, how much Canto and Mando Pop can you download?

Hutchison Hong Kong recently announced their partnership with Taiwanese KKBOX Music Service via its 3 Hong Kong mobile operation and HGC Broadband. Local artists such as Swing, FAMA, Pakho, Siu Fay, Keeva and Taiwanese boy band MayDay came out in support for the Hong Kong launch of the service, now available.

3 Hong Kong iPhone customers, Android handset users and HGC Broadband customers can enjoy over a million tracks on their handsets and PCs via KKBOX, Asia’s largest Chinese music album library, as well as wireless karaoke with its running lyrics function.

So, it seems that instead of buying indiviual songs or albums on iTunes for a fixed price, 3 wants to lend you all the songs for a flat rate each month. Apparently, there’s also a good selection of English songs as well but, for obvious reasons, the main focus is on Cantonese and Mandarin artists. This KKBox service has already proven very popular in Taiwan, so it’s a no-brainer launch here in Hong Kong.

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Smartone-Vodafone Opens Android ‘Apps Select’ for Hong Kong

Almost double SMV customers choose Android over iPhone apps.

Smartone-Vodafone today announced the launch of their new Apps Select Android app website for the Hong Kong market.

This new Smartone initiative is set to really turbo-charge the already huge Android app market in Hong Kong, by putting a Chinese filter on the entire app downloading experience.

By logging into www.smartone-vodafone.com/apps_select/, Smartone customers can use this website to properly check out new Android apps with Chinese reviews, videos on how the apps work, and a download helper that sends an SMS to your Android handset for you to easily download the app.

Although the Android Market only allows for free app downloads in Hong Kong, this initiative is being fueled by the huge demand Smartone is seeing from its customers.

In today’s press conference, Smartone-Vodafone CEO Mr. Douglas Li shared some impressive statistics on the Hong Kong smartphone scene:

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Camangi Webstation Wants to be the First Portable Internet Tablet

Will a virtual unknown be the first out of the gate in the tablet race?

Promises, promises, promises. We’ve all heard the gossip, rumours, chatter and whispers that Apple and Microsoft are each developing a touch screen tablet, but when it will be confirmed no-one knows.

However, a company called Camangi recently announced that the portable 7-inch touch screen tablet that they are developing is ready and will be available as soon as early next month, just in time for the gift-buying season.

Called the Webstation, the device uses the Android 1.5 operating system running on a Marvell 624MHz PXA303 processor. Camangi’s device sports a 7-Inch (800×480) glass touch screen display with built-in Wi-Fi (b/g), GPS, microSD slot, 2MP camera, 0.3MP webcam and a USB port.
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