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In recent times, I’ve begun to prefer Sony Ericsson phones over Nokia ones, even though I used to like Nokia phones in the past. However, that was before Nokia started pumping out symbian phone after symbian phone after symbian phone, all of which were extremely slow and laggy. While they were indeed powerful, I still find it quite pointless, which is why I prefer Sony Ericsson phones now, and for the sake of this review, the Sony Ericsson K618 specifically.

It’s once again an extremely solid phone by SE and the OS is about the same as the other phones that were released around the same time as it was, back in August 2006. While it’s been almost a year since the phone was released, it’s far from being too old. The phone has all the typical functions that you’d come to expect from a SE phone: bluetooth, 2MP camera (which unfortunately isn’t very good, without auto focus or macro mode), support for M2 memory cards, etc. It also weighs about the same as standard SE phones, and has roughly the same dimensions: 102 x 45.2 x 16.9 mm, 89g. Function wise, it’s pretty much the same as many other SE phones.

However, there are a few things that really stand out. First of all, it’s design is pretty unique. Sony Ericsson has once again been able to produce an extremely good looking phone that will definitely capture the attention of anyone who sees it for the first time. It has a really unique d-pad as well, with a backlight that looks really good. One more thing that stands out really clearly are the speakers, they are extremely loud, and this might as well be a walkman phone. There are 3 speakers visible on the back, and they aren’t just for show. The phone can reach amazingly high volumes, which is a big plus, as many phones nowadays have extremely poor speakers that can’t really be used for listening to music.

On the whole, this is once again an extremely well thought out phone, with a unique design, improved speakers and delivering the same type of ease of use and functionality that one would come to expect from any Sony Ericsson phone, the Sony Ericsson K618 is a worthy addition to the entire K series, as well as SE phone collection.

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I’ll admit it, when I first saw the title and thickness of The Five People You Meet In Heaven, I was skeptical of how good it’d be. Surely a book that’s about heaven and is this thin should be for kids? However, as it was recommended to me by a friend who kept singing praises about it, I decided to give it a go and I’m not regretting it. I’m almost thankful for it being relatively thin as compared to other novels, as it allowed me to finish reading as soon as possible, so that I didn’t have to keep myself in suspense. Once anyone picks up this book and starts reading it, it’ll be hard for one to put it down without finishing it.

The book starts off with a pretty unexpected title for the first chapter: “The End”. It starts off with Eddie, an 83 year old maintenance worker, dying in an accident at the theme park he works at. It’s unusual for a book to kill off the main character right at the beginning, but considering how this book focuses more on what happens after death, I’m glad the book doesn’t dwell on his life for very long. After his death, he meets five people in heaven (as expected after one sees the title), all of which teach him a valuable lesson about his life, or about life itself. I won’t spoil the book for anyone here, as I believe almost everyone should read this, but essentially the message that the book is trying to get across is this: every single life is intertwined, and the actions of one person will inevitably affect the life of another person. Therefore, no action is too insignificant as it could have major repercussions.

The book is unlike any other book I’ve ever read before, despite being about the afterlife, it does not overdo it by introducing overly fictitious characters that would threaten to ruin the entire story. There are no fairies or angels in this book, rather, all the characters are people whom have affected Eddie’s life in one way or another when he was still alive. This makes for extremely intriguing stories, flashbacks and lessons throughout the entire book as he progresses from meeting one person to another. Every person teaches Eddie, and thus the reader, a valuable lesson about life, one which he never understood when he was alive. The way the book does this is also really smooth, by using flashbacks and extremely appropriate dialogue to get the message across, so that it doesn’t seem like the book is completely preaching certain lessons, but rather adding them as a sidenote to a great storyline.

The Five People You Meet In Heaven is an extremely thought provoking one that will definitely cause one to reread the book several times in order to fully understand its story and characters. The lessons in the book are also extremely valuable as they will apply to almost anyone in this world. All in all, a definite must read for everyone.

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Sony Ericsson W880i is the slimmest Walkman phone ever at just 9.4mm thick - the depth of a CD case - and yet it promises to outperform previous Walkman phones. It’s that thin and light you don’t even know it’s in your pocket. Besides its thin form factor, the brushed metal face resists fingerprints, and its soft-touch rubbery backing also provides firm grip - it feels excellent to hold. The Sony Ericsson W880i comes in a beautifully designed casing with a choice of two colors - black or silver.

Sony Ericsson has crammed the W850i’s highlights into its thin frame. The industrial steel-clad W880i has an ultra-crisp 1.8in QVGA screen, a 2MP camera, a 1GB M2 memory stick, and it’ll do 3G browsing and email. The menu interface is intuitively animated and colorful; every feature on the phone shows thoughtfulness in their design.

Thank God, Sony Ericsson W880i uses a 5-way scroll key rather than the irritating joystick used on some of its other phones. The keypad is designed exactly like three big i’s, if you notice. Text addicts may complain about the small and fiddly keypad, but I decided to overlook it. As a matter of fact, the keys, although small to grapple with for fast texting, are very well spaced out and are very responsive; they are easy to operate after a couple of days. The keypad takes a bit of getting used to but it’s still a class act. Perhaps it’s time to grow your nails out?

Besides the primary 2MP camera behind the LCD display, Sony Ericsson W880i also comes with a second lens just beside the earpiece for video calls. My biggest gripe with the W880i is probably its camera. It’s indeed an extremely good camera but it misses a flash and an autofocus. Again, I decided to overlook it as the emphasis in W880i is on music. I can always opt for a digital camera if I want to take a high quality camera, furthermore, who takes pictures at night in a dark environment with their phone anyway?

The built-in speaker is very tinny, but plug in the good quality headphones included and you wouldn’t really notice the difference from a normal mp3 player. Like W850i, the W880i also comes with the TrackID feature that will provide the user with the name of the song, artist and album from a few seconds recording. It’s expected that the Sony Ericsson W880i doesn’t come with an FM radio, who needs an FM radio while you don’t even have time for the 1,000 tracks stored on the supplied 1GB memory card anyway? Yet it may be a disappointment for DRM lovers, as the W880i doesn’t support DRM tracks.

Overall, Sony Ericsson W880i is a stylish music phone that has everything in a combo device, backed by its easy-to-use Walkman 2.0 software, it is destined to be the best iPod Nano alternative around.

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Since they formed under the name of “Kara’s Flowers” back in 1995, the band that soon became Maroon 5 has come a long way in the music industry and have definitely left a mark. Be it in the form of chart topping songs (She Will Be Loved) or controversial music videos (This Love) and lyrics (Harder to Breathe), Maroon 5 has definitely gained a sizable fan base with its soul-influenced rock music.

Their second latest album was released just last month, titled It Won’t Be Soon Before Long. In just this one month, it has already sold more than 1.4 million copies and has reached the top of both the UK and US charts. After listening to the album, I’m sure almost anyone will agree that they deserve such a spot.

To start things off, the first track If I Never See Your Face Again is a pretty face paced song that will get your head bobbing up and down to the beat. The second track is one of the singles in this album: Makes Me Wonder. It’s a slightly techno, but it fits in nicely with the overall rhythm and lyrics of the song, which is what made this song reach the top of the Worldwide, UK and US charts. If I had to pick one song out of the entire album, I’d say that Makes Me Wonder is my favourite one. The third song, Little of Your Time, doesn’t slow things down one bit and might get some people dancing even. Following that, Wake Up Song follows the style of This Love, placing a heavy emphasis on the rhythm with the drums. The fifth song, Won’t Go Home Without You, is slower than the previous songs, and has a style that’s similar to She Will Be Loved, however I think that it’s better than She WIll be Loved, but of course that might just be because of the fact that I’ve listened to She Will Be Loved one too many times.

The sixth song, Nothing Lasts Forever is once again a slower song whose style is pretty similar to the song before it. However, the next song, Can’t Stop, immediately speeds things up once again with a fast paced rhythm. However, the next 2 songs, Goodnight Goodnight and Not Falling Apart are slower songs once again, with Kiwi increasing the pace of the album for one last time after that, the remaining three songs, Better That We Break, Back At Your Door and Infatuation (Bonus Track) then slowly finish off the album.

On the whole, It Won’t Be Soon Before Long is a great album, with a nice balance of both fast and slow songs that will cater to the preferences of everyone. In my opinion, it is definitely an improvement over Songs About Jane, their previous album. However, some of their classics like This Love and She Will Be Loved might still be preferred by some of Maroon 5’s fans, and it’s not hard to understand why as those songs were definitely hard to beat. However, anyone who even remotely liked the first album will definitely not be disappointed by this one. For those of you who still haven’t heard of Maroon 5 (I doubt there are many), it’s time to come out from the rock that you’ve been hiding under and go get this album as most people will be able to appreciate their songs.

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The cross-country family vacation type of movies has almost become a genre of its own, with filmmakers trying to think of as many creative ways as possible to portray a family going on a vacation, and more importantly to make it interesting. There have been quite a few shows that have tried to do this, and RV (2006) is one such film.

The film revolves around the Munro family, with Bob Munro (Robin Williams) initially promising to take the entire family on vacation to Hawaii, however when something crops up at work, Bob is forced to cancel that trip. Instead, to make it up to his family, he decides to rent an RV and take them on a cross-country vacation, much to the dissatisfaction of his wife Jamie (Cheryl Hines) and 2 children: a rebellious teenage girl named Cassie (JoJo) and a 14 year old boy named Carl (Josh Hutcherson). Along the way, they meet with various hilarious mishaps and also meet the overly-friendly Gornicke family. However, the Munro family simply cannot get along with them, and hilarity ensues as they desperately try to avoid them. In the end, as luck would have it, these two families are brought back together at the end of the show and it ends with Bob giving a speech to his new colleagues about the lessons he’s learned on this simple RV trip.

On the whole, this film does indeed deliver quite a lot of comedy, with raccoons infesting the RV and especially the scene where Bob balances the RV on a peak as seen in the poster. The film should keep most people laughing throughout, however as it drags on, the humour might get boring for some, as nothing spectacular comes up in the later part of the show. However, by that time the film has a more serious tone to it, as for the reason behind that, I’ll leave it to you to find out yourself.

The odd thing is that while I can’t find anything to hate about this film in particular, there’s nothing much for me to like either. The acting is quite solid, with Robin Williams trying to get his family to be enthusiastic about the trip while he himself being half-hearted most of the time as he has work on his mind. Even JoJo managed to pull of the “rebellious teenage girl” character pretty well, while Cheryl and Josh also did their jobs well, portraying a desperate mother and unhappy adolescent well. However, despite the good acting and pretty well-thoughtout plot and scenes, this film seems lacking. It could be that after awhile the in-your-face humour begins to get boring and some of the jokes become downright lame.

While RV (2006) might not be the perfect comedy movie for all of us, it will definitely be a perfect family movie, as its story revolves around a family and the humour can be appreciated by both the young and old. Young children will especially be able to enjoy the film and keep on laughing, as it doesn’t require you to keep up with the plot in order to appreciate the humour. However, for serious movie-goers who want to watch a pretty high quality comedy film with smart humour, I’d suggest that you rent this movie first.

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