April 2005 Archives

It's all about digital photography! Find out why a phone cam just can't match the quality of a digital camera just yet... Adel and Jayvee tell us what to look for when buying a digital camera... Print your digital photos without having to use a computer... And get up close and personal with Dominique James and his digital photo studio! All this and more on m|ph TV this Saturday, 1:00-1:30pm at ABC-5!

A bit off topic but still post-worthy. Besides, its for a good cause. Got this from SMART's PR point person, Arlyn. They need volunteers on May 13. Read on. Smart is currently working in partnership with Gawad Kalinga to build 100 houses in General Nakar, Quezon which was one of the areas heavily affected by the typhoons late last year. Scheduled to be handed over by June this year, the houses are built under the guidance of Gawad Kalinga and local carpenters by Smart employee volunteers who go there every Friday. In line with this, we're sending out an open invite for you to come and join us as volunteer housebuilders on May 13, 2005. If you have a day to spare and would be interested to help, you may reach Arlyn through this email address (ARSamaniego@smart.com.ph) or through mobile # 0918-3371121 for details. Hope this will entice you to join us, as this is something worthwhile to experience firsthand. Many thanks!

"The only time it's OK to break up by text message is if the entire relationship consisted of text messaging." - Regina Lynn, Wired Magazine Over-the-air relationships are a tricky one. Gone are the days where the woman has to wait on her balcony for the guy to serenade her. Gone too are the days where she has to wait on the phone for his call. If its anything, women have gained a great advantage in today's modern age of dating and relationships. I sometimes come by WIRED Online and just this morning I read the Sex Column (the topic was not about sex, but about dating) of Regina Lynn, one of the more popular site columnisits. What struck me was how easy it was to get into a relationship nowadays. Meeting your boyfriend or girlfriend online is not something to be ashamed of anymore. Koreans for instance meet their significant others through World of Warcraft. Pinoy couples meet through Friendster and chatrooms. So all is well and dandy ... until something goes wrong. How do you remedy online relationships? How do you remedy a relationship wherein communication is not through voice but through VoIP? Check out her column. It's rather interesting.

...Find out what makes a gaming ("multimedia") laptop different from a regular laptop! ...Learn about Bluetooth and how it connects your devices together! ...Adel and Jayvee show you the different mobile gaming consoles in the market today! ...Organize your very own LAN party! All these and more this Saturday, April 23, on m|ph TV! 1:00 to 1:30 pm on ABC-5!

Today! Saturday, 1:00pm, marks the first episode of the TV version of the country's most authoritative mobile tech and lifestyle magazine -- m|ph TV! m|ph TV is choc-ful of tips, tech stuff and fun things you can do with your mobile devices! And it's presented in a light, easy to understand format that's sure to entertain! Let your m|ph hosts, Franco, Paolo and Jaymee, along with your loveable m|ph editors, guide you through a world of mobile technologies and the mobile lifestyle! Besides, isn't this a better viewing habit than watching yet another noontime variety show? In this first episode, Franco shows us how to transform our CDs into portable music files the easy way. Paolo looks into the different ways you can get to play your MP3 music on your car's stereo system. And Jaymee tells us all about MP3-playing cellphones. And look! Is that Poch and Adel giving us a rundown of the different types of MP3 players out there? m|ph TV! Saturdays, 1:00 to 1:30 pm on ABC 5!

You don't have to camp out at Grauman's Chinese Theater this early just to get ahead of everybody else for "Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith" (while anxiously wondering whether or not it will indeed be the first theater to screen it). Instead, why not just read the script right on your handheld device? Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith is now available as an eBook for your handheld, courtesy of eReader.com. It is the complete, final screenplay, and it even comes with full color images from the movie itself! Get to know how the story unfolds before everybody else. Check out the images that point the way to how the movie will look like. And heck, use your imagination for everything else (after all, that's what books and eBooks are all about!). The eBook is currently on sale for US$4.99, which could be a bargain price for those who would actually consider wasting more than a month of their life camping out at some questionable theater.

Welcome the iLog. I bet the acoustics are really great inside. Heh. Did I mention it has a recording function too? (unlike the iPod shuffle) Anti-termite varnish sold separately.

I earlier wrote about the FL200 being an iPod shuffle killer. Well, after getting hold of the unit, I say, I'm quite impressed. There's been an influx of LCD-less MP3 players and this one wins the carrot on a stick for design. It's just absolutely gorgeous. Well well well Mpio. The necklace MP3 player (256MB for P4,xxx.00) has something going for itself. The extremely small package doesn't come with a charger. Instead, it comes with a proprietary USB cable which connects to the ear phone outlet and is used to charge from your PC or Macintosh (I personally prefer this method of charging). The Li-Ion battery has a life of 8 hours on the average. I must note that the stylish earphones will not fit in a typical ear phone jack, becuase the hole is smaller than usual. Do check out the next issue of m|ph for a full review. Note: The only downside I've experienced is that since the player is so small and light, it tends to sway back and forth when jogging or even walking. No worries of it snapping though - there's a plastic lock mechanism that keeps the earphones locked into the speakers. Wow! Talk about design!

I'm still fiddling around with the new Nokiia 7710. The initial nostalgia I got treating it as a Star Trek Datapad died down after I saw how slow it was - my PC boots up faster than the phone unit. Speaking of THE phone, the 7710 does not resemble a communication device one bit. In fact, the 7710 is more multimedia center than phone. The form factor alone hints this - it looks like a small plasma TV. With regards to specs, the 7710 has a huge touch-sensitive 640x320 screen, a 1MP camera at the back, a whopping 90MB of internal (!) memory and support for external MMC storage up to 1GB (!!!). All that memory -- its for the movies and songs. The phone itself is quite slow, as I've mentioned. It takes a total of 5 seconds to open up the "reply" menu when sending text messages. Scrolling through contacts is also a hassle because you have to tap the starting letter of your friends' names and then scroll down all the iterations of "Ann", "Annabel", "Anne" to finally get to "Anwar"(ooh, do you watch American Idol??). The speed issue goes for opening videos, inputting text and basically all the other phone functions. Boo. You be the judge with the P32,xxx.00 retail price. What it is: It is the first attempt to create a convergence device boasting a portable media center and a phone. The multimedia features are just great - playing MP3's and viewing Realplayer videos is really worth showing off on this widescreen wonder. The phone actually trembles because of the bass (and its not sabog). Good job on that one, Nokia. What it's not: Bye bye one hand texting, hello pure stylus input. The phone has no keypad which means if you're looking for a PDA-phone combo, this might not be the one for you. Opt for the 9300 or 9500 Communicator instead. Check out our full review in the next issue of m|ph.

It's big! It's very, very blue! And --- for the first time in its very colorful (literally) history --- the cover actually features guys! Two of them, in fact! Meet Paolo, Jaymee and Franco, the hosts of -- get this -- m|ph TV! (More about this in a while) The electric blue April issue of m|ph shows you where to get terrific bargains on SD cards, along with a shootout of megapixel cameraphones, a primer on GPS navigation, a head-to-head between iPods and Creatives, music lists from real people, and a summer reviewer of interesting eBooks. Your editors discuss the tricky issue of software piracy, and you get another dose of Mobile Man. You also learn how to get your music player linked to your car's audio system. And of course you get a plethora of the most comprehensive device reviews out there! Meet the iPAQ 2110, iPAQ 2410 & iPAQ 2750, the Mac mini, the Nokia 6020, Jabra BT110, Canon PowerShot A510, Canon Digital IXUS 700, the O2 Xphone II, Rumba 2000 digital audio drive, and the Creative Zen PMC! And you will also get to know about m|ph TV, destined to be the most authoritative tech show in the local airwaves! Catch m|ph TV every Saturday beginning April 16, from 1:00-1:30pm, on ABC-5! But for now, catch this latest issue of m|ph!