Quantcast Mobile Philippines: May 2005 Archives

May 2005 Archives

We've been fooled! Long have I been trying out cleansing solutions that cost an arm and a leg, that guarantee to clean any piecec of technology in a jiffy. The latest one I tried was that two-piece plastic sachet with a solution allegedly composed of 90% Steve Jobb's sweat. my mom's new best friend! However, my friend recommended this really great cleaning solution that REALLY CLEANS my iBook. Now, from a depressing mother-of-pearl color, it is now back to pristine Apple(TM) white! You can buy the Mr. Clean Magic Super Eraser (names vary in international market) from any True Value branch. I just got mine yesterday from Shangri-La mall but I hear the one in Parksquare has a ton of em lying around too. One of these magic erasers will cost you P49.75, which should be cut into strips to make efficient use of space. I pity the drool! All I did was cut a half inch strip off and soaked it in water. After squezing the water out, I began to wipe my iBook, charger, Coolpad, mouse, and then my microwave oven. By golly! It really cleans, just like those infomercials we see on TV - except that this time, there are no camea tricks! One swipe does a very good job! Read user testimonials here!! Another reason why I know this stuff works? My mom got hooked on a cleaning spree after I gave her one pack.

The Daily Gadget

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hats off to alan! When I was beginning my stint as a tech writer, I would often check out Alan's Daily Gadget. Formerly from a group called PDA Avenue where co-editor Howard was very involved with, Alan parted ways to found his new project, The Daily Gadget. Tech, news, and pop culture are the main foci of his site. Recently, he revamped the online forum and made it look more like a tech blog, similar to Engadget and err .. m|ph!
As a top-of-the-line model, the LifeDrive has several wireless options built in: infrared, Bluetooth (1.2--oops, a fact check showed that it's only 1.1), and Wi-Fi (802.11b). For a long time now, Palm users on many a message board have been screaming for a Palm handheld with Wi-Fi. And really, they can’t be blamed, because top-of-the-line PDAs from most other manufacturers had it. They thought it would come in the Tungsten|T3, but it did not. Then the T5 came out, and it did not have Wi-Fi. The SD Wi-Fi card provided little consolation because of the price (P8,000) and the fact that it worked only with a few models. Bluetooth has been present on many palmOne models from the Tungsten|T onwards, so that’s nothing new. It’s still a rather useful feature if you have other Bluetooth-enabled devices such as phones and laptops. You can leave your sync cable behind and HotSync via Bluetooth when on the road, and can connect to the internet with your phone in a pinch. Even IR has its uses in this day and age. I find that it’s the most convenient way of sending over a contact to a cell phone. But Wi-Fi is easily the most anticipated feature of this handheld, because it multiplies the LifeDrive’s usability several times. Whereas large-screen models like the T3 and the T5 were useful for working on office documents—even large spreadsheets—they were limited to just working on documents. Wi-Fi adds a kind of immediacy to the work you do with the LifeDrive, like pulling down some data from the Web, reading and responding to an urgent email, sending out updated versions of Word or Excel files. If need be, you can also connect to your office server via VPN, though I never had a chance to try it as our office network wasn’t set up for it. But I had not trouble accessing other sites, whether through open hotspots (at home) or public, commercial ones (I tried it out on Airborne Access, which gives every LifeDrive buyer a two-month free subscription). Overall, I still think that a PDA screen makes for cramped browsing, and it’s not something that I would do for extended periods. But definitely, Wi-Fi makes the LifeDrive much more useful, and there are many occasions when I would rather much bring a LifeDrive and a wireless keyboard instead of my laptop and still get as much work done. Conclusion: The LifeDrive has some rough edges, but that’s pretty much expected for a first product in a new class of handhelds. It’s the most full-featured handheld in the market right now, so the rather steep price is justified. I’d recommend it to early adopters who are willing to put up with a few shortcomings, and to those who’ve sat out the upgrade cycle for the last couple of years.
3.85 gig of hard drive space is way too much for work files. And all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy anyway. The LifeDrive is meant to keep tons of multi-media files: photos, music, videos. An iPod this ain’t, but it can make a serviceable replacement for an iPod shuffle or iPod mini. Pocket Tunes has replaced Real Player as the default MP3 player, and it looks and works better. It’s skinnable, and the D-pad works for adjusting volume and moving to the next or previous track. If you only have MP3s (and doesn’t nearly everyone?), you’ll be fine with Pocket Tunes. But if you have other formats, like Ogg Vorbis, WMA, or AAC, you’ll have to get other programs. AeroPlayer, and old favorite of mine, can handle Ogg Vorbis, MP3, and AAC files (the player is free if you only have Ogg Vorbis files). Upgrading to the Deluxe version of Pocket Tunes will give you WMA functionality as well as the ability to stream internet radio on the LifeDrive. The Core Media Player (TCMP), a free, open source project, will also let you play Ogg, MP3, and AAC files, as well as video. The interface could use a lot of improvement (no playlists, only play and pause), but it’s free so it’s hard to complain. For this test I copied over nearly 800MB of MP3 and AAC files, and all three players handled the files well. Of the three, Pocket Tunes seemed to be using some sort of caching function and was accessing the hard drive much less frequently compared to the other two, and will probably give the longest playing time. In a very informal test, I ran TCMP for an hour and that brought battery life down to 50%. I then switched to Pocket Tunes, and played for another two hours, which brought battery capacity down to 34%. On the LifeDrive, battery life really varies depending on how efficiently programs use the hard drive. Though I never ran the battery down playing only music, I’d bet that the LifeDrive will run for at least 6 hours using Pocket Tunes. I also dumped 150MB worth of photos from my trip to Lucban. Each photo was 1600 by 1200 pixels in dimension, and about 1.5MB in size. Playing them back as a slide show on the LifeDrive was a breeze as the LifeDrive scaled them down to the 320 by 480 screen. My only quibble is that it cropped the photos since the screen didn’t correspond to the 3 x 4 orientation of most of the pictures. 3.85 gigs isn’t that much space for holding movies, but it can hold at least a couple and leave you enough space for music, photos, and work files. I’m not a true believer in portable video (yet), mainly because the time and effort it takes to either rip or hunt down videos on the Web is far from being a mainstream activity. It just ain’t as effortless and as quick as ripping songs from a CD. But for those who have either the patience or the links to online videos, you’ll be disappointed to discover that the Media player is rather limited. After loading a bunch of video files into the LifeDrive, it only recognized the video clips form my camera (in .avi format) and the LifeDrive flash presentation (in .asf format). The Quicktime trailers and ads and DivX/Xvid files weren’t recognized. Good thing there was TCMP to the rescue. It recognized and played back (some) of the .mov files and all the DivX/Xvid files. Smoothly. I didn’t have to resize the videos or run them through some kind of converter. I just copied them over in Drive Mode and then opened them in TCMP. Then came a rather unpleasant surprise. When I looped an Alias episode and let it play with brightness set on 50%, the LifeDrive gave out a low-batt warning after 1-1/2 hours, and then quit after another six minutes. That’s not even enough to finish watching a movie. The LifeDrive’s battery capacity is actually decent—1660 mAh, according to one web source. But it seems that TCMP doesn’t do any caching, and was almost constantly accessing the hard drive. The limited-function media player and the short battery life when using other video players make the LifeDrive a so-so video player only. Tomorrow: Bluetooth? Check. Wi-Fi? Check.
Although palmOne is adamant about not calling this a PDA (it’s a Mobile Manager, for God’s sake ;-)), it’s only logical to use their previous high-end PDAs—the Tungsten|T3 and T5—as the starting point for looking at the LifeDrive’s specs. Before proceeding to describe what’s new, let’s list down what’s not new. The processor is the same as the one on the T5: a 416-megahertz Intel Xscale processor. The screen is the same as that of the T3 and the T5, as far as I can tell. Good, but nothing great. The stock apps are all there, with the addition of a new music player (Pocket Tunes), a Wi-Fi connection manager, and the new Camera Companion app for transferring photos from an SD card to the LifeDrive. The memory, at 64MB, is the same non-volatile kind found in the T5 and Treo 650. The hard drive—an IBM MicroDrive—is the biggest thing about the LifeDrive, of course. The drive has a capacity of 4 gigabytes, but “only

I’m glad to see that the LifeDrive is smaller than I imagined it to be. The initial rumors on the Web said that it was twice as thick as the Tungsten|T5. Well, if you want to be technical about it, it’s about 1-1/4 times as thick as the T5 (15 mm vs 19 mm). It’s Palm’s biggest handheld so far, but its not so big that you can’t pocket it. Granted, it’ll be a tight fit in your shirt pocket, but who carries PDAs around in his shirt pocket anyway? It will slip easily into your pants pocket, although you might get funny looks of the “Is that a rocket in your pocket…

May Day!

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It’s big! It’s beautiful! And it comes in a delicious, summery green mango flavor! The May issue of m|ph is at your news stands, and what an issue it is! o Get to know some of the biggest movers and shakers of the Philippine mobile scene! o Mothers talk! Get device tips from some pretty tech-savvy moms! o Learn about eStandard's insurance service to protect your precious cellphone against theft! o Take a tour of the different USB flash drives available today! o Get to know Dominique James, digital photographer with an edge! o And of course we review a whole slate of mobile devices, from the Canon EOS 350D digital camera to the Nextbase SDV185-A Tablet DVD Player, and from the MPIO FL200 MP3 player to the Apacer Disc Steno CP-200. Plus lots of other goodies! So get out and get your May fix before it vanishes from the shelves!

Random Thoughts

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Okay, this will be a bit of a geeky rant. But my MP3 player keeps playing Wang Chung’s “Hypnotize Me
It's all about stretching your mobile budget! So get some cost-saving tips right here! o Adel and Jayvee give you some cheapskate substitutes to mobile accessories! o Learn the scoop about low-priced laptops! o Know what to look for when getting your first mobile device! o Find out how push can help cut down on your text expenses! All these and more this Saturday, May 14, on m|ph TV! 1:00 to 1:30 pm on ABC-5!

Yeah, ba!

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One way for you to cut down on your texting expenses is to use a mobile instant messenger app. With instant messenger apps on your cellphone, such as those by Agile and Yahoo!, you can steer away from paying one peso per SMS text and instead course your messages via GPRS. After all, while SMS costs one peso per 160 characters, GPRS costs around 25 centavos per 1,000 characters. You do the math. Well, now comes YehBA*, a new instant messenger app that was launched just a few days ago. Like other mobile instant messenger apps, it allows you to take advantage of your GPRS connection to send messages via the internet, allowing you to chat with folks on Yahoo! and MSN messenger. But what sets YehBA* apart is its potential ability to send messages via Bluetooth! D3Systems plans to roll out so-called "Bluezones," which will allow you to eventually use Bluetooth-enabled mobile devices to send and receive messages-- even if your device isn't exactly a cellphone! Imagine sending and receiving instant messages via your PDA even if it isn't synced to your phone! For now, however, YehBA* is currently available only for the following Nokia phones: 6680, 6681, 3230, 6670, 6260, 6630, 7610, 6620, and 6600. Download the free app from here. My take: Bluezones? The concept is intriguing... and yet, do we really need another kind of hotspot? The company seems to be gambling on the hope that Bluetooth will eventually become a dominant means for interconnectivity (even as others predict that Bluetooth will eventually be swallowed up by new WiFi standards). Time will tell...

Ode to my first digital camera

This was my first digital camera, a Kodak Digital Science DC20, which I got in early 1997. With a top resolution of just 493x373 pixels, this entry-level digital camera stores up to 16 pictures in its 1 MB of RAM. That was low-end high tech back then. No flash, no zoom (not even digital), no LCD display. Just point-and-shoot "instamatic" fun. The funny thing about the DC20 is that even if it was equipped with a CCD (charge coupled device) imaging chip, the resulting pictures display the washed out look that is typical of CMOS sensors (which are found in your typical cellphone). The reason for this is that the DC20 actually uses CCD chips that were designed for video cameras -- they have 2:1 ratio rectangular pixels, which the camera then extrapolates into three pixels each. Video cam CCDs were used since these were cheaper due to manufacturing volumes back then. Despite the washed out pictures, however, the DC20 is fair enough for taking web pictures. And the nice thing is that my unit still works! So I can actually try to take some pix with this for blog entries... ...if only I have the patience enough to install its COM-port dependent setup, heheh...

This Week on m|ph TV...

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...See how far a PDA can go as a mobile office! ...Find out just what WiFi hotspots can do for your work and for your social life! ...Learn what a Personal Access Network is all about! ...And get to know a real-life mobile warrior, Chito Reyes! All these and more this Saturday, May 7, on m|ph TV! 1:00 to 1:30 pm on ABC-5!

My Not-So-Smart Wrap

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Okay, this is embarrassing. With my earphone wires snagging everywhere while I go to and fro about the MRT, I decided that I really needed to get a Sumajin SmartWrap – except that I’m too cheap to buy one. I tried using twist-ties to manage my wiring, but it just didn’t feel right, particularly because of the way it made the wires bunch together awkwardly. The real Sumajin SmartWrap So I thought, why not just make my own SmartWrap? After all, it’s a fairly simple plastic item. It shouldn’t be so hard to make a do-it-yourself version, right? And so I did. The result? Well, let’s just call it the ScrapWrap (head hanging in shame)…
Cheap DVD case - four pesos onlyThe first step was to select a suitable material for my planned SmartWrap clone. It has to be firm, yet pliable enough to be cut by a good pair of scissors (since I had no access to an industrial lathe). After much searching, I finally decided to use a DVD case. It was made of the kind of thin plastic that fit my requirements. Plus, it was only four pesos each at CD-R King, heheh.
Edward Scissorhands would tremble with fear...And so with a pair of scissors I proceeded to murder this piece of plastic and to sculpt out my planned SmartWrap. I had the design clearly in my mind. After all, what’s a SmartWrap but a piece of plastic that’s shaped like a stylized femur, with notches on both ends for you to snap your wire into place? That shouldn’t be so hard to make! At least that’s what I thought. In reality, yes it wasn’t hard to make. But that assumes that you don’t give a flying fig to just what it ends up looking like.
WARNING: This image can induce nightmaresAnd… here it is. My ScrapWrap. Horror of horrors. I test drove my ScrapWrap, and I have to admit that it worked on at least one level: the wires did snap crisply into place on both ends, and it was functional enough to manage my wiring for me. Aesthetically though, as you can see, it is a nightmare, jagged edges and all. The only way I can take this along is if I buried it completely under coils and coils of wiring. And there is one other big problem with my ScrapWrap: because it’s made of flat plastic, I noticed that my earphone wires ended up getting way too sharply folded after being wrapped around it, which could lead to a risk of cutting through the wire’s insulation at worse (the jagged edges didn't help at all). So it may not exactly be good for your earphones’ health. By contrast, a real SmartWrap has gently curved edges which do not threaten to slice your wiring. At any rate, because of this monstrosity (or perhaps out of pity), a good friend of mine decided to give me a real Sumajin SmartWrap. So now you can see the difference between the real thing and my sorry-looking ScrapWrap!
I tried. I really tried...
Hmmm. If there’s a moral to this story, it might be this: If you want something bad enough, try making it yourself. Sooner or later, someone’s bound to feel sorry enough for you to give you the real deal.

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This page is an archive of entries from May 2005 listed from newest to oldest.

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