Recently in Features Category

   As a response to one of our readers’ request, we are pitting the latest smartphones in the market against each other to see which one really stands out in this elite group. Actually, we are also quite curious ourselves to find out which is the best among the bunch as each one has a unique feature to offer that the others don’t have. As you can see in the table, there isn’t one phone that clearly dominated in all the categories. Take for example the Nokia E71. It does win in the camera, size and weight divisions, but it has the smallest display in the group with the best one goint to the 3G iPhone. While the iPhone may also be considered a winner in terms of internal memory, all the others support memory expansion which makes their total memory flexible although I doubt there’s an SD card available now that’ll match the iPhone's 16GB capacity. On the user interface side, QWERTY is still the most efficient way of entering long messages and composing e-mail, which makes the iPhone the blacksheep of the group albeit its highly advanced touchscreen. However, the Palm Treo Pro manages to incorporate both a touch screen interface and a QWERTY keypad into its design offering users a taste of both worlds. As far as the OS is concerned, that is a matter of preference. While the Mac OS X mobile version is relatively new in the market, it is fast gaining popularity and many developers are now releasing apps for the iPhone. Both Windows Mobile and S60 have been around for sometime now and they have their own respective community of developers. The Blackberry, on the other hand, also has its share of software developers though they're quite limited and not so visible as opposed to the others. Nonetheless, all of their respective mobile OS are equally capable and can get the job done at hand. It all boils down to how much you would like to expand its capabilities through 3rd party applications and additional software.   Clearly, there’s no one way to call this competition and it will all rely on what you need. If it’s a simple internet mobile device, the 3G iPhone is what we would recommend simply because the mobile Safari is unmatched in terms of performance. If it’s a serious business phone you’re after, you can’t go wrong with the Blackberry Bold, but considering its limited availability worldwide, I’d say its better to get the Nokia E71 or Palm Treo Pro instead though the latter is yet to be released. If you want an all-around performing device, the Nokia E71 gets my vote. However, if availability is a major concern, you'll narrow down the playing field to the iPhone and the Nokia E71 as both the BlackBerry Bold and Palm Treo Pro are not yet out in the local Philippine market.  But hey, this is just my opinion, how about you guys; which one's the best smartphone among the group for you?

Even though the unit you see in the picture is still just a pre-release model, it’s hard to deny that the HTC Touch HD does look better than the iPhone 3G thanks to its bigger and brighter display. As for the lack of flash, an interesting side-by-side comparison of the same photo taken indoors reveals that the Touch HD does quite a remarkable job in ambient lighting as opposed to the iPhone. However, the iPhone still has a slight advantage in terms of thickness ergonomic design although it looks a bit longer and wider than the Touch HD. So, aside from visual comparison of the two, how does HTC's latest device stack up to Apple’s mobile phone? Shown in the table below are the major areas where the two are completely different aside from the OS, of course. So which is better? While the HTC Touch HD does get my vote this early on, it’s still hard to say which one is exactly better due to how different Windows Mobile 6.1 is from Mac OS X mobile OS. The HTC Touch HD does have a bigger and better display and camera, but there’s more to a mobile smartphone than just those two features combined. We'll wait for the final product to come out before we make any final decision on this face-off, but I must admit, the HTC Touch HD does look quite impressive.

 

The weather is quite unpredictable nowadays; very hot and sunny in the morning, then it's suddenly raining cats and dogs in the afternoon. It’s times like these that you should have the right bag to protect your electronic gear, and the Targus Dash backpack is just what we would recommend.

It features more then enough compartments to keep everything organized, and provides ample padding to keep sensitive equipment such as your laptop protected at all times. There’s even dedicated wet compartment where you can store your umbrella or towel after a heavy downpour so that you won’t have to worry yourself about getting your other stuff wet.

There’s also a hidden rain cover that you can pull out to add that extra protective layer when the need arises. A built-in cable, security pocket, contoured padded backing and ergonomic shoulder straps provide that balance between security and comfort that is essential in the bags of today.

 

The Targus Dash backpack will set you back P3800 and comes with a lifetime warranty. It might seem a bit expensive for a bag, but think of it as an investment as it’ll surely protect whatever stuff you put in it from the elements. Targus products are exclusively distributed by MSI-ECS in the Philippines.

I exaggerate. But hey, it almost is. Once upon a time, a week before the Asian Crisis set in, I bought a black, Singapore-made IPC laptop. It was a pretty good unit for its time, save for the fact that the plastic casing seemed flimsy. It was a Pentium unit with 32MB of RAM, 4GB of hard disk space, an RCA Video Out port (a novelty, even today), and Windows 95. After a couple of years of usefulness, the unit got stashed away in some dark nook. Unfortunately, it turns out that it was a rather humid nook. Almost a decade later, I uncovered the laptop and, to my horror, was faced with crumbling plastic and a moisture-savaged LCD screen. I had this poor thing revived at SST Laptop n PC Shop at the Cyberzone of SM Megamall, and they did what they can to salvage the thing. Including replacing the dead LCD lid with one from a Toshiba Satellite. A dull gray one. It was the closest fit, I suppose. That, plus the putty-work that was done to salvage the disintegrating plastic, led to the monstrosity seen here. Note how the lid is much larger than the body. But amazingly, it works! My old Windows 95 booted up without a hitch, and memories flooded back as I saw old files and programs come to life. The shop did its best to make the unit look a tad presentable, eventually covering the horridly drab lid in black tape. Total cost: just a thousand pesos, which was a steal considering that they patiently puttied the thing together and gave me a replacement lid. After ten minutes playing with my Frankenstein laptop, however, I shut it down, tucked it away in lots of silica gel, and forgot about it. There simply isn't much that one can do on a computer that ran Windows 95, had no USB ports, and only had a floppy drive to let you extract its files. I know, I know, there's Linux. I'll get to it sometime...

I've had my laptop for over a year and a half now, but I've never really given it a thorough cleaning. So you could imagine the kind of dust and dirt that it has accumulated by now. I decided that it was high time that I gave my overworked tool a decent tidying up. There are a number of high-end, expensive laptop cleaners out there, but nothing beats good old-fashioned (and very cheap) MC Multi-Purpose Cleaning Cream, available at your local groceries and hardware stores. It's non-reactive, which means that it's very safe on your equipment's surfaces, and it instantly lifts off all sorts of grime. Its carnauba wax component should also give a microscopic layer of protection for your device. What's more, it's so safe that you could even use it on your LCD screens. Also needed: a soft cleaning rag (available via your favorite street vendor... or much, much cheaper bought by the bolt at Divisoria), and possibly cotton buds.
Here's a step-by-step of the cleaning process: Step One: Remove all power sources. Unplug your laptop and remove its battery pack/s. This is because you're bound to hit your power button several times over during the course of cleaning, and you wouldn't want your laptop doing hiccups now. Step Two: General cleaning. Give your laptop a general rubdown. The nice thing about MC cleaning cream is that it's so cheap and safe that you could smother your device in it and not worry much. With the soft cloth, apply the MC cream throughout your laptop, even on the LCD screen, and use a dry part of your cloth to rub it clean. Dirt lifts off easily. Step Three: Clean the keyboard. This is perhaps the most challenging laptop component to tidy up. Unless you have one of those new MacBooks, your keyboard is bound to have deep recesses that do a good job of sucking in dirt and grime. Warning: this step will take a lot of time. The good news is that you could still use MC cream here, applying liberally on the keyboard itself and rubbing the keys clean. The cream would also go into the recesses, but don't worry. We'll take care of that next. Here's the tedious part. In order to clean the recesses of your keys without having to disassemble your keyboard, do this: (1) Press down on adjacent keys; (2) Slip the edge of your cloth underneath your target key; (3) Press down on your target key so that it will push your cloth against the keyboard's base; (4) Slide your rag out so that it cleans the base; and (4) repeat for all your keys. Agh! (If anybody has a faster way of doing this, let me know!)
Step Four: Touch up hard-to-reach areas. Use the edge of your cloth, or use cotton buds, to clean areas that are difficult to reach, including laptop edges and grooves. It took some time to clean it up, but my laptop feels fresh again. Phew! I hope I need not do this again for another year and a half...

What would you do with an 8.0 megapixel camera? It's a valid question considering that even just 3.2 megapixels can already give you decent archive-quality photos. Well, megapixel-rich cameras like the Olympus Mju DIGITAL 800 (reviewed in our upcoming issue of m|ph) have one potential killer application: Document capture mode. It allows you to take a picture of a full page of a document with sufficient detail to actually make it readable when viewed on a monitor or printed out later on. Truth be told, even a 3.2 megapixel camera does a fair job of capturing a regular 8.5x11" document, provided that it contains font sizes of 12 and up. Font size 10 is tolerable. But at font size 9, the punctuations start becoming difficult to make out. And at font size 7, you start having to guess what some of the characters are. But with a large enough resolution and a fast shutter speed, capturing even the fine print on legal documents should be a breeze. Students can then use their cameras to reproduce pages from books, or even to quickly copy their classmates' notes. It would be great to have a camera-phone with an 8-megapixel "document scanner" mode, but that's probably still a couple of years away.

Was doing some Digging yesterday and found WIRED.com's listing of the best of 2005. Two of the more interesting lists are 2005 Best Tech Moments and 2005's Sexiest Geeks which, unfortunately do not include any of the m|ph editors. Entries to note include the $100.00 Negroponte laptop and the up-top-date blogging of the Katrina disaster. How the servers were kept running? Well that's why it made tech's shining moment for 2005. As for the sexiest geeks, if Gawker Media's Nick Denton made it to the list, I wonder why Leo Laporte of TWiT, Jason Calacanis, or even Hugh McLeod didn't. *shrug*

In my experience of reviewing phones there are several questions I would have wanted to ask but forgot, due to the excitement of tinkering with the demo unit in front of the sales guy. The great thing about reviewing phones is that I get to take a more in depth road test which usually lasts for a week or more. Here are some things that consumers should be testing out for themselves:

It's hard to test the signal strength. When buying a new phone, make sure there's a SIM card (or whatever if its CDMA) inserted and ask permission if you could walk into an enclosed area to see if the signal seeps through. If you can't do this then you could ask for user feedback. Some of the newer phones don't have a very good signal indoors, like the N90. Those fancy built-in antennas can be a pain. Ask how many contacts the phone can accomodate. Sony Ericsson has that annoying problem of only being able to store 510 contacts despite their huge memory capacity, which is not allocated to phonebook memory. How tragic, how irresponsible. Find out if the phone can do multiple fields per contact. Motorola phones for instance don't this (like the E398). Nokia and Sony Ericsson can have just one contact with several entries for FAX, Home, Mobile and Email. My gosh, if you could drop the phone to test its durability then do so. Some sales people actually do this. I remember a Samsung guy opening a clamshell and getting a mallet. He pounded the hinge where the screen and keypad were connected really hard just to prove how durable it was. I almost fainted.

UPDATE: You can subscribe to the Philippine Podcasts by following these instructions, care of Elbert from PhilMUG: Fire up iTunes, select Advanced from the menu and Subscribe to podcast... Then enter the following URL: http://www.microwarehouse.com.ph/podcast.xml From there, you can 'Get' any of the available Pinoy podcasts. Woot! I just love good news. It's news like this that makes me proud to be Pinoy. You see, I just came from an event of monumental proportions - the launch of the Philippine Podcasting Network. Since you all read our mag, you must already know that podcasting is the newest medium of broadcasting that empowers anybody to have a voice over the airwaves. Spearheaded by Microwarehouse, a total of 25 original local podcasts will be uploaded into the iTunes Music Store, thereby allowing anyone around the world to get a glimpse of the rich Filipino culture. We'll give you an update as to when these podcasts will go live on iTunes, all ready for download - for free! Some of the more interesting podcasts include Jessica Zafra's Twisted (she's abandoned traditional media ladies and gents so this is the only place you'll hear her), the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism channel, Gayspeak by Danton Remoto, The Fully Booked book reviews, Red Box Greatest Karaoke Hits (hehe!), and the timeless Kahapon Lamang by local broadcasting luminary Eddie Ilarde. We also got several friends who contribute to our magazine with their very own podcasts. You can listen in on The Fabulous! Podcast by Dominique James as well as the PhilMUG and Podcentral podcasts. Of course, we at m|ph also have our own podcast. Since you'll have to wait a few more days, we've decided to upload it onto our site. You can download our first podcast HERE. Booya!

Some time ago, Sony issued a controversial memo announcing that no more than 20 CD titles have been released containing what was called an XCP protection software that was similar to Microsoft's DRM technology. As it turns out, there's more to it than meets the eye. XCP is a rootkit-style software that installs itself deep into the computer without the consent of the user. Hmm. Wait a minute. Sounds more like malware to me! In fact the entire world has reached a concensus that this XCP rootkit is indeed a virus that can become a security threat to Windows itself. Microsoft has declared the XCP as hazardous to MS Windows because not only can it disable your CD-ROM drive, but it also opens a gateway to a wide-spreading virus for Windows. It's so rampant that Symantec has released a security response to remove the XCP-drawn virus.

The software giant said a key part of the XCP copy protection system counted as malicious software under the rules it uses to define what Windows should be protected against. It plans to include detection and removal tools for parts of XCP in its weekly anti-spyware software update. The news came as Sony BMG suspended production of CDs that use XCP.

How exactly does XCp destroy your CD-ROM drive?

Sony's anti-piracy program installer pops up when you drop one of these content-protected CDs into your drive. If you agree to install it, there is no "uninstall" feature. Russinovich was able to use his knowledge of rootkits and the Windows operating system to zero in on the offending driver files needed to run the software. Unfortunately, he found that removing the program also erased the system files that power his CD-ROM drive, rendering it useless.

c/o Brian of Security Fix (Washington Post Blog) There is a partial list here and here of albums that contain this XCP copy protection. These albums include titles such as Foo Fighters' In Your Honor and Switchfoot's Nothing Is Sound. Sony claimed that these copy-protected CD's number no more than 20 titles but from indie surveys and blogger counts, the number is in the 50's. It has to be noted that the XCP protection scheme was only used in CD's sold in the United States. Is this a preview of things to come? With the bad publicity the XCP DRM has generated, Sony might have to rethink their overall strategy for world domination as well as make several apologies suspending the DRM technology bundled in their CD's.