July 2007 Archives

By Joey Alarilla INQUIRER.net JUST how tough is the Toughbook? Here's a video I took for iVDO when Alex Villafania and I covered the Kickstart As ia 2007 information technology forum held last week in Bintan, Indonesia. T hat's Linus Lim, sales and marketing executive for IT Products, Wireless Commun ication Division of Panasonic Systems Asia Pacific, giving the demo. Check out Alex's Toughbook story for INQUIR ER.net Infotech.

By Alex Villafania INQUIRER.net ONCE in a while, an electronic device manufacturer would try and compete with A pple in the portable MP3 device market. Most of the competition would try to ma ke theirs look as simple as the iPod that they end up looking like the iPod. Korean electronics giant Samsung has previously attempted to enter the MP3 devi ce business with their small Yepp series. Now, the company is stretching its le gs as it launched the K3 series. Not surprisingly, it looks like the iPod nano and because it is somewhat a clone of Apple's mid-range MP3 player, the K3 admi ttedly looks good. The unit is just slightly longer than the nano but is just as thick. It has a s tainless frame lining while top is covered in seamless colored laminated glass with a large black-tinged LCD. The K3 comes in three colors: black, green and m aroon. When powered up, unit reveals the navigation control buttons, which are touch-s ensitive lighted icons consisting of a four-way directional icon, a middle "ent er" button and two upper buttons that serve as "exit" and "options" selectors. The unit comes with a white earphone about 2 1/2 feet long and a proprietary US B transfer and charging cable, as well as a CD that contains the Samsung softwa re. In some cases, the K3 would turn heads because of its similarities to the iPod nano as well as due to its slightly larger frame. The LCD is also quite good. U nlike the nano which has a white backlight, the K3 uses a black backlight and e verything else (text, equalizer, battery and volume indicator, etc) is in whit e or blue. While it cannot be used to viewvideos, the unit can display photos, though the color quality is not as good as on the iPod. Surprisingly, the K3 c an view text -- not the type that you send on your mobile phone but documents i n text format. This featur, however, is very limited. On the other hand, the K3 has an internal radio tuner and works much better tha n the iPod's own attachable radio tuner. While it has no antenna, it can receiv e weak transmissions even inside buildings or while in a moving vehicle. The K3 's radio system is pretty solid and first-time users can easily navigate throug h different stations by just holding down the left or right navigation button u ntil a signal is found. Once a station is located, it can be saved as a preset station and all the user has to do is to press on the left and right buttons to change channels. It would have been helpful though if the manufacturer added a title capability on the unit. Though the K3 does sound enticing, the interface is not exactly as user-friendly as it should be. The radio navigation may be e asy, but browsing through the songs isn't; the songs are listed down according to artists! Users of the K3 will not be able to navigate according to song title, genre or frequency of playback for a song. Browsing for a particular song or artist mean s going through the entire list. Sure you can build a playlist through the PC b ut having a playlist on the fly would have been convenient. Another problem of the K3 is the extremely sensitive navigation panel. Literall y, it's touch-sensitive and users can inadvertently change to the next song or increase the volume or stop the playback while casually holding the unit. There is, however, a locking mechanism on the right side of the K3 (which also serve s as the power up button) but that means finicky users will have to keep toggli ng the lock on and off just to control the volume or change the songs. The supe rsensitive navigation control buttons become annoying at times. On the other hand, the unit's saving grace is the surprisingly easy-to-use soft ware, the Samsung Media Studio, which is similar to Apple iTunes. The Media Stu dio scans the hard disk for all multimedia files, and most of these files can j ust be dragged and dropped into the K3. The files' ID3 tags can be changed on t he PC but not when these files are already in the K3. This is a more or less go od thing, however, as it forces users to clean up their ID3 tags from the PC. It's also on the Media Studio that users can add playlists so that they could c hange the choices of genres or artists in the K3. Of course, an MP3 player wouldn't be an MP3 player if it's not about the sound. Luckily, the K3 can reproduce quite respectable audio on most of the frequency channels. The earphones are still in stereo but using a semi-professional (and expensive) headset would let you appreciate just how good the sound is. In fa ct, the K3 sounds as good as the iPod nano especially when the nano's earphones are used on the K3. Overall, the Samsung YP-K3 is a good alternative to the iPod nano, if only for its near-perfect sound and solid design. However, the designers should make som e changes to the extremely sensitive navigation controls and also include opti ons to play music based on artists, title and genre. Other than these problems, the K3 deserves a market of audiophiles who want a fresh change from the iPod.

By Joey Alarilla INQUIRER.net YUP. trust the Japanese to come up with something as cool as a robot that pours your beer for you. OK, it's a serious waste of money at a price of supposedly $799, and it takes a bout three minutes to pour beer when you can do it in seconds, but you have to agree the Asahi Beerbot looks awesome, heh :) Too bad, it's supposed to be out of st ock right now. Check out the video.

By Alex Villafania INQUIRER.net COMMERCIAL electronics company Nokia is leading the pack in the latest list of "green electronics companies" of international environmental group Greenpeace. The quarterly "Guide to Greener Elect ronics" also puts Dell, Lenovo, and Sony Ericsson at the top of the list of around a dozen global electronics firms evaluated by Greenpeace. Other companies considered "green" in the list are Motorola, Samsung, Toshiba, Acer, Fujitsu-Siemens, Apple, HP, Panasonic LGE and Sony. However, the last six companies are still in the latest guide's "red zone" for weak take-back programs of end-of-life products, not removing hazardous chemica ls in their products, or lack of policies on conducting both. The "Guide to Greener Electronics" is a ranking system identifying computer and electronics companies that have product recycling policies as well as removal of hazardous substances in their products and processing. As of their latest June report, Greenpeace noted that many companies are alread y pressed to implement product take-back and recycling, as well as removing the use of hazardous materials (lead, mercury, PVC) in their products. Greenpeace Southeast Asia Toxic Campaigner Beau Bacongius said there are more f irms to that will be implementing cleaner measures. Bacongius also said that the purpose of the guide is to promote change among th e larger companies, which should trickle down to their partners and smaller com ponent firms, such as original electronics manufacturers. She said these same OEMs also create products for the do-it-yourself market of computer builders. "Eventually, companies will build environment-friendly devices and would have e ffective take back and recycling measures," Bacongius said. Editor's note: Photo by Lea Guerrero, Greenpeace

By Joey Alarilla INQUIRER.net WILL the 2008 race to determine who will be t he world's most powerful man or woman hinge on YouTube? You might think so, the way the candidates in the 2008 US presidential election s are trying to rock the vote via YouTube and other online video sites. Of cour se, the YouTube clip that has really caught everyone's attention is the sexy "I Got a Crush...On Obama" By Obama Girl. As if Barack Obama weren't already popular, heh. It doesn't hurt that Obama Girl is sexy model/actress Amber Lee Ettinger, who lip-synchs the vocal s provided by Leah Kaufmann. Photo courtesy of Amber's official site. Here's the YouTube video clip in case you haven't seen it yet. You can also check out the Obama Girl blog and BarelyPolitical.com. Here's an excerpt from an Associated Press article on the so-called YouTube Ele ction:

Given all that's at stake in the 2008 presidential race, it's a bit terrifying to realize that by one measure, a major role is being played by an aspiring model/actress/fashion designer/former beauty pageant contestant named Amber. That's Amber Lee Ettinger, aka Obama Girl, whose racy Web video "I Got A Crush On Obama" has gotten well over 2 million hits in the three weeks it's been onli ne, making it one of the most-watched political videos this season. Some of us have gotten so used to our daily fix of Web videos, it's hard to rem ember that back in 2004, when President Bush spoke of "the Internets," there WA S no YouTube. Three years later, people are calling this the "YouTube Election" -- in which a nyone with a minicam or even a mere cell phone can conceivably impact the outco me. "Some of the best, the most innovative stuff is gonna come from some voter out there, who changes the entire complexion of the race," says Joe Trippi, for mer campaign manager for Howard Dean in 2004, now adviser to the John Edwards c ampaign. And that's a scary thing for campaigns, which are used to controlling their own message, enforcing it from the top down. On the new playing field, "you lose t he ability to manage what you want to say," says Democratic strategist Chris Le hane, a former Clinton White House staffer. So what's a campaign manager to do? Fight back, with all the technology availab le: MySpace and Facebook profiles, candidates' own online communities, text-mes saging networks.

Of course, it wouldn't be a YouTube Election and a Web 2.0 world without a vide o parody, heh :) Check out Hott 4 Hill< /a>, where Taryn Southe rn spoofs the Obama Girl video and declares she has a crush on Hill. Hill of course is the other very popular Democratic aspirant for US president, Hillary Clinton. Taryn' s photo courtesy of her official site. Here's the Hott 4 Hill YouTube clip.

By Lawrence Casiraya INQUIRER.net WATCH out, Google. Yahoo! is out to conquer the world one country at a time. Yahoo! is localizing its services in its goal of building communities that cons equently, produce tons of local content. Flickr recently announced multilingual versions. And isn't it just timely that co-founder Jerry Yang is taking over a gain as CEO? Yahoo! is more aggressive this side of the world than rival Google , I think. During the recent launch of Yahoo! Pinoy Co nnect, I asked Tom Sipple, Yahoo! managing director for Southeast Asia, about t his "go local" (I coined that term myself) strategy. Here's what he had to say.

By Erwin Oliva INQUIRER.net WHILE we Filipinos (and Asians in genera l) will only have a chance to get our hands on the iPhone next year, some have jumped into the bandwagon and bought themselves one. One of them (as shown in photo) is Elbert Cuenca, now a personal Mac trainer an d former executive of a local distributor of Apple products. Apple executives that we have talked to, local mobile phone companies included, have been mum on the iPhone's anticipated entry in the local market. So for no w, we can only drool (that is if you worship the very earth Steve Jobs stands o n), and wait for this product to come to our shores. This may sound cheesy, but the iPhone will remain the Apple of our eyes, at le ast for now. Does that make any sense or am I just too darn corny :)

By Joey Alarilla INQUIRER.net SHARP Japan claims its newly introduced Aquos G-series has the world's thinnest body for a high-definition LCD TV at a sexy 8.1 centimeters. Check it out for yourself in these photos courtesy of Agence France-Presse. Oh, and the babes don't look bad either, heh :)