June 2008 Archives

By Erwin Oliva INQUIRER.net SINGAPORE--I took a 30-minute break on the first day of this year's CommunicAsia 2008 summit to loo k around. I quickly noticed old and new names dotting the spacious venue here i n Singapore Expo, a large exhibition and meeting area close to the airport. Spanning 47,000 square meter of space, the exhibition area alone is overwhelmin g. There are also a host of talks on different topics. I found familiar and ne w brands among the 1,500 exhibitors from overseas. According to the organizers, there are 22 countries, including the Philippines, participating in this year' s exhibit and conference. And just to complete the experience, queues during lu nch time are long. Finding a seat proved a challenge everyday. Here's a video I took to give you a walkthrough. And here's a bird's eye view. This year, I found more Asian brands outnumbering known brands in mobile handse ts. Sony Ericsson, for one, is not part of this year's CommunicAsia. Nokia, on the other hand, has not been a participant of this biggest telecommunications s how in Asia for years. Samsung and LG, both Korean companies, launched separate ly their new handsets. Meanwhile, newer players include Garmin Corp., which sh owcased a mobile phone and GPS (global positioning system) device that can work on a third-generation mobile phone network. Frequent visitors to CommunicAsia observed that the number of attendees this ye ar has seemingly gone down. Day 2 proved a bit disappointing for some exhibitor s who were expecting more people by this time. In my brief tour, I saw some in teresting technologies. A small French company called Alioscopy had a 3D displa y that literally caught my eye. You won't need special glasses to see animated 3D images popping from a flat screen display in this French company's booth. Ac cording to the company's flyer, video content can be rendered in 3D using softw are. To put it simply, it was a wonderful sight to see. Imagine playing compute r games or watching "Kung Fu Panda" in 3D right in your living room. In another booth of Panasonic, I was instantly lured when I saw a big sign that said "Toughbook." Apparently, there remains a market for rugged notebooks. One unit was placed behind a glass box as it was drenched with water. Down in SingTel's booth, I found a mock setup of a F1, which gave people a tast e of what it's like to be behind the wheels. (There will be an F1 race in Singa pore this year). What made this display interesting is that people can actually ride it, and drive it -- that is using a virtual game and some force feedback. I was too shy to try it, so I moved on. On my way back to the Ericsson media lounge, I saw a walking Blackberry Curve m ascot. I just can't stop but look at it, and take a snapshot. He was literally mobile. Editor's note: Photos and videos taken by INQUIRER.net technology reporter Erwin Oliva.

By Alexander Villafania INQUIRER.net IT may have come late in the mobile music player business, but Philips intends to break into the market in the Philippines and set a trend. So confident and a ggressive is the company that they aim to take second place after the dominant Apple iPod series. Philips launched six models under in its GoGear line, ranging from the basic 1 Gigabyte SA1916 to the top-of-the-line 4Gb SA3445. The company did not mention that it also carried the SA6185, a passport-size multimedia device launched som etime last year overseas and is the predecessor of the SA3445. All of the new G oGear devices have the Philips design signature: they come in a matte black fin ish (except for the SA1916, which can come in blue-green), curved corners and b uttons that are smoothened into the body of the device. Of course, it's expecte d that when Philips makes audio devices, the sound should be of the highest qua lity (their headsets and earphones challenge even those from Sony). Testing out the first three products, the 1Gb SA1916, the 2Gb SA2625 and the 2G b SA2825, their audio is nothing spectacular, particularly because they use the more basic Philips earphone sets. The base is not as audible and the treble is a pitch too high. Perhaps a better sounding earphone should make the sound fro m the devices stand out. I did, however, test out the SA2825 with one of Philip 's clip-on earphones and the sound was better improved that it were with the st ock earphones. Take note that only the SA2825 has the Philips proprietary audio function FullSound, which greatly improves its sound quality. The SA1916, SA2625 and SA2825 all feature FM radio functions and while antenna reception might be a problem especially inside buildings, users might not use t heir mobile music devices to listen to radio that often. Still, the radio signa l reception of the three was pretty strong even inside a building. The three basic models also have their own voice recording functions. It was ha rd to test this out especially in a noisy environment, which is always a proble m with any device that has this integrated function since these also capture ba ckground noise. I suppose having this function is more of a novelty than practi cality. The multimedia models of the GoGear series are the 1 Gb SA3015, 2 Gb SA3225 and the 4 Gb Sa3445, all of which have video playback and can view photos as well. The SA3015 is the smallest of the three and has the smallest screen at 1.5-inc hes, while its two big brothers have 1.8-inch screens. The bigger models also r ender videos at 220x176 pixels while the SA31015 can only render at 128x128 pix els. These players can only play .smv (streaming mobile video) files but Philip s says the devices come with video converters for video in different formats su ch as .mov, .mp4, .vob, and .wmv. Conversion is by no means necessary when playing on small screens because a lot of the file sizes of videos are dependent on the video quality. Because there' s no need to view high-quality videos in small screens, Philips just decided to keep things small for their multimedia players. The small screen size practica lly hides the pixelation caused by videos encoded into smaller formats, which i s also beneficial to the GoGear series' memory capacity. Surprisingly, the user interface of the GoGear multimedia models is very basic and looks as if it came straight from the previous generation of multimedia pho nes. The user interface lacks the dynamic flair seen in the Apple iPod. In terms of other functions, the GoGear series is basically the same with their smaller brethren. These also have FM radio functions, voice recording, and ver y long battery life. Philips claims their GoGear's batteries can last over 20 h ours in music playback and between 2 to 4 hours video playback. Except for the SA2625, all of the GoGear models are rechargeable through their USB ports. It is going to be a challenge for the Dutch company to penetrate the mobile mul timedia device business but as the company said, they're targeting to take seco nd place in this business in the Philippines. The company is already enjoying g ood business in its audio-video and home appliance segments but it's still wait -and-see for their new foray into the mobile multimedia device. Philips is also notorious for the names it gives its devices. It should try to join the crowd when naming their devices because people might not be able to ge t past the first two letters of their GoGear products. I couldn't.

THE HTC Touch Diamond is the latest touch-screen device from the Taiwanese hand set maker, competing against Apple's iPhone. The device features 64MB on-board graphics memory and 640 by 480 VGA resolution. No official launch date yet in t he Philippines but INQUIRER.net technology reporter Lawrence Casiraya got his h ands on the Touch Diamond.

By Erwin Oliva INQUIRER.net IF you're tired of using Twitt er (because of the annoying downtime mainly), you might consider flocking t o Plurk. After discovering this on Mas hable, I took the plunge and created a profile. A service almost like Twitt er, Plurk looks, er, cuter. Its interface shows a timeline of messages posted b y users. You can respond quickly to any user using a pulldown menu. As in Gmail, you can see the threads of discussions among users. No need to put @(name of twitter friend) You just click on a friend, and send your message. I t's that easy. You can also send private messages, post cute emoticons (which o ne user suspects is similar to Yahoo! emoticons), and choose one of Plurk's col orful verbs. By colorful verbs I mean literally verbs in different colors. The word "says" is in orange, "loves" in red, and so on. I started plurking today, and I found a lot of people/friends starting to move to Plurk. So because I've gained more friends, I have earned some karma points. Yes, you earn more karma points by being an active user (completing your prof ile, adding friends, etc.). If you get more points, you'll be given access to s ome special emoticons, among others. Let's see how this new micro-blogging sens ation will last when it becomes as popular as Twitter. Plurk me.

By Alex Villafania INQUIRER.net THE BATTLE for the sub-notebook market is heating up as HP enters the fray. It may not be the first to introduce a laptop in the below-12" inch segment but it is the first branded, non-Taiwanese vendor to do so in the Philippines. The HP 2133 Mini-Note PC has the unmistakable HP design all over it: curved cor ners and tapering edges and a semi-shiny aluminum finish. It could be mistaken for a metal folder if its top half isn't pulled up. When it is opened up, the very first thing you notice is the keyboard; unlike m ost notebooks with the same form factor, the Mini-Note's key buttons are full-s ize. Instead of being extended, the keyboard takes up the entire length of the unit's lower portion, leaving barely 5 millimeters of space between the edge of the keys and the edge of the lower portion of the Mini-Note. It is also the fi rst one to have a full-size Shift key, the most undersized key among sub-notebo oks and even full-size laptops. An aluminum track pad is in the middle, just be low the keyboard. It is quite small, barely 50 millimeters across. The left and right mouse buttons are literally on its left and right sides. There is also an integrated webcam on the Mini-Note, which can be handy when ta lking to someone on instant messenger applications such as Yahoo! Messenger and Google Talk. The Mini-Note can connect to the Internet via a LAN cable or wifi . It also has Bluetooth connectivity. The Mini-Note only has two USB connections, one on the left and another on the right side of its body, whereas other notebooks in the same category would have at least three. However, take note that sub-notebooks are not normally used as full notebooks and are primarily used for quick desktop editing work and web b rowsing. USB attachments could only include an extra mouse and an external hard drive. Other connections are one microphone/earphone jack on the left side, an externa l VGA monitor also on the left side, and a RJ-45 LAN slot. It also has a SD car d reader and, surprisingly, an Express Card slot, which is rarely seen on sub-n otebooks. The screen is also one of the proud features of the Mini-Note as it could rende r at 1280x768 pixels, just a bit better than that of the Asus Eee PC 900, curre ntly the most popular sub-notebook in the market. The screen may not look stunn ing enough when using an optional Suse Linux operating system, but it does look good when the Mini-Note is installed with Windows Vista Home Basic, also optio nal. This will also be the first sub-notebook to have the system-hogging Vista installed. Surprisingly, the Mini-Note uses the low-power Via C7-M processor, which runs u p to 1.6 Gigahertz. Previous tests showed that this particular chip could do so me basic processing at faster rates than using even the Intel Celeron. This is because the Via chip is designed to run only basic functions, not multi-tasking . The graphics is also the Via chip Chrome9, which apparently can run the graph ics requirements of Vista OS. For such a small form factor, the Mini-Note can be integrated with a 2.5" noteb ook hard drive, ranging from 120 Gigabytes to 160 Gigabytes. If the user prefer s to use Linux, the Mini-Note can be integrated with a 4 Gb solid state drive. It would still be a treat if it had an 8 Gb or higher solid state drive. The Mini-Note competes directly with the Asus Eee PC 900 series even at price p oint. While the Eee PC 900 costs P24,950, the HP Mini-Note's basic package also costs the same while the higher models cost from P29,950 to P34,950. Here's a video I took when I interviewed HP Philippines Personal Systems Group general manager Bernadette Nacario. Editor's note: Videos taken by INQUIRER.net community evangelist Alex Villa fania.