more googledesktop news: Inside Google Desktop

moving out, moving on after staying more than 3 years on our current apartment. the place is a bit bigger and has ample space where the kids could run about. excited but unfortunately, Bayantel has no way of determining when a DSL slot would be available in the new apartment. that might mean out of the grid whenever am home till christmas. maybe its time to configure that old dialup modem and stick it to the FreeBSD box in the office.

DSL downgraded to dialup, just like good old days.


Looking up I saw nothing but blue in the bluest skies.
-Gin Blossoms

hampas

ihampas mo sa hangin
ang nagpupumilit na damdamin
iduyan mo sa kawalan
hinagpis ng nakaraan

nakaukit na lang sa panaginip

HOWTO Rip DVD Movies To Your iPod Using Free Software. Actually not just for iPods. Same software can be used to make your DVD collection available to your Palm or PocketPC device via TCPMP. Actually the PDA's have long had the capability of viewing movies on the go. The only problem is the limitation in terms of storage. Now put a 4 gig flash drive (like the one found in nano) and stick it to a treo and you have an all in one device to rule em all (adding a wifi adapter wouldn't hurt either). On the software side, allow it to sync with itunes and you have an all time winner for the highest technolust ratings the world has yet to see. Price it at not higher than $299 please.

And if isn't too much make it widescreen and follow the T3 design. The treo thumboard remains, but the screen can be "expanded" for a wide screen viewing experience. Make the battery last for 5 hours on video.

Yes am talking about an iPod + Treo offspring.


Everywhere you go you shout it
You don't have to be shy about it..
-U2: Origin of the Species

Sarcasm

In my youth, a bully once asked me.

"Can I have a word with you?"

In which I gleefully replied.

"You can have two. Fuck and you."

Rounded, random, and seemingly cute face art forcibly installed on my face moments later.

AvantGo for RSS. about time. been waiting for this feature. I currently use Hand RSS on my Palm powered clie.



now only one app to use for Internet clips and RSS feeds. Interesting "slideshow" feature to view RSS embedded images.

New browser gives taste of Web 2.0 | CNET News.com.

Browse...
Feed...
Blog...

Browser wars! Browser wars! Browser wars!

Till all there is left, is one browser to rule em all...

The mind of the married man.
-nox

VMware Player: could probably restore your faith in humanity, nevermind the recent fad of visiting mendiola nowadays.



But wait, I forgot to mention its free! If you don't have an existing virtual machine config, you can get one here here.


Emulate the style,
Competition smile...
-Gin Blossoms

Fresh from Canada, my good friend Jay bought me a Linksys WRT54G wireless broadband from Villman at a discounted price of P3.7k. He couldn't bear my poor man's access point setup (a.k.a. adhoc mode), and he will be staying at our house for a couple of days and direly need to connect his toshiba lappy to the net.

Now would be a good time to try out the OpenWRT project! Next step would be to save for an NLSU2, which would be perfect for a 24x7 home server with relatively low power consumption.


I'm high and I'm hopeless
So help me to get untied...
-Gin Blossoms

The Million Dollar Homepage - Own a piece of internet history!. Great idea! hmmnnn...

1 peso per pixel local version available today! contact me for payment details and own a piece of philippine internet history!


Wouldn't it be nice...
- Beach Boys

sweet gulay! just saw from a fellow MRT passenger a tiger airways ad stating around P328.00 pesos for a one way fare to singapore or macau.

at least prices are going down in that area. wouldn't it be nice if all prices go down.


Wouldn't it be nice...
-Beach Boys

Apple - Aperture - Quick Tours... am not a pro photographer, but this new photo editing app from apple is slick. Core Image all the way baby.

Check out the product tours!

Now how can I afford a Canon 20D and that new high-res 15inch Powerbook?


Only in dreams...
-Weezer

Unix Mages: a free downloadable eBook for those newbies wanting to learn unix. Lots of humorous tidbits there. All in all a nice guide to learning unix.

Just remember, don't forget to NEVER execute this command as root -> "rm -rf /"

Diva: a Cairo/Mono based open source iMovie killer...



It seems GNOME is attracting a good bunch of desktop applications nowadays. F-Spot, Tomboy, Muine, Banshee and now Diva, definitely a nice step towards opensource conquering the desktop segment.

50 First Dates (2004) currently showing on HBO. Its a wonderful romantic comedy of a guy who makes the girl of his dreams fall for him every single day. Must have seen this more than 3 times already, and it still manages to somehow to send a few butterflies into my stomach.

Ah, love... Exactly what the world needs now. Fortunately for me, I already found the love of my life, the only living mammal able to look straight into my soul and strip me down to the bare human kernel. Thats limbic-system-overload for the discovery-loving-anatomical-travelog-fanatic in you.


And all these years, I never really knew what love is.
Till I found you...
- Bamboo

Zimbra Collaboration Suite. Slick and AJAX based. Will give this a spin. Check out the demo. Novell has something similar called Hula, though not yet as polished as Zimbra.



Hmmnn... I think Web 2.0 is moving towards Sun's slogan -> "The Network is the Computer".

World Wind on Linux.

[WW2D] [..] is cross-platform, free and open-source version of NASA World Wind software, see http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov for details. WW2D allows you to explore Earth using satellite imagery, topographic maps and image from other data sources also providing large placenames and boundaries database and allowing you to install community-made add-ons for even more information about our planet.
In basic configuration WW2D uses images from Blue Marble (1 km/pixel), LandSat7 (15 m/pixel), USGS Topo Maps, USGS Digital Ortho imagery, USGS Urban Area imagery.

WW2D is designed to dynamically download needed data from internet, however you can download data you want for faster access and offline usage.

Runs on Linux via Mono. Cool!

This was bound to happen.

Mobile GMaps - Google Maps and MSN Virtual Earth on your mobile phone!

What is MGMaps?

Mobile GMaps is a free piece of software that displays Google Maps and MSN Virtual Earth maps and satellite imagery on Java J2ME-enabled mobile phones or other devices.


The world in the palm of your hand.

Move over Google Sidebar | CNET News.com. Another addition to the Desktop Search Wars (TM). The opensource community has something similar in alpha/beta? state via Dashboard.

Sabi nga ni ka edong, it will only be a matter of time before there would be a technology that can search your brain. Now that would be terribly Google-rrific!


"Resistance is futile..." - Startrek

From a Bancnet AD today:


G-Cash Bancnet tie-up

Sept 23, 2005: very soon you will be able to transfer funds from your ATM account in a BancNet-member bank to your or somebody else's G-Cash wallet.

Just go to any BancNet ATM, log on to www.bancnetonline.com or text through BancNet Mobile Banking.

Choose which account to debit from linked to the ATM Card, select (BANK) as your destination bank (Asia United Bank) as the destination bank and enter your Globe cellphone and the desired amount to be transferred.

Regular Interbank Fund Transfer fees will apply.


Sound's eerily similar to an idea we had been pushing thru in a not so distant past.

Didn't I tell you everything is possible in this
deja vu? - Roxette

Law enforcement agencies deny raids on local Internet shops - INQ7.net... hmmmnn... Confusing... Wonder who is responsible for spreading FUD among PC users? With most shops closing and switching to linux, the online gaming companies are probably scratching their heads due to lost sales.

On the bright side:

NOW! is the time for opensource to spring into action! This would also mean more kids being exposed to FOSS. Which is probably better than them getting rather too addicted to online games. A typical opensource *Linux/*BSD is probably good enough for "typical" desktop use.


"Gusto mo ba? Gusto mo ba? Sumama!" - eraserheads

Some nagging thoughts on m-commerce.

I think G-Cash and Smart Money (S-Money) should augment their platform with LBS (location based services). Users should be able to inquire the nearest cash-in and cash-out center based on their location. Or should be able to locate users within their proximity willing to do cash-in/cash-out.

The ability to locate other users willing to do cash-in/cash-out could work by allowing them to text their cash-in/cash-out availability (ala instant messenger status). They have the option to turn the feature on or off and indicate perhaps the amount they can currently cash-in/cash out. This has the potential of accelerating the adoption rate of m-commerce in the Philippines.

Of course nothing beats making short access codes and m-commerce API's somehow more accessible to modern day pinoy technopreneurs.


Am not like them, but I can pretend. -Nirvana

When I first got a taste of Mac OS X via bookah, I sorely missed the tomboy application. It is a personal wiki of sorts, and could readily kick your current post-it note app. It was only available on the linux platform and uses GNOME-Mono combo and is generally Beagle friendly. Tomboyless, I immediately felt the urge to port or manage to create something similar on OS X but as always haven't managed to find the time to do so (as if).

While browsing to Apple's dashboard download repository this morning, I stumbled upon inkspotting : WikityWidget



Problem solved. Works nicely and best of all FREE! It doesn't support Spotlight at the moment, so you search using the widget itself. Still, all in all a nice addition to my dashboard collection.

And yes, I turned 28 last Saturday. And what better way to start it than a seemingly endless series of group hugs and kisses. Ah, life is good. I cooked my infamous spaghetti and bundled it with barbecue and everyone was pretty happy.

Rock on!

The GNOME Journal: GOCollab -- Peer to Peer Document Collaboration. Technologies like this will greatly accelarate the adoption of opensource technologies.

What we need is a collaboration standard/spec that opensource apps can take advantage of. Realtime collaboration is also one of the next big thing in the nearby future.

Onlife, very slick! it automatically creates the record of the most common apps you use (safari, mail, etc.).

Hmmnn... Taking this for a spin.

Yesterday, day two at linuxworld PH.

- Met with Melvin Vivas Java Developer/Photographer extraordinaire and Ian Dexter of PhilRICE LTSP'ed ubuntu workstation fame.
- Attended mysql replication sessions. Postgresql also have this even prior to 8.x but it was a non-free solution. Should check if the current 8.x version has replication built-in.
- Had a chat with emacs loving Zak and Claire. Nah, still Vi for me. hehehe.
- Had fun at the microsoft booth. Tried my best not to look too pleased with the scenario. Hopefully get some pictures up by today.
- Also attended the linux audio sessions. Trommler was slick! And it seems audacity could really cut it. Althought you need some background on sound engineering to take full advantage of its features. Nevertheless, it proves that linux could rock!
- Went home a bit inspired to try out music editing on GarageBand. Unfortunately I couldn't understand how to input even a basic drum loop on Garageband. The input is asking for musical notes. Bummer...

More non-sense linux world news later.

I went to the LINUX WORLD Philippines conference at the Dusit Hotel in Makati and have some uhmmn non-sense comments.

While having an opensource event is great, its pretty ironic that the participation fee is quite expensive! At P3.5k (students), P5.5k (government/NGO/academe) and P6.5k (Corporate/Individuals) it doesn't exactly fit into the idea of opensource as a less costly alternative to the propriety solutions from redmond. To make matters worse, the registration process was a mess. If I had known they wouldn't be strict on ID's, we should have registered as students and shaved off P2k on the registration fee. Also, all the sessions seems to be open to the public? My gulay! Better yet, we should have walked-in, and just have lunch at nearby food stalls. Generally they should have lowered the participation fee or even have it for free to entice more participants. The organizers also failed to provide conference kits and would not even hand you out the topic listings if you don't ask for one. The opensource company exhibitors also suck in a way that they don't even hand out sample cd's. I mean it wouldn't hurt if at least redhat, sun and novell/suse would have something to give to potential users.

On the other hand, some interesting topics on day one: FAI (Fully Automatic Installation) for debian. The LTSP front end management tool by the good folks at ASTI's bayanihan linux (Although, I am curious why it has to be QT dependent. It would be nice if it would be cross distro and cross platform perhaps). IPTraf and PAM were also discussed.

It was also nice to see the faces of some people on the now defunct pinoy tech scene (which I asked migs for the opml, which he gladly gave, so I can revive it when my schedule eases up a bit, hopefully this weekend again, and this time I want talking heads). Shook hands with clair ching and zak elep. Also seen some familiar local opensource figures there like Jijo, and Dom. Throw in a bunch of ph-freebsd guys like jimmy and barry. I didn't get a chance to say hi as my introvert alter ego kicked in. Aside from the fact that i'm nowadays a promiscuous opensource unix lover/user, so that probably was a factor too.

The good thing is I didn't feel too akward being the only(?) Mac toting user there, not because Mac OS X is unix underneath (a variant of unix resulting from the of Mach and FreeBSD), but because... microsoft was there, giving away an xbox and with a bunch of testosterone inducing representatives to try to win you over to the dark side of the force. Although in scenarios like this, it makes you wonder why opensource choose to have penguins and cute little daemons instead? hmmmmnn... At least were getting there, I remember the Redhat booth having a big banner with a slogan like "fsck me?" (should have taken a picture). But then again that might send a wrong message to potential redhat users... does it need fsck lovin?

Wonder what tomorrow brings?

Rojan can rock!

Taking a break after debugging a malfunctioning dbms session.



Too old to be a rockstar, too young to give up being a rockstar... hehehe

Yay! I might be sent to the upcoming Linux World Expo at the Dusit hotel September 14-16, 2005.

What I find ironic is that for an Open Source event the registration fee is a bonafide wallet punisher.

They should invite Alanis to sing Ironic there.

PROPAGATION_REQUIRED is a necessity if you invoke or spit out native sql using spring frameworks Session object. Else, you would have dbms sessions closed pre-maturely.

Installing the Java 1.4.2 Release 2 DP4 for Tiger from ADC Member Site seems to fix the gradual slowing down of the Eclipse IDE (including the entire OS) after prolonged use.

Hopefully this means I don't have to Restart Eclipse every 3hrs or so.

Bug 95475 - Eclipse get progressively slow under Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). Turns out, am not the only one with this problem. Time to try XCode's Java support perhaps?

downloading jdub's planet repository. hopefully will have planetpinoy very soon.

Deggy and Bookah Comic Strip:



Expect more non-sense comic strips to follow. Another peek outside the room inside my mind.

blainekendall.com - DeliciousMind = del.icio.us FreeMind mindmap... A delicacy for your mind.

Looking forward to the "Anatomical Travelogue" in discovery channel. Really cool!

Google Talk!, seems to work with iChat. Have no luck making iChat work with Yahoo via jabber tho.

I think I finally found the words that best describes a Mac: "Its a creativity machine. Designed to bring out the creative creature in you!"

ChickenPox by: Jun Lisondra is out! You can download it for free! Reminds me of the good old IRC days at the #forum channel of PDI. Mabuhay ka pareng elmo!

addendum to the render/encoding farm concept, it could have a feature where you can inquire the status of your encoding job via SMS, WAP or via the internet!

hmmmmmnnn... pweeedeee!!! (ka edong effect)

Now if only there is an equivalent tool like ffmpegX for linux or *BSD's! Command line would even be preferred. That would mean easy to use video editing via iMovie and encoding to VCD/DVD via an idle unix powered generic PC!!!

The workflow would be like this Capture/Edit via iMovie (or whatever video editing tool you prefer). Then encoding on a unix PC which should produce a disc image ready for burning on any popular CD/DVD burning software. Ah, even an "encoding farm" would not be a remote possibility. With an "encoding farm", I can even rent it out to Video editors eh?

Yeah... Am a technopreneur wanabeee!

Another oddity of the MacOS X is when copying over a shared drive (WinXP host), it bails out if the size of the file(s) you are copying is greater than your current amount of local hard disk space. Internally it uses samba (SMB), but can't find yet if there is a setting that could resolve this problem.

While editing a family movie is fun on iMovie, making a vcd copy of your work is another story. Encoding takes time and hard disk space and CPU processing power. Too bad the external USB enclosure (GL811USB chipset from Genesys Logic) doesn't work with MacOS X, it could at least help in the hard disk space dilema. On the encoding front will try this out: ffmpegX a DVD, SVCD, VCD, CVD, VOB, DivX, XviD, H.264, PSP, MP4, MOV encoder for Mac OSX. as other iMovie to VCD solutions is rather frustrating for an amateur video editor like me.

iMovie rocks! I really need to get the external USB hard drive working. Video editing can consume an insane amount of space.

MacOS X offers a great Java Development platform. It comes bundled and works pretty much the way it should. Installing the eclipse IDE is a simple download and drag n' drop affair.

The default comes with Java 1.4.2 with Java 5.0 downloadable via Apple's developer site. Performance on the 1.33ghz ppc is comparable to my previous Centrino 1.6ghz x86 machine. The difference tho is the somewhat distinct creativity inducing allure generated by the general combination of slick hardware and drop dead gorgeous software. Truly inspiring.

iBook PMU reset. Keeping this for future reference.

Darn! hit the first snag. My GL811USB based external Hard Disk enclosure could not be detected by Tiger. Something Linux, FreeBSD and Windows could happily detect and use with relative ease, out of the box. Formatting the drive to HSF or FAT32 doesn't help a bit.

EZ does it on MRT and Buses -- Pinoy Tech Blog - The Philippine%u2019s Premier Technology Blog another informative article by ka edong.

My how time flies. When I was in Singapore a couple of eons back this was still new. At that time they were using the same type of card that we use today at the MRT. The one which you need to insert into a card reading machine. But the infrastructure was already there. The same card can already be used on taxi's and buses. It was even used on devices mounted on cars which are automatically "transacted" on roads that require a toll fee (look ma no toll booths!). Currently in the Philippines, aside from the MRT's and LRT's, only a few Parking Lots are using this kind of technology.

Been using WiFi for the past 2 years and it seems scp never gets passed 650kbps (with access point two 3 feet away). Tethered on the otherhand can reach up to 7-8mbps. Maybe what I need is a WiFi Speed Spray.

At last. I finally found the /etc/rc.d/ or /usr/local/etc/rc.d (that would be /etc/init.d for linux users) equivalent of MacOS X. Tada! its:

/Library/StartupItems/

My gulay... So babaw, aking kaligayahan.

Downloads - Mono. There is a MacOS X port. Hmmnn. It does have cocoa bindings. Wonder how hard would it be to port Tomboy to the Mac?

Or maybe I should learn Sacha's PlannerMode for emacs. Since emacs works out of the box on a mac. The trouble is, am still too attached to old school Vi.

Which reminds me. While Mac has Fink for getting most OSS apps. I can't find a tool that lets me view all the packages that comes with OS X. While the GUI ones just require dragging the thing to the Trash can, I couln't find a CLI equivalent. Heck, I don't even know yet the list of userland stuff that comes with it.

beatnikblog ? Blog Archive ? Note of the Day plugin: Pretty neat plugin. This is the app that I seem to be missing on OS X. It has a bundled app called stickies, but is nowhere near as useful as Tomboy.

A good friend, Jessie seems to be doing well with his business: TechTribe Systems. Ok yan. Payt sana!

Fortunately I have a bluetooth enabled Sony Ericsson T630, that pairs quite well with bookah's builtin bluetooth. I can use this feature out of the box -> O'Reilly Network: Use Bluetooth for SMS.

Sweet justice.

Also, using the phone as a temporary dialup modem worked like a charm. Although since GPRS is just ridiculously expensive, I need to refresh my ultra rusty ipfw skills to filter just the right traffic for a given task (e.g. Only allow ssh traffic for emergency server interventions). I haven't found yet an email client that allows partial downloading of emails. Like, say limit the size to 5kb per email, or just download the email subject. So email via GPRS is a big no-no on bookah, unless of course I want my wallet to scream.

Good news! To support my GSM modem addiction, the kind folks at itegno emailed me a copy of their Mac OS X drivers. Next step is to find a javacomm API implementation for the Mac. Which inspite of its FreeBSD lineage (Mac OS X uses FreeBSD for its userland implementation), doesn't support the javacomm API out of the box.

Gasp! 5 hours and counting! With wifi on :D

Onwards to Fink'ing. Debian'ish installation of common OSS tools.

And before I do countless paeans to the engineers of "bookah", I would like to thank ka edong for making it possible to acquire this undeniably sweet machine. Another fine example of the inherent generosity and kindness of the human spirit.

Yipeeeeeeeeee!!!

uname -a
Darwin nox-ibook-g4.local 8.2.1 Darwin Kernel Version 8.2.1: Fri Jun 24 23:31:10 PDT 2005; root:xnu-792.3.2.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc


Unix with a pretty face! Beautifully engineered hardware! Definitely titilates the geek in me.

The Bus That Could Rock!



A similar local project could provide a literally last mile mobile training center.

But then again, that just might be wishful thinking.

ahhh... Ganyan talaga ang life... Must control how I must react. Tomorrow would be Janro's 1st Birthday! More important than the gear held by the Pampanga Clark Customs. A series of events beyond my control.

But yes, painfull experience indeed.

Shit! There is no www.customs.gov.ph???

TARIFF AND CUSTOMS LAWS OF THE PHILIPPINES - CHAN ROBLES VIRTUAL LAW LIBRARY.

And I can't find reference saying that there is a 10% VAT charge for items bought abroad by a Filipino tourist!!!

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!

ka edong has landed! bad news, customs is asking for 5k tax for his hand carried item!!!

M-Audio FastTrack USB, you could be my technolust. Wonder how much this would cost locally? Ah, maybe this could motivate me to dust off my electric guitar and play some half-decent music.

Gitara kong hubad, liwanag ang hangad...

Suspeeeense! (kris aquino effect)

Suspense, suspense, suspense...

ka edong,

Since I can't reach you (I tried calling...). If you by chance could read this, Janus has reserved a unit for us, ready for pickup.

================================================
Hi,

the stocks arrived an hour ago... I'll reserve one for you
immediately.

Please tell your friend to pick it up from me as soon as he can. I
can only hold it for one day because there's quite a queue of
customers waiting to get them.

Regards,

Janrius
================================================

Thanks!

On another news, for the past few days I was generally worried that the slippery firewall like device has failed to stop the Darwinian river of source code flowing via my one and only output device. Good thing the firewall worked as intended, no security holes discovered. I should really write an article about this, ala "The Tech Of" show in Discovery channel. There is a fair amount of technology thrown in there for those firewall like devices.

The economics of raising your meat space succeeding versions, is something even we mortal geeks should seriously and responsibly consider. Specially, when you are currently installed in the Philippines.

Long distance circumstance...

How I wish those SG computer stores have skype contact details readily available. Same with HK stores too. Otherwise, you couldn't help but anticipate the pain induced by your incoming telecom bill.

Imagine the pain.

no lappyness,
no tappyness,
no coded mess,
oh man I need some more.

I miss my lappy tappy...

Apple - Mighty Mouse

Apple really rocks on the design and implementation department.

After upgrading my workstation to jdk 1.5, I realized I lost all my keystores located in the previous 1.4.2/jre/lib/security. Now all the my test cases against unsigned ssl http ports flooded me with red strips in a fit of rage.

Next step is to go to a PC with an IE to export all the certs again. Wonder if there is another way to do this? I can't find an export function for certificates in Firefox running on linux. Next step is to add it one by one using the java keytool utility.

keytool -import -file eas.crt -keystore $JAGUAR_JDK13/jre/lib/security/
[cacerts | jssecacerts] -trustcacerts

Back to eclipse, change the correspoding property file to point to the new JDK1.5 JRE security directory. Then click the run button. Oh yeah! the world looks good in green.

Since it's a holiday today, I decided to do some tweaking. First on the list is to enable horizontal and vertical scrolling. Am using this xorg.conf as a guide.

Also foolishly upgraded hoary to breezy. I ended up with a non-working X. The culprit was missing font.dir on the new font directory location -> /usr/share/X11/fonts. Breezy also does not include mkfontdir and mkfontscale so I had to download from an existing install. So far everything seems to be working.

The good news is the mouse seems to work reliably on wakeup after suspend to disk/RAM now. Still using the stock xorg ATI driver's and will try using the fglrx binary later on and see if it doesn't break the suspend-resume .

The breezy kernel is based on 2.6.12 and *seems* to be snappier than the 2.6.10 series. Still contemplating if it would be worthwhile to do a custom compiled kernel to make it some what lean and mean.

More on this later...

Had been playing around Beagle for a while. Its still in its alpha stage but seems to be ok for everyday use. One feature that it should have is the ability to stop the beagle daemon when the laptop is on battery. Continous disk activity doesn't make your battery happy. Wonder if Apple's Tiger spotlight feature has this feature.

One of the notable feature of Beagle is the Gaim plugin. I find it useful to search for previous online conversations. Provided of course that you enabled logging for Gaim.

INQ7 Syndication... Finally! inq7.net has RSS feeds.

FACEANALYZER daw.

G-nius The search for the great G-Cash Idea! - Bringing Philippine schools into the M-commerce era

Saw this via ka edong's blog. This could be a great opportunity to harvest fresh ideas for m-commerce. The criterias are:

- Originality (uniqueness and differentiation from competition/ other products) – 40%
- Business impact (market significance, cost saving/ profit maximization, feasibility) – 40%
- Social impact (alignment with Globe values, impact on nation-building) – 20%

The best gets to keep 1M in cash/G-Cash!

If I were a student what kind of G-Cash idea would I come up with? hmmmnn...

You can't use G-Cash to bribe your Professor since there would be an electronic trail. Same goes for other under the table transactions so ubiquitous in your campus life. This means we have to think of an idea with a bit of social impact. On the other hand it could be ideas that can somehow lessen those not so good practices inside the campus.

Maybe G-Cash could be a great tool for those PTA contributions. One account per PTA group. Parents could pay conveniently and perhaps be entitled to a verifiable copy of the account transactions. So that everybody knows where did all those PTA contributions really go.

During my student years the "paluwagan" system was a great way to save and earn. It can also sometimes help fellow students who suddenly find themselves financially handicapped. Applying G-Cash to that "paluwagan" system wouldn't be a bad idea either. And of course it could also be applied to facilitate micro-payments for student loans.

Book recycling was something I wish were available during those tosterone driven years. When school year ends, lots of textbooks are wasted and not re-used when in fact it can be sold or given away for the next batch. I could imagine an application where a student can submit the list of old books available for sale (hopefully cheaper than a new one) or to be given away for free. Then another student can query for a book title in the database, if there is a matching one he can pay or reserve via a payment gateway (could be G-Cash or Smart Money or _______). I guess this one meets the criterias, though not necessarily m-commerce specific.

Good luck to the participants! Hooray for the Filipino Youth!

Optimus keyboard

That's what I call "The keyboard of the near future".

*drool*

irresistibly cute. getting more and more curious about his surroundings. you cannot afford to take your eyes off him when his awake. i guess he has a passion for climbing, and is more likely to smile when she hears her mother scream ("janro mahuhulog ka dyan! wag kang gagalaw!"), and he can't even walk yet. we could just imagine when he starts to walk and run.

and yes, how time flies! not too long ago i blogged about it here. With a picture taken just minutes after his birth.

SubEthaEdit: a powerful and lean text editor. And it's the only collaborative one you can actually use. by combining the ease of Bonjour with the world's best text collaboration engine, it makes working together not only possible but even fun...

This could be a fun tool to use for those user group discussions (like pinoyjug meetings), or hackfest like scenarios. Wonder if there is an open source alternative. A Vi or Emac integration would be slick!

LanceArmstrong.com | Your portal to everything Lance | About Lance...

Truly inspiring! Truly inspiring! Truly inspiring!

Reading on articles about this man can really motivate you and remind you that everyday is precious, and that every step matters.

Live strong!

choices, choices, choices...

the good news is that finally there's a solution to my stuck lcd problem. it is now possible to get a refund for my dell 600m.

now am torn between returning it, since i got a really good deal for it (hand carried from the us, so it was way cheaper than its current local price).

for $1,200, what would be a good laptop deal locally? one that i would not miss the 1400x1050 lcd, 512mb, 1.6 centrino, 64mb of dedicated video ram, ATI radeon for video, 5lb's travel weight specs of the dell. thats the dilemma, for that amount can i buy a brand new one here with almost the same specs as the dell?

maybe i should just stick with the dell, its just annoying that for that hard earned money, you expect some level of build quality. and it doesn't help that the stuck pixel is right in the middle of the screen.

its hard to let go of the current dell gear, due to several economic reasons, since there's no clear alternative yet. but should i just let it be that way, should convenience be my main priority? or should i do more research and ask around for a better alternative?

*sigh* i think my last paragraph is in some ways related to the current political landscape.

NOVELL: Cool Solutions: Multi-tiered Service-Oriented Systems with JBoss

The article outlines JBoss Service-implementation fundamentals as well as techniques for instrumenting services using JBoss and JMX.

The Core Pocket Media Player - About TCPMP.

If you have a Palm or Windows CE/ Windows Mobile based device, be sure to check out this nifty smooth media player. Supports a wide variety of formats. Bundled with pocketdivx you can watch those DVD series during your daily commute on the MRT.

Best of all, its FREE!

rant mode:

The Philippine Social Security System service sucks! I was trying to follow up on the status of my loan filed months ago. Even if I have that stub signifying that I have loaned It still does not reflect on their online query system. The online query system would bail out with java exception errors more often than not (Hmmmnnn... I could see Oracle on those exception messages). Worse, the numbers they gave me to follow up the loan status (9206446 to 55) are always busy, and I have been trying for several weeks now to get thru.

*sigh*, SSS you can do better than that!

i give up, i can't resist whacking (wacky hacking) maps.google.com's publicly available API. and here's what i ended up with, a few minutes later.



give me a latitude! give me a longitude! and let's whack it into google map dude!

treo Addicts ? Blog Archive ? Google helps send text to your Treo.

haven't tested this send to phone yet. but shoud be really handy. i would assume the user will be charged for a push message.

on the other hand, can this be used for mobile spamming?

i wonder... do sites like Google News need to request permission on all the news content on that page? or is it ok as long as:

1. you acknowledge where the blurb came from.
2. you provide a link to the actual news article.
3. ?

interesting...

Wired News: Map Hacks on Crack. Nice to know yahoo is following google's open platform approach.

If only our telcos would follow this model. Its really a win-win situation. THE MORE MOBILE APPLICATIONS, THE MORE TRAFFIC!

I'm dismayed everytime i hear them say "this is an open platform", especially for m-commerce. For m-commerce this is the way to infuse more electronic cash into the system. A google like approach of opening the platform would mean more innovative applications! If they do that, then it would accelerate the increase of the level of awareness of potential users.

For the meantime, i don't wanna wait in vain...

HNS - Laptop Theft - An Insider’s Guide To Not Becoming Another Statistic.

i don't know the statistics locally, but in these trying times, better be safe than sorry. i regularly see people who are obviously just showing off their laptops (using a regular laptop bag) and even goes to the extent of opening their laptop at the mrt. good luck to them. i'll stick to the not so obvious laptop backpack rather than use a regular laptop bag.

wonder if there's a local insurance company for laptops....

at first glance i thought doing the UCP/EMI via Kannel ain't going to be easy. the docs remind of the early NET HOWTO days. was pleasantly surprised to have a working setup after i really took the time to read the doc. RTFM, read the farting manual. yay! sweet justice :D

Planet Surfing! via Google Earth is now my new hobby!

Mother earth is really lovely...

still playing around with Google Earth. the slick aerial view. you can't help but notice how frighteningly congested the NCR is. on another context, you realize there is so much that the earth could offer. rojan would be delighted to see this!

next stop, singapore (darn, can't find chua chu kang, i stayed there in northvale a few years back) and hk. then new zealand and canada. i'll hover thru the eiffel tower in paris and check out mount fuji in japan. what's next? hawaii? thailand? around the world in 80 seconds.

this is an armchair-aerial-traveler's dream come true.

long distance, circumstance...

bilog ang mundo!

Google Earth. download it now! prepare for an awesome jaw dropping experience!!!

pan, zoom, tilt! even elevation is included.

3d terrains!

check out mount mayon!

Wired News: Google Gets Earthy... another amazing app from google... it has a wiki like feel into it as it allows the user to add notes to locations. and of course, staying true to the google tradition, has an open architecture for the whacker (wacky hacker) in you!

i had long been a fan of location based services, imagine binding it with mobile phones! even without the ability to triangulate, just a database of cell site locations would do. when an sms is received by a CP/VAS the cell site id information is attached to it.

imagine the possibilities:
* want to know the nearest G-Cash/Smart e-money cash-in/cash-out? done (? kilometers away)
* want to know the nearest drug store? done
* want to see an aerial view of an environmental NGO's project site? done
* want an mms map of where you are? done
* want to know if your near a point of interest (POI)? done
* want to find the nearest hospital? done
* want to know if ka edong is nearby? done
* the lists goes on and on...

the POI sample above can be expanded by allowing you to make a comment on a POI (e.g. this restaurant sucks!). or just simply allows you to rate a POI. and when 90% of the mobile user phones has a camera and at least gprs wap enabled, technologies like shotcode could make things more user friendly.

another location based application would be presence initiated services. e.g. during an emergency, all persons near a vicinity gets an sms -> "calmly run for your life..."

of course some of these are already possible with the current telco locator services. but those are still too limited. there are far too many wonderful uses of mobile technology. wouldn't it be nice if those guys follow the google model?

according to Wireless Developer Network - From The Editor May 12, 2000, a local telco was using kannel to serve thousands of SMS requests per day (circa 2000).

i can't find the UCP/EMI spec anywhere, so no go whacking a home brewed java implementation. no luck on a free java library either as most of the libs out there (simplewire, jsms etc) aren't for free. so am now trying out kannel, hopefully would make things easier.

bicolano.org dns seems to have propagated enough. if your a bicolano and has a blog, let me know. am trying to setup a planet.bicolano.org.

cheers!

Not only that telecomms are not exactly developer friendly, the protocols used are different (UCP, HTTP, SMPP etc.). the likely solution is for JSR# 212 to be widely adopted. wonder how the patriot is coming along.

just another manic wednesday... oh UCP, can't you see what your doing to me (with shampoo commercial effect)?

cmon' pareng bob, sing me "no telco, no cry"...

iAudio X5. pretty slick alternative to an ipod, and cheaper too.