ZZips is an area code/zip code locator which could be pretty handy especially if you’re the type who frequently sends out greeting cards and snail mail letters.

Pusoy Dos (Big2 Poker) is a popular Filipino card game — one that I’ve been waiting for to be posted in the iPhone App Store.

These two are also currently on the top 10 most downloaded in the iPhone App store (for the Philippines). There are a couple dozen other iPhone apps out there specific to the Philippines/Filipinos (just search using the keyword Philippines) in iTunes. Check out the Classical Philippines Radio, SpaceBlaster Puzzles, Philippines Offline Street Map, SabiNila, Coversational Tagalog and iManila.

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I chose the update from an older version 3.0.11 and got this error when launching Firefox.

Not really sure what that meant but it’s possible it has got to do with the fact that I’m running Windows 7 RC.

Update: So, I uninstalled the old version and re-installed v3.5 and it went all fine.

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Besides, I no longer use IMs much these days (only recently found out that ICQ originally meant “i seek you” so the IM was aimed more like an avenue for meeting dates/friends).

For the last decade or two, ICQ tried to evolve and was positioning itself to be like Skype. And for some time, it was In the Philippines, Yahoo took over most of the leadership in web properties including instant messaging.

I guess that’s how trends come and go. Is there anyone out there still actively using ICQ?

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Yahoo! seems to have ditched the Yahoo! Go brand and went with Yahoo! Mobile with their new app for the iPhone. Everything is there — from YM, to Twitter to email, including support 3rd party email providers like GMail and AOL.

On the other hand, the Skype App is something a lot of iPhone owners have been waiting for but was only made available now. It’s unsure whether the delay was due to Skype or Apple (similar services like Fring and Truphone were already available for the iPhone since last year).

The apps are free to download on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

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The biggest advantage Nokia has among all other app stores is that it has th largest existing userbase of mobile phone users worldwide which means it potentially has a much bigger market than the iPhone and Blackberry combined. Only if Nokia does it right the first time.

Here are some of my wish list for the Ovi Store, and please add you own at the comment if you thought of something better:

• Make the Ovi Store easy to access and easy to use on all Nokia screens (S40 and S60 platforms) — it could be via a mobile-friendly website, a pre-installed widget or an app anyone can download and install on their Nokia phones (including other non-Nokia but S60 phones). If they can do it on all 3, the better.
• Allow anyone to publish content on the Ovi Store and distribute it for free. Nothing beats free. Imagine paying for a phone and getting thousands of apps for free on top of that — now that’s added value.
• If free is not viable, please make the apps very affordable — like $0.99 affordable. When I got my Nokai 5800, I scoured the web to look for free and paid apps but the ones that charges for their softwares sell them too expensive (some $50 or more) I don’t think a significant number of people would buy them.
• Provide multiple payment options or at least support Paypal payments on top of credit cards.

Nokia is already making the right step by providing a centralized repository for all mobile content. It has the potential to make owning a Nokia phone more compelling than just being able to make calls and text at 18 wpm.

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Latitude is available on most phones — the Blackberry, S60, and Windows Mobile, and will be available on Android in the next few days. It’s highly likely it will be coming to the iPhone, through Google Mobile App, very soon — according to the official Google blog.

I tried installing it on my Nokia 5800 and it replaced my existing Google Maps to version 3. Here are some of the screenshots I took on the phone.

You can also view the location of your friends on Google Maps in your desktop (via iGoogle Gadget). The accuracy of the tracking will depending on how many satellites your GPS is connected too — up to 20 meters on 4-5 GPS satellites and as far as 800 meters on 1 satelite.

Looks cool but at the same time a little scary (especially when you know others can snoop on you). Of course, your privacy is of utmost concern for Google so you can pick who you share your data with (and assuming there’s no glitch in the system).

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The custom Linux flavor was developed and intended to run on Intel Atom processors (reason why Intel is trying to push it to market, via Ars).

You can grab a copy of the OS and download it from the repository (here).

Download Squad says the OS boots in just 15 seconds.

Question is — do people need another OS for their netbooks? At least it’s free.

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The list on the new Google Pack has Chrome “checked” by default and FireFox “unchecked”, displacing the latter in just less than 3 months after it was first revealed {via}.

This isn’t surprising and I’ve sort of expected this to happen (though not this soon). We even saw how FireFox ran to Yahoo! for some help.

Google will not completely remove FireFox from Google Pack nor totally stop promoting the browser as there’s still money to be had between the browser toolbar and the default search. Google even used to pay $1 for every Firefox referrals installed. The Google-Mozilla partnership generates hundreds of millions of dollars in ad clicks annually.

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In a short email to Pownce users, it looks like the userbase was bought by SixApart:

We are sad to announce that Pownce is shutting down on December 15, 2008. As of today, Pownce will no longer be accepting new users or new pro accounts.

To help with your transition, we have built an export tool so you can save your content. You can find the export tool at Settings > Export. Please export your content by December 15, 2008, as the site will not be accessible after this date.

Please visit our new home to find out more: http://www.sixapart.com/pownce

Our thanks go out to everyone who contributed to the Pownce community,

The Pownce Crew

Pownce is co-owned by Digg founder Kevin Rose who started the service to compete against Twitter. Despite Rose’s popularity, the service didn’t picked up much users. By Kevin’s last mention, the numbers were just around 100k worldwide.

The first sign of its impending doom was when Kevin Rose opened up a Twitter account and was pimping it during their Diggnation show instead of his own service. According to Twitterholic, Kevin is on top of the list at 75,718 followers.

It’s possible Jaiku will be next in line, an acquisition made by Google back in October 2007 that has not made any much noise since then.

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What’s actually more interesting is that the other third of those who sent in their feedback had other media players in mind. That’s on top of the 8 choices I put up.

There were media players recommended that I’ve only heard of the first time — GOM player and KM player. Interestingly enough, there were quite a number of people who are still loyal to Media Player Classic.

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It’s still a very limited release actually but if you don’t the the Nokia N810, you can still actually download and preview it on your desktop.

It’s an 8.8MB download availabel to Windows, Mac and Linux users. Select download links below:

• Windows
• Mac OS X
• Linux

This release is just an experimental version which will allow others to develop add-ons or extensions for it. I’m now more excited once this goes out and becomes available to other NSeries and ESeries Nokia phones (something to compare and replace my Opera Mini).

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Was wondering what do others use to play their videos, hence the poll. There aren’t much of them today that I can think of. Back in the 90’s, Xing MPEG Player was a personal favorite. How about now?

Which video player do you often use?

• Windows Media Player
• DivX
• VLC
• Real Player
• iTunes/QuickTime
• PowerDVD
• WinAmp
• WinDVD
• Media Player Classic

Please do send your feedback on our poll section on the right sidebar or leave a comment here.

I’m also particularly interested to know which one has the smallest footprint (in terms of memory or CPU usage) as well as the most efficient especially when used on netbooks.

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As quoted from Engadget, people who bought their netbooks with Linux pre-installed as more likely to return the unit:

MSI’s internal research has found that Linux-infused netbooks are returned four times as often as units with Windows XP.

That’s not twice as often. It’s 4 times. What does it say about Linux?

I’m not sure but I guess it all boils down to familiarity. Netbooks are for mass market and that market is more familiar with Windows XP than any other OS available.

As the Atom processor gets faster with HDD/SSD storage and RAM cheaper, there will be less and less reasons to go with a stripped-down OS.

No wonder XP continues to get a second lease in life.

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Featured in the newly redesigned Yahoo homepage are huge ads for Mozilla Firefox:

They’re rotating banner ads and text ads all over the homepage, the biggest push I’ve seen so far.

Of course, Yahoo will also be benefiting by having its toolbar included in every new download of Firefox 3.

Could this also be a sign that we’ll see the Firefox Search bar be pointing to Yahoo search instead of Google search anytime soon?

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What this basically does is track all your movements via GPS and tags them along with all the photos and videos you take throughout the day.

What I usually do is activate the LifeVine software in the Nokia phone every time I go out of the house. It will then plot every movement I make unto Google Maps and take note of all the photos and videos (tag them with the exact coordinates where I took them) I shoot a long the way.

I can then upload all the media via 3G or wait until I get back home and use my WiFi connection to do so. The Sport Tracker will show me some relevant stats about my “journeys” including distance traveled, duration, max speed, average speed, etc.

The GPS data isn’t that accurate (between 20 – 50 meters) so the trail sometimes goes into a zigzag (Happens every time I’m on a stand-still in the middle of a traffic jam; the satellite’s positioning wobbles a bit.) but if you drill down to the building level, it pretty much gives you a good idea of your travel path from the top-view.

You can share these data to the public or just friends via the Nokia Sports Website or you can grab a widget you can display on your blog (mine’s at the bottom right side).

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According to Statcounter.com, the turnover before, during and after the launch of Google Chrome showed significant decline of Firefox usage.

Now, that has got to hurt. While Google is supporting Firefox and have been funding them tens of millions of dollars a year, this early results is like a cat running around and eating it own tail.

Note: The Chrome browser was launched late in the day GMT time on Sept 2nd so the first full day of tracking for Chrome is Sept 3rd.

This information is based on a total sample for the period of over 250 million page views globally. All daily stats are based on 24 hour periods, bar the stats for today, September 4th, which are based on a 12 hour sample to 12noon GMT.

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But before that, let’s see what’s under the hood of Google Chrome and compare that with other browsers (layout engine):

Google Chrome: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13

Mozilla Firefox 3: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1

Flock 1.2.4: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.16) Gecko/20080714 Firefox/2.0.0.16 Flock/1.2.4

Apple Safari: AppleWebKit

Opera 9.5: Presto

In a sense, Chrome is like a hybrid of Firefox and Safari. It’s lean and its fast. When Flock came out, it was also lean and fast which is why I still use it as a secondary browser today. But nothing beats Firefox’s development community and the extensions.

Note: Google Chrome is running a serious security flaw so I wouldn’t encourage downloading and using it for the meantime.

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