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June 14, 2006

Playing WarCraft 3 with voice + gesture commands

Imagine playing a network game of Warcraft 3 without a mouse and keyboard? Well, this demo video of a PhD study by Edward Tse (BSc, MSc of Interactions Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary) shows it all using a combination of speech and gesture commands:


Warcraft Game Speech and Gesture Commands

Warcraft 3


See video demo here.

Interaction on a digital table supports face to face collaboration with the added benefits of digital displays (e.g., real time updates, access to the Internet and rich satellite imagery). Core features of my work include rich whole handed bimanual gestures, speech and gesture input, and multi user interaction.

Application areas include tabletop gaming, military command and control, air traffic control and hospital emergency rooms.

Really cool invention. Reminds me of Tom Cruise in the movie Minority Report (2002). It’s not just for computer gaming but a whole plethora of other fields of discipline as well.

Nevertheless, I’d love to try playing Warcraft with that myself. :D

[tags]rpg, games, warcraft, blizzard, inventions[/tags]

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June 13, 2006

Beta Testing Friendster Ads

Just got an email invitation from Friendster Ads (FADS) with a free credit of Php50 which is equivalent to 625 ad impressions. Though I don’t remember signing up for a beta tester, I do remember visiting the site before when I blogged about FADs at PTB last January.

Continue Reading

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June 13, 2006

Om Malik goes fulltime Problogging

{Nope, not because he got fired or something.}

Valleywag leaked the story from an internal memo at Business 2.0:

Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 14:44:34 -0400
To: The Staff
Conversation: Om, Sweet Om
Subject: Om, Sweet Om

To: The staff

As many of you already know, Om Malik, after three years of writing about startups, Web 2.0, the GoogleNet and everything else, has decided to eat his own dog food. He’s accepted seed funding to turn his mega-popular blog, gigaom.com, into a real business.

When Om told me about his plan to start a company, I reacted predictably: I burst into tears, fell to the floor, clutched his ankles, and begged him not to go. This had nothing to do with Om having introduced me to the superior grilled lamb chops at Pakwan. I really like the dude.

Luckily, I was able to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse: Om will be staying on as a contributing editor, writing a monthly column for Business 2.0 that will start in September.

Watch this space for details of an upcoming pour celebrating Om’s, and our, good fortune.

JQ

This has forced OM to prematurely announce his transition. We can say that Om Malik has gone fulltime Problogging and his GigaOM Blog is only as big as Mike Arrington’s Techcrunch. :)

Props to micro-pubs. ;)

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June 12, 2006

Government IT Career, no good?

During a beer-drinking spree (I actually had just one bottle) last week with a friend, he told me that he had left his post at the DILG’s IT Department to move to a private company. He had several such opportunities before but recent developments have prompted him to grab this latest offer.

I’m fairly familiar with the Philippine Government’s Salary Grade (and the Salary Standardization Law) so I understand why one would want to go private. We’ll, it’s common knowledge that there’s no money in government service (unless you’re alignjed with a jueteng lord) but I have been told that there are a lot of perks and benefits that come along with it.

A government employee with a salary grade of 11 would bring home just over 8 thousand pesos a month. Barely enough for a single person to live by, much more to raise a family.

Still, work in a government office isn’t as stressful as in other private corporations. Add that to the wide plethora of benefits for you and your family along with the saying that “a government employment is yours to keep until retirement” is something to consider. There’s no such thing as security of tenure in the private sector.

So, my friend asked me if ‘it was a good move’ and I said, under the circumstances, getting twice the take-home pay is better if you have more than one mouth to feed.

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June 12, 2006

Will eBay AdContext be a Chitika killer?

The eBay Affiliate Program is set to launch eBay AdContext real soon.

eBay AdContext is a new contextual ad tool by eBay. It will scan the content of a Web site and automatically return relevant eBay ad content. For example, a Web site about sports could use eBay AdContext to display ads for sporting goods listings or eBay search results for memorabilia related to a specific sports team. When a user clicks on the eBay ad, they are led directly to the eBay site (either to the listing, the category, or the search results page). {see AdContext Homepage}

The ads are in Text Only, Text + Image and then in Flash.

eBay AdContext

If you will notice, this is almost similar to what Chitika has been doing for months now. Their ads even have the uncanny resemblances. The only difference is that you get paid per click on Chitika while you get commissions per sale on AdContext.

Will it be a Chitika killer? Could be. Depends on the type of site you are running. I usually get around $0.08 per click on a Chitika ad while a single commission from Amazon for a digital camera sale got me about $6.50.

[tags]amazon, ebay, affiliates, associates, chitika[/tags]

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June 12, 2006

Digg was never just for geeks.

The BusinessWeekOnline ran a story about the popular news and bookmarking site, Digg.com, opening up for other verticals such as Politics and Entertainment. {see full story: Digg This: Soon, Not Just for Geeks Anymore}

Isn’t the current Digg doing that now? If you’ve been checking Digg for months now, you would have witnessed totally non-tech related stories making it to the frontpage almost everyday. Digg was never just for geeks from the very start.

From funny videos, to politicians using iPods, pictures of Brad and Angelina Jolie’s new bron baby, etc. etc.

What I’m curious is how would Digg go about this new expansion scheme — will they launch totally new websites (politidigg.com, entertaindiggs.com)? Will they introduce tagging instead of categorizing?

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June 11, 2006

Why would Scoble leave Microsoft for PodTech?

Reports of Robert Scoble, the Microsoft poster boy in the blogging world, leaving the software giant for a recently funded start-up company PodTech is catching one with Techcrunch spilling the latest scoop.

The bigger question is, why would he leave a seemingly good career at Microsoft (especially with the role he is playing in the blogosphere)? We can only surmise.

Scoble has not yet really (officially) admitted about it early today but he’s already blogged about what it’s not about.

More about it here: Correcting the record about Microsoft.

[tags]robert scoble, scobleizer, microsoft, resignation[/tags]

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June 10, 2006

The Google Browser Sync that wouldn’t work

The first time I read about this, I got a bit excited. Since I’m using 2 PCs and a laptop at home, I may be able to synch all of the Firefox browsers whichever workstation I work with (or so I thought).

Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions.

Naturally, I installed it on my laptop first so I could copy it over to the other two desktop PCs. But then, all I get is a very very long load time with Firefox and some errors with other conflicting Firefox extensions (i.e. Session Manager).

So, after a day of trying with no luck, I removed it. Better wait next week until they fix this:

Please note: Google Browser Sync must update your browser settings whenever you start Firefox. This will increase the start-up time of Firefox (the time between clicking on the Firefox icon and loading your start page) – please bear with us as we work to decrease this delay.

Or until the other more important Firefox extensions post an update to resolve the conflicts.

[tags]Firefox, Mozilla, Plugins, FOSS[/tags]

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June 10, 2006

Forbes: GBuy will launch on June 28

Forbes has reported that Google Buy (GBuy, Google Payments, Google Purchases or Google Wallet, whichever) is due to be released to the public on June 28, 2006.

Consumers using GBuy, which is set for release on June 28, will be taken off the merchant’s site to complete the payment. This will enable Google (nasdaq: GOOG – news – people ) to capture e-commerce transaction data, driving more precise targeting in future searches.

On its core search results pages, Google will designate each merchant accepting GBuy as a “trusted GBuy merchant.” If consumers view this as a mark of safety and security, Rohan believes this should increase click-through rate.

Previous speculations on this have been blogged here and here which touted the new Google service to be a Paypal killer.

If and when Google will leverage on other existing services like Froogle, AdWords and Adsense is yet to be seen but considering that Google has had huge successes in integrating all its services into one user account (Google Account), much like what Microsoft did then with MSN Passport, I think this is an easy guess.

We will soon find out come June 28.

[tags]google, ebay, paypal, online payments[/tags]

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June 09, 2006

You gotta love DOTA AllStars

Warcraft I rekindled my love, err… addiction, with Warcraft and the whole gang (DOTA Online). For the past several days, I’ve been up whole night playing Warcraft with my brother until we couldn’t bear the early morning sun.

And yes, I get really frustrated with my brother who doesn’t know how the whole art of playing Warcraft from the hero class, abilities, special powers, to Sun Tzu’s Art of War. Nevertheless, we’ve managed to suceed at finishing a scenario after numerous re-starts, combination of heroes and the save-and-reload strategy.

The thing is, I don’t give up so easily yet my brother always say “if only”, which is not an excuse for me by the way. That attitude has drag us to playing over and over again for the the same game in days until we completed the quest.

I remember last night’s topic over at GMA 7′s Debate with Mare and Pare about the lack of classrooms and government budget that causes lower english proficiency among elementary and high school students. Oscar Orbos aptly countered it by saying that if we look for faults somewhere else, we won’t find any solution. We should “make do” with whatever we have and give the best we can.

Ok, I digress…

Anyway, once this addiction is satisfied (hopefully soon), I’ll quit using my gaming PC and start working on long delayed projects.

Apologies to those who are affected in one way or another. Am I still missing a reply to your emails?

Latest Review


June 08, 2006

Banco de Oro and Google Dollar Checks

Whenever people ask me what is the best bank to open a dollar bank account for their Google Checks, I’d point them to Banco de Oro since it only takes $200 to open a new account and $100 to maintain it.

Anyway, my friend just told me that he was having some problems with his account in Banco de Oro (BDO).

Apparently, the BDO Branch was questioning the legality or authenticity of the Google Check. Either they haven’t heard of Google yet or they just can’t believe a search engine pays people in dollar checks.

Then, they required a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between my friend and Google stipulating such transactions and what not. MOA what?

I think it’s a hopeless case and i just told my friend to move to another bank. Say BPI? This could just be an isolated case with the branch as I know several other people banking with BDO and not having similar problems.

[tags]check clearing, dollar deposits, banking, finance, Google Adsense[/tags]

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June 08, 2006

Japan creates own iPod Video imitation

Why wait when you can make one yourself? One Japanese company has introduced the Meizu miniPlayer, a really good copy of the possible next-gen iPod video.

Apple iPod Video Imitation

T3 UK has the scoop:

The Meizu miniPlayer looks like something straight from Apple’s labs, but is, in fact, on sale this month in the Far East, packing all the features we’ve wanted, but Apple has yet to deliver.

Sizing up at a nano-challenging 10mm thin, the pint-sized player packs impressively broad video support, as well as a built in microphone and FM radio.

Most surprisingly, Meizu claims the tiny tunebox keeps going for 20 hours in music mode, and a staggering six while playing video on its 2.4-inch screen

Also comes in black.

If only them Japs would make these gadgets with English menus, they’d be as hot everywhere else.

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June 08, 2006

Will Friendster Mobs change the way you use Friendster?

Additional questions from my post at PTB for Friendster Mobs.

Don’t we all have YM, MSN, ICQ, GTalk, etc. installed in our own home PCs?

Aren’t internet cafes all have the ones above pre-installed?

Isn’t voice better? (Yahoo! Messenger w/ Voice, Skype and GTalk)

Isn’t Chikka already doing that? (Web-2-Phone and Phone-2-Web) And I don’t really like paying Php2.50 to SMS reply to a PC.

Where will Friendster Mobs carve its niche?

Just some random thoughts….

Latest Review


June 07, 2006

Gail wins WP 2.0 Theme Competition

Not sure if Gail (kutitots.com) already knows about this but she bagged several awards in the recent WordPress 2.0 Theme Design Competition.

Kurtina 1.0 – 2nd Place, Best in Overall Design
Kurtina WP Theme

Dapit Hapon 1.0 – Best Use Of Colours
Dapit Hapon WordPress Theme

Complete list of winners here. Props to Gail. :)

[tags]themes, contest, skins, design, css layout[/tags]

Latest Review


June 07, 2006

I am teh Pinoy Cook!

Yes, that’s right. I am now teh Pinoy Cook!

I played around the kitchen last night and came out with something for dinner.

Pasta in Tuna with White Sauce and Mushrooms
Pasta in Tuna with White Sauce and Mushrooms

Ingredients:
2 cans spicy Century Tuna
1 pack Nestle Cream
1 small can sliced mushrooms
1 can Cream of Mushrooms
diced onions and garlic
salt to taste
dried oregano to smell
olive oil
1/2 kilo pasta
grated Quickmelt cheese


Chocolate Cake
Very Chocolate Cake with Cashew Nuts

Ingredients:
1 box chocolate powder mix
2 eggs
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cup water
ground cashew nuts
Betty Crocker Chocolate Frosting

Instructions: Just dunk everything in. That’s it! *hahaha*

[tags]cooking dinner, baking, pasta, food recipe[/tags]

Latest Review


June 06, 2006

Google has its own Spreadsheet

W00t? I just found out about this. First, the online wordprocessing tool, Writely. Now it’s Google SpreadSheet:

Google Spreadsheet

Create basic spreadsheets from scratch.

You can start from scratch and do all the basics, including changing the number format, sorting by columns, and adding formulas.

Upload your spreadsheet files.

Upload spreadsheets or worksheets from CSV or XLS format – all your formulas and formatting will come across intact.

Familiar desktop feel makes editing a breeze.

Just click the toolbar buttons to bold, underline, change the font, change the cell background color and more.

Choose who can access your spreadsheets.
Just enter the email addresses of the people you want to share a given document, and then send them a message.

Share documents instantly.

People with whom you share a given spreadsheet can access it as soon as they sign in.

Edit with others in real time.

Multiple people can edit or view your spreadsheet at the same time as you – their names will appear in an on-screen chat window.

Edit from anywhere.

There’s nothing to download; you access your spreadsheets from any computer with an Internet connection and a supported browser.

Never lose your work.
Online storage and auto-save mean you need not fear hard drive failures and power outages.

Easily save and export copies.

You can save your spreadsheets to your own computer in CSV, XLS and HTML formats.

Yes, the complete Google Office Productivity Suite is just around the corner. It will be free and Adsense will be plastered all over. Try it out.

Who needs Microsoft?

Latest Review


June 06, 2006

Ken Leebow and 300 Incredible Blogs

Ken Leebow, the author of popular web guides like 300 Incredible Things to Do on the Internet, says he will be writing a new book called 300 Incredible Blogs on the Internet. He is currently taking incredible blog suggestions.

Well . . . I’ve decided to write a new book. Yep, 300 Incredible Blogs on the Internet.

So . . . if you have an incredible blog or know of one, let me know about it. – Ken Leebow.

From BloggersBlog via The Blog Herald.

If you think you have an incredible blog waiting to be discovered, email him. Malay mo, di ba?

[tags]blogs, books, publication[/tags]

Latest Review


June 05, 2006

Pricenoia for a better deal.

Got this one from one of my readers, Dave StarrPricenoia.com.

It’s a substantially cool implementation of Ajax and it’s one of the few sites I have ever seen on line that truly cater to those outside the USA as well as inside.

You search for an item from Amazon (be sure to use the drop down to search all the Amazon sites) and tell it the country to ship to .. and it checks availability and shipping costs from all the sites. Example, I searched for a certain book and put in Philippines for destination .. cheapest overall source was amazon.jp … who woulda thunk it.

And all this time, I was shopping at Amazon US.

Pricenoia has been around for over a year now and they’ve been spotted by several huge blogs already:

It also got an honorable mention at the recent SEOmoz Web 2.0 Awards.

{ Thanks to Dave for the tip! }

[tags]amazon, shopping, bargains, price compare, sale[/tags]

Latest Review


June 05, 2006

How does your blog look like in a graph?

Mine looks like this:

Blog Graph

What do the colors mean?
blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

Make one for your blog too here.

{ via Weblog Tools Collection }

Latest Review


June 04, 2006

Yahoo! Chairman takes home $1 per year

Yahoo’s Chairman, Terry Semel, will be taking home an annual salary of only $1.00, down from the previous $600,000 he’s getting the previous year.

In exchange for the salary downgrade, he’ll get 6 Million Yahoo stock options, valued at $31.59. So, even if he’s not getting any monthly check, if Yahoo’s stock is higher the following year, he’s able to cash in with his stocks. Say, by December 2007, Yahoo’s stock is valued at $35 on Nasdaq, just $3.41 higher than it is now. Semel can cash some of his stock options. If he gives up all of the 6 million stocks, he’ll go home with $20.46 million.

On top of that, he’ll be awarded an additional 1 million in stock options each year until 2008.

Since Semel’s arrival, Yahoo’s stock price has tripled despite a recent slump in the shares. Semel has cashed in on the run-up by selling 18.1 million of his stock options for a gain of $429 million during the past three years, according to SEC documents.

Terry Semel has had a total of $429 million from 18.1 million stocks he sold in the last 3 years he’s been with Yahoo.

On another note, Google’s two founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are also getting $1 a year in exchange for billions of Google stocks.

{full story here}

[tags]yahoo, exec, stocks, nasdaq, terry semel[/tags]

Latest Review


June 03, 2006

EverythingOnline.ph: Net Cafe Franchise in a Box?

I was going to blog this over at PTB the other day but Mon beat me to it.

I went out on a coffee at Starbucks 6750 Thursday evening when I noticed some party happening just beside it. We went out to check on it and found the launching of EverythingOnline.PH (EOL). It was a bit dark and the people at the booth didn’t noticed us when we where poking around. I was actually interested in this out-of-the-box solution they were talking about.

Anyway, they had the URL printed there so I checked on it when I got home only to be greeted by a 403 page. It turns out that they had their URL on SSL — which means you can only view it via HTTPS and not HTTP (they’ve fixed this now).

When they tell you it’s cheap, it means you don’t have to pay anything upfront for the franchise fee. The franchise fee is on a monthly basis ranging from Php700 for 2 PCs to just over Php2,000 for around 5 to 10 stations. And they add that they will be the one shouldering the monthly PLDT myDSL connection.

The catch, you ask? Their PCs cost a whooping Php35,000 each.

No way. A decent PC for internet browsing and online gaming is just around Php18,000 if you buy it straight from the distributors. What makes EOL’s PC that expensive are the add-ons like OS license, billing software and stuff. However, the PC packages are bundled with chairs and tables but you can get them cheap anyway (Php1,000 – php1,500).

I’m not sure if it’s really worth it but most people who can’t afford a Netopia franchise do it on their own. The additional Php10,000 charge per PC package might not seem too expensive if you are buying 2 or 3 of them. However, if you want to put up your own internet cafe, you won’t earn a dime with just 2 or 3. You’ll need to have around 10 to 15 stations in order to get some ROI within a year (if you’re lucky enough).

It’s been long since I wanted to put up my own net cafe business but I was studying the figures and one won’t cut it easily in this mushrooming industry. What more with the competitive pricing? There’s one around in the corner charging as low as Php8/hour for pre-paid members.

[tags]internet cafe, broadband, business, entrepreneur, financing, franchise[/tags]

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June 03, 2006

Jayvee lands KMM gig

Was just chatting with Jayvee at GTalk a while ago when he mentioned to me he got into Know More Media. He’s now assigned to blog for two sites — Smart Tech Writing and BizToolbelt.

He’s also celebrating his 1st year in problogging.

I have high regards with KMM and glad that they got Jayvee in their talent pool. That’s on top of a couple fo other blogs he’s handling over the B5Media.com. I’ve been reading before that KMM is paying their bloggers on a per post basis so the more you post in a month, the higher your take home pay. Real big motivation if you’re planning to buy the new MacBook! :D

Anyway, if any of you are still interested in becoming probloggers for these networks, you can check out my earlier post here for Creative Weblogging.

[tags]problogging, blog networks, kmm, cw[/tags]

Latest Review


June 03, 2006

Apple MacBook Launch and Interview on ABS CBN

Just finished an interview with RG Cruz of ABS CBN a while ago about blogging and how technology helps in promoting it.

Watch out for it tonight on ABS CBN or ANC, I’m not sure which one really.

The interview coincides with the local launching of the new MacBook, which Appple claims to be blogging-friendly.

MacBook 13

[tags]interview, abs cbn, blogging, apple, macbook[/tags]

Latest Review


June 02, 2006

SixApart’s Vox: TypePad 2.0?

SixApart recently launched the 3rd (4th if you include the LiveJournal acquisition) of its blogging platform, Vox. This new service used to be codenamed Comet.

So why is Vox the TypePad 2.0 of sorts?

What is Vox?

Vox is a new personal blogging service. It’s all about ease of use, privacy control, playing well with other web services, and staying connected to the people you care about.

* Control exactly who gets to see each of your posts and photos.
* See all the posts from your friends and family on one page.
* Bring in content from other web services you already use (Amazon, YouTube, more).

We think that Vox will be a great choice for bloggers looking for a more turnkey environment that balances community and privacy.

It’s not yet live and SixApart says it will be released later this year. For the meantime, you can sign up for a member invitation here once it launches.

[tags]sixapart, movabletype, typepad, livejournal[/tags]

Latest Review


June 02, 2006

WordPress and FireFox Upgrades

There’s a new FireFox subversion upgrade earlier today — FireFox 1.5.0.4 which includes some minor security fixes. If you’re already running the 1.5 version, it will prompt you for an upgrade once it has downloaded the newer version.

Likewise, WordPress also released some security updates and speed enhancements for WordPress 2.0.3 which you can download here. The Movabletype/TypePad import script has been fixed as well.

Actually, I was in the process of upgrading my old WP 1.5 to the newer version when the updates came out. I had some problems with the custom hacks and plugins. Spam Karma 2.0 wasn’t also compatible so i had to disable it in favor of Akismet. So far, only a couple of trackback spams got past thru and just over 300 comment spams are filtered out in the last 24 hours alone.

[tags]foss, firefox, mozilla, wordpress, movabletype, typepad[/tags]