For the last 3 weeks now, I’ve been to three European states and have seen and experienced the advancement of technology in these first-world countries. It’s oftentimes amazing but once in a while, I would miss the ones I enjoyed in the Philippines.
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This may come as a surprise but local online game companies Level Up! and E-Games has finalized talks of a merger. eGames made the disclosure earlier this morning at the PSE (since it’s a publicly listed company).
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Several months ago, we finally closed our little internet cafe business. I wrote about the viability of the net cafe business many years ago and actually started one about 2 years ago. Despite its eventual failure, I learned a lot of lessons from that little experiment.
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Since early this year, we have not heard nor seen any new nettops announced locally. After the craze on netbooks several years ago, companies like Intel were banking on nettops as the next major market.
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In the recount of what happened yesterday regarding my hacked Paypal account, I realized that it was my GMail that was originally compromised and used to reset my Paypal password.
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Been in the boondocks for about a week now on a semi-vacation mode (and semi-retreat kind of way) so I’m not able to regularly publish new entries here. With a thousand miles away from mega Manila and a couple hundred more miles from the nearest city, my mountain resort hide-away is almost devoid of any internet coverage.
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I’ve been asking engineers around for reasons why ISPs around the world have been implementing bandwidth caps and got several possible scenarios to consider. Here are the top 5 most probable reasons behind the issue of bandwidth caps.
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SmartBro Surf TV is Smart’s attempt to create a market from those who cannot still afford to buy a brand new PC.
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For the past 5 years now, we’ve seen a huge growth in internet penetration in the country. At the same time, we’ve also seen the barriers to entry go down in favor of consumers, partly because of competition.
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Friendster and Globe Telecom has partnered to provide all day surfing on their phones to the Friendster Mobile site for only Php20.
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After over a week of playing around with the HDX 1000 Media Player, I am convinced that this is a great device to have especially if you’re mostly watching downloadable shows. It has some quirkiness but let me share why I think this media player is worth considering.
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About a year ago, I wrote about the state of the internet cafe business in the Philippines and why it’s a seemingly losing battle. A couple of days ago, I mentioned that I started venturing into the Internet Cafe with a friend. I got emails asking why I thought the net cafe is still a viable business and here’s my take.
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Over the week-end, a friend and I went out buying sets of PCs for a small internet cafe business we’re putting up in the province. We were mulling between cheap CRT monitors and LCDs but it turns out a lot of shops have them in stock anymore.
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As the year 2008 is ending, I dug up into my Google Analytics to see which stories in tech made a lot of buzz here on YugaTech. We’re heavy on gadgets and gizmo’s so here are the top 20 gadgets and top 10 stories published here this 2008.
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If you survey various telcos around the globe, you will notice that all of them offer packet-based charging for 3G or Ev-DO. Only in the Philippines you’d get time-based charging. And the reason why?
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This could probably be the last media player you’ll ever need in your living room.The Popcorn Hour is an integrated video processor tucked inside a small portable casing that plays almost all of the popular media files out there, plus some more. It’s like the open source version of the Apple TV.
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This was one of the questions asked during the afternoon session of the 2nd day at the iBlog3 — what’s slowing mobile blogging in the Philippines?
Actually, Globe Telecoms (G-Blogs) and Smart Communications (AMBlog) have already entered into mobile blogging years ago. An old friend who works for Smart’s Marketing department approached me 2 years ago asking how much we would sell PinoyBlog for. I told him it wasn’t for sale. He then asked how much (monthly retainer) do we want for it to be re-branded as a Smart property allowing us to retain editorial control while the mobile company gets access to the content. Nonetheless, Connie and I didn’t push thru with the deal as we feel it doesn’t add much value to the service we’re doing. Obviously, Smart and Globe were already looking forward to the time when moblogging will be a hit in the country. Why it did not, I’d like to share a few thoughts.
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Last Thursday, Google announced a new Mobile Java Application based for GMail. This mobile client can be downloaded and installed in a lot of supported handheld devices.
Gmail users can already access their accounts through the browser on their mobile devices, but this application brings users the same great Gmail experience — complete with search, conversation view, and automatic synchronization with the desktop version — with the following new benefits:
* Up to five times faster access and use, thanks to automatic pre-fetching of messages
* Drastically reduced clicks and scrolling to access email
* Fewer keystrokes for reading, composing, or searching mail
* Attachments, including files and photos, viewable and automatically resized to fit the user’s phone
I wanted to blog about it then but I was trying to access gmail.com/app to download the client on my Nokia 3230 but it seems my GPRS settings would not work. I tried downloading the new settings for SmartInternet/SmartGPRS today and was able to successfully install the Java app.
Yes, it’s faster indeed, and the interface is mobile-friendly. I’d usually get a notice to “use network to connect” which is kinda bug me for a while but checking and replying to emails is way easier than before. And, with Smart’s GPRS rate of Php10 per 30 minutes, this beats going to the net cafe to check your GMail.
Just got back from the Southern Island of Mindoro. =)
No Wifi, no net cafe, no internet. Disconnected form the net since Friday night. Both liberating and worrysome. *heh*
