While browsing around the blogosphere, I came across this interesting website called AideRSS on one of the comments on Google Blogoscoped’s article “Tips For Dealing With Information Overload”. AideRSS is apparently a free tool that takes an RSS or Atom feed, collects some statistics, and then gives each post in the feed a PostRank, which seems to be an objective measure of a post’s quality, based on “relevance and reaction.” (You might say that PostRank is similar in name and function to Google’s PageRank.) Among the metrics it uses are the number of comments, Delicious links, Digg votes (?), and Google Blogsearch backlinks. You can then use PostRank to filter a feed for the best posts if you so desire.

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The ASUS Eee PC 900 Press Launch this morning was the first time that I’ve attended a PR event that’s not primarily for bloggers. Thanks to Abe for the spur-of-the-moment endorsement of invitation. The press launch was held at the swanky Makati Shangri-La Hotel in Ayala Center Makati and its basically what you expect it to be: basically a series of presentations (including one from Intel and Microsoft each) showing of the drool-worth ASUS Eee PC 900, a worthy successor to the wildly popular Eee PC 701 (which I still don’t have). And the answer to the grand question? The Eee PC 900 costs 25 thousand pesos in the Philippines (about US$590).

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The big news that’s rocking the physics, electrical and electronics engineering fields is the proof of the existence of the memristor. “Mem-what?” Well, that’s what my initial reaction was, too. The memristor is apparently the missing fourth fundamental basic element of electrical circuits, alongside the resistor, the capacitor, and the inductor. And the cool thing about this is that the memristor was first hypothesized in 1971 by Leon Chua, a Filipino-American professor at the University of California at Berkeley who got his degree in B.S. Electrical Engineering at the Mapúa Institute of Technology in 1959, here in the Philippines! Yay, Pinoy!

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Almost one year ago, Yuga raised the alarm that Intel might move their Cavite operations to Dalian, China. Well, it didn’t happen at that time. Also, when Intel announced last year that they will sell off their flash memory unit to form a new company called Numonyx, the closing fears circulated the rumor mill again since half of the operations at Intel Cavite was in the manufacturing of flash memory. Well, just yesterday, an internal announcement came that Intel Cavite might close off for good within the next six to nine months.

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San Francisco just finished their turn at Earth Hour about two hours ago, and more than 17 hours after Metro Manila switched off its own lights. Earth Hour is a viral movement that started in Sydney, Australia last year and became an international affair in 2008 as 28 partner cities and hundreds more supporting towns and cities switch off lights and other non-essential electrical devices for one hour to raise awareness about global warming and climate change.

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Connie, over at Write Life Guide, asks “Can you remember your first Internet experience? How was it like?” Well, surprisingly, given the fact that my non-work waking life is centered on the Internet, I can’t remember exactly when I first got on the Internet or what was the first web page I visited.

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Herewith are some mapping news to start the year.

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One big productivity step I took a few months ago was to organize the subscribed feeds I had in Google Reader into folders by priority. The result is that I no longer feel overwhelmed if I have hundreds of unread items in my feed reader, and I now able to use my time more wisely by scanning those feeds that I really am most interested in.

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Even though I already have a desktop and a laptop, I can’t help but want the ASUS Eee PC. Several bloggers such as Juned, Ade, and J. Angelo have already bought it, and a majority of the reviewers I’ve read say they love it. J. Angelo, with some content from Ade, has already launched his ASUS Eee blog, there’s a local unofficial EEE Philippine Users Group already, and there’s also a global gadget blog dedicated to this tiny notebook and its niche even before it came out in the market.

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I arrived terribly late at the Blogger Meet and Greet because I had an important errand to do in Manila, yet I didn’t really miss much and I had a really great time. I finally got to meet Shai Coggins, the b5media Vice President for Community and the special guest of honor of this event. (This brings to three the total number of siblings of the Manuel clan that I have met.)

The event was held at Kape Isla at Serendra, Fort Bonifacio, Taguig and besides meeting Shai, bloggers also got to play around with Juned’s drool-worthy ASUS Eee PC. I also had an impromptu interview by Azrael Coladilla for my Blogenyo webcomic.

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There are two technology fields that Google has recently entered and will prove to be interesting battle grounds: one is the cross-platform mobile application development space, and the other is the social-networking Web application space. Google entered the former by announcing the Android platform and launching the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), which includes Intel, Motorola, and T-Mobile, and the notable absence of Microsoft, Apple, and Nokia. Google forayed into the latter field by releasing the OpenSocial API with notable partners Friendster, hi5, imeem, MySpace, Six Apart, and LinkedIn, and the notable absence of Facebook.

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The previous post on Bloglines and Google Reader brings me up to a another topic, that of feed reader lock-in. Both Google Reader and Bloglines support the export and import of feed subscriptions via the OPML standard (that’s how I switched from Bloglines to Google Reader in the first place). This means that both aggregators do not lock-in customers. Nominally.

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I had been using Bloglines as my feed reader/aggregator since 2003 before I completely switched over to Google Reader a few months ago. I tried Google Reader early last year but it didn’t stick with me then. What made me decide to switch now? I got sick and tired of the way Bloglines marked every unread item as read when selecting a feed. If you neglect to check your feeds for a while and one of them adds tons of new items, you’d be forced to invest a lot of time to catch up on that feed if you don’t want to miss anything.

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When I was reading blog entries and comments about the (Night) Sky in Google Earth, I came across several references and comparisons to other similar applications. One of these is Celestia (Wikipedia), which I raved about three years ago, and a program called Stellarium, which I’m going to rave about now.

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Markku once talked about false productivity and asked for suggestions. I commented by explaining my organizational system consisting of scattered to-do lists and organizing mechanisms.

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I really try to avoid back-to-back Google posts, but this new feature/product/service by Google is too good to pass up posting about. Download the latest version (4.2) of Google Earth then switch to the Sky view by clicking the astronomy icon in the toolbar or selecting the “Switch to Sky” menu option under the View menu. You’re now presented with a view of the night sky!

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I’ve heard about OpenStreetMap (OSM) (see the Wikipedia article) maybe one or two years ago and was interested in the collaborative aspects of it. This mapping project aimed to create a free (as beer and in speech) street geodata of the whole United Kingdom and Ireland. While Great Britain already has excellent mapping data care of the Ordnance Survey (the national mapping agency of the UK), the problem is that this data is not free (as in beer and speech). The Ordnance Survey holds the copyright to the mapping data and charges people who want to use it, despite being funded by taxpayer’s money. So the OpenStreetMap project was born.

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Playing catch up with Google Maps, Yahoo! last year added satellite imagery to their Yahoo! Maps website. Naturally, being the map geek that I am, I checked out their offering last year and was disappointed to find out that they didn’t have any high-resolution satellite imagery for the Philippines, unlike Google Maps which had some back then.

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Here’s the second part of the story behind Lakbayan. You should also read the first part or the launch blog entry if you haven’t done so.

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Today is the 109th anniversary of the Philippine Declaration of Independence and I’m celebrating it by launching the beta version of Lakbayan! See how much of the Philippines you have visited! To whet your appetite and give you a preview of what to expect, my personal result is shown below.

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As anticipated by Google Earth enthusiasts, Google has updated its public satellite imagery in Google Earth (see the announcement). I checked in Google Earth and it seems that in the Philippines, only one new Digital Globe image was added: Honda Bay in Puerto Princesa City, Palawan. Shown below is the world-class Dos Palmas Arreceffi Island Resort in Palawan.

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Oh. My. God. This has got to be the coolest thing I have ever seen on Google Maps by far. Google has now integrated street-level panoramic views of practically every street in 5 U.S. cities: New York, San Francisco, Miami, Denver, and Las Vegas. The photos only require a flash player, is zoomable, pannable 360°, and it’s interactive! You could practically do a virtual drive around these cities! It’s almost as good as being there.

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After months of planning and setting up, I am extremely pleased to announce that we have finally launched Vista Pinas, my second blog where I give you a virtual tour of Filipino sights as can be seen from satellite imagery found in Google Maps and Google Earth. It’s like Google Sightseeing done Pinoy-style!

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Last year, I speculated on getting a broadband connection. Now, after years of subsisting on dial-up and chewing on months of free Wi-Fi, I’m finally munching on high-speed Internet, baby! In a stroke of good timing, Globelines/Innove have recently began servicing my area and they have been aggressively promoting their broadband services around the time we got back to Las Piñas. While PLDT already provides MyDSL services in our village, we hear more horror stories about PLDT and their customer service (e.g., Rico and this hapless call center conversation) that signing up for Globe was an easy decision. My friend, who lives in the adjacent subdivision, has vouched for Globe as well. Not even Max’s gripes with Globe dissuaded me (and being the winner of this year’s Philippine Blog Awards Best Technology Blog, Max’s opinion must count for something).

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Due to the recent announcement of Google’s top SEO guy Matt Cutts of a way to report to Google sites who sell links on their pages, there has been a lot of online discussion about the whole economy of buying and selling links and how it affects search engine rankings, with particular emphasis on small people like bloggers who use text links from brokers like Text Link Ads as a way to get additional income. For instance, Yuga touched a bit on the topic by talking about links from WordPress themes.

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Yay for free Wi-Fi. I’m finally blogging live about something for the first time. I’m at the iBlog3, or the 3rd Philippine Blogging Summit, held here at the School of Economics in U.P. Diliman. Today is Day 2 of the summit and right now, J. Angelo Racoma is talking about blogging as a form of mainstream media (i.e., Social News, like Digg).

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The Google/GIS blogosphere is having a field day with the Google Maps easter egg instructing you to “Swim across the Atlantic Ocean” at a distance of 5,572 kilometers (taking 29 days) if you want to drive from any point in the continental USA and Canada to Europe. See for instance any of these posts: Kottke, Google Blogoscoped, Metafilter, and The Map Room.

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Apparently, Airborne Access’ Wi-Fi network is indeed glitchy. While that’s usually a bad thing, on the balance, I like it because I keep on enjoying more free Wi-Fi access. Similar to the first time, I was able to essentially double the minutes of my Airborne Access Wingspan prepaid cards. The other Saturday, I used some of the prepaid cards I got from the Eastwood City Wi-Fi promo. Sometime into my second hour, the network went dead and so I finished my web surfing session. Last Saturday, I checked the balance of my cards on a whim and was pleasantly surprised to find my minutes unused! Two more free hours!

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While going to work Wednesday morning, I noticed a strange-looking palm tree planted at the southern end of the Manila Golf Club near the Fairways Tower and McKinley Road. It was definitely a new species, probably yet unseen by the country’s botanists. So I took a picture of it this morning:

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Google has updated their data for Google Earth and Google Maps last February 28. In terms of Philippine content, I only see just a few more areas with high-resolution satellite imagery care of Digital Globe. Below is my updated hi-res coverage map. (See the previous version.) The blue spots show areas with added hi-res imagery. The red spots indicate places with already existing hi-res coverage.

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Annoyed by those intrusive Snap Previews? Disable them for good. (Via Kottke.)

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No, I’m not talking about the free Airborne Access Wingspan pre-paid cards promo. I’m talking about real free Wi-Fi access like the one you get in Robinson’s Galleria.

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I read an interesting business article yesterday saying that an Australian bank has developed a new purchasing power parity index called the iPod Index. We all know about foreign exchange rates. But we also know that just because the U.S. dollar is equivalent to 49 Philippine pesos, does not mean that an apple that sells for 50 cents in California will go for 24.50 pesos in Cebu.

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After leaving the office early today, I redeemed 3,000 pesos worth of receipts at the information booth of Eastwood City and got myself three hours of Airborne Access’ Wingspan pre-paid Wi-Fi cards. Eastwood was congratulating itself for being the first “city” to have full Wi-Fi coverage and it’s celebrating by having a promo in partnership with Airborne Access. Basically, every 1,000 pesos worth of receipts dated this January 2007 from any Eastwood City establishment nets you a free 1-hour Wi-Fi access!

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I have the lucky timing of being in Tokyo during the time a selection of M. C. Escher’s works were being displayed at an exhibit in Shibuya. The Dutch M. C. Escher has been one of my favorite artists, ever since I saw his work, Relativity, in a Childcraft volume from World Book Encyclopedia. If Relativity seems familiar, it’s because the concept has been used many times, the most notable reference for me being the climax scene in the movie, Labyrinth. In fact, Relativity can be seen hanging on the wall of the bedroom of Sarah, the movie’s lead character.

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It has been almost two weeks since I’ve been here in Tokyo. The weather has been mostly overcast, with isolated rain showers, and the temperature is slightly uncomfortable at 10–20°C. (The coolness is actually quite bearable, if it weren’t for the icy wind.) Right now autumn is catching up with about half the trees still in summer green and the other half in fashionable fall colors or winter nakedness.

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Well, what do you know. I’m going to Japan again. That’s the second time this year. I’m staying there for 4 weeks as well, same as last time. I’m actually looking forward to this trip, though I’m kinda put off by the cold temperature that’ll greet me (5 to 15 °C—colder than your normal aircon!) and that’s not even the coldest it can get in Tokyo. I’m just glad my trip’s not in the middle of January.

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Yay! Finally downloaded Firefox 2 last weekend. Among the new features, I like the inline spell-checking the best, something which Yuga has been raving about. And I agree. Whenever I write a blog entry, I use Google to verify words whose spelling I’m not sure of. Now it’s all in the browser. Sweet. (Tip: configure the layout.spellcheckDefault option to also enable spell checking in single-line input text boxes.)

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Wow. I was able to enjoy my 100-peso 1-hour Airborne Access Wingspan pre-paid Wi-Fi account for almost two hours. I don’t exactly know how, but it’s probably a temporary glitch on AA’s part, which may or may not be related to the PLDT DNS problem that Yuga blogged about and that my web hosting provider e-mailed their clients on (AA is connected with PLDT).

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Following-up on my previous post about the updated satellite imagery in Google Maps and Google Earth, below is version 2.0 of the Philippine hi-res coverage that I have shown before. The bright blue spots on the map below indicate the areas that have added high resolution satellite imagery. The red spots indicate the areas that already have hi-res photos.

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Hooray! Due to the most recent update (October 3) of Google Maps/Earth satellite imagery data, we now have a seamless, and more importantly, cloudless, satellite view of practically the whole Metro Manila! Finally, the Central Business District of Makati is now shown in all its glory! For example, here’s PBCom Tower, the country’s tallest building.

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I went to the first ever Philippine BlogCon 2006 last night at the National Sports Grill in Greenbelt 3 sponsored by Globe Innove. I finally got to meet some of the people behind the local blogs I read such as Abe Olandres and Markku Seguerra.

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Not even a half-year after I got my iPod nano, Apple introduced even yummier nanos last Tuesday. Thinner? Check. Twice more storage for the same price? Check. Twice the battery life? Check. More colors? Check. Scratch-resistant aluminum casing? Check. Brighter LCD screen? Check. And the oft-requested gapless playback feature? Check, check, check!

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I bought myself a new cellphone early last June. Not because I want to, but because I needed one. You see, as I was trying to reconnect my 2-year old Nokia 6610 to the computer via the data cable, it suddenly conked out and started asking for a Restriction Code, which I have never heard before. So I rebooted the phone and it shows a “Contact Service” message that won’t go away. Gah. Looking it up, it seemed that it was a very bad thing.I suspected that the software got corrupted and so I brought the unit to Semicon at SM Southmall. That was a Saturday.

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That was fast! Via Google Maps Mania I read that Google Maps now has the same new satellite imagery that I mentioned before. Wheee!

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Since there’s a lead time between the introduction of new satellite imagery in Google Earth and its deployment to Google Maps, you can use the lead time to spot interesting before-and-after scenes. And we’re in the middle of such a lead time right now, due to the recent update in Google Earth.

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Well, sorry for the Google Earth-related posts but I’m just excited. Hehehe. Anyway, I explored the Philippines on Google Earth and compiled all the areas with high-resolution images into the image below. The red spots (they’re not exact) mark those areas.

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When I found out that Metro Manila, among other Philippine cities, have hi-res satellite imagery in Google Earth, I lamented the fact that I still don’t have broadband access since Google Earth works much much better on when you have fat data pipes. (See this thread over at SkyscaperCity for a whole bunch of Google Earth screenshots.)

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It’s almost inevitable that I’ll be subscribing to some sort of broadband Internet connection someday but I’m holding on to my dial-up access like some old guy afraid of technology.

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Can anybody guess how I did this photo below? I discovered this nice effect by accident.

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Yay! Due to a recent update of Google Maps’ data, satellite imagery is now at par with what Google Earth has. What does this mean? We now have hi-resolution imagery of five cities in Mindanao! We can now spy on Cagayan de Oro, Davao City, Cotabato City, Butuan City, and Bislig City. More playing grounds for my other blog.

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Remember when I said that I wouldn’t get an Apple iPod? Well, I changed my mind. I’m now a proud owner of a black Apple iPod Nano 4GB, which I bought in Akihabara for only ¥24800 (around 10,600 pesos). I can’t wait to turn my younger sister green with envy. Hehehe.

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One nice thing about Japan is that they have unbelievably affordable consumer electronics here. And the Akihabara district in Tokyo is definitely the place to go to if you want digital cameras, portable media players, mobile games consoles, cellphones, and computer parts and accesories. In fact, most of the PSPs, digital cameras, MP3 players and 3G cellphones owned by people in my company were bought in Japan.

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My almost one-year-old desktop PC now has a companion. Like I mentioned before, I got out and bought me a spanking new laptop, just in time for my Japan trip.

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I’m going to buy a notebook/laptop by the end of this month and I would like to solicit suggestions on what are the nice mobile computers out there. I’ve never owned a laptop before and so I don’t consider myself informed about the possible choices.

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I’ve added a beta Map page to my second blog, Tanawing Pinoy. Like the original Google Sightseeing, I plan this page to be an interactive embedded map pointing to all or a subset of the featured sights from the blog.

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I’m proud to introduce to you Tanawing Pinoy, my weblog dedicated to highlighting Pinoy sights from Google Local. Well-versed web surfers will recognize that this blog is really just a localized Pinoy version of the popular Google Sightseeing blog.

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I’m so glad I don’t have any Sun unlimited account. I realized that I’d be pretty annoyed by the people who would send me inconsequential texts. For instance, a dormmate of my brother would send him on his Sun account essentially the same message in several texts. Then there are people who would forward stupid messages like in the early GSM days of Smart and Globe.

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If you’ve ever enjoyed playing Konami’s Gradius on the Nintendo Family Computer (a.k.a. NES, for those stateside) you need to see this interesting video, Averaging Gradius.

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Today is the last day of Globe’s CelebRATE Promo where you can call and text Singtel subscribers at rates as if they were on the Globe network.

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There is this technology company, on the top 200 of both the Fortune Global 500 and the Forbes Global 2000, with revenues in the tens of billions of dollars, that recently decided to ban the use of all software licensed under the Apache License and IBM’s Common Public License.

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Tim Berners-Lee has a blog! If you don’t know who he is, then you either probably haven’t read Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons, or you haven’t carefully read Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons. For the still clueless, he’s the reason you’re reading this blog entry now; he’s the inventor of the World Wide Web.

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Recently tried out Globe’s Family/Friend tracker service, which they newly promoted. The locations it gives me were, while technically correct, can be misleading. I wouldn’t have tried the service if it weren’t for my mom who asked to enroll me so she can supposedly track me.

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I just watched the majority of two episodes of National Geographic’s Megacities Week, which explores the underlying vital infrastructure that powers or protects eight cities in the world. The two episodes I caught dealt with the power and electricity demands of Las Vegas in the United States, and the defense systems and engineering safety that built Mexico City in the wake of the devastating 1985 earthquake.

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Hay. Malas naman talaga o. I went home last night, turned on my PC, and wondered why it wouldn’t detect my new S-ATA hard disk and why there was some weird clicking noises when I boot the PC up. It seemed that the hard disk crashed. The brand-spanking-new hard disk. The 5-year Seagate warranty sticker on the hard disk mocks me.

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In a reference to the oft-mentioned phrase, “I can see my house from here!” I’d like to show you the Google Maps Satellite view of the Our Lady of Fatima Parish in Philamlife Village, where my family goes to mass every Sunday. (See also my earlier post on Google Maps Satellite view).

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My dad got lucky and won a 512-MB iPod shuffle in a raffle. Naturally, my younger sister went agog over it and protested when my dad announced that he’s giving it as a present to my mom. Even my younger brother and older sister were quite excited as well. In the end, my siblings got what they wanted and now they share it among themselves.

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Here’s something I’ve learned when I was using my new PC. I’m writing this down so that other people might benefit.

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I can’t think of a clever and witty rejoinder to that title so I’ll go straight to the point and announce that I bought myself a new computer! I’ve been meaning to buy one for a very long time since my 5-year-old AMD K6–2 500 MHz PC with its 64 MB of SDRAM and running Microsoft Windows 98 SE is now inadequate for my computing needs.

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I’ve owned my Nokia 6610 for almost a year now, but I only discovered two of its nice hotkey features only recently. You’re welcome to skip this post if you’re not interested in techie minutiae. (I’m a self-confessed geek. So sue me.)

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If ever I would buy my own portable music player, it definitely won’t be an Apple iPod no matter how cool it is. That doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t appreciate someone giving me an iPod as a present—I would be thrilled to receive one—but I wouldn’t buy it with my hard-earned money.

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Yay! Firefox 1.0 has landed. My browser of choice for the past two years has finally come of age. And, my God! The installer is only 4.7 MB! I remember downloading Phoenix (the browser’s first incarnation) at almost 7 MB and thought it was small. Now they managed to bring it down to a comfortable 4.7 MB; it’s almost as fast as downloading an MP3 song.

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Celestia is definitely one of the best open-source software that I have ever tried. I followed the link to this software via Dave. Celestia is a 3D-based simulation of outer space. You can explore the solar system, go to the nearest stars, and see in three dimensions the arrangement of the Local Group of Galaxies (which includes the Milky Way, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, and the Andromeda Galaxy).

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I’ve actually had a Gmail account for about ten days now. But it is only now that I’ve tried to really play with it. I’m impressed. Now I understand why people have been raving that it feels very much like a desktop application. The response is quite fast, even on the dial-up connection I’m using.

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Last Tuesday, I bought myself a new Nokia 6610. It’s a great cellphone. It’s features include a 128×128 4,096 colored screen, tri-band capability, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), downloadable Java™ applications, polyphonic ringing tones, integrated stereo FM radio, and WAP 1.2.1 over GPRS. Best of all, it has all these features, without an integrated camera!

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