Google acquires JotSpot

Hah! Now this is an acquisition that I'm really excited about....
Google just acquired Jotspot!

The Acquisition FAQ is available in Jotspot's website.

Jotspot is a company that provides a collaboration platform that is hinged on the concept of wiki. It's a very welcome addition to Google's growing arsenal of web applications for office and collaboration.

If this doesn't send the message loud enough that Google is serious in the web-native Office, i don't know what will.

[update: added a brief summary bout Jotspot]

Lesson #1

In migrating your gmail identity.

Autoforwarding.

My currently active Gmail handle has been with me for a while now, but i use it merely for professional / formal correspondences. So the way I did it is to set up my multiple email accounts in emelgeek to be able to send using my (mark.gamis) identity. I then setup the latter's (mark.gamis) email forwarding to forward everything to emelgeek.

Then when i decided to start dumping my emelgeek account, i also set it up to forward everything to mark.gamis. But i forgot to turn off the forwarding settings in my mark.gamis account, so in turn i have set both inboxes to forward to each other. TF!

Now that answers the question that has been bugging my mind: Why on earth did people stop emailing me on the day that i decided to change handle? I was starting to think that changing handle was a bad idea... Sigh. I feel like an ass.

Pumpkin Sam

From Halloween 2006

emelgeek

It was originally emelgee, a derivative of my name's initials (Mark L. Gamis = MLG ="em" "el" "gee")
then Jasmin added playful twist to it - emelgeek, to somehow describe my then starting enthusiasm in technology. I think it was on her phonebook -- when i first saw emelgeek.

So emelgeek stuck, and became sort of my universal handle.

But things change, and sometimes you want to leave things behind and just move on. Nikki said in our conversation this morning (thru google talk, using my new handle of course, :P )
"sayang yung 'emelgeek' :P"

He was right, pero oh well.

The new handle? nothing could be more boring: my firstname and lastname separated by a dot.
(jumping in the bandwagon?) .

It's just my first day and it's not easy. The first thing i did was invite people again to my google talk. Nikki (of course) was one of the first to respond. But nothing can be more virtually depressing than an empty Gmail inbox and very few green dots on your Google talk friends list.

Anyway, why the change? Hmm. I was trying to think of something less destructive than deleting this blog (which is, btw, bound to be transformed anyway, when i have made the necessary things in transferring my blog) which is what i'm always tempted to do whenever things are not doing right..

But it's just hard to find the guts to delete a blog with posts that dates back to 2003. It's a part of my life's online history now, and it just didn't feel right deleting it.

So what's the next best thing to do? Create a new blog, select a new handle. Drop the old one.

How sure am i that this won't screw up my online identity for a while? 0%. Change has always been difficult. And no matter how much it sucks, it has to happen anyway.

So there, my little (but incomplete -- i feel so sleepy) story about my handle.

I will certainly miss it like hell, but it has to go... bye emelgeek. :) hello, boring handle.

A Story

Image from Gaping Void

Last...

There are wrong things thatI wish I never did,
and there are things I did that I wish were never wrong.

iTunes 7... Where's Piles?

Okay jut so we're clear, this post does not criticize the Cover Flow view of the new iTunes, but rather, the Album art list view. I think th Cover Flow UI is slick. The list view with Cover Arts is not.

I don't get it. Apple owns the patent for the Piles UI concept (demo, description) , one of the more novel ideas in UI that i know of, and they just let the perfect oppurtunity to showcase it slip away by not using some part of it in the newly-added Album Art View in iTunes 7.

Cover Flow in iTunes 7 - Cool



List View - Not Cool

And what adds to the weirdness is the fact that it's Microsoft (of all companies) who seems to be the one who's more serious in using piles (or at least a variant of it) in the form of Stacks in the upcoming Media Player 11.

Stacks in Media Player 11

In fairness to Apple's User Interface experts, i have no idea how the concept fared with the users in actual usability tests done by Apple.

Just wondering... why my list of songs are soo widely spaced when viewing artworks in iTunes 7 when i think that it could have been implemented differently...

Otherwise, iTunes 7 rocks, so far. :)

(Not So) Smart Mail

August 22, 2006 - Took a leave from work to process my Police clearance. Proud that i still get to enjoy the power of email with my state of the art nokia 1100 phone, i emailed my boss using smart's mobile email feaure to ask for permission to leave.

"Sir, i won't be working today because i have to process... blah blah"

August 30, 2006 one week later - In the office:

Boss: Sinong absent? May nagsend sakin ng email galing ata sa cellphone...

Holy shit Smart. One week? WTF! Dapat nagsnail mail na lang siguro ako.

Handle this...

I thought emelgeek is geeky enough for a handle...

This is what Gmail offerred me when i tried to create a new Gmail account:

emelgeekenator@gmail.com (cue music)

OMG... it's the emelgeekenator! Run!!!

Google Reader

For those who haven't discovered yet....

Google reader has a very slick way of navigating through your labels. Just type G and the starting letters of your label. :D Enjoy.

Bawal tumakbo sa Walkway

Last thursday, hinahabol ko yung closing time ng Bank ni Han, so tumatakbo ako sa Walkway (from Rufino papuntang Enterprise) nang biglang may guard na tumawag sakin...

Guard: "Bakit ka tumatakbo?"
Me: "Ummm, hinahabol ko bangko eh (glances at my left wrist kahit la akong watch, to gesture the time)"
Guard: "Bawal tumakbo sa walkway eh"
Me (in my mind): WTF? Bakit bawal tumakbo sa walk...? Oh.

Anyway tumakbo ulit ako after namin mag-usap.

Bookish Bimbo: Bring back the books

Bookish Bimbo: Bring back the books

:) It's nice to see this post, knowing that you haven't read a good one in a while. It's even nicer because now I know what to give you. heh.

Sam video

Sam....

Writer, Blogger and a few other stuff...

I am currently using Windows Live Writer to post this...

My blogging life is in chaos right now. There are many things that I have been wanting to do(change), like moving to wordpress.com, using my immortal handle as my blog url, making a new original template, promoting world peace, setting up a regular posting schedule, etc... But it's so hard to get started, and the fact that I have a regular day job now doesn't really help either. (I am not even supposed to be blogging right now, according to the guidelines i personally set..)

The fact that most of my friends (well, at least the blogging ones) are here in Blogger, and the mantra "if it ain't broke, don't fix" held me back from moving to WP. Though some people complain about how Blogger sucks, it surpisingly fits me just right. It's not perfect, but it's something that I could live (blog) without.

Which brings me to my next point: new blogger version!

Google is about to launch a new (and improved) version of Blogger, along with move to integrate users' Google and Blogger accounts.

At this point, only a few existing Blogger users are allowed to migrate to the new version, though if you really want to try the new bits, you can sign up (or just use your Gmail/Google login account ) to beta.blogger.com

Blogger buzz lists some of the notable new features here.

Back back back

Back from the dead,

just to vent out my frustrations (and one good reason at the bottom of this post) on my screwed up blogger template. Blogger has this annoying bug of clipping off the blog's template while you are saving/publishing some changes to it. I was trying to fix the botched up nav bar this morning when, during one of my save-publish routine I realized that my template got messed up, this time pretty badly. I don't know if i'll restore the old template but since I don't have it with me now (i'm on cel's pc), i will just use a new one. Stale content I can take, not a bastardized template.

And oh, it's Italy for World Cup 2006, but the real highlight was Zidane's headbutt(video). Wtf was that?

Btw, I stopped watching the matches when Brazil got dropped. Damnit...
--

And i finally got Google Browser Sync to work (dialup sucks). Ah... the convenience of not having to enter passwords again and being able to retain your history, cookies, and even opened tabs and windows, even when you're using another pc. (and the risk of someone else taking over your online persona. hehe). Seriously though, the idea of your browser's data (firefox) data following you wherever you go is much more convenient than it sounds.
--

Thanks for those who greeted baby Sam on his first birthday, and for those who came. :-) . Every birthday is special, but Han and I both agreed that next year's would be the first of many birthdays that will be very meaningful for our little family. As you know, when they first diagnosed Sam, the longest time that he was expected to live was 18 months. So next year we'll be celebrating the first of the many extra birthdays that he was given . Truly a milestone, truly a miracle of life. :-)

(Updated: added Google browser sync link)

...This is my techie blog.

The previous post was actually started as a distraction. This is what i originally intended to post.

I've been thinking lately to pull out my blog altogether. I don't know. Maybe when you want to start a new chapter in your life, you just want to get rid of the things that remind you of that particular chapter that you want to end, or maybe i just wanted to go away, and crawl back to my own antisocial cave. Had a serious heart to heart talk with Han about it (amongst other things), and i decided, to her prodding, to just go on a blog hiatus instead (though she wants to call it a sabbatical blog leave, heh). We've also analysed that maybe this is my own innermost urge to send a signal to the world that No, I am not ok. The tech-related posts are there because not because i have nothing else to blog about, but they are there because they are the only ones that I have to courage to blog about. I mentioned this before-- for every boring, techie content i blog about, there are hundreds of things bothering my mind that I don't. So this is it I guess, no more blogging for me, for a while. (I almost started my pullout last week actually, by deleting my comments on other people's blogs, bad bad, i know. Sorry)

But this is not all bleak, my dear 3 readers. You see, i have just updated my sidebar, and now it contains 3 dynamic lists, the most interesting i guess is the newest Recently, elsewhere section. Hah. I hope that gives you the reason to continue visiting this place, now that it also acts as your aggregator. :) (while you're still too lazy to set up your own).

Bye, for now.

The Sidebar

My sidebar has evolved from your default out-of-the-box blogspot sidebar to what it is now. Most of the time i spent fiddling it was to make it reflect more of my online existence. Also, a considerable chunk of of the effort was to make it as useful as I could possibly make it. It's in a form far from what i really want it to be, but it's a work in progress (albeit slow).

Partly inspired by Nikki's explanation of his blog redesign (also a slow work in progress, heh), Here's a quick list of what you can find on my sidebar, since it's length might have discouraged you (and the fact that our generations' attention span is really getting shorter each day) from fully utilizing its usefulness .

• Profile - The default blogspot profile block. Used to have a link to my technorati profile, but after doubting its usefulness, decided to remove it (might put it back later on though).
• Calendar - powered by 30boxes, a list of public calendar events that i remember to put on my online calendar.
  
• Previous posts - needs no explanation
• Recently, elsewhere - New! this is my dynamic link roll, the 5 most recent posts from my contemporary bloggers listed below. And yeah, powered by Google Reader.
  
• Contemporary bloggers - my list (a bit outdated) of fellow bloggers.
• Archives - dropdown list format, to conserve space.
• Photos - powered by Flickr . Most recent uploads to my flickr account.
• Bookmarks - powered by del.icio.us. List of sites that I find interesting. Arranged in chronological order as i bookmarked them
• Buttons
  
• Get Firefox with Google toolbar - I love Google, I love Firefox, and I love the idea that I might be able to make a litle money from promoting it. :)
• Add to Google - if you're using the Google reader or the Personalized Google Homepage, this button lets you add my blog to them.
• Add to My Yahoo - adds my Blog to your My Yahoo content aggregator
• Hopefully i can improve this particular part of my sidebar, until then, if you don't know my rss feed, just add /atom.xml to my blog url (this btw, works for all blogspot blogs with their feeds turned on)
  
• I power blogger. Licking the hand that feeds. hehe.
  

BackBlog

Stowe Boyd nailed what I think is the real big implication of what Gmail is doing in integrating Google Talk with Gmail.

"...Google is hastening the inevitable collapse of the Berlin Wall
between real-time communication (chat) and slow-time communication
(email)."

I meant to post this on the day Google integrated Talk with Gmail, then forgot about it in my local drafts. Since i don't remember what i was trying to say after this anyway, i might as well post it now. Now, because there are now too many good stuff piled in my to-blog list, i can't take it anymore.

First. (chronologically, as i remember it)
Google launched its web-page creator (pages.google.com), though i think they're suspended registration till now. This is one of the products that is aimed to pass the grand-ma test (my grandma can use it). Excellent showcase of AJAX stuff for the geeks, a super-easy to use tool for those mere mortals who just want to contribute to the world wide web of information pool. Check my test page. When Google pages opens up for larger public consumption, i highly recommend it for your family members, a very nice way to get them started in creating online content.

Second.
Ray Ozzie, the man who is behind Microsoft's efforts in being relevant again in the world of network computing, presented in Etech the idea of extending the idea of the clipboard in the web 2.0 context. Read more on his blog and this simple demo.

Third
Mike of Techcrunch.com presented the screenshots of the upcoming (i hope soon) CL2, Google's Calendar. I've been using 30Boxes for the past weeks as my main online calendaring app, but Google's offering just blows 30 boxes away. I've never felt this urge to become a beta tester again since Gmail launched.

Fourth.
Writely, a web-based word processor, gets acquired by Google. Nothing surprising here, but still, it's very exciting to hear this development. More on the Google blog and Writely blog.

that's all for now. Links coming later.

A Picture

speaks a thousand praises. Sam, growing stronger...
Thanks for the prayers and the support guys. :D

Google buys Measure Map

Google just bought Measuremap, hopefully that means they'll give me an invite now, and let me see how good it really is.

More here.

Yahoo opens up a lot of cool stuff

They just made availabe to the commons their UI Library (ajax stuff) and arguably the first HIG (human interface guidelines, sigh) for web apps -- The Design Patterns Library. Yahoo is in for some good developer luuv and karma.

Oh, the sweeter bits - they're licensed using BSD (for the UI Library) and Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 (for the Design Patterns Library).

picked up from O'Reilly Radar through memeorandum.

Oh yeah, Happy Valentines!

Magbukas ka pa ng Tapuy...

System::Windows::Forms::MenuItem* __mcTemp__7[] = new System::Windows::Forms::MenuItem*[1];
__mcTemp__7[0] = this->menuItem8;
this->menuItem5->MenuItems->AddRange(__mcTemp__7);
this->menuItem5->Text = S"Help";
//
// menuItem8
//
this->menuItem8->Index = 0;
this->menuItem8->Text = S"About";
//
// ProjectSevenMainApplication *

She's one of the earliest bloggers that i personally know of (jae, of course, was the first, shocking the whole world with his mind-blowing balls-scratching blog feast eons (of internet time) ago...

I remember the first time i learned about her blogging, to which i JOKINGLY (anti-flame disclaimer goes here: JOKINGLY) replied. Ah, so you're officially a bum now, wala ka nang life, kaya magfflourish na online life mo? hehe. Of course, 8 months later i will eat my words, and start my blogging journey too. So there in blog city, her first blog, she awed her 3 readers with her overflowing stream of consciousness. Okay a lot more readers, but you get my point. In June 2003 she ended her blog-city days, because of work.(jae stopped writing for Pancit Canton in April of the same year, but i'm not trying to make any point) In September 2004, she returned from her blogging hiatus to join the party with the new bloggers. Why she chose multiply is completely beyond me, but she stayed there for a year (insert MULTIPLY bashing comments here)...

After days and nights of bashing her strings.multiply, and days and nights of tapuy sessions.(han, exaggerated na days and nighths ha) Finally, she got seduced to the dark side... Angel, on blogger. Yay! multiply sucks!

tapuymoments.blogspot.com

this->menuItem6->Index = 0;
this->menuItem6->Text = S"&New";
//
// menuItem7
//
this->menuItem7->Index = 1;
this->menuItem7->Text = S"&Exit";
//
// menuItem2
// *

*this is how you blog secretly, while at work.

McShing-Aling

Tapuy Moments: Tip for the Day

Have you tasted the New McDo product? Angel, the very kind (change this later when angel is not looking) officemate that she is, brought to the office 3 orders of McDo Shing-aling (she had a pasalubong for the whole office! -- how generous could one get...). I ate what was left (i was late for work, came in at 1pm) of her office pasalubong, secretly hoping the i will find just one piece that's not crunchy. I was disappointed. Freakin' curly shing-alings.

Firefox 2.0 alpha on Friday. Happy Times!

may have resurrected IE from the dead, but after using the beta of IE7 (i liked it), at the end of the day, it just left the impression of a me-too product. Though i can't deny that i liked some of the stuff that they added to the browser, and that I couldn't be happier for IE users, IE7's failure to kick Firefox's ass (hard enough) just underlines more how far ahead Firefox has leaped over IE when it first reached version 1. The truth is I feared that IE7 will blow away the fox, but fortunately, and as always, Microsoft disappointed (and again, i am attributing this to the amount of catching up that IE had to do, and not on the skills of the people in the IE team). So they made their move, albeit beta, but we kinda saw it, And I'm talking about sheer software power here, no marketing involved (which MS would surely spend lots of money on, come the official release of IE7). And this friday, Mozilla is about to make theirs. I'm pretty excited about Firefox 2.0 because along with all the new features that it will be offering, they're addressing what has been the achilles heel of web browsers from the beginning: how to present the enormous amount information found in user's bookmarks and history into something that will be useful to the user. Expect to hear a lot, or rather see a lot about the Places (Bookmarks, History and Feeds unified) as the Firefox team and community focuses their (our) energies on making things better again. With Ben Goodger (he's the mozilla hacker that Google hired, for those who just tuned ind) heading the Places team, i can only hope for great things coming. Good luck everyone. :). Let's kick some ass..


Btw, very timely post by Ben Goodger: the history of Firefox.
I just took a quick glance on the article. It's pretty long, so be warned.

Google Talk Saves...

This just in (after my shameless work nap) -- Google Talk can now save your chat history in your Gmail account. Now i really have to secure my Gmail password. Checked my Gmail to see the changes and voila - a brand new "Chats" tab. But that's just the half of it, now they're teaching Gmail how to talk. They're integrating into Gmail a browser based implementation of Talk, complete with a buddy list that will appear under the tab Quick Contacts (under the curent Contacts) and gtalkr-like floating chat sub-windows. Wow. (thanks Gtalkr guys, it was good while it lasted. you still beat Gmail to the punch implementing this...)

A few things of note:

• the gmail chat feature will be rolled in stages, as all new gmail features are. But now the Talk history saving is already working in my account.
• the Google Talk chat window now adds a handy drop down arrow where you can do two things: 1. go off the record to temporarily disable history saving, and 2. block the current user
  
• you can set you availability status from Gmail, so you need not be "visible" during your email sessions.
• the Google Talk UI of notifiying you of the new feature is nice.
• This is still not in the official Google blog. Why should I care? because the last time i linked to them, they brought me a lot of traffic. heh.
  
• my officemate is sleeping again. Ok, that was not really related to Talk.

Update:
OM Malik notices, (at the urging of some readers, and according to him, one of the gtalkr guys... so they know already) let the buzz begin..

FON is fun. And so not Evil

This has the potential of being one of the next Big disruptive things. FON. Dreaming of a truly global network of wifi hotspots? You don't get any more global, fair and sustainable as what FON promises to be. Seriously. You don't believe that idea? Well, too bad, coz Skype, Google, and and venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures do, in a big way (as in $21.7 million big)

The What's Fon page is a good place to learn about what Fon is, but basically FON is a way for existing wifi hotspot owners to share their bandwidth and in exchange, experience free roaming wifi in areas where other FON users also share their bandwidths. That goes for the fair part, (global comes as more people jumps in to tha bandwagon). Sustainable? yes, coz it supports (ok, will) both the Linus and the Bill way of doing things, and Aliens too. (learn more about linus-bill-gate-aliens connection). I could go on discussing FON, but if you're interested in these stuff anyway, i though you might check their blog, or the FON-owned tech.memeorandum snapshot . (if not, you can wait till our next meeting when i will bore you to death about this and all the other geeky stuff...)

Okay, before i get you even half as excited as I am, at this point, FON exists only in US and in Spain (wow, this might become one of the first things that i'll love about Inang Espanya, hehehe, besides the excuse that they gave us for being lazy). But I'm sure (fingers crossed) sure the philippine map would eventually grace this page too.

On Personal stuff...

WELCOME TO HOLLAND

by
Emily Perl Kingsley

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved

I have not been talking much about Sam in this blog. In fact I seldom talk about personal things here. That's actually what I meant when I said in my New Year Resolutions post that I want to be more honest in upfront to people. Anyway, I've been thinking, or rather, God has been flooding my mind with things that makes me think on Sam's condition. Things might have been easier for me, in an unfair way maybe, than with Hannah, being with Sam almost all the time. It's hard enough to raise a normal baby with your husband not with you all the time, much more harder I guess, if your baby is sick. It's this guilty feeling that I battle everytime I post something here. For every techie, political, funny entry that I post, i cannot help but think of the Sam-related content that I didn't.

... It sucks how your mind fucks* up with what you feel, or, how your emotion skcuf up how you think.

/*sorry bout that.

Must sleep after this post....

where the interweb brought me...

(disclaimer: to my officemate to whom i promise that I will work tonight, i did work. :D )

started off with alekos' update (which is something that will not go unnoticed, considering how "often" he blogs). As always, a very good piece, this time about having fun with old friends (and lots and lots of alchohol ), which, pointed me to Jem's blog, specifically to this post, which is soo true, having spent more than 5 years of my life travelling (although my version involves not an airplane flight, but rather a 12-hour bus ride to bicol and back). Anyway, looking around jem's posts brought me to his twist on the big book list meme, to his very heart-warming new year post, and to the very cool music meme which i picked up. It was a meme about music alright, so Dacs was in the conversation, saw her version of the meme, enjoyed a few of her blog posts (dacs, i can't add you to my aggregator, so I'm not updated with your new posts), where i found out about Butch Dalisay, whom Dacs regards as "of the most accomplished PSHS graduates " and his blog, Pinoy Penman, which gave the most enjoyable blog reading experience i've had lately. Superb writing, very very substancial content (well, most of them). Do you know how to "slow boil" your noodles? Anyway, turns out he's a mac lover, and he's been to the 2006 Macworld, proudly taking home a shirt proclaiming “I visited the Mothership.” . No words from me can do justice how great his blog is. Go visit. Moving on, he pointed me to another MUGer - blogger, Adel Gabot. It is from Mr Gabot's blog did i get the link to the recently-redesigned
Neil Gaiman blog. Which, should bring this trip to an end, coz i'm pointing the Gaiman blog to Alekos... a true-blue Gaiman groupie. heehee.

Oh, i forgot, Jae posted what he thinks is the Greatest Video there is... (gad, streamed video rules!). I was too sleepy to fully apreciate the greatness, or maybe too shocked to even believe what I was seeing... see for yourself

Talk to me, iTunes

Got this from Jem. Enjoyable waste of time (when you have a deadline in less than 48 hours)

Go to your music player of choice and put it all on shuffle. say the following questions aloud, and after each one press next. Use the song title as the answer to the question.

1. What do you think of me, iTunes?
High Hopes - Frank Sinatra

2. Will i have a happy life?
Broken Dream - Anggun

3. What do my friends really think of me?
Rosita - Pepe Romero (this is a boss-mp3)

4. Do people secretly lust after me?
B & C - Utada Hikaru

5. How can i make myself happy?
Colored People - DC Talk (wow. i love this song)

6. What should i do with my life?
Happy TalkKiri and Jose

7. Why must life be so full of pain?
Sunday Bloody Sunday - u2 (yeah. blood. pain. now i get it)

8. How can i maximize my pleasure during sex?
Music for the Royal Fireworks IV (fireworks! hell yeah! heeheehee)

9. Will i ever have children?Early
Autumn -harry allen meets (not sure about the tag. anyway, invalid question)

10. Will i die happy?
Nocturne E flat majr op. 55 No. 2 (nocturne. aha. night death. how dramatic. i don't know about the happy part though)

11 Can you give me some advice?
True Love - Anne Murray

12 What do you think happiness is?
How Do You Keep the Music Playing (hmmm)

13 What's my favourite fetish?
Mr Moonlight - The Beatles

Testing IE7

The public Beta of Internet Explorer 7 is out. Genuine Windows XP required.

Today i will step out of my "normal-user" comfort zone and try not to use Firefox in my browsing activities.
I'm testing IE7...


You can download your copy here.
This is what Mozilla was all about. Bringing innovation and competition to the browser space, so that users will have a better browsing experience. Firefox was a wake up call for Microsoft, who has been sitting on IE for too long. Now the user wins, again.

NTT DoCoMo to buy 7% stake in PLDT

Ignoring the fact that i loathe PLDT (and SMART Philippines) , companies that reap Millions of pesos from a business model that is sometimes built on deception, the news that DoCoMo, (one of the most advanced Mobile Communications Network company around) is buying 7% of PLDT makes me somehow hopeful and excited for the local mobile technology scene. 3G is indeed on its way.

PLDT also said it would enter into "a strategic partnership" with Smart Communications and DoCoMo to enable Smart to offer DoCoMo's i-mode service to Smart's subscribers, among other things.

See, i'm hopeful enough to even believe that that "strategic partnership" means something. sigh.

Btw, i really enjoyed reading Aissa's convergence post. :)

Google Toolbar 4 Beta

Google Toolbar 4 Beta

IE only though. (booo!) I'll call this Google toolbar, the cutesy-icons edition. hehe. What i like -- Google Bookmarks (yes, there is a Google Bookmarks service) integration, gmail integration (drop down access to your inbox items) though still broken as of my test time, redesigned user interface, and Instant suggestions (google suggest in steroids).

Also, you can now add buttons developed by by third party developer and companies to directly query their search services. (eg. mp3.com, slashodt, orkut). Here's the buttons gallery. I'm excited to have this on my firefox installation....

Link - official Google Blog post about the new toolbar

Google Censorship in China

(Updated)
This issue has been going around for a while now, but we've been too busy at work so I wasn't able to blog about it.

Google is now censoring Google.cn, at the pressure of the Chinese Government, and Google is taking a beating from bloggers, something that Google was expecting to happen.

This sucks, and I wish Google didn't have to do it. Although my knowledge of the entire issue is not entirely comprehensive, I believe in the idea of a democratic web of information. Damn the Chinese Government. and shame on Google, Microsoft and Yahoo for bowing down

UPDATE:
I just read the google blog and Google's statement on the China issue. Posts from a company's official blog can be taken as a pure PR BS or a true statement of their company's ideals and beliefs, depending on how you read it. That being said, here's my take on it....

The admission on the company's part that that their action was a compromise of what they believe in

Filtering our search results clearly compromises our mission...

is something that I admire. This is a sign that Google clearly understands the gravity of the decision they made and that they are being transparent about it.

...Whether our critics agree with our decision or not, due to the severe quality problems faced by users trying to access Google.com from within China, this is precisely the choice we believe we faced. ...

The blog post also stated that the Gmail and Blogger services will not be offered to the the Chinese version of Google:

No, we're not going to offer some Google products, such as Gmail or Blogger, on Google.cn until we're comfortable that we can do so in a manner that respects our users' interests in the privacy of their personal communications. And yes, Chinese regulations will require us to remove some sensitive information from our search results. When we do so, we'll disclose this to users, just as we already do in those rare instances where we alter results in order to comply with local laws in France, Germany and the U.S.

Read the rest of the blog post.

Disclaimer: This is the official google blog that I am pointing to. Depending on how well you are versed with the issue, reading it might not give you the most objective perspective on the matter. Read and research more on your own...

Living a not-so-secret double blogger-life

online... what do yo think?

Listening to: Rock-A-Bye by Orange and Lemons

Still working...

back to blogging

Was able to fix my messy code, trying to become a better OO programmer. I'm stuck though, and I need google, but Angel's still busy coding, so I can't use (or even share her connection). A very nifty thing though --at long last I was able to setup our adhoc wireless network. Coolnees. Dang, 'twas kid stuff really, I just didn't tried it earlier coz i never really thought that 'twas possible.

We're supposed to eat dinner 3 minutes ago, but (surrprise,), angel still coding... I'm done with my break.

Okay, i don't think she's gonna remember about the dinner soon, so I might as well go ahead and code too. I won't mention dinner again...

Listening to: Lihim by Orange and Lemons

Weekend update

Monday morning. As always, (very) late for work again. Our boss called at 11 in the morning to tell me that he would be out of the office by the time that we would be arriving at the office, so he just reminded me to just use mey keys to the house (angel and I both have copies of his house's keys.. ain't that cool? ). But I was still at LB then, still struggling to leave for work, because Sam was still awake and it's just too hard to leave with him not sleeping.

Sam, which grew a lot in one week while I was away, has been making really big progress in his fight against the disease. First, the SMA's progess has actually plateued, which made his neuro think that sam's probably got an atypical Type I or even, type II SMA. In fact Sam's a lot healthier and stronger now than when he was first diagnosed with SMA, which is the exact opposite of what's supposed to happen to children like him who's aflicted with SMA, which makes him really special. Then again, every parent think of their baby as someone special, and I guess that's every parent's right.... ;) Although Sam's weaker than most of other babies his age, if you know how bad his disease is, seeing him being very very active is a very big miracle already. Next, Sam's resistance to pulmonary diseases has been pretty strong, even when he had a very bad case of colds, he has still shown an amazing resistance in keeping his lungs clean. And this weekend granny and mommy han showed their big surprise for me: With assitance to his upper body, Sam's now able to keep his head straight, with only occasional support to his neck. I was just so happy seeing him do that, Having accepted the fact that our son will no longer be able to achieve his physical milestones. It's funny how when things are taken away from you, you learn to appreciate them in a very special way, no matter how little they are.

Skipping the part about getting up late on sunday morning (i was supposed to leave earl for LB), and the Pacquiao boxing match which i watched in the Atrium mall (and finished in the Tritran bus, thanks to Jaemark's heads up on which round Morales will finally go down), that's pretty much how my weekend went, which btw, was reduced to one day, because our project's deadline is getting nearer...

Right now it's 8:30 pm and I'm at my officemate's place in UP Bliss, working (before i started my blogging break) because there was no electricity back in the Office.

back to work...

Mystickies, Sticky notes for the web

Yes, you got your desktop stickies to remind of you some stuff. But what if you can put stickes on websites so that when you go back to those sites, you are reminded of the notes?now you can, with online stickies... no sharing of stickies yet, but it's coming.

Read more at www.mystickies.com/

The day after, for the scores...

A very good article summing up the issues and scores on this Feds-asking-for-search-engine-data hoopla, from SearchEnginewatch.

First, let me stand corrected here that as most people have agreed on, this is not really an issue of privacy, since there were no personally identifiable information given out (or request by the US Government). But this centers more on trust-- can we trust search engince companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, AskJeeves, etc) to hold their ground in protecting their user's data? And for how long can they do that?

Okay, so the big 2 (Yahoo and Google), as well as MSN and AOL got the requests from the government. Everyone except for Google complied. There's a very importan point that I'm itching to nail down about all these happenings, but nothing brings it home better the way Danny Sullivan did:

Since Google first started growing in stature, people have wondered if (or when) they might start passing along private information to governments or misusing it for their own gain. The company has faced hyperactive attention in this space, while others, as I have written largely got a free ride from criticism. Moreover, the privacy freakout about Google was based on lots of "might dos" or "could dos" rather than "has done."

Yesteryday was a historic moment in answering some of those doubts. What might Google do, if faced with an unreasonable demand from a government agency? Google will push back And what might its competitors do, who have faced nowhere near the same amount of criticism? Comply.

I suggest you go ahead an read the whole article, but for those who want to know how Danny scored the search engine companies, here's his take:

Google - 9 pts
Yahoo - 4
MSN - 1
AOL - 1

These are more than mere scores though. Go read all about it.

MSN has a post on their Search blog that tries to explain their side.

Feds After Google Data

From MercuryNews.com:

The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order
Google to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded
databases.The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court....

...The Mountain View-based search and advertising giant opposes
releasing the information on a variety of grounds, saying it would
violate the privacy rights of its users and reveal company trade
secrets, according to court documents.

Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said the company will fight the government's effort ``vigorously.'' ...

First, I believe in the US Government's (or any other government in this matter) cause of protecting children from the darkest (and filthiest) corners of the internet. I will not pretend though that I have the slightest idea of how they plan to do it. But oh please, to the American government, why the hell don't you just do your own work of researching on the matter instead of taking the easy route of violating people's privacy and liberty online? For those of us who believe in the idea of network computing, this is a very critical issue that we should be watching. How safe and private are our data (gmail, google searches, private flickr pics, etc.) in the hands of Google and the other web companies? How strong can they stand against things like this -- blatant attempt to intrude into our online private life? Kudos to you Google, for standing against big brother.

Bush, magsama kayo ng bestfriend mo...

We all have some...

The three things I want to do/be this year to improve myself

1. Read more books
2. Value time more.
3. Be more honest and upfront to people.

Work Work Work

I love this day at work. I'm sure or boss would have loved it too.It's nice to be really productive... Ah the glory and victory of winning over one of my greatest weaknesses - the interweb.

I'm sure my team mate feels the same, though honestly I think she's always been more productive at work, somehow before we left the office tonight I felt that she was happy with our work too.

Thumbs up to us. Panget.

Seagate's Super Drive

Seagate's Super Drive: "

Need a bigger drive in your laptop? Seagate's 160GB notebook drive is just the thing for those of you ready to scrap your desktop PC. Being touted as the first 2.5-inch notebook PC disc drive to use perpendicular recording technology, the aptly-named Momentus 5400.3 drive is a 5,400-rpm drive that operates with 4,200-rpm power efficiency and the perpendicular recording makes the drive density larger by standing data bits on end on the disc, rather than flat to the surface. And all this promises not to drain your battery life. Weighing less than a pound, it's powered through a USB port and transfers data at 480Mbps.
"

Apple a day

For the geeks this is old news...

Apple delivered yesterday the first macs with "Intel inside". The new Intel-based iMac and the rechristened MacBook (formerly known as Powerbook)... i didn't get it at first, but yeah, Power is no more, at least for Apple (and at least for now), hence the the name. It's gorgeous. I'd just point you to the macbook page in Apple.com so that you can savor it more.

They updated Mac OSX, iLife 06 was launched, with a new slick new addition to the suite - iWeb. A web-authoring tool with support for all your web 2.0 stuff and goodness (podcasts, photocasts, rss,). As always, its tight integration with the rest of the iApps is one of its best features. iWork 06, which i hope fixes Pages seriously.

And the best gift for the geeks is a very funny and amazing strike of chance. On the day that Apple launched its first intel-powered macs, the company's stock price closed at 80.86. Okay, if you need help, 8086 is intel's 16-bit microprocessor that gave rise to the x86 architecture. (from wikipedia)

Macworld time

you know what that means... the time is nigh for the judgement day, for the rumors, that is. To lift form
somewhere else, Steve jobs is my homeboy. hehe. To all zealots and fans... enjoy!

2005

And to keep the meme going....
I'm supposed to pick the first line of my first post for each month. Kind of a "walk down the memory lane" of 2005.
January
creativecommons.org: a glimpse on the future of copyright. be prepared. before you got run over.

February
No post!

March
No Post! Thesis?

April
Gmail just turned 1! Now we have 2GB of mail storage (woopeedee!).

May
Planning a redesign. So i decided to use the simplest template that I could get as a placeholder.

June
The unthinkable can happen. According to Cnet News, Apple is dumping IBM in favor of Intel.

July
[Samuel Mark T. Gamis]: more...

August
Praying Mantis Eats Hummingbird (Bird Watcher's Digest)


September
verge: "angulo ko"

October
While preparing to uninstall OpenOffice1.1 from an ubuntu installation...

November
A few days ago sam discovered his left hand.

December
Angel's cork board. Priorities, priorities...

Video and Pack

updated: added the links

I miss the feeling of a fanboy -- patiently waiting for news about a favorite company's rumored announcement, just in case some little juicy tidbits of information leaks out early... Yesterday while at work (alone!), i hit on tech.memeorandum to get the current buzz on technology. I was expecting hardware to dominate memeorandum pages, since as it's CES week.... but surprise (well, I guess not really), Google ruled tech.memeorandum yesterday. So what's the buzz about? Google Video Store and Google Pack (Pack is already live, the Video Store is not yet). Google Video brings Google to the Video-content distribution race, but not without its own set of disruptive features, the most notable of them I guess is how Google plans to split the revenue - 70/30, in favor of the content producer. Also, the decision to use DRM for the content is up to the content producers, but the technology is already ready, from Google, of course.

Item no 2: Google pack. From the website:

Google Pack is a free collection of essential software from Google and other companies. The software in the Google Pack helps you browse the web faster, remove spyware and viruses, organize your photos, and more...

Google Pack also takes the hassle out of downloading, installing, and updating software. You can download and install the entire Google Pack in just a few clicks. And the included Google Updater helps you discover new programs and keep your current software up to date.

The pack includes the following Google softwares: Google Earth, Google Desktop, Google Toolbar for IE, Picasa and the new Goole pack screensaver. Additional software: Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar, Ad-Aware SE Personal, Adobe Reader 7, and the one the I'll definitely install (coz it's the only thing in the pack that I don't have, besides the screensaver hehe): Norton Antivirus 2005 Special Edition. update: more software are available if you go to the add/remove programs page.... there's Trillian, RealPlayer (bleh), the new Google Video Player, and a GalleryPlayer for HD (hi-def) images..

I like what John Battelle said about Google's recent announcements:

Google is now officially a Really Big Company, and is acting like one. Diversify your revenue streams, for one thing. Leverage and consolidate your core strengths, for another. And protect your vulnerable flanks, for yet another.

And to throw in a bit of Prince Of Egypt OST wisdom, (since it's what on my iTunes playlist now), "You're playing with the big boys now...'

A couple of links:

Engadget's live coverage of Larry Page's keynote. "The mob is in full press, even more than the older crowd of Gates groupies the other night" cool.

John Battelle's take on the Google announcements

Google Logo for Braille

this is the coolest Google Logo ever... Happy Birthday Louis Braille!

Btw, Happy New Year everyone, and sorry for not blogging for a while...