Google Chrome
I created a fairly long and hopefully good article about this Chrome* thing and why it is big.. But i have to hit the sack and it's still not finished, so I'll just draft it for next time, and just post an equally good (and shinier) one: Google Chrome's slick logo:
Because The Second Time's a Charm
At Mt Pulag Peak. Again.
The whole trip was really blog-worthy. But I'm too sleepy and tired for that now. Maybe next post...
Lock Down with Steady State
Windows Steady State is free (if you manage to get around the Windows Genuine Advantage check) to download.
This looks like a cool way of locking down your shared computers (at home or in your Internet Cafe). Definitely worth looking at if you're still using "the windows". (works with Vista too btw)
Honestly I would have loved playing with this, too bad I rarely see my Windows partition now.
via lifehacker.
Sam's Birthday Party
Had a great time. I'm sure our little boy did too. :) Later, more pics and thoughts and thanks for eveyone who came. For now I'll just leave you with this photo.
Retiring my theme...
No backups, fresh start. :) Ahhh, to be free again.
Goodbye Emire.
Firefox 3
It's undeniably, un-"spin"-ably the best browser in the planet right now.
If you happen to read this post before 1:00 am, June 19, 2008, your download will also contribute to the effort to set a Guinness World Record. Ciao.
3G iPhone
- 3G
- GPS
- thinner, slicker design
- 199USD for the 8GB version
- 299USD for the 16GB version
- More countries (including, yay! the Philippines -- see map below)
The map above was taken from the keynote, showing the 70 countries (shaded in red) where iPhone will soon be rolled out.As if Globe's announcement is not confirmation enough, this map is the first official confirmation from Apple that iPhone (3G) is indeed coming to the Philippines. Oh yeah!
It's that time of the year again.
Twitter updates - check
Tortillos - check
Clearance to stay up late - check
I'm good to go.
WWDC Keynote time!
Goodbye Hello
On May 15th, Hello, the picture sharing tool from Google (which was part of the Picasa acquisition) will be shut down. This piece of software was ahead of its time when it first launched, providing what probably was the best way of sharing pictures between friends in real time. Its specialized functionality will however turn out to be the cause of its own demise -- it never reached a wider audience (my short friends list below being an evidence of it) because it didn't quite fit the taste of most IM users. However, the functionality that Hello was offering could have been an excellent feature of a full-pledged IM client. (Yahoo eventually implemented something similar)It's barely 4 days to go before the servers of Hello are turned off, so for the next few days I'll be online on Hello and will probably be playing with the software a few more times before it goes away for good (paging anyone). If you want to try Hello, it can still be download at http://updates.picasa.com/hello/651/Hello651.exe You have to have a Picasa account though (your Google/Picasaweb account won't work). My handle on Hello is (surprise surprise) emelgeek. Want to play with Hello too? Add me.
Firefox 3 (slickness) in a nutshell
On one hand, I've been dying to review this slick, major update to Firefox. On the other hand, I'm trying not to spoil the surprise for those who'd rather use this in its final form.... hmmm. Compromise. Firefox 3 Beta 4 in 107520 pixels...
Can't wait? Grab the latest beta installer from Mozilla.
Getting Lost with Google Maps
This has been bugging me since the day it launched: the street labels when viewing Manila in Google maps is way off the mark. I wonder if Google is aware of this bug? Paging Miss Aileen Apolo, can you bubble this up to those concerned? It's really running the otherwise good user experience of using the Hybrid view in Maps.
View Larger Map
To get this view, Go to Google Maps, locate Manila, then click Satellite. Make sure you check the "show labels" check box.
News from the Web Front
- Acid 3 Released and murders ALL browsers.
- Internet Explorer 8 beta out now for developers. Microsoft is promising a lot of good things (I won't tip my hat off till I see them, but having felt the pains of developing for IE, any improvement is welcome.).
- Google releases Contacts API and Google Calendar Sync for synching your Google Calendar with Outlook.
An Hour and a Half...
For the moment, forget the speeches, forget how "influential" he has shown he is, forget the movement that he was able to create. Forget most of the things about this man that has made him popular and impressive from the observer sitting at a distance, moved and touched by his eloquence and charisma.
Focus instead on the most difficult question to answer: Who is Barack Obama and is he really equipped to be the man that can lead a country as important and as powerful as the United States? If the presidency is only just about the man and what he can do and how well he can do things, will Obama still be the one that can bring true change to a country in need of a true leader?
With that thought, and if you had but one article to read about this man that goes by the name Barack Obama, running a movement against the traditional politics of Washington, read this one by Marc Andreessen:
An Hour and a half with Barack Obama
Then you'd be even more glad, and it would even make more sense that this man has the charisma, eloquence and the influence to make people believe. Again.
The Other End of the Democracy Stick
I'm not sure if I should be blogging about this knowing that I could have thought of better things to say (like "world peace!") when the GMA Reporter* approached me, but heck, this is too cool to pass up. hahaha.
Thank god they edited out most of the crap that I said. heehee.
On a more serious note, I feel bad that I didn't even take the time to go and witness the rally when the crowd was at its peak. I guess that's the reality of growing up: I'm still the same person that marched to Edsa back in college. Its just that I'm fighting on adifferent front now.
*I usually do everything I can to escape reporters, but with two packed bags and an aching kidney that night, I had little choice (the other being to run like a fool along the Ayala/Paseo stretch to escape being interviewed)
The Love Calculator
Wala lang. Naalala ko lang bigla. I was reading Inside Google Desktop's Valentine gadgets post when I suddenly remembered the site (and it's still alive!). I remember the countless J3 minutes/hours spent playing with this then-internet-gem. hehe.
Glubble: Firefox Parental Control
Actually I think Glubble is a lot more than just a parental control. Maybe when I find the time I will test it thoroughly and review it.
For the mean time I'd really recommend this excellent firefox addon specially if you have young kids using the Internet at home.
The best thing (besides the fact that it runs on top of Firefox) is that it's free. And look at that graphics! awww...
Yes We Can Obama Song by will.i.am
I never thought I'd say this, it must be a great time to be an American.
New Soul
(you must read/listen to this post from a feed reader that supports rss enclosures)
Microsoft Heart Yahoo
It's all over the news/blogs that this is a mere message relay just in case you missed it.
Cabling Yarrr
Cabling perfection:
and Cabling chaos:
More of the best ones: When data center cabling becomes art
More of the worst ones: Cable Messes: Want Meatballs with that?
and: The worst cable mess ever
Original BoingBoing article: Can Ethernet Cabling Become Art?
TechCrunch Tech Presidents Endorsement: Obama and McCain
He is staunchly in favor of net neutrality, and has promised to make it a priority to reinstate it in his first year in office. He has proposed intelligent programs for increasing technology education and access to children. He doesn’t believe the FCC went far enough in their proposed rules for opening up the 700MHz spectrum auctions. He wants to see increases in the number of H1-B visas given out each year. He strongly supports research into renewable energy sources and he has a realistic, market based approach to capping carbon emissions.
...More importantly, though, Senator Obama talks about the future with a sense of optimism that the other candidates seem to lack.
...Senator Obama is the candidate of optimism and leadership, and he will be getting my personal vote.
While the endorsement for Obama was an easy and obvious choice, on the republican side, it seems TechCrunch went for the lesser (least) evil.
Choosing Senator Obama for our Democrat endorsement was relatively easy. We had a lot more trouble with the Republicans. The trouble comes because, based on their positions on the issues, none of them are the perfect candidate.
Flicking the Switch soon
(You don't have to worry about updating bookmarks / feeds though, may dear (sigh) three readers. Blogspot will be properly redirecting requests to the new domain as soon as I flick the switch)
Quick: without hitting CTRF - F, what's the most abused word in this post? (besides "the" and the likes you smart-a**)
OLPC XO Sugar UI Tour
I've been very curious about the User interface of OLPC's XO Laptop. Codenamed Sugar, the XO OS is a Fedora derivative (Version 2 of the XO Os is based on Fedora 7) with a very radical user interface designed for young minds (and a limited screen).
Tonight I was able to test drive it. I wish I could say that I got hold of an OLPC XO (what they actually call the laptop) but nope. Instead, I found out that there are qemu images (qemu is an open source virtualization engine like VMware) for the XO Sugar builds.
What you need is the OS image is a hefty 228MB download, (thanks God for the fast internet), qemu and this excellent XO qemu Emulation quick start page.
There are also images for other virtualization engines, if you're more comfortable using them instead... More details here.
Enough words... on to the screenshots:
for full-size images, you can go directly to my picasaweb album.
Jive Love
JiveSoftware has become one of my favorite open source companies this year, having discovered their great collaboration offerings*. We have deployed their openfire XMPP server here at work (convincing people that it's better than using YM or IP Message is another thing, :p ).
The reason I'm blogging about them now is that I just found out about their free licenses: Jive is offering free licenses (unlimited I assume) for OpenSource developers and user groups for their Clearspace X and Jive Forums products.
So if you're working on an open source project and you're thinking of building a community around your project, you may want to take a look at what Jive's offering.
*also, I really dig their kickass web site design.
iPhone in Thailand?
Coming from an Apple rumors / news site (albeit a trusted one), Thailand telco firm Advanced Info Service (AIS) is said to be in talks with the Cupertino company to bring iPhone to the country (Thailand).
Now it makes me wonder if any of our own local telcos are also engaged in talks with Apple to bring iPhone here.
I don't usually take pride in our country being a prime mobile market, but now I am, because we are! Therefore, we must have the iPhone before it reaches Thailand... Globe / Smart / Sun? Ano ba yan? :p
6mpixel.org
On the lookout for a new baby? This site has the best explanation why it may not be the best idea to go for a compact digital camera with more than 6 megapixels. If you really must, get a Digital SLR instead.
Sun Acquiring MySQL
From Jonathan Schwartz's Blog:
But the biggest news of the day is... we're putting a billion dollars behind the M in LAMP. If you're an industry insider, you'll know what that means - we're acquiring MySQL AB, the company behind MySQL, the world's most popular open source database.
This is nice. Sun is exceptionally beating expectations in recovering from their slump. And more importantly, like IBM and other pioneering companies, this move further puts Sun in a position that really understands and embraces the economics (wikinomics if you will) of openness.
MacBook Air
Two words: 3 lbs. 0.6 inch thick. (ok, that's 5, but you get the point)
Syempre ibblog ko, sayang naman yung pinuyat ko kakahintay ng keynote ni pareng Steve Jobs. :)
Good morning everyone.
New Mac Pro Desktops and Xserve Servers
( ..just trying start this blog rolling agin. :) Happy New Year everyone!! )