And here are my de rigeur unboxing photos:

I’ve received quite a few gadgets since I started blogging in earnest, which was around 2007, either directly (gifts, prizes) or indirectly (acquired through blog-related earnings). There was a series of Nokia phones and a Bluetooth headphone, each of which I got to use for about a month — and my all-time favorite was the N82, which I got to keep. I won an HP mini at a press launch of HP’s new line of computers. Except for that and my very first laptop, my notebooks (as well as two iPods) were all bought with earnings from ad placements on my blogs. Same goes for my Lumix LX3, the quintessential blogger’s camera.

What I really would like to be given is a Sony Bloggie. A handy pocket videocam perfect for interviews and such, don’t you think? Of course there’s the Flip Mino and similar cameras of other brands, but I believe the Bloggie is for me. It’s nearly identical in spelling and pronunciation to my own nickname, for crying out loud!

It’s fun and it’s fulfilling in a way to receive gadgets. After all, these devices are tools of the blogger’s trade. But it shouldn’t be an end, it shouldn’t be the objective for blogging. It’s disturbing to see some people taking up blogging because of a desire to get hold of material things. More often than not, so-called bloggers of this ilk fail to appreciate the raison d’être of blogs: quality and meaningful content. But that’s an entirely different topic which I’ll leave for another day.

In the meantime, I’m finally going to be able to play Angry Birds on a bigger screen. Oh yeah, keep my Google Apps calendar and contacts beautifully synchronized as well, of course, that too. Now I’m in a quandary as to whether I should dispose of my old iPod touch 3G or not…

HP Laserjet Pro CM1415

Today’s growth in mobile device usage in the country has spawned new ways of accomplishing tasks. For example, mobile users now read news on their tablets or send messages via their smart phones. With the ease in communications afforded by mobile devices, users have also come to demand more conveniences in other ways. HP is addressing one of those through their ePrint technology, which is now enabled in all of their new printers.

On my Apple iPod touch, I can have PDF files, MSWord files, but due to the closed nature of the iOS environment, there’s not much I can do with those files on the device when the need arises for me to print them. But with HP’s ePrint-enabled printers, all I need do is to email the file directly to an HP printer for printing.

No more tinkering with drivers or worrying about supported file formats! When you email a file (attached to the email message) to your printer, it’s HP’s cloud-hosted printing service that’ll take care of determining the proper drivers to use for completing the print job. And you even get a confirmation email response to inform you whether or not the print job was successful.

At the ePrint launch in Makati last 15 April 2011, HP’s market development manager, Erwin E. Creencia, and his colleagues talked about this newfangled innovation. In answer to my question regarding file formats that are not yet supported, Creencia said that AutoCAD files are the only printable files that can’t be printed via ePrint. (Although, ePrint is now also enabled in HP’s large-format Indigo printers.)

What came to mind right away after learning of ePrint and how it works was spam. HP Philippines country general manager, Mandy Pascual, addressed this by apprising us of the safeguards built into HP’s cloud printing service. He said that the service allows for whitelisting of source email addresses, aside from having built-in anti-spam monitoring. (I just wonder how good their anti-spam software is…) The good news is, you can change your printer’s email address anytime, and for an unlimited number of times.

HP Officejet Pro 8500a

Printers that are equipped with the ePrint technology — i.e., HP’s printers that can be connected to the Internet either via LAN or Wi-Fi — need only be registered online. Once registered, it will be assigned its unique email address. An online account will be created where you can manage or monitor print jobs.

For those who are concerned about privacy, Pascual said that the online printer registration is secure and can be done anonymously. (I certainly hope HP won’t do profiling of their customers, or worse, sell the aggregated user data to advertisers.)

Currently, ePrint is enabled on the following printers: HP LaserJet Pro M1536dnf Multifunction Printer, HP LaserJet Pro CM1415fn/fnw Color Multifunction Printer, HP LaserJet Pro CP1525 Color Printer, HP Photosmart Ink Advantage K510a, and the HP Officejet Pro 8500A e-All-in-One Printer.

According to HP Philippines, there is also an enterprise solution for corporations that require the ePrint service on their private networks. Normally, printers with their own email addresses are open to the world for receiving documents — this is what lets you print from wherever. But for companies that require a more secure system, HP can enable the use of their ePrint technology within a corporate Intranet.

With a growing number of individuals and businesses going online, it’s becoming more and more practical to use the ubiquitous email for communicating… and for printing. One day soon, HP’s ePrinting will most probably replace the fax machine. In fact, I’m trying to convince my friends in the travel industry to consider the shift. Since all of them have email already, and since they still need to print stuff regularly, upgrading to HP’s ePrint technology is but natural!

Consider this: when buying an airline ticket online, you could supply your printer’s email address to the online booking system. So that when your e-ticket is sent to you, it gets printed right away!

What about you? Can you think of other practical uses for printers that have their own email addresses?

Globe subscribers, your Internet access is going to be throttled if your downloads and uploads exceed 1 gigabyte in a day. For most of you, whose Internet access involves mostly just emailing and interacting on Facebook or Twitter, this isn’t going to be an issue at all. But for those who use the Internet (via Globe Telecom) for business, a broadband cap is going to be a major problem.

Filipino netizens today are very sophisticated, constantly finding amazing and creative ways to make use of the Internet. Buying and selling online are activities that aren’t so newfangled anymore, and an increasing number of Filipinos are finding jobs through websites and making a living via the Internet. These people are in need of better Internet access, which Globe Telecom would do well to provide.

Everyday, I hear complaints from people around me about their Internet access woes. At home, in the office, in public Wi-Fi hotspots, Filipino Internet users are dissatisfied. But more urgently, the satisfaction of Filipino Internet users whose living depends on the Internet are not being met.

In a news article, Globe Telecom purports that a minority of users are abusing access:

In a recent internal analysis, Globe said about 5 percent of abusive subscribers use 80 percent of the available broadband Internet bandwidth in the company’s network.

This leaves only 20 percent of the capacity to be shared by 95 percent of the remaining users.

Source: INQUIRER.net

They seem to be blaming “abusive” Internet access on illegal downloading of content (music, TV shows, etc.), but are they for certain that these are the only activities going on online? It’s like saying excessive use of knives is bad because it kills people. Do chefs kill people for a living?

I don’t think telecommunications firms in particular, or businesses in general, are in a position to dictate which activities are illegal and which aren’t. That’s the government’s job. In my opinion, Globe Telecom is imposing their broadband cap because they do not want to invest further in their facilities and infrastructure.

Do they really give a damn about Filipinos, about protecting us from illegal online activities? I doubt that very much. And my reason for saying that is this: if they did care, they would be proactively anticipating the fast-paced growth of Internet usage in the country, and addressing this by meeting our requirements. But no, what Globe seems to be doing now is attempting to hide the fact that their Internet service provision is sub-par and does not even meet the minimum requirements of today’s netizen.

I’m quite certain that everyone who’s using the Internet for work or business will agree with me here, that if Globe, Smart and the other telecoms firms provided better Internet access, productivity would soar and we would have more time and resources available.

TXTPower, a mobile users watchdog, has a very cogent suggestion: for the government to conduct an independent review of telcoms companies’ existing facilities and services vis-à-vis consumer demand. Let’s hope that the National Telecommunications Commission finds it persuasive enough. But if you doubt that, then let’s all be vigilant and defend our universal right to a better Internet.

HP Officejet Advantage 4500

Hewlett-Packard (Phils.) launched in Davao City last 7 April 2011 a new line of value-for-money printers that are designed primarily for the home-use market. In total, six new models have been introduced: from the basic HP Deskjet Ink Advantage K109a, to the advanced HP Officejet Advantage 4500 All-in-One Printer, of which SME companies could very well take advantage as well.

These printers are priced very competitively at ₱8,999 (SRP) for the Officejet 4500. This particular printer has all the bells and whistles, such as borderless printing, network printing, and PC-less printing (via SD card). You can event assign

But what caught my attention was the new line of inks that HP has come up with. These new printers accommodate the new Ink Advantage 703/704 ink cartridges.

In addition to providing greater choices and outstanding value, the new HP Ink Advantage printers deliver the same quality, reliability and convenience customers rely on from HP.

The high-capacity HP 703 Black and Tri-Color Ink Cartridges used in the new HP Photosmart Ink Advantage e-All-in-One and the HP Officejet Advantage 4500 All-in-One offer up to 600 pages in black and 250 pages in color, delivering finely detailed graphics, laser-quality text, and archival-quality output.

The New HP 704 Black and Tri-Color Ink Cartridges used in the New Deskjet HP Ink Advantage Printers offer up to 480 pages in black and 200 pages in color and is composed of up to 70%(3) recycled plastic.

Personally, I use the HP Deskjet Ink Advantage 2060 AIO Printer (SRP: ₱4,999) at home. It can print, scan and copy and the ink cartridge costs less than ₱400 apiece!

With this new line of HP printing solutions, equipped with the new Ink Advantage color and black ink cartridges, the cost of ownership of an HP printer should be its greatest selling point. Over time, an HP printer owner will spend less compared to other brands whose printers are cheap but the corresponding ink cartridges are exorbitantly priced.

When I asked an HP representative about the new Ink Advantage cartridges being HP’s response to the spread of continuous-ink systems, he said that it was. He said that HP does care about their customers, and that’s why they came up with this solution: a very cost-effective ink cartridge that delivers the same quality of printing as HP’s more high-end ink cartridges. Plus, you get to keep your printer’s warranty, too!

HP Ink Advantage printers

HP printers are available in many of Davao’s computer shops. And, there is an HP service center in the city, at Digital Interface, Pryce Business Park, J.P. Laurel Ave., Davao City.

I have now almost completely abandoned Yahoo! and all of its services. I’d stopped using their “search engine” a long, long, long time ago, and their Web-based email service is but a distant memory to me. I don’t use Yahoo Messenger either, except when I’m online on Nimbuzz, where I’d enrolled my Yahoo! account and kept it there for the sake of the few friends who still have my Yahoo! ID.

The last item was Flickr. I’d actually gotten myself a pro account a couple of years back, and was happy enough using the service, especially because many of my WordPress themes incorporate Flickr widgets. Around December 2010 I renewed my subscription via PayPal, but the payment somehow got flagged “Pending”. My PayPal balance was debited, though, and PayPal said that it was up to the recipient to accept the remittance. Days passed and nothing happened.

The daughter of one of my cousins had been given a DSLR, so I thought a Flickr pro account would be a nice birthday gift from me, but I had to settle my renewal first. It was not meant to be.

I emailed Flickr (after much digging around for the proper contact form) and got a reply no less than a week after, but only to be told that the problem was with PayPal. PayPal said, again, that the ball was in Yahoo!’s court, so to speak. Since I badly needed to reactivate my account and send my niece her own pro account, I actually made another payment transaction… but the same thing happened — payment pending. This time, I got no reply from Flickr / Yahoo! at all.

To make a long story short, my Flickr pro account did not get renewed. To hell with it, I thought. If they don’t want my business, then I’ll gladly take it somewhere else. Good riddance.

The Y! logo above is a trademark of Yahoo! and is being used here solely for identification purposes.

Ok, to be fair to the NTC, the draft Memorandum Order is actually about whipping telcos into shape: that ISPs should deliver a minimum of 80% of promised bandwidth. Still, allowing ISPs to put a cap on bandwidth use is anti-development, it’s against our freedom, and it’s just plain embarrassing.

The rationale, NTC said, is to prevent illegal downloading of huge amounts of cyber-contraband, so to speak. But that line of reasoning is flawed and flimsy. I know of many people who use the Internet to download (and upload) gigabytes of data for work or for pursuing knowledge and not for anything illegal. (It’s like saying highways shouldn’t be used at night because criminals operate in the dark…)

If you ask me, this smacks of the government colluding with greedy telcos. Wouldn’t those companies just love it if their bandwidth-throttling activities become legalized? Then they wouldn’t have to upgrade their facilities or technologies to keep up with demand.

Cocoy Dayao of The ProPinoy Project wrote an open letter to the president and to Congress. Click here to read it. Let’s hope the government listens.

When I was in Vilnius, Lithuania for a conference on Internet Governance, I enjoyed 4G access via a USB modem. I was uploading at an average of 5Mbps, can you imagine? In almost every foreign city I’ve visited, Internet access speeds are way out there compared to ours here in the Philippines. This in spite of our having a relatively high Internet penetration rate. You’d think our telcos would be competing against each other to deliver the best in terms of technologies in order to woo the market. Instead, they attempt to dazzle the masses with unfulfilled promises of “unlimited” access.

It’s not even only about reasonable connection speeds with Philippine carriers. There’s still that gaping problem of under-serviced areas in the country. But let’s leave that for another discussion.

More and more Filipinos are finding themselves online today, the hours spent by each Filipino using the Internet have grown exponentially since the last decade, and there’s no slowing down this growth. And yet, the providers of Internet connectivity aren’t keeping up. They say “broadband” to label their Internet products, but is it really? The way Internet access is now, I’m happy when I get a steady speed of 80Kbps, which isn’t always.

The final NTC Memorandum Order should indeed compel telcos to deliver what they’re advertising — and yes, they should declare a CIR. Heck, they should already be doing so, Memorandum Order or no. But, the NTC should drop that part about allowing providers to limit bandwidth usage.

Like what Abe Olandres of YugaTech said, “I’d (rather) look at the other provision that requires a minimum guaranteed speed based on the subscribed speed.” However, Olandres goes on to defend the draft M.O. and puts forth the analogy of the MMDA limiting the use of the highways in the nation’s capital via color coding. But, with all due respect, I think this analogy is not apt.

The days of saying physical roads are analogous to the so-called information highway are long over, in my opinion. The highways in congested Metro Manila are incomparable to the Internet because the former is a limited resource: what you see is what you get, despite the burgeoning amount of vehicular traffic, hence the implementation of color-coding schemes. But the Internet is not limited at all; it’s limited only by what the telcos are providing at the moment. So, in this vein, the question really is not about limited resources, but about competence.

There’s been talk about the “fair-use policy” being adopted by telcos. A good friend of mine pointed out that this is baloney. If you’re a waterworks body, he goes on to say, you are constrained to implement fair-use policies because potable water is in limited supply. But, again, the Internet as a resource is not comparable to water supply.

My view is that the Internet is not merely a resource, but a tool as well. That’s why throttling access to it is a detriment to progress.

Here’s what Jayvee Fernandez of a Bugged Life says about this: that it’s a human rights issue because this bandwidth cap will stunt progress. I agree with him.

This media center lets you collect the things that matter to you safe in one place, share the things that you love with your family and friends using multiple devices anywhere in your home, and lets you experience a whole new level of entertainment.

Here are the new things to love about the WD TV Live Hub Media Center:

• The advent of HD video and increasing demand for premium online video beefed up the need for storage. In the US alone, households will need at least 500GB of storage in 2013. But WD exceeds that expectation by coming up with a built-in 1 terabyte space in the TV Live Hub™ for both network and local storage.
• The WD TV Live Hub is also a media server. You can stream your HD video, music and photos from the onboard hard drive to any DLNA-certified multimedia device, anywhere in the connected home, including the WD TV Live™ media player, TVs, Blu-ray disc players, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3 game consoles. You can also stream content from the WD TV Live Hub media center to your iPad, iPhone, or Android smart phones.
• Using the new, stylish, and feature-packed interface of WD^® TV Live Hub™, you can now mark your favorite files or folders, even rate them, set up a playback queue, browse videos with synopsis view, and many more.





• Express your personality and mood with WD TV Live Hub’s customizable interface. Choose various themes or use your own photo as background.



• If you want everything to be simple, just grab your remote control and program its color coded keys, or set up the content browse method the way you like it – lesser key presses, more time to enjoy your favorite music, video, and other files.



• Choose from the different input options WD® TV Live Hub™ offers: on-screen keyboard, alphanumeric keypad, and optional USB keyboard.
• WD TV Live Hub allows you to manage your files, or sync content from USB or network drive.
• Using an online database, you can get content information on your media files.
• Facebook fanatics may play their shared photos and videos, and check out the latest newsfeed from this social networking site.



• For those who decided to have a breath of fresh air outside, turn on the WD TV Live Hub first to get weather forecast from AccuWeather.com to help you decide whether to bring your umbrella or not.

With the numerous options and amazing features WD^® TV Live Hub™ offers, you and your family have more reasons to welcome the coming year together!

[Media Release]

Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, Foursquare, not to mention Flickr, Picasa… You’d think there were too many social networking services on the Web already. And yet, you’ll find yourself curiously drawn to the straightforward and refreshingly attractive interface of the newest one on the block: Piclyf. Today, in fact, I was surfing that single site for more than two hours — which is not a usual activity for me when I’m online.

Piclyf is a welcome addition to the Internet’s burgeoning social media space, and it is admirably focused on its main raison d’être: pictures. You can use it as a photo diary, a “blog in picture form.” If you’re not the type who can write long entries, you’ll enjoy this online service because it lets your pictures speak for you. And like a blog, when a picture inspires it, a conversation can ensue via a rich commenting interface.

What I find unique about Piclyf is the way it organizes your online “friends”. On other social networking sites, you have friends or you have followers. With Piclyf you have both. You can follow people without having to make them your friends, and vice-versa. Your Piclyf friends, on the other hand, are those whom you follow and who, in turn, follow you. Neat huh?

As with most other photo-hosting service out there, you can upload your pictures to your Piclyf account and attach various kinds of meta data onto them. You can even specify some EXIF information, as well as geotag your photo via a visual map interface. Speaking of which, I have an item on my wish-list for Piclyf: automatic detection of geotag EXIF values.

Actually, there are several more in my wish-list. The site is still fairly new and some of the features are still in their infancy, so we should expect improvements very soon. In the meantime, go on and create your own account now! Here’s why:

[What is PicLyf? from Eric PicLyf on Vimeo.]

Piclyf is the product of Twidl Inc., a Davao-based technology & design company headed up by Eric Clark Su.

VPS web hosting is a great midway option between shared and dedicated hosting environments. Just like the name entails, a VPS runs like a private server, but in a virtual environment. In this case, some resources, such as CPU, are shared. However, important resources like RAM and disk space are dedicated to each VPS account. Also, with a VPS you get your own operating system, email server, web server and more.

VPS hosting is a great option for many reasons, especially for the following:

1. Root/SSH Access – In other words, you get “server-level customization,” which was previously only available with dedicated hosting due to security reasons. In addition, you can utilize the command-line access and have the option of operating as the root user if you’ve got the experience to do so.
2. Scalability – For a website that’s just starting off, shared hosting is usually a sufficient choice. However, since the goal of many website owners is to grow or improve by either adding other sites or increasing traffic, there’s a big possibility of growing more than you expected to. Shared hosting, by its very nature, isn’t scalable because all of the resources are shared among all of the accounts on the server. However, VPS hosting can provide scalability that allows you to add more resources (RAM, disk space, etc.) for the room needed for growth.
3. Burstable Memory for Unpredictable Usage Spikes – If your goal is to gain more traffic to your website, then you should definitely be prepared for it. Let’s say that the popularity of your blog is on the rise. In addition, links to your website are added to larger ones like Digg or Slashdot. On a shared server, this can become a major disaster that can quickly cripple your website. But on a VPS, this wouldn’t be much of a problem with the availability of “burstable memory,” which is a pool of reserved memory that’s available when needed, such as in times of very high traffic.
4. Can Support Large, Dynamic Websites – If your website’s a source of income (e-commerce site with product-filled databases), it wouldn’t be a good idea to count on shared hosting to handle the expected heavy load. With a shared environment, you never know when someone else on the server may use up a large portion of the resources (CPU, MySQL queries, RAM), so you’re at risk of your site not functioning from time to time. On a VPS, you can rest assured of surmounting this problem since your website doesn’t rely on the same resources as others on the same machine.
5. Cost – With the great benefits of a dedicated server combined with the affordability of a shared platform, VPS web hosting is a great option to look into when in need of sizable resources on a modest budget.

WD® (NYSE: WDC), the world’s leader in external storage solutions, today announced that the WD TV Live HD media player, featuring network capability and Full-HD 1080p resolution, is the first network media player compatible with Windows 7. The WD TV Live HD media player makes it easy for anyone to play media stored on USB and network drives, any PC on the home network, as well as content from popular websites, on the biggest television screen in their home.

Using the Windows 7 Play To feature, users can initiate and control the streaming of video, music or photos to the WD TV Live HD media player and home entertainment systems from any Windows 7-based PC on their network. Any compatible media file accessible from the PC — located either on the PC or on the network — can be played to the WD TV Live by right clicking on the file name in the folder or directly from within Windows Media Player 12 and choosing the WD TV Live HD media player as the playback device.

Current users of the WD TV Live will need to update their media player to the latest firmware in order to use the Windows 7 Play To feature. Instructions for updating the WD TV Live HD media player can be found here.

“Microsoft is pleased that Western Digital has earned the Compatible with Windows 7 logo and is supporting the Play To feature with WD TV Live HD media player,” said Mark Relph, senior director, Windows Ecosystem Product Management at Microsoft Corp. “Now more than 100 million Windows 7 customers will have an affordable and easy way to play files to their HD TVs and other devices from their PC.”

“We regularly engage with WD TV Live enthusiasts in our online community. Many have been asking for a way to “push” media from their PCs to their TV or home theater system, especially from laptops. With the new Windows 7 Play To feature, users can select music or movies from their laptop and play it on an HD TV connected to a WD TV Live HD media player, whether the HD TV is across the living room or in a different room altogether,” said Dale Pistilli, vice president of marketing for WD’s branded products group. “WD worked closely with Microsoft on this exciting new feature to ensure the seamless compatibility of the WD TV Live HD media player with Windows 7 PC’s and deliver WD TV Live users what they want.”

WD TV Live HD Media Player

Features of the Windows 7-compatible WD TV Live HD media player include:

• Full-HD 1080p video playback and navigation with the included remote control and crisp, animated navigation menus;
• Play a wide variety of file formats including support for the most popular file formats with no need to spend time transcoding;
• Play videos, music and photos from the Internet on your big screen TV and discover new music with Pandora® Internet radio or listen to thousands of radio stations via Live365 Internet radio;
• Ethernet port for wired or WiFi® connection¹ to access files anywhere on the network to play movies, music, and photos from any PC or drive on a home network;
• Turns a USB drive² into an HD media player and plays content from most popular USB drives, and digital cameras, camcorders, and portable media players that can be recognized as mass storage devices;
• Unlimited media collection, just add more USB drives for more space;
• Two USB ports for seamless media playback from multiple USB drives and ability to access them simultaneously while a media library feature collects the content on all the drives into one list sorted by media type;
• Transfer files by copying, moving or deleting files stored on a USB drive, a network drive, a camcorder, or a camera to the attached USB drive using the on-screen menus;
• Picture Transfer Protocol support to show photos and movies directly from digital camera or video camera and/or any digital imaging device that supports Picture Transfer Protocol;
• Advanced navigation options including thumbnail and list views, media library and search;
• Photo viewing to create custom slide shows, zoom and pan and search;
• Movie viewing with fast-forward, rewind, pause, zoom and pan, view subtitles, and search;
• Music playback with fast-forward, rewind, pause, shuffle, repeat and search;
• File copying between USB devices;
• HDMI® 1.3 port, composite video and component video output for the highest quality HDTV or home theater;
• SPDIF digital output that sends digital signals to your AV receiver for the best surround sound experience; and,
• Ultra-compact design to fit easily into a home entertainment center.

Pricing and Availability

The WD TV Live HD media player is distributed by Axis Global Technologies, Inc. and ATP Peripherals (Phils), Inc. and is available now at select retailers in Philippines. Covered by a 1-year limited warranty, the MSRP for WD TV Live HD media player is ₱7,500.

[Media Release]

Western Digital, WD, WD TV and the WD logo and My Book are registered trademarks; WD TV, World Edition and My Passport are trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. Other marks may be mentioned herein that belong to other companies. All other brand and product names mentioned herein are the property of their respective companies. One gigabyte (GB) = 1 billion bytes. One terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment.