Why I Love Google Chrome

cool ads!

Olympus EP-1

I recently purchased a camera - an Olympus Pen EP-1 Micro-four thirds in Broadway, a popular electronics store in Hong Kong. For a price of HK$6,740, the bundle includes the body, a 14-42mm lens, an 8-gig SDHC card, a tripod, a LowePro bag and and Adidas bag as a freebie.

The camera's main attraction, aside from its oh-so-cool retro styling, is its micro four-thirds format. It uses a sensor similar to a DSLR but it doesn't have a prism inside, hence the size is compact-ish and svelte.

The EP-1 has an effective 12 megapixel resolution.

A more thorough review can be found here

Iron Man II

got these pics from Facebook, movie is out 2010

Mobile Phone for 999?

I saw this at Mindpro mall in Zamboanga City - a basic Cherry mobile phone for 999 pesos. The phone, despite its blah design (looks like a cheapo calculator) and three-liner LCD display - could come handy as an emergency phone that could be stashed in your survival kit.

If Microsoft Redesigns the iPod Packaging

funny, but dead on

Disaster Relief in Manila

Here are some important info for disaster relief/rescue for Metro Manila:

National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) Emergency Numbers: 911-1406, 912-2665, 911-5061, 912-5296, 911-1873

RED CROSS: 0917-899-7898 and 0938-442697

Send relief goods to Caritas Manila Office at Jesus St., Pandacan Manila near Nagtahan Bridge (tel.no. 5639298/5639308) or Radio Veritas at Veritas Tower West Ave. Corner EDSA (tel no. 9257931-40). We are still identifying other drop ...off by points... for relief goods which we will post soon. Goods required are: Canned food, rice, used clothes especially for children, milk...

ATI Eyefinity Debut | 3D Gaming at 5760x2400

In this demonstration AMD's Simon Solotko demonstrates Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. gameplay at 5760x2400 resolutions on six monitors, ostensibly using the new Radeon 5800 series video card.

iPod nano Gains a Camera

Apple unveiled the new iPod nano, which gained a VGA camera, an FM receiver, and a pedometer.

Pixi Dust

Palm just unveiled its newest smartphone, the Pixi, aimed at younger buyers. The Pixi has 8 gigs of storage, a full exposed keyboard, and runs on WebOS, just like the Pre.

NYT

Video Ads... in Magazines?

CBS embeds a video player inside a magazine to play ads.

PS3 Slim Out September 1

Sony will release the improved PS3 Slim, available everywhere on September 1. The new console - 32% smaller and uses 34% less power than the fat model - will have a 120-gig hard drive and retails for $300.

Watchmen Blu-Ray + PS3 Game

I got this from DataBlitz today, a Watchmen Blu-ray movie and PS3 game combo, for PhP 2495. It includes a 2 discs (one movie and one game), a poster, instruction manual and a Watchmen comic timeline.

Good thing tomorrow's a holiday :)

G.I. Joe 3G Kit

Globe Telecoms is selling limited edition G.I. Joe-themed 3G USB modems. The prepaid kits, part of their Tattoo line, sells for PhP 1895 each.

Robot Musician

A robot playing 'Twinkle, Twinkle' on piano, at Shanghai Science & Technology Museum

Shanghai Science & Technology Museum

I visited the Shanghai Science & Technology Museum last week, together with some colleague from UP Astronomical Society. I particularly enjoyed the World of Robots exhibit, as well as the section about Space Navigation.

pics, from top: piano-playing robot, the IMAX theater, facade of the museum

Making the Switch

I finally did it. After another incident of malware infection, I decided to switch from Windows to Mac. I got myself a Mac mini with a 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, with 2 gigs of RAM and 320 gigabytes of storage space.

And so far, I am loving my Mac. Runs fast, and the OS X Leopard is just amazing. BOINC has a Mac version too, so I can still crunch numbers for SETI@Home et al. The mini needs anHDMI out though, and dual-screen out.

I still plan to get a Windows machine in the future, an AMD Phenom II quad most likely.

2009 Total Solar Eclipse

The UP Astronomical Society will send an expedition to Shanghai (which I am part of) to witness and document the rare event. The eclipse is on July 22, 2009, and the totality will occur at 9:43 am.

The team site is here.



(Slides from the lecture on the 2009 Total Solar eclipse given by UP Astronomical Society alumni Bamm Gabriana.)

Metal Gear Solid iPhone Covers

Found these in Trinoma Mall, a place called Digital Walker: Metal Gear Solid iPhone covers, at PhP 2500 each.

iPhone 3GS: Underwhelming

I must admit, the new iteration of the iPhone, the 3GS is a bit of a disappointment for me. I mean, seriously, 3 megapixel camera? Samsung is already pushing 8MP.

It's good that the new phone also supports high tech features now, such as MMS, cut and paste and it has a compass!

On a related note, I saw the Globe logo during the WWDC, so does this mean the local carrier is one of the first to support these new features? Also, the version 3.0 of the iPhone OS will be available a week from now.

Palm Pre Comes in June 6

It's final. Palm Pre, the much-vaunted smart phone from Palm, will go on sale in the US on June 6.

Missile Silo for Sale

an abandoned ICBM missile silo has been put up for sale in America

Upcoming AMD Video Cards

AMD is on the verge of releasing new graphics cards in the next few weeks, hot in the heels of its introduction of a higher performing mid-range card, the HD4890.

The new cards will be based on 40-nm process: the RV740, which will have 826 million transistors, 640 stream processors, 188-bit interface and GDDR5 memory. The cards are expected to be priced in $99 range. 

New Gmail Features

Gmail, which celebrated its fifth year last April 1, added new features: the ability to display the sender's time zone info in message headers, including the sender's current local time. Gmail can also show icons that depict the sender's availability.

According the Gmail blog, red and green phone icons indicate that the sender may be asleep/out of the office (between 9:00 am and 6:00 pm in the sender's local time zone) or available.

Skype for iPhone

Now available for download from the iTunes Apps Store

PS2 Now $99

Sony cut the price of its previous generation console, PlayStation 2, to $99, starting April 1.

Sony sold 136 million PS2 consoles since 2000.

3rd Gen Shuffle

The smallest iPod yet, the 3rd gen Shuffle is a wonder in industrial design. About half the volume of the previous Shuffle, this one packs 4 gigs of memory for the song. I'm still partial about the controls, which were located at the earphone cord, but I'd definitely have this one.

It's 4,190 pesos in Apple online store

New Mac Mini

Apple has just rolled out new Mac minis:

Specs:

2.0 GHz Core 2 procs

120 or 320 gig drive

Nvidia 9400 graphics

iLife included

update: available in Apple Store Philippines for PhP 33,900 - 44,990.

Epic Fail

Facebook Blinks

Facebook, facing a bruhaha over its new terms of service, is reverting to the old ToS to "sort" things out.

PAF Aircraft at Clark Field

Philippine Air Force displayed some of its aircraft and weapons at Clark Field, during the Hot Air Balloon Festival last Feb 14.

from top: an F5 pilot, F-5 Freedom Fighter, Sidewinder missile, an Aermachi AS211, helmets resting on the wing of an AS211

An 'Aww' Moment

Firefighter giving a bewildered koala - caught in a bushfire in Australia - a drink

Third World Countries will Get Crippled Win7

Poor Third World countries (euphemistically labeled 'emerging markets') will get a crippled version of Windows 7, aka improved Vista. The Windows 7 Home Basic for emerging markets has no Aero UI.

Microsoft will also sell Windows 7 Starter - another crippled version that can only run an astounding THREE concurrent applications! So what, you can only run Notepad + Paint + Calculator, and will get a BSOD if you open MineSweeper? 

I won't be surprised if 3rd world people will opt for the pirated versions of the Win 7 Ultimate instead of this trash.

more

Possible Replacements for my iPhone

I love my iPhone but there are some new models coming out in the next few months that I would love to get my gadget-freak paws on: the Palm Pre (bottom) and the Android-based General Mobile Sharp DSTL1 (top).

more on Palm Pre and the DSTL1

Phenom II at 6.5 GHz

A group of overclockers managed to upped the AMD Phenom II 940 processor to 6.5 GHz, using liquid helium. They were able to set a record score of 45,474 for 3DMark05.

Take that, i7!

more

Outlander Trailer

I want to watch this upcoming flick - alien vs. Viking movie starring James Caviezel.

Remember when...

hard disk drives only have 15 megabytes capacity?

via Oobject

AMD Phenom II is Here

Advanced Micro Devices officially releases its new 45-nm processors called Phenom II, which ran at 2.8 and 3.0 GHz.

I am waiting for this proc to be released here in the Philippines, as I would be upgrading my system with this CPU (yep, I only need to replace the CPU and nothing more.)

Tom's Hardware has a review here.

Bashing NVDIA's Re-brands

NVDIA is rebranding its old G92 chips, and this video has a funny take on it.

via Fudzilla