The Personal Blog of David Gonzales

Nokia N78 Review finished, hardware edition

2008-07-06T08:18:00.001+08:00

The title says it all. Read my Nokia N78 review like it isn't old news on Electronic Pulp. Yes, it's a gadget blog.

[Nokia N78 review]

8,000,000 bugs all over the world

2008-06-28T18:57:00.002+08:00

There's something wrong with the Internet. I can't access my Google Reader using Mozilla Firefox. It used to be that I couldn't access Blogger either, but that's been fixed last night by I don't know what. My Google Reader problem still persists, however, and I'm left with no other choice but IE to download my feeds. Anyone else out there experience problems with FF3? I thought this was supposed to be the Internet?

Free, legitimate, tax-free Wi-Fi when you buy a new Nokia N78

2008-06-28T09:10:00.002+08:00

Abe Olandres points out that Nokia is still offering their "free Wi-Fi access with every purchased phone" promo, even with relatively old units like the Nokia E51. He says that this little Eseries candybar will give you up to 60 hours of free wi-Fi access on any Airborne Access wireless hotspot, provided that you can find one and try to log-on before the end of this month.

I thought the free Wi-Fi access promo for Eseries phones had already ended long ago, but obviously, it still hasn't. What I do know, though, is that free Wi-Fi access also comes standard with every purchase of a new Nokia Nseries phone, although with the Nseries deal you'd be getting a whole lot more.

See, I have a Nokia N78, and the free Wi-Fi access flyer in the box says that I have 60 days of free Wi-Fi via Airborne Access, under the same conditions as above. And not only that, there's also 3 months of free voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation included in the package, which I haven't really tried to activate for fear that I might do something wrong. So it's easy to see that with the Nseries deal, you'll be getting a whole lot more. But then again, you'll be paying a whole lot more, so it's only fair.

What bugs me, though, is how there doesn't seem to be any options for Philippine maps on the phone. There are no pre-loaded Philippine maps, and when I go through the process of activating my free 3-month license for turn-by-turn navigation, only European countries show up in the options. You think maybe I got an f-ed up phone? I hope not.

Huge storm + PAG-ASA = FAIL

2008-06-28T08:59:00.000+08:00

I've been wondering, just what good does PAG-ASA do to the Philippines? I mean, what good is it for, what is its real job, and do we really need it?

See, come storm after storm, all they do is give out "updates". Updates which we clearly do not need. Just look how much the updates on PAG-ASA's web site helped the passengers and crew members of the sunken ship MV Princess of the Stars.

When the weather is sunny, the government agency is nowhere to be found, and is rarely heard from. They report of upcoming calamities right after a storm (like how they report this time that there are at least 14 more typhoons heading our way after Frank - yeah, right), and during a storm, they really can't offer anything of help to us because they're only human too.

If I see that the flood outside of my house is already neck-deep, and the winds of the storm has already blown off my neighbor's roof, what can PAG-ASA do to help? Even their so-called weather updates often appear to be nothing but lies. I remember back in elementary school that I had been assigned to do a weather report the next day. I cited one from PAG-ASA which said there will be a very huge storm in the upcoming week. Well, guess what, the storm never came. They are all a bunch of liars, I think.

So when I hear about them in the news, I cringe, knowing that these people get paid to do absolutely nothing but turn the loose nuts in the heads of the Filipino public who don't know any better. It's a good thing that majority of the people do what I'm already doing - which is ignoring PAG-ASA - but with the recent tragedy of over 700 lost lives, I wonder even more why the government agency still exists. Surely you notice this yourself, too, right? Don't you?

Blogger enhances post editor, adds import/export feature, embedded comments, star ratings and more

2008-06-28T08:52:00.000+08:00

This happened just in the nick of time. I've been mulling over moving my web site to Wordpress from good ole' Blogger for quite some time now, but then lo and behold, new features get announced.

Now, Blogger has an embedded comment form in blog posts, support for importing and exporting of old posts and comments, and the post editor gets a few improvements as well. There are a few caveats, however, like how the embedded comment form takes too many steps to accomplish, the import/export feature currently works only with Blogger blogs, and though improved, the new post editor also loses a few old features. In any case, there has been a major overhaul in Blogger's feature-set, and I'd be a fool to enumerate them myself when all the info is available from their official blog anyway.

Thankfully, there are a couple of new features that I like, and these are:

1. Google Webmaster Tools integration
2. The addition of a rating system to posts

Now I understand why I've been seeing those "star" comments in my blog template while I was editing it - it was a new feature that had not been activated yet. Until now.

Read all about the new Blogger features at the following links, and have fun using the updates!

Read - Webmaster Tools Verification
Read - Star ratings
Read - Import / export of blogs
Read - Embedded comment form
Read - New post editor

A new Google Reader feature?

2008-06-25T04:39:00.002+08:00

Earlier today, while I was trying to view my Google Reader items
offline as usual, I noticed something funny about the status bar of my
downloads. Rather than slowly inching its way up to 100%, the status
bar kept fluctuating, displaying an even number up as it rises to 8%
for example, and an odd number down like 5%, etc. It kept going up and
down like crazy but I decided to just wait and watch what happens in
spite of the obvious fact that there was something wrong. And then,
instead of stopping at 100%, the download status bar happily crossed
the threshold and reached a ridiculous 500% before stopping! So, when
exactly did Google announce this new feature, and what on Earth does
it do? Come on, somebody tell me!

Thanks be to my iPod

The Shameful State of the Nation, Part I

2008-06-22T10:52:00.003+08:00

Note: I couldn't be bothered to go outside of Starbucks to take this photo, but take my word for it - the tree you see in the background had a fellow tree standing right next to it just five minutes ago that got blown down by the storm. And the flood is more than knee deep.

It's raining. At any given time at any random point in the world, I'm sure there's some place where it's raining very hard, too. But in that place, does it also flood so deep that you can actually drown a grown man in it? Or whole houses, for that matter? This is one of the many things out government has overlooked, all while doing stuff that I don't even know what are.

I mean, look outside your window. Or don't, just tune in and watch the news on your TV. Oh wait, you can't, because there's no electricity. The power to your house just died because the power lines MERALCO has built are too weak to even withstand a Signal #1 storm. Is there where you let all your taxes go? OK, it's your taxes, after all, so I won't bud in.

But look, just look. Is this the Pearl of the Orient? Is this the place that you so proudly portray in commercials, DOT? How come I never see these floods in the commercials? Or the countless beggars and homeless folk? How about the thieves, kidnappers and terrorists? You are definitely doing it wrong, homeboy. This is not the right way to humiliate a country, no.

Whether you like it or not, the Philippines is garbage. Garbage citizens, garbage politicians. garbage children, garbage. We reek of corrupt senate members and congressmen, not to mention the shady businessess that manage to stay alive despite being explicitly against the law. The president is a joke, the people are stupid, this country is clearly headed nowhere but the dumps.

I may only be 20, but I have seen enough of this country to know that it absolutely and positively is a failure as a whole. If you want to go on living like this, well be my guest. I'm not gonna stop you. I'm happy enough with my life as it is. Right now I've officially just lost all hope on this country's "recovery."

We Filipinos now are a disgrace to our name. We're an embarrasment to our ancestors and a failure in front of the world. I'm not angry because of what's happening, I pity the country because it can't be helped. No amount of help can save it. And if you plan on asking for mine, screw you. I'd rather be sitting here and drinking hot choco.

One Tall Signature Hot Chocolate for David!

2008-06-22T10:39:00.002+08:00

Yeah, so I have the money. Because of my job, I can finally afford this shit. But really, I've never imagined myself going to Starbucks for breakfast. No, I've never. First, because I don't drink coffee. Second, I don't drink overpriced coffee. And third, because I don't drink overpriced coffee that's actually tasteless, even though the whole world says otherwise. It's just that this storm is getting everybody down, and I've nowhere else to go for a cup of hot choco and a fairly good time.

Actually, all the power just died back over at my house, and my laptop, cellphone, and self are nearly running on empty. I needed food and a place to charge my gadgets, so I had to go outside where there was an outlet, and breakfast.

My first thought was to go to the most famous fastfood restaurant in the country, Jollibee. The thing is, I wouldn't even need to go outside if only the people from over there did their job and delivered my breakfast.

But because the storm is so strong, they've decided to temporarily make their delivery service unavailable, for the safety of their riders and whatever. But that means I'll starve to death, so screw them, I needed to eat (and charge my gadgets).

I decided to brave the rain and walk through the flood to the nearest Jollibee store, which was a good 20 or so blocks away from my house. And it's raining hard, too, so you can just imagine how I look like right now -- all wet, jacket, cap, laptop bag and all, aimlessly walking through the rain just a while ago on my way to shelter and the two things I mentioned I needed above.

Long story short, I ended up going to Starbucks at the mall, because as it turned out, even the Jollibee store I was aiming for was closed! Not my lucky day, I think.

Well, guess I have to consume my order of a "Tall Signature Hot Chocolate" before it gets cold now. I mean, this is what I'm supposed to do here at Starbucks, right?

Nokia N78 unboxing, live pics, pride

2008-06-21T03:18:00.004+08:00

I am now the proud owner of a Nokia N78. It's black, shiny, and a magnet for fingerprints. View my Nokia N78 unboxing and live pics at Electronic Pulp.

Read [Nokia N78 Unboxing Pics]
Read [Nokia N78 Live Pics]

Nokia E71 and Nokia E66 official photos [Late coverage]

2008-06-19T04:23:00.004+08:00

Before I forget, Nokia has also recently announced two very sexy and powerful business devices, the Nokia E66 and Nokia E71 (pictured). I've been closely following these two phones since the first rumors about them surfaced around the Internet, and am glad they've been finally launched. It's time Nokia showed Apple what a real smartphone can do. No word yet on when these phones will be coming to the Philippines, but I'm almost sure they will. I mean, the Philippines does have businessmen who need this, right?

Oh yeah, the specs:

Nokia E71: QWERTY keyboard Nokia, smaller by a third than the E61i. S60 FP2, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, USB 1.1 (!), 3.2 megapixel camera (with Autofocus and flash). Nokia E61i successor, obviously.

Nokia E66: Narrow-bodied Nokia with slide-out alpha-numeric keypad, and much of the same features as the Nokia E71. This is a successor to the E65.

More photos of the Nokia E66 and E71 after the jump.

Nokia N78 now available in the Philippines

2008-06-19T04:18:00.003+08:00

I was windowshopping the other day and remembered that I'm going to buy a Nokia N82 this coming weekend, so I went on to SM San Lazaro's 3rd floor cellphone stores to see the phone I'm going to own soon for one more time. To my surprise, right beside the Nokia N82 was the Nokia N78 sitting nicely in black, and suddenly I felt like rethinking my shopping plan.

Will I or will I not buy the N82? And more importantly, should I get the N78 instead? Yesterday I scoured the web for the best N78 reviews I could find, and found that the N78 was a rather satisfactory device, as long as you're not overly conscious about the megapixel count on your cameraphone. And since I could score an extra half-Benjamin from writing a review of this phone, ah, I've decided that I'll get one of these on the weekend instead of the N82.

What bothers me, though, is that the N78, although much less feature-packed than the N82, is a thousand and two hundred pesos more expensive. I still haven't satisfied myself as to a reason why, and I refuse to believe that they're going to let this on just because the N78 is a new model. Anyway, I'll see in a couple of days if the N78 is really worth the extra thousand and two, and prepare a review of the said device soon as possible.

Read [Electronic Pulp]

iPhone 3G commercial ad (High Quality)

2008-06-10T03:48:00.001+08:00

As if all this is even necessary.

The perfect time to buy an iPhone...

2008-06-10T03:36:00.004+08:00

...is now! Well, not really, since you won't be able to buy one as in "right now" anyway, but it's a great time to ~~think about it~~ buy it! It is really a great time to be alive, I tell you.

This is a landmark moment in mobile computing. And you know what the best part about this is? You won't even have to worry about saving up, because the base iPhone 3G model should only set you back $199, which is about $8,000+.

Really, it doesn't get any cheaper than that! Imagine, the most-advanced handset in the world for the price of a mid-level iPod? It just doesn't get better! It's a great time to be alive. Did I say that twice? :)

iPhone 3G coming to Philippines, finally!

2008-06-10T03:28:00.003+08:00

In case you missed it, Apple CEO Steve Jobs just unveiled the much-rumored iPhone 3G in his WWDC 2008 keynote. It now has 3G network support, built-in GPS with A-GPS, longer battery life and sleeker overall design.

It will be available in black and white models, with 8GB and 16GB models that will sell for $199 and $299. It's cheaper than most high-end Nokia's, which means that more people will be able to afford it.

The official worldwide rollout date is on July 11th of this year, but unfortunately, the Philippines won't be part of that initial rollout. More info on this later.

Read more about iPhone 3G here and here.

Morning coffee

2008-06-07T06:33:00.003+08:00

If you can't survive, just die, and get revived.

Fail Videos from FAIL Blog Part I

2008-05-30T06:52:00.003+08:00

Sometimes, spammers grow a sense of humor.

Quote of the week from FSJ

2008-05-30T05:33:00.003+08:00

"Zune continues its spectactular ride to the top. Oh wait, the chart's upside down."

[Fake Steve Jobs]

When bloggers watch the stars...

2008-05-28T01:14:00.002+08:00

[XKCD]

Video of the week: Google Earth + iPhone = iPhone Earth?

2008-05-27T02:36:00.003+08:00

It's things like these that appear to me as the devil himself. Now that June is fast approaching, and it's highly likely that Apple releases a 3G version of its fruit phone, I am becoming more and more entrenched into thinking about whether I should buy an iPhone or not. I already have an iPod Touch, and the absence of enough Wi-Fi hotspots should be solved when I finally buy a Nokia N82 and use it as a Wi-Fi router. But seeing how cool the iPhone is by itself, I can't help but think twice about not buying it!

Video from [TechCrunch]

Download Youtube Videos in MP4 file format

2008-05-27T01:04:00.008+08:00

Since I'm on the topic of downloading Youtube videos to something anyway, and because some of you might like to actually know how I do it, here it is, my quick tutorial for downloading Youtube videos in MP4 file format.

It's actually pretty easy. No, very easy. In fact, it's so easy you can do it without a PC! Well, that's true, but that's another story. Anyway, here's what you have to do to download any Youtube video in high quality MP4 format.

First, turn on your PC, launch your browser (I recommend Mozilla Firefox), and... oh, are you already done doing that? OK then, on to the downloading procedure.

Step 1.

You see this little box right here? This is your ticket to high quality MP4 Youtube videos. To use it, drag it to the Bookmarks Toolbar of Firefox by using your mouse pointer (I don't know how it's supposed to work in IE; just use Firefox, dammit!).

Wow I can't seem to add the Bookmarklet that is needed for this operation.
Step 2. Just read this blog post for further instructions.

Go to Youtube.com, go the the video you want to download, click on the box where you put it in Firefox, and wait for words "Download as MP4" turn up just underneath the video embed code on the video page. Here it is in a screenshot.

Step 3.

This part is a bit tricky. To start the download, you need to right-click on the "Download as MP4" link, select Save As... give the video a new file name, and finish it by adding .mp4 at the end.

Now, all you need to do is wait for the video to finish downloading, and voila! You now have a free video on your PC courtesy of Youtube. And you are free to watch them on any device you prefer, such as I do with my iPod Touch. That wasn't so hard, wasn't it?

Kudos to [Google System]

iPod Touch Video App problem with downloaded MP4 Youtube videos

2008-05-27T00:48:00.006+08:00

Recently I've cooked up an awesome and very easy way to watch free movies on my half-month old iPod Touch. What I do is I download Youtube videos in MP4 format, load them up on iTunes, transfer the videos to my iPod (that's connected to iTunes) and after just a few moments the videos will already be found on iPod's video app.

The first time I tried this, with random Youtube vids that are mostly for cartoons, commercials, and other senseless crap, it worked like a charm. And the videos were in high quality MP4 format too. But the thing is, this doesn't seem to work on vids that are more than 5-7 minutes long, and that's a problem because my main target for exploiting this "hack" is to score free movies from Youtube. The way I actually do this is:

1. I search for a movie on Youtube (say, "David Gonzales The Movie")
2. Then I download ALL video clips (it will come in clips of 10 minutes each because 10 minutes is the time limit for videos uploaded by mortal Youtube members)
3. I load them on iTunes and transfer them to my iPod
4. Lastly, I turn on my iPod's Videos app to watch

I've tried this many times, but I can't seem to get past more than 5 minutes into each clip. I know something is wrong, and I'll keep trying to find out just what in the heck I should do to fix this thing. I'll update about this when I land on a solution.

My Iron Man 2008 Movie Lightning Review

2008-05-27T00:45:00.003+08:00

When is Part 2 coming?!?

BREAKING: It's official - Globe Telecom is the official carrier of iPhone in the Philippines

2008-05-12T15:46:00.004+08:00

Globe Telecom will be the first official carrier of the Apple iPhone in the Philippines, according to various sources around the Internet. Globe Telecom will offer the Apple iPhone in the Philippines along with a few other Asian carriers for the very first time as soon as September, according to sources.

Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. is actually the one who got exclusive rights to market Apple's iPhone here in Asia, but because Globe Telecom is one of its mobile associates, the Philippines can get in on the cake.

And also according to a one-sentence statement released by Globe Telecom Today,

"Globe, SingTel, Bharti Airtel and Optus today announced that they have signed an agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone to the Philippines, Singapore, India, and Australia later this year."

They say more information will be released at a later date. But that's all fine, and what's important is that the Philippines will now get official Apple iPhone support! Rejoice!

Read [Reuters] and [Inquirer]

Chuck Norris is the iPhone killer, has a Twitter account

2008-05-09T18:57:00.004+08:00

We all know that Google is the ultimate "answer machine" available to everyone (for free, nonetheless) right now, but what happens when Google itself has a question? Simple - they "norris" it. And that's according to famous action movie star and six-time undefeated World Professional MiddleWeight Karate Champion, Chuck Norris. Also according to him:

He has a 5G iPhone
He knows the last digit of Pi
He gets his toast out of the toaster with a fork
He lost his virginity before his dad did
He is the iPhone killer

Find out more shocking truths about him through his Twitter account. Yes, you can follow Chuck Norris on Twitter. Go on!

Nokia's first official iPhone killer to be called iPerformer?

2008-05-09T18:48:00.004+08:00

Talk about bad product names. I know Nokia's probably not the most creative company when it comes to naming new products (the reason why their handsets have stale, numeric codenames - e.g. N95, N800, 6220 Classic) but to name what will probably your best mobile phone ever the "iPerformer" is just mad nuts! Mad nuts, I tell you! Don't tell me you can't do at least half as good as iDog, Nokia?

Read [Engadget]