Relive Man's First Step on the Moon

As a child, I dreamed of becoming an astronaut and an astronomer to travel through space and discover new worlds. I was a whiz when it comes to names of rockets, capsules, stars, moons, and planets but too bad the Philippines never had a space program (Did Marcos try to create one?).

This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11, the first mission to land people on the moon. It was so unfortunate that I was not born twenty years earlier to witness this historical landmark, but thanks to modern technology and the internet, we can all watch the mission as it happened forty years ago.

The JFK Presidential Library and Museum set-up a website to recreate the 'most significant' achievement of President John F. Kennedy. If you want to catch a glimpse of the location of the command module Columbia and the lunar lander Eagle at this moment, go to www.wechoosethemoon.org.

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." - JFK

The Mystical PS3 Slim: A Black Market Sighting

Another first for the Philippines! A few months back, leaked photos surfaced from the alleged assembly plant of the PS3 Slim in China. Many speculated it was fake, but here's another 'evidence' of its existence -- the world famous footage of the new PS3 Slim being sold in the streets of Manila. Sony must be furious but there's nothing wrong with a little publicity right? Most people in the internet say the 'PS3 Slim' in the video is also fake -- probably another China-made DVD player or something. But who knows? This might be it.

Anyway, here's the original post of the person who took the video:

The Web site this originated from (UltimatePlayStation.com) has been shut down by Sony to kill any evidence of it's existence. However, they have not taken down the YouTube video (below) yet. Enjoy!

To quote: "I'm sorry the video is very short and very low quality, but my phone is ancient and the memory is very low, but I hope you believe me when I say this is in now way a fabrication."

The details are as follows, taken from the Web site now seized by Sony:

• It has a 120GB HDD.
• Two USB Ports
• The 'touch' button for eject and on seems to be gone, and there are now these random buttons.
• The PS icon is now white instead of colored.
• No more card reader
• PLAYSTATION 3 is gone, rather its PS3. It says this on the bottom as well for some reason.
• The guy was selling it with a DualShock 3. Whether it is compatible is another matter.
• The guy was selling it for 20,000 pesos, which is roughly £250, which is roughly $410

If there's any other information on this unit, let us only hope, someone will snatch it up and leak more info on it!!

Read more: http://www.ps3news.com/PlayStation-3/ps3-slim-console-surfaces-on-black-market-in-the-philippines/#ixzz0LOmxxBQx

The Sony Bravia WE5: Greener than your Usual HDTV

It’s an inconvenient truth that the world is losing resources quickly. Well, thanks to some manufacturing giants, eco-friendly devices are fast becoming a norm. One of which is Sony, and their WE5 line of flat panel televisions that aims to cut power consumption to up to 40% than that of current LCD TVs.

The Sony Bravia 40WE5 is a full-HD 40-incher that belongs to Sony’s line of eco-friendly and energy saving LCD TVs. We all know that the majority of the energy goes to lighting up the panel, so Sony developed a new kind of lighting called the Hot Cathode Florescent Lamp which uses 50% less electricity to produce the same amount of light. And with higher efficiency, translates to lesser number of bulbs – significantly lowering your electric bill!

This Sony WE5 HDTV features a Presence Sensor that uses heat and motion to constantly monitor if there’s a person in the room watching. If no one is present, it automatically turns-off the backlight but the sound remain; and if no one comes back for a longer period of time, it puts itself into standby mode. Also, it has an Ambient Light Sensor which adjusts the brightness of the picture according to the brightness of the room. If you choose not use it for a long time, a power saving switch completely cuts energy consumption to zero.

Despite the eco-friendly features packed into this set, picture quality is uncompromised. The Sony Bravia 3 engine delivers vibrant colors, crisp visuals, and stunning clarity to HD and SD programs alike and the Motionflow 120Hz eliminates ‘LCD ghosting’ during fast-moving games and action scenes. It also promises to deliver a 100,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, but compared to other sets with the common CCFL bulb, the WE5’s blacks aren’t black enough. But on the brighter side, there are no backlight inconsistencies throughout the panel.

The Sony Bravia KDL-40WE5 is an awesome product that combines earth-friendly features with great performance. And for P139,999 for the 40-inch model, it will definitely pay for itself in energy savings.

Oh and did I mention that it comes in a box made from recycled paper? Yep. Cool.

The Samsung S3500 Mobile Phone

While developed and released to be a mid entry-level mobile phone, the Samsung S3500 is not your typical cheap-looking budget phone. This quad-band GPRS and EDGE-capable phone hides quite a number of tricks up its sleeve including a 2Megapixel camera, a music player, and FM radio.

Reminiscent of the more expensive Samsung U900 Soul, it tries to present itself favorably with the slide interface and brushed aluminum fascia. It is solidly built with no hint of wobbling or squeaks on the slide mechanism.

It has a 2-megapixel camera on the top part of the phone which has superb panorama, mosaic, burst modes together with the night shooting mode to compensate for its lack of flash. The S3500 comes standard with a microSD slot for up to 8GB of storage for images, videos, or music. The music player can sort songs by artist, album or genre and even keeps track of the most played songs.

Although it doesn’t come with a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, it can wirelessly stream your tunes to your Bluetooth-capable headphones or car head unit. FM radio and music player can be easily controlled with the D-pad. JAVA apps and games are supported but unfortunately, all games included in the package are all demos.

The Samsung S3500 is a looker on a budget. Though it's nothing original nor cutting-edge, it can count on some of that Soul or the Nokia 6500 slide charisma. The camera performance is nothing special either, but the music player and FM radio perform well. If they just added 3G capability like the oher phones in its price range, then this is definitely a steal at P6,500.

Stop Globe's Unfair Traffic Shaping Practices: Sign the Petition Now!

Ladies and gents, please sign the petition to stop this non-sense. Don't let Globe dictate what you should do with your connection -- if you're paying for 1Mbps, it's your right to use that for whatever reason it may be. Please sign even if you're not a subscriber of Globe so that other ISPs can see that we are united, as a country, to uphold Net Neutrality.

Sign the petition here.

Globe Broadband Limits P2P Speed to 20kbps!

Thousands of Globe subscribers are experiencing significant problems downloading from peer-to-peer networks including bit torrent. I am also a subscriber of Globe Broadband and from my normal D/L speed of 110kBps, I now only get around 15kBps.

From forums around the net, I read that plan 1Mbps is throttled at 20kBps, and plan 2Mbps, is at 40kBps (they use an advanced traffic-shaping hardware to do this). Others speculate that Globe will apply throttling if you reach your download cap -- 20GB a month.

Nobody from Globe has confirmed nor denied this crappy new system that they are implementing, so I hope this is only temporary. If this turns out to be a permanent BS, I'll surely look for a better ISP the soonest.

Please hit the comment button and share your story.

UPDATE: This is a scan of the contract of new subscribers. Looks like this will be permanent :(



UPDATE 2: Good news people! We can now bypass Globe's BS by using this as BT client. Enjoy! LINK

UPDATE 3: Still no word from Globe. And bad news, Thunder doesn't always work on all torrents. Tried using it using public trackers like TPB or TorrentBox, download doesn't even start. I'll experiment some more.

Mac vs. PC -- Let's Get It On!

From time immemorial, Microsoft and Apple are throwing, uhm, apples at each other through advertising campaigns. The following are the latest ads from the two.

Here's one from Apple in response to Microsoft's Laptop Hunters:



And here are others from Microsoft: