The Netopia - Microsoft partnership

While most internet shops have closed business during the year, leading internet café chain Netopia is planning to open more than 12 new branches in 2009, adding that the global economic slowdown has little or no effect on them.

Netopia President George H. Tan said that they are setting aside P25 million to P30 million in budget for the projected expansion. They will be eyeing spaces inside the malls around the country for the new branches.

With the cost of computer equipments going down, and also the prices of crude oil, Netopia is very optimistic in their planned expansion.



Although Tan admitted that they have closed some 25 company-owned branches during the year which were considered as ‘non-contributing’ outlet during their ‘period of consolidation.’ Said decision was brought about by the then increasing prices of oil, because “foot traffic in the mall went down as people did not want to go out,” Tan added.

Learning from previous mistakes and seeing new opportunities now, Tan said that they have learned on how to identify a good location, what should be the ideal size, and how to market if effectively. They (Netopia) are now undertaking new marketing strategies to set them apart from their competitors.

And just recently, Netopia was able to enter into a partnership with technology giant Microsoft Philippines. The partnership will see Microsoft displaying their products inside the EGG-Netopia store in the SM Mall of Asia. Windows-based consumer electronics products like computers, mobile phones and video games, among others, will be showcased in this joint project which was called the Windows Technology Zone.

Tan expects that this will bring in more customers to their places, thereby increasing the traffic as it becomes known in the market. Although Netopia will not be handling the selling of these products, they will refer customers who will inquire to authorized dealers.

Pinoy e-Jeepney is Featured at Discovery Channel

We have the solution at hand, but somehow, bureaucracy and other self-vested interests from controlling industries have formed such a big hurdle that we cannot fully maximize the potentials of the e-jeepneys. With the international exposure that it has recently, perhaps this promising invention would get the much needed push to be fully developed for our country’s main thoroughfare.

The e-jeepney or electronic jeepney which was developed by Solar Electric Company, Inc. (Solarco) was featured in the Discovery Channel’s Ecopolis, a technology TV program hosted by Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr. Daniel Kammen.

Kammen presented the e-jeepney in the show as one that may prove to have the most impact in reducing harmful carbon dioxide emissions. Although in the said episode, the e-jeepney failed to pass the test, because it was only effectively able to reduce carbon emissions in the city by 4%.

But that was understandable, because the Ecopolis (where it was tested) was designed in such a way that everybody would be driving their own cars and would not take public transport. Dr. Kammen pointed out that if everybody would be taking the public transport, the e-jeepney would effectively reduce carbon emissions by 80%.

With the exposure that it got from the Discovery Chanel, it might get more interest and support. Hopefully from the parties that can really do something to bring this project into its full potential.

Currently, the e-jeepney is being pilot tested in the cities of Makati and Puerto Princesa in Luzon and Bacolod in the Visayas. It can carry 14 people, including the driver and can run for 60 to 90 kilometers after an overnight charging from an ordinary wall power outlet.

The e-jeepney was launched in July last year. It is a good solution to high fuel prices, but aside from the a few units on a pilot run, the Land Transportation Office has yet to make it fully road-legal. (Source: Pinoy Business)

Scientists find hole in Earth's magnetic field

LOS ANGELES, CA. – Recent satellite observations have revealed the largest breach yet seen in the magnetic field that protects Earth from most of the sun's violent blasts, researchers reported Tuesday. The discovery was made last summer by Themis, a fleet of five small NASA satellites.

Scientists have long known that the Earth's magnetic field, which guards against severe space weather, is similar to a drafty old house that sometimes lets in violent eruptions of charged particles from the sun. Such a breach can cause brilliant auroras or disrupt satellite and ground communications.

Observations from Themis show the Earth's magnetic field occasionally develops two cracks, allowing solar wind — a stream of charged particles spewing from the sun at 1 million mph — to penetrate the Earth's upper atmosphere.

Last summer, Themis calculated a layer of solar particles to be at least 4,000 miles thick in the outermost part of the Earth's magnetosphere, the largest tear of the protective shield found so far.

"It was growing rather fast," Themis scientist Marit Oieroset of the University of California, Berkeley told an American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Such breaches are temporary, and the one observed last year lasted about an hour, Oieroset said.

Solar flares are a potential danger to astronauts in orbit but generally are not a risk to people on the surface of the Earth. (Yahoo! Science News)

Hands-on review: Sony Xperia X1

It's not an iPhone, and for many that's half the appeal: Sony's $800 (unlocked) Xperia X1 is the most expensive mainstream cell phone on the market, but it's one of the sexiest handsets around that doesn't start with an "i" and end in "phone."

The main X1 interface is unlike any other handset you've tried, and you'll notice the difference immediately as you punch into the XPanel home screen, a custom dashboard that lets you quickly -- and stylishly -- jump from one application to another, usually with just a single touch. You get nine panes to work with. By default they include an FM radio, calendar, clock, photo viewer, and the Opera web browser (a much appreciated improvement over the IE browser included with Windows Mobile, atop which all of this is built). Some Xperia-specific apps, including a bizarre system that uses colored fish as alerts, are also on tap to baffle you for months. Dig into the settings and you can mix and match the apps you want to appear and download new apps from Sony's website.

The phone is a horizontal slider, and when closed the front of the phone features a three-inch touchscreen (with a whopping 800 x 480 pixel resolution) with a small collection of buttons beneath it. Of special note is the center action button, which also works as a tiny touchpad in many applications while you drag your fingertip around on it.

Flip the phone on its side and slide the screen up and you get a full QWERTY keyboard, a real blessing for those of us cursed with the inability to type on touchscreens. The buttons on the keyboard are a bit too flush for my taste -- typing with two thumbs didn't work well for me -- but it beats tapping on the screen with a stylus. The design is very sturdy (and not too heavy at 5.6 ounces), and the phone, on the whole, feels like it will be able to handle multiple drops to the floor.

Other features include a nice 3.2 megapixel camera (though it's dog slow to focus) and a microSD slot (no Memory Stick for this bad boy), which is located under the battery panel cover. The phone supports 3G, but only if you use an AT&T SIM card, but it also has Wi-Fi built in to pick up the slack no matter what network you're on. GPS (and Google Maps) are also in the box. I haven't done a full battery drain test on the handset, but Sony rates it for six hours. Judging by experience and the size of the battery, that seems like a fair guess.

In addition to notes above, I have a few smallish complaints with the phone. The biggest problem is that Windows Mobile underlies the innovative XPanel, and I found I had to scurry back into WM more often than I'd like in order to get certain things done. I wish Sony would have enhanced the OS it uses on its Walkman handsets instead of building on Windows... though I do understand the benefits that Windows Mobile gets you, including email and application viewers. But still, do we really need both Opera and IE on one handset?

The X1 also has some general performance problems: Apps load so slowly that I often found myself clicking a button twice, which would then inadvertently undo what I was trying to do while I waited for the phone to catch up. Everything is kind of pokey, even the web browser. Whether it's a slow CPU or all those layers of OS that slows the Xperia down I don't know, but it's bothersome to the point of frustration.

Lastly there's that little matter of price tag. Who will pay $800 for a cell phone? No matter how excited I am about the mini-touchpad and the XPanel system, I can't justify spending nearly a grand on this handset. Subsidize it to $200 with a contract and I'm on board. (Source: Yahoo! Tech)

Coming in 2009: Nokia's touchscreen N97

I thought we were done with big phone announcements for the year, but it looks like Nokia had one last trick up its sleeves. Behold the N97, a sleek new touchscreen handset with 3G data access, a slide-out QWERTY keypad, and customizable widgets. Count on a hefty price tag, though.

Nokia invited a small group of reporters and bloggers—including me—to check out the N97 (due in the first half of 2009) at the Midtown Manhattan Nokia store Monday night. We only got a brief look (hence, this is not a review), but from what I've seen so far, the N97 looks like a significant step up from the 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia's first stab at a touchcreen phone.

First, the basics: We're talking 3G HSDPA access (a version of the N97 will be tailored for U.S. HSDPA networks), GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth (including a stereo Bluetooth profile), and a whopping 32GB of on-board memory—plus a microSD memory slot, for a potential total of 48GB of storage. (Compare that to just 16GB of flash storage—tops—for the priciest iPhone 3G).

The N97 boasts a sharp-looking 3.5-inch touchscreen (same size as the iPhone); slide the screen to the side and you'll find a backlit, full-QWERTY keypad. With the phone open, the touchscreen tilts at a 30-degree angle relative to the keypad—a nice touch.

Of course, a slide-out keypad also means more bulk; in the N97's case, that means 5.2 ounces, with a girth of 0.62 inches, which puts it somewhere between the iPhone 3G and the bulky T-Mobile G1.

Besides its QWERTY keypad, the Symbian S60-powered N71 boasts another cool trick: Customizable "widgets" for the home screen that let you tap into your e-mail, upcoming events, favorite contacts, music, oft-used applications, and more. Five of the rectangular widgets fit on the home screen at one time, and you can tap and drag them around the display as you see fit. Nokia reps said they'll be encouraging developers to cook up their own widgets, so expect examples from Facebook, MySpace, Friendster ... you name it.

Unlike the Noka 5800, the N97 is a full-on Nseries handset, and that means access to Nokia's "Ovi" suite of online tools, including new universal messaging features, online file storage, and the ability to sync driving directions—from PC to phone, and vice versa after you've completed your journey—with Nokia Maps (now enhanced with topographical features and satellite views). Also on tap: N-Gage gaming.

Multimedia features look promising, including 30 frame-per-second video playback, a 3.5mm headset jack, TV out, and a 5-megapixel camera capable of VGA-quality video capture—nice.

The N97 is slated to get the same robust messaging features that I've seen on Nokia's other Nseries handsets, including POP, IMAP, and Exchange e-mail access. If you don't want to use the slide-out keypad for composing messages, you can tap on a virtual keypad (both numeric and QWERTY) or use the phone's handwriting-recognition features (with help from the included stylus). As far as Net surfing goes, the impressive Nokia HTML Web browser—complete with Flash support—is present and accounted for.

Overall, sounds pretty cool—but keep in mind that Nokia's phones (especially its Nseries handsets) are never cheap, and the N97 is no exception. While U.S. pricing hasn't been set yet, the N97 will go for a cool (unsubsidized) 550 euros when it debuts in Europe next year. I'm guessing an unlocked version of the phone will cost in the $500-$700 range once it arrives Stateside ... ouch.

Stay tuned for a full review once I get my hands on a review unit. (Reprinted from Yahoo! Tech)