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)

Motorola Joins 'Touchscreen' Technology with Innovation

The sexy Motorola Krave ZN4 for Verizon looks like a Star Trek communicator, makes a great little portable TV, and incorporates some genuinely innovative touch-screen technology. But its lack of interesting applications leaves me wanting a lot more. Here's the problem: The bar for touch-screen phones has been raised considerably recently. With the iPhone, the LG Dare, the Samsung Instinct, the T-Mobile G1, and the BlackBerry Storm out there, just having a touch screen isn't enough anymore. A handset needs to offer fresh software, too. And the Krave's software feels old—functional but stale.

A descendant of the Ming, a Moto phone that was wildly popular in Asia, the Krave is a rounded 4.6-ounce slab (4.1 by 2 by 0.8 inches, HWD) with what appears to be a clear, protective flip cover over the screen. But that "clear" cover is actually composed of a nearly invisible wire mesh that allows the cover to become a touch screen, too.

This is a neat concept, but it's slightly self-defeating. You can control the music, TV, or GPS applications through the cover, which means you can watch TV, for example, with the flip closed. But if you don't hit the physical lock switch, it's easy to trigger apps accidentally while the phone is in your pocket.

When you flip up the clear cover, the earpiece—a silver Motorola logo—looks as if it's floating in space—an extremely cool effect. With the flip closed, you get a bright color screen of 240 by 320 pixels; opening the flip reveals the full 2.4-inch screen and adds another 80 pixels, bringing the total screen resolution to 240 by 400. Above the display, there are just two buttons: Home and Power. The sides of the handset house the microSD card slot, 3.5mm headphone jack, volume controls, micro USB power/connection port, lock switch, and voice-dialing and camera buttons.

The main reason to buy the Krave is V Cast Mobile TV, powered by Qualcomm's FLO TV. which is ten channels of honest-to-goodness TV from partners like Comedy Central, ESPN, and Nickelodeon. The programs, however, are time-shifted; they're not showing what's on your TV at that moment. Boob tube addicts will also appreciate Verizon's new library of streaming episodes from partners like MTV and the Sci-Fi channel, which streamed smoothly, though not in full screen.

In a fringe reception area, TV on the Krave worked well laid down on a table, but not when I held it in my hand because my hand partially blocked the antenna. With better reception, TV worked well in both scenarios, but again, holding the phone up reduced the quality. TV audio through the phone's speaker and either wired or Bluetooth headphones sounded just fine.

This is the best FLO TV experience so far, because of the big screen and clear sound. The Krave seems less like a TV phone than like a little TV.

As a voice phone, the Krave is solid, once you can get over the fact that it feels odd pressed up against your face. The drop hinge causes the top half of the phone to fall about half an inch behind the bottom half, which is an unusual form factor. The Krave has strong RF reception, good voice quality in the earpiece, and adequate in-ear feedback of your own voice. The speakerphone is loud but transmits a lot of background noise, too. The Krave worked well with our stereo Motorola S9 Bluetooth headset and our mono Aliph Jawbone headset. Ringtones are loud, but the vibrate function isn't very powerful, though it does make a noticeable buzzing sound. Battery life, at 6 hours 20 minutes of talk time, is simply awesome.

But otherwise, the Krave's too-standard Verizon software is pretty boring, especially held up against the competing LG Dare.

The phone features visual voice mail, but so do an increasing number of Verizon handsets. The dial pad, address book, and SMS application come across as generic. You enter data by tapping on a portrait-style T9 keypad or a landscape-format QWERTY, both with slight vibrating feedback. Both keypads feel lively and responsive. It works well. But the software, overall, is far too similar to too many other Verizon feature phones to stand out from the crowd.

You get Verizon's underpowered OpenWave barely HTML browser, and very basic AOL, MSN, and Yahoo! IM clients, along with the standard Verizon e-mail client, which can access AOL, Windows Live, Yahoo!, or any POP/IMAP account. The VZ Navigator GPS software also worked well, including rerouting me around a traffic jam.

For music, the Krave hooks up to PCs and syncs with Rhapsody clients using a standard microUSB cable. You can also buy new music over the air, but you can't download files from your Rhapsody library over the air. Our handset synced smoothly and easily, and loaded music onto our 16GB SanDisk microSD card without a problem.

I wasn't able to get a Bluetooth file transfer to work, and Motorola said the Krave isn't eligible for Verizon's Bluetooth modem plans. This isn't a huge deal, since the phone doesn't hit Verizon's fastest network, anyway; it runs on the older EV-DO Rev 0.

A surprising number of BREW games run on the Krave, considering that the phone doesn't have a physical keyboard. When I loaded Pac-Man, for instance, I could control my little guy by tapping the top, bottom, or either side of the screen. Tapping the corners of the screen activated virtual soft keys.

Built-in applications aren't bad. I was just hoping for something a little more fun, or new on this unusual phone—something like the Dare's photo contact cards or draggable menu items, for instance.

The camera is oddly bereft of options. You can't change the resolution of your photos, like you can on plenty of other phones on the market today: it's 2-megapixel or nothing. There are two video modes: MMS and 320-by-240 at 10 frames per second. Shots were a bit soft, with highly saturated colors. They weren't terrible, but they weren't great, either. At least the roomy 128MB of built-in memory leaves lots of space for photos.

At $149.99 (with contract), the Motorola Krave ZN4 goes for $50 less than its main competitor, the LG Dare. Also, the Krave's touch keypad is a bit more responsive than the Dare's. But the Dare prevails in plenty of other ways with a much better camera, a better browser, and most important, software with a sense of whimsy, fun, and freshness. The Krave costs the same as Verizon's other large-screen mobile TV phone, the LG Voyager, which adds a physical QWERTY keyboard to the mix. I definitely crave the Krave's hardware, but its generic software doesn't allow it to stand out from the crowd.

BlackBerry 5-megapixel phone, Storm 2 coming soon

While it’s already confirmed that both Globe and Smart will offer the BlackBerry Bold in the local market, we have yet to receive news of when and if the touchscreen-equipped Storm will make it to Philippine shores. Now, to further complicate things for the frugal shopper, word on the net has it that RIM has a 5-megapixel camera phone and a successor to the Storm already in the works.


According to two independent sources, the 5-megapixel phone will feature an auto-focus camera, 1GB RAM and a “near HD quality” display. If everything goes according to plan, this will be the best imaging BlackBerry device to date. Design wise, it could look like a fusion between the Storm and the Bold which could mean a touchscreen phone that’s equipped with QWERTY keypad. No details were divulged regarding the Storm 2, but we’re guessing it’s the one that will support 850MHz and 1900MHz 3G spectrum bands for use in more countries.

So, with this bit of info regarding new and better BlackBerry devices in the pipeline already, are you still interested in getting the BlackBerry Bold when it comes out? Personally, I’d wait, but hey, in the world of gadgets and technology, everything will eventually become outdated anyway so it’s really all up to you if you’d rather get what’s available right now or wait for the next batch of device to come out first.

Watch out for the "Tube" by Nokia

The Nokia 5800 is an upcoming portable entertainment device by Nokia.

The Nokia 5800, code-named "Tube," is a Symbian S60 smartphone. It's a XpressMusic series phone, which emphasizes music and multimedia playback. Although it's not the first Nokia phone with a touchscreen, the first being the Nokia 7710, it's their first phone based on the S60 platform which utilizes a touchscreen. While it has tactile feedback, it doesn't use Nokia's upcoming Haptikos technology.


It has a compatibly mode for older S60 and Java applications that aren't touchscreen aware. It works by using part of the screen for displaying the essential buttons that the program needs.

The phone was seen in Britney Spears' Womanizer's music video.

Nokia announced the 5800 XpressMusic in London on October 2nd. The suggested retail price is €279 before taxes and subsidies. The phone will be available Q4 2008 in developing markets, specifically India, Indonesia, United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Russia and Spain. The phone will miss Christmas sales in more matured markets. Nokia has only commented that it needs time to customize the phone's software for operators in other markets. Analysts speculated the delay as a business maneuver not to butcher its existing product portfolio sales for Christmas as the phone is very competitively priced. The phone will hit the rest of Europe sometime in early 2009. A United States and Asia-Pacific release date has yet to be announced.

Specifications

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic has the following specifications:

3.2-inch 16M touchscreen.
640 x 360 pixels resolution (16:9 display ratio).
Symbian S60 5th edition OS with touch input
Quad band GSM / GPRS / EDGE: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
Dual band UMTS / HSDPA: UMTS 900 / 2100 or UMTS 850 / 1900 (Latin America and Brazil variant)
Accelerometer for auto screen rotation.
3.2 MP AF Carl Zeiss lens, dual LED flash and geo-tagging support
GPS with A-GPS function
FM Radio 87.5-108 MHz with RDS.
3.5mm headphone/video-out jack
microSDHC card slot (up to 32 GB)
8GB microSDHC card included