I can finally come out of the shell and talk about Smart’s latest technology release — Plug ‘n Talk. I met with Smart representatives earlier today and I was able to witness a demonstration of this very cool gadget. It is a hybrid VoIP unit. In a nutshell, the unit which is essentially a thumbdrive accepts a Smart Buddy Simcard, plugged into a Windows computer with internet connection and can take outgoing and incoming voice calls and SMS/MMS messages incurring Philippine local rates. The hybrid nature of the technology is derived from the model whereas the party using the unit uses an over-IP technology which connects to Smart’s network in the Philippines and from there a circuit-switch communication occurs. The reciprocal applies when the unit becomes the receiver. In other words, it’s a VoIP-Circuit-switch technology.
Though I know the launch date, I will not provide that information as well as any pricing. I’m just to excited to post the technology’s overall concept. For more information, visit the hyperlinked site above.
During the demonstration, the call is quite loud and clear, however I won’t be too optimistic. There still is that VoIP characteristic. I’m only after the text messaging because it only costs P1/outgoing message to any Smart/TNT and P2 for Globe/TM/Sun and the MMS which costs the same as what they charge in the Philippines. I’ll have my dongle hooked into my PC and find TXTM8S.
September 3rd, 2008
I was looking around WordPress for an idea for today and stumbled upon a bloggers iPersonic entry and thought I’d give it a try. I have the results below. Not perfect, but some are sound. Psychological theories are still a long way to go. I really believe that each individual is a diffusion of each other. They are the same, yet different. It’s like Philosophy. I’ve spent a few years searching for my niche in Philosophy, but I can’t completely pinpoint my loyalty.
Independent Thinkers are analytical and witty persons. They are normally self-confident and do not let themselves get worked up by conflicts and criticism. They are very much aware of their own strengths and have no doubts about their abilities. People of this personality type are often very successful in their career as they have both competence and purposefulness. Independent Thinkers are excellent strategists; logic, systematics and theoretical considerations are their world. They are eager for knowledge and always endeavor to expand and perfect their knowledge in any area which is interesting for them. Abstract thinking comes naturally to them; scientists and computer specialists are often of this type.
Independent Thinkers are specialists in their area. 
The development of their ideas and visions is important to them; they love being as flexible as possible and, ideally, of being able to work alone because they often find it a strain having to make their complex trains of thought understandable to other people. Independent Thinkers cannot stand routine. Once they consider an idea to be good it is difficult to make them give it up; they pursue the implementation of that idea obstinately and persistently, also in the face of external opposition.
Independent Thinkers are not the type who easily comes out of his shell. Speaking about their emotional life is also not one of their strong points. Anyway, social relationships are not particularly important to them; they are happy with just a few, close friends who find it easy to share their intellectual world. They find it difficult to establish new ties. In love, they need a lot of space and independence but this does not mean that their partner is not important to them. Independent Thinkers often make a cool and reserved impression on others; but this impression is deceptive: they can hardly bear it if people close to them should reject them. They prefer a harmonious, balanced relationship with a partner who shares their interests and with whom they can realize their visions.
Take the free personality test and determine your iPersonic type!
July 24th, 2008
I couldn’t deliver a promise to myself that I would write each day of the weekdays. I was too busy at work that I lost so many blogging hours. I am writing this entry aboard a Continental Airline flight. So what thoughts have accumulated this past week?
Firstly, my attempt to move my router failed. I’ll figure it out when I return.
The first Gala Night of Pinoy Idol was held this weekend and I was fortunate to watch the performances. The show has put a limit on the number of text votes per SIM; the maximum is 200 text votes per SIM. My guess was correct because I guessed an average of 100 per SIM.
Eat Bulaga’s first E-Banda Eskuwelahan came into existence this weekend also. Out of four bands, I enjoyed two. It was a good contest.
At work, I ordered tons of computers. I realized that I’m too slow setting them up. When I say setup, it means uninstalling pre-installed software and installing my own software. One PC per hour is quite slow. Alongside that, I was also multi-tasking — programming and other operational work. Joking around has to be there also to take away all the pressure.
June 22nd, 2008
I’ve decided that next week I shall change the router in the office. It’s been due for two years, I just don’t have the courage to do it. Originally, the setup in the office has an Adtran router. I couldn’t maintain the router because of my limited knowledge, so I went the easy way out — Smoothwall. I turned off routing from the Adtran router and injected a Smoothie between it and the LAN (meaning it’s currently a bridge). If I was to bond another line in our current network, I’ll need to eliminate the Smoothie. The move also will enhance my MPLS connectivity and VPN capabilities. I can also move some services in their own public host (I have four public IPs to use). I will need to come in pretty early to do this.
After all these connectivity issues are dealt with, I really hope I can solve our heating problems in the computer room. Throw in power issues also. We’re on a tight budget, so I don’t want to spend a lot on battery. I need a new one because our batteries are pretty old and very annoying because they keep beeping every hour.
It’s very difficult to find Adtran tutorials so I will be posting them here for my own reference as well as for others.
June 5th, 2008
I feel cocky tonight, so I’ll present you with deceiving stats for this web site. I intentionally cropped the graphs to have 400px width so that they won’t mess up the layout of the web site. Giving, of course, the sample containing the highest peak.
If you see a graph, do not conclude immediately. You need more information in order to understand the situation — the behavior of the sample. Statistics is widely used now to give us false information. Every morning you will hear these information in the news. Researchers taking down stats and most of us make facts out of these samples. That’s why I hate the medical field so very much because of its dependence to stats.
Below is a Wordpress blogstat graph. Even though I’m showing a sample with the higest peak, blogstat shows that this is a typical activity for this site. That’s an average of 1000 visits. Blogstat does not compute according to a visitor’s uniqueness. So you may think that I’m bored every day and since I have no life, I visit the site 1000 or so times in order to see a graph looking like this.
You thought wrong! Below is a graph from Google Analytics. It’s really a boring graph because it’s nearly constant (almost a straight line). The graph below (the Y-axis has an interval of 1000 visitors) is showing an average of 1000 UNIQUE visitors daily. That proves the graph above to be legitimate.
Why then did I entitle this entry “Deceiving…”? Well, I intentionally omitted relevant information. The information I omitted do not affect the result of the graphs above, but they do affect the understanding of how the site is doing.
May 28th, 2008
Everex has unveiled an Eee PC competitor with its CloudBook. Scheduled to be available at Walmart.com only starting January 25, 2008 at an affordable $399. This is the same price as my Eee PC 4G, except that it has better specifications. The CloudBook also weighs 2lbs with a 9-inch screen and has 9 times more of gigabyte storage space than my 4G. It is pre-installed with gOS which I think rocks.
I’m a little disappointed that I just bought an Eee PC and a new interesting machine cos out. I’ll have to wait for reviews, maybe for the next generation of CloudBook before I decide to get my hands on it.
9 Inches, 2 pounds, 5 hours of battery life. Surf, email, blog, IM, Skype, compute. Cloud computing makes it simple and easy for everyone.
Based on the latest gOS Rocket operating system, the ultra-mobile Everex PC comes with popular applications from Google, Mozilla, Skype, OpenOffice.org and more.
Find your $399 CloudBook at Walmart.com beginning 1/25/08
Additional Preinstalled and Linked Software
Mozilla Firefox, gMail, Meebo, Skype, Wikipedia, GIMP, Blogger, YouTube, Xing Movie Player, RythemBox, Faqly, Facebook and OpenOffice.org 2.3 (includes WRITER, IMPRESS, DRAW, CALC, BASE)
Hardware Specifications
1.2GHz, VIA C7®-M Processor ULV, 512MB DDR2 533MHz, SDRAM, 30GB Hard Disk Drive, 7″ WVGA TFT Display (800 x 480), VIA UniChrome Pro IGP Graphics, VIA High-Definition Audio, 802.11b/g, (1) 10/100 Ethernet Port, (1) DVI-I Port, (2) USB 2.0 Ports, (1) 4-in1 Media Card Reader, (1) .3MP Webcam, (1) Headphone/Line-Out Port, (1) Microphone/Line-In Port, (1) Set of Stereo Speaker, (1) Touchpad, (1) 4-Cell Lithium-Ion Battery
January 19th, 2008
Eee PC comes with XandrOS distro of Linux, therefore the way I access my network files is different than when I’m using Windows. Fortunately, there is a system called the Network File System (NFS). First generation of WD Netcenter are NFS enabled, but my recent acquisition — the MyBook World Edition — is not NFS enabled. Therefore I have to do the dirty work before I can access my audio/video files from my half-terabyte hard drive. The following are the steps I went through before successfully accomplishing the task:
- SSH Access in MyBook WE
- MyBook WE as NFS Server
- Mount the path:
mount mybook_ip:/shares/internal /mnt -o rw
That’s all folks!
December 23rd, 2007
