The PDA Users Group of Davao blog

Blugre Wi-Fi Party

2005-11-11T06:42:00.000+08:00

Blugre incooperation with Microwarehouse and PUG@D

Invites you to the very first Blugre WiFi Party. Music. Prizes. Wireless.

This will be happening on November 16, 2005, 7:00PM, Blugre Landco.

Get a chance to win an iPod shuffle

Free coffee for the first 50 registered guests.

Send an email to blugrewifiparty@gmail.com to register.

See you all there!

News for the week

2005-05-26T10:14:00.000+08:00

PalmOne paid $30 million to Palm Source to get they full rights to use the Palm brand name. PalmOne will revert back to being Palm almost two years after the original Palm company divided to form the two separate entities today. Palm Source will find a new name for themselves and both companies will released their new names and logos by next month or July. The $30 million paid will help go into efforts by Palm Source to go into open source. PalmOne's interim CEO says, "We think Linux will be a big force in the business. Certainly, being in the Linux world has its opportunities.'' Link to the story from MercuryNews.com.

In the meantime, PalmSource's CEO has stepped down which according to analysts could be due to the company's poor performance. The interim CEO, Patrick McVeigh, spent 10 years with Apple before joining Palm. More from ZDNet UK News.

At LinuxWorld held in New York this week, Nokia unveils a Linux-based handheld device. The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet boasts of Wi-Fi and bluetooth connectivity and a 65K colour TFT touch screen, measuring 4" diagonally with a 800 x 480 pixels. The Nokia 770 also has 64 MB of RAM as well as a expansion slot for RS-MMC.

Applications include "a web browser with support for Macromedia Flash 6; an e-mail client; Internet radio; news reader; media player; image viewer; Adobe Acrobat viewer; file manager; search; calculator; world clock; notes; sketch; and games." The handheld device measures 141mm x 79mm x 19mm and weighs of 230 grams. Browsing time is up to 3 hours and standby time of up to 7 days. More at InfoSync World.

It's official! LifeDrive is here!

2005-05-18T15:10:00.000+08:00

The cat's finally out of the bag. LifeDrive is now here. This is confirmed by PalmOne itself by putting up a page for it. It will cost $499.

PalmInfoCenter and Dave's PDA Place gives you product previews while those of Mobile Tech review, BargainPDA and CNet Asia offer reviews of the LifeDrive.

The LifeDrive boasts of a 4GB MicroDrive made by Hitachi of which 3.85GB are available to the user. It still has 64MB of RAM of which isn't non-volatile as those of the Tungsten T5, Tungsten E2, and Treo 650.

Worth mentionings is that PalmOne has finaly integrated Wifi into their latest PDA. Not since Tungsten C has there been a PalmOne PDA with wifi. Bluetooth is also included.

The battery isn't replacable but seems impressive enough. As noted in Mobile Tech Review:

As a test, I surfed the web for 1.5 hours, watched videos for 40 minutes, viewed 50 images from an SD card, played games (Billiards, Bejeweled 2 and Trivial Pursuit) for 1 hour total, wrote an MS Word document in Documents To Go (25 minutes) and listened to 40 minutes worth of MP3s with the screen on during playback and had 38% battery remaining. Not bad for a device with an internal hard drive. We got 6 hours of continuous MP3 playback with the screen turned off and watching a two hour video with brightness set to 66% used 50% of the battery's charge (we used headphones with both tests).

LifeDrive

2005-05-18T09:42:00.000+08:00

According to sources that shouldn't be named, PalmOne will be releasing the LifeDrive pretty soon. I did a little snooping and I found a French website that previews the LifeDrive.

There are also pics of the LifeDrive and one screenshot clearly shows the Lifedrive has built-in Wifi. Estimated cost? $500.

Use Babelfish to translate the article in English, though it's still pretty difficult to read.

Meridian Telekoms covers more areas

2005-05-17T15:17:00.000+08:00

I received an email from Mr. Jess Iñigo informing us that Meridian Telekoms is now covering more areas.

We are pleased to inform you that we have now covered Catalunan Grande (upper part), Dumoy, Lanzona Subdivision (and neighboring Alpha Homes, Delta Homes, Poly Subd., Sto. Nino Village, San Antonio), Ma-a (Woodridge and Monteritz), Buhangin proper, Catitipan (PNP regional camp), Sasa (near Dona Salud), Ecoland (vicinity of John Paul II College, TFD, DCOTT, Ecoland).

Prior to these sites, we have covered the Ponce-Jacinto areas (convenience store, Ateneo U and Holy Child), Camp Leonor area, Monteverde (PBCom), Mabini-Torres corner (near the badminton court) and Juna Subdivision-DBP Village.

HP iPaq hw6500

2005-05-05T17:59:00.000+08:00

Mobile-review, has pictures and specs of the HP iPaq hw6500, a PocketPC based PDA-phone with an integrated QWERTY keyboard. It will come in two models: one with a 1.3 megapixel camera and one without. The hw6500 has a smaller screen as compared to other iPaq PDAs; the screen measures 3-inches diagonally and resolution is 240 by 240 pixels. Comes with 64MB memory and bluetooth. However no mention of this unit having WiFi.

PalmOne PDA comes with 4GB HDD

2005-05-05T17:51:00.000+08:00

According to Brighthand, PalmOne will introduce their latest PDA by mid-May. Called "LifeDrive", this PDA supposedly has a 4GB miniature hard-disk drive and will sport bluetooth as well as WiFi. It is rumored to measure 4.7 x 2.8 x 0.8 inches and will weigh 6.8 ounces. Read more here and here.

InfoSync World reviews the Tungsten E2

2005-05-05T17:48:00.000+08:00

The Tungsten E2 is a only a modest upgrade to its predecessor, but it's upgrading from a best seller. Current Tungsten E users probably won't see a need to upgrade unless they have a dying need for Bluetooth, but the E2 does keep palmOne's entry-level offerings up to date with the latest expectations with the company's usual finesse. Most significant is the now butt-kicking battery life, a feature that, combined with Bluetooth, justifies the $50 premium over the Tungsten E's launch price.

PUGAD April discussion: wireless broadband internet

2005-04-21T12:24:00.000+08:00

Last night, PUGAD had the first of its scheduled monthly discussions. Our guest were Mr. Mr. Jesus Manuel "Jess" Iñigo, Branch Manager of Meridian Telekoms Davao and Mr. Jay E. Opolentisima, Branch In-Charge, Micro-D International.

We held the meeting at Formula Pete's located at Wheels and More Drive.

Meridian Telekoms offers wireless broadband internet for only 988 pesos per month. There's a one time set-up fee of 500 pesos. With the 988 pesos you get connected to the internet at speeds of up to 288 kbps and includes two e-mail addresses and one dynamic IP address.

As was discussed during the meeting, Jess explained that Meridian Telekom uses Smart's cellsites to attach their equipment to in order to bring the service to their consumers. One important requirement in order to avail of Meridian's wireless internet service is a direct line of sight from the residence to the cellsite. Obstructions such as buildings, billboards and trees will prevent the signal from reaching the residence.

As of the moment, there are only a few areas in Davao that can subscribe to this service. These are there areas around: Grand Regal Hotel, Juna Subdivision, Kim San Pawnshop (near Camp Leonor), Monteverde (PBCom), Mabini-Araullo street, Ponce Street (around Central Convenience Store), Matina Aplaya, and Ateneo High School. However, Meridian Telekoms is planning to have its service in Buhangin (Diversion Road), Dumoy, Camp Catitipan (regional PNP camp), and Shrine Hills. They are also planning to expand their coverage to Toril and Panacan.

Meridian Telekoms' wireless broadband internet is an affordable alternative to getting broadband speeds in to your home. I remarked during the discussion that some people rely more on their mobile phones for communication rather than their landline. So with this service, a consumer now has a choice of getting rid of their landline altogther yet be able to enjoy fast internet connection. On average a DSL connection will cost about 1,900 pesos a month. Add to this the cost of the monthly fee for the landline and you will spend more than 2,500 pesos a month.

Mr. Joey Manulid is already subscribed to Meridian Telekom. He applied on a Saturday and was connected 3 days later. He says he is quite satisfied with the speed.

The meeting had been very informative and PUGAD would like to thank Jess and Jay for coming to the meeting as our guests.

If you would like to contact Meridan Telekom, you can call them at 225-1110 or 225-1112. Fax number is 225-8955. You can visit them at 16/F Landco Corporate Centre, JP Laurel Avenue, Davao City. Email is davao@meridiantelekoms.com.

Next PUGAD meeting will be on May 18, 2005.

Pocketfactory reviews the Tungsten E2

2005-04-13T17:16:00.001+08:00

I think Pocketfactory is the first to review the Tungsten E2. The reviewer was suitably impressed with the E2's bright display. He also liked PalmOne's decision to put 32MB worth of non-volatile memory and the built-on bluetooth.

His gripes are that the E2 still doesn't have Wifi built-in and the paint finish attracts fingerprints just like its predecessor.

The review concludes:

The Tungsten E was originally designed for budget conscious business users and prosumers. During its lifecycle, it has sold nearly 2 million units. PalmOne seems to be taking a queue from Apple’s playbook by adding new features and goosing the price point a bit in order to squeeze out higher margins and cash in on a successful product. I expect the new $249 price tag to fall back down to $199 once demand settles. Still, even at $249, the product offers many key features found on the more expensive Tungsten T5 for nearly half the price.

I came away from this review surprisingly impressed with the product. PalmOne deserves high marks for fixing nearly every complaint levied against the original model, and integrating a pedigree of new functionality.

PalmOne releases new PDA

2005-04-13T16:48:00.000+08:00

Contrary to my pronouncements, PalmOne hasn't given up on their PDA line yet.

On their website you can take a look at the new Tungsten E2. So, what's new?

Following after the Tungsten T5, the E2 also now sports a non-volatile, flash memory. Which means there won't be any worry when your battery dies. This is a good move for PalmOne since the main problem plaguing PDAs with built in batteries is that once it is competely drain all your files are gone.

What else is new?

Better, brighter screen.
Bluetooth.
Better battery life.

The unit is said to be compatible with their Wifi card. I hope this time they released a driver before selling the unit. As some of you might remember, PalmOne released and sold their T5 bundled with a wifi card but there was no driver for the card.

It also has the Intel 200MHz XScale ARM-based processor and multi-connector port.

Bundled with the unit are Documents To Go version 7, Versamail 2.7.1, and a multimedia application from PalmOne.

This is being sold for 249 USD or probably around 16,000 pesos here. I'm hoping we can have a unit to review soon.

This link to Mobile-review.com talks more about the Tungsten E2 and the other PDA PalmOne is said to release soon: the Palm LifeDrive. The specs are:

- Intel XScale PXA270 416 MHz with 32 MB of RAM
- Palm OS 5.4
- 4 GB hard disk drive
- Wi-Fi 802.11b
- Bluetooth version 1.1
- 320x480 pixels screen
- 5D joystick
- integrated microphone

I still consider the Palm LifeDrive as a rumor. But if the above specs are true, this is on sweet PDA. Price is rumored to be around 550 USD,

Go to Mobile-review.com for pictures of the Palm LifeDrive.

Call Centers Spread to Asia's Frontier Lands

2005-04-05T13:23:00.000+08:00

From Career Journal Asia.com:

The surprise for outsourcing companies is how deep the talent pool is in out-of-the-way cities like Davao. In fact, this type of town may be exactly what the industry is looking for, with a population of 1.4 million and 36 colleges and universities producing about 8,000 graduates a year. Now that the violence of the past has largely receded, Mr. Fournier and other outsourcing specialists hope call-center jobs, enabled by the advent of the Internet, will help Davao's economy diversify and grow; in Manila, call centers have created about 60,000 jobs in just a few years.
Like the rest of the Philippines, Davao is steeped in Americana. Local restaurants and stores bear names like Kini Rogers Chicken and The Tom Cruz Grillhaus. The mayor, Rodrigo Duterte, patrols Davao's streets on a Harley-Davidson look-alike and cultivates a grizzled, "vigilante" image; he calls himself Duterte Harry, after one of Clint Eastwood's tough-guy film roles.

All this kitschy linkage to U.S. pop culture seems to help make many Filipinos adept at outsourcing work. Nasdaq-listed PeopleSupport Inc., for example, intended to spend a month in Davao hiring staff for its call centers in Manila and Cebu, but it filled more than half its recruitment target after a week.

"People here already understand America and American English. What we're doing is giving them enough confidence to use it," says Mr. Fournier, a former airline executive who is chief operating officer of 3G Communications Inc.

Mr. Fournier also has recruited a diverse range of call-center agents for 3G's U.S. partner, Cyber City Teleservices Ltd., which opened Davao's first call center in October, creating more than 1,000 jobs for people to provide customer support for catalog companies, Internet-service providers and other businesses. Some recruits are Filipino expatriates returning from jobs abroad, while others are university graduates. A clutch of recent recruits included three local radio disc jockeys.

More at the Wall Street Journal.

Toshiba reveals new lithium-ion battery

2005-04-03T14:58:00.000+08:00

March 29, 2005, Toshiba announced a new kind of lithium-ion battery that charges 80% of its charge in one minute. This is 60 times faster than the lithium-ion batteries currently available in today's market. The battery also has a long life cycle, losing only 1% of its original capacity after 1,000 cycles.

Toshiba says that the battery will be available for commercial use in 2006. It will initilly be used in the automotive and industrial sectors.

More at Toshiba.

Problem with the blog

2005-04-02T01:30:00.000+08:00

For those of you who visited the blog since it's inception, you will notice that the March 30, 2005 blog has changed. It's my fault. I was editing some details when the browser I was using decided to make my life miserable. After editing a part of the blog. The browser refused to refresh. I thought that I was able to saved the blog successfully and closed the browser. When I used another browser to open our blog, the previous post wasn't there! I had to re-write the entire post, trying to remember what I wrote before. If any of you notice anything missing in the March 30 post please send me an email.

March 30 meeting at Blugre Landco

2005-03-31T12:03:00.000+08:00

On March 30, PUGAD had a meeting at Blugre Landco. Those who attended were: Joey Manulid, Holden Hao, Grace Villareal, Andre Fournier, George and Lisa Mae Tujan, and Mark and Pinky Suanes.

On the agenda was my proposal to have a moderated meetings or sessions. We were also going to discuss the picture for PUGAD's yahoogroup and the group's membership card.

We discussed the idea of having a moderated meeting or forum for a particular topic. I suggested that a moderator, either having volunteered or having been chosen, will facilitate the flow of the meeting and he or she can suggest what topic to be discussed. But anyone from the group can also suggest anything he or she would like discussed. The moderator will make sure that the discussion will not stray away from the topic at hand. Those present were amenable to the idea and suggested further that we get a guest for the discussion. They also suggested that we hold the meetings or fora every month.

So as agreed by all those present, PUGAD will hold a monthly session wherein as a topic, picked by the moderator or by the group, will be discussed and a resource person will be invited to talk about the topic or part of the topic. A transcription of the meeting will then be posted in our blog.

We are going to start our monthly moderated sessions on April 20, Wednesday. The first topic will be about wireless technology and our guest will be from Meridian Telekom. On May 18, 2005, our topic will be about security for our portable devices and our guest will be someone from the insurance industry. Anybody who wants to volunteer for be the moderator for next month's meeting?

We will try to make a recording of our first session and then make it into a podcast. What is a podcast? Go to Engadget and iPodLounge to learn about podcasting.

I would like to suggest that we limit our session to sixty to ninety minutes so that we can have time to discuss other matters.

Next up was about PUGAD's membership card. Those who are 'veterans' of the group will be eligible to get the membership card for free. On the other hand, new or inactive members will qualify in getting their membership cards for free if they are able to attend at least 3 meetings within a 6-month period. The April meeting will be the first month of the 6-month period.

Lastly, George brought up what picture we were going to post in our yahoogroup. We uploaded the sample picture of the membership card. You can see the picture at our yahoogroup page. (I cropped the picture after writing this blog)

Other things discusssed
Before we got down to business, Joey mentioned that his house is currently connected to the internet at 100 kbps, wirelessly. His internet service provider is Meridian Telekom. We got to know about Meridian Telekom last February when Andre mentioned that there will be a company here in Davao that will offer wireless internet access at a speed of 100 kbps. We were intently curious about it but Andre said he as of the moment couldn't give more details about the company. But about two to three weeks ago, while Joey was jogging around the subdivision we here lives in, he accidentally go to know about Meridian Telekoms. By chance, he managed to look down while he was jogging and saw a flyer that had the words "wireless" and "internet". That piqued his curiousity. He called them up and the next day, Saturday, he went to Meridian Telekom's office at the Landco building and inquired. I think he said the next week, Tuesday, he and his family were connected to the internet wirelessly. Joey said that on average, they are on 100 kpbs but they can have bursts of 288 kbps. We will learn more about Meridian Telekom and their wireless internet service soon.

Other matters talked about were the silence from PalmOne regarding their plans for the PDA market. We talked a bit about Voice over IP or VoIP and e-cash. We agreed that VoIP and e-cash will become one of the topics for the monthly moderated sessions that PUGAD will hold starting April.

Please post your comments and suggestions.

Welcome to PUGAD's blog

2005-03-31T11:47:00.000+08:00

Welcome to the PDA User's Group of Davao or PUGAD's blog. This is still beta.
The history of PUGAD will soon follow.