Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Foxier browser

IT’S fast, it’s free—and it’s an excellent upgrade. If you still haven’t installed Firefox 3.5, do it today. The speed and new features make this browser a keeper.

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Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Shifting to OpenOffice

GIVEN the cost of buying a licensed copy of MS Office and the dangers of using pirated software, it’s no surprise that many companies are opting to use OpenOffice. Published free and open source, OpenOffice (Version 3.0 is the latest) can be downloaded and used with no legal liability or guilt—and it does most of what MS Office does. As a bonus, it runs on Windows, Linux or Mac OS X, so your main productivity tool won’t be locking you in to one operating system.

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Tuesday, June 16, 2009

E-books to go

Some writers suggest that dedicated e-book readers are on the way out, since Apple’s iPhone and other smart phones can do the same job, I disagree. For most serious book readers, the tiny screen just doesn’t cut it. The real challenge to Kindle and other dedicated e-book readers will come, not from mobile phones, but from small and inexpensive netbooks.

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Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Cool Web applications

GOOGLE caused a stir last month with Wave, an experimental Web application that combines e-mail, instant messaging, online forums and wikis. Developed by the same engineers who worked on Google Maps, Wave was unveiled during the company’s developer conference, in a bid to encourage programmers to create plug-ins for the new platform. The service isn’t available yet, but there’s no shortage of Web 2.0 applications to explore. Here are a handful I found over the weekend.

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Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Searching for a better search

MAYBE the third time’s a charm. Microsoft must certainly be hoping so, after announcing the third reincarnation of its search engine, now dubbed Bing, which goes live June 3. By pumping $80 million to $100 million into a marketing campaign to boost its new brand, Microsoft is hoping to pull itself out of a distant third place in the search engine rankings.

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Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Do we need our own Linux?

I downloaded a pre-release version of Bayanihan 5, the upcoming version of the state-sponsored Linux distribution, hoping to put it through its paces. Unfortunately, a few technical snags prevented me from making all but the most cursory review of what is by nature a complex product. After all, to get a fair reading of an operating system, you ought to have installed it and used it for at least a week. I only had two days, if that.

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Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Smart and easy wireless access

WE crossed the threshold to become a mobile-connected society years ago. In 1999, the number of cell phone users had already caught up with landline subscribers; a year later, they outnumbered them by a ratio of 2-to-1. By the end of 2008, there were about 68 million cell phone subscribers, while the number of landline users languished below 5 million. While Filipinos clearly prefer mobile phones, most broadband Internet services continue to be based on landlines or co-axial cable. This too may change, however, as mobile service providers begin offering competitive wireless alternatives to DSL and cable Internet.

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Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Ubuntu on my netbook

With desktop effects activated, I can bring up thumbnails of all active windows and choose the one I need with a simple mouse gesture.

In the weeks since setting up Ubuntu 9.04 and the programs I need, I’ve been using the Aspire One as full-featured notebook at work—connecting to the company network, browsing the Web, communicating online, and writing and editing documents.  In fact, with Jaunty Jackalope, this netbook feels just like the little engine that could.

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Monday, May 11, 2009

Netbook wallpapers

To complete the experience of running Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix edition on my Acer Aspire One, I created a few wallpapers that designed with its screen in mind (1024 x 600). Click on the smaller image to see the full-size file, then right-click and save to download the file to your computer.

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Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Is Twitter for twits?

JUST to be provocative, I was going to write a column entitled “Twitter is for twits”—but two things prevented me from doing this. First, a quick Google of my prospective title showed that Bryony Gordon of The Telegraph in the UK had already used a variation in his opinion piece “Twittering is for twits with nothing better to do. A second reason I didn’t entitle this piece “Twitter is for twits” is that I felt I should be fair. A number of people I knew and respected were on Twitter and I thought I shouldn’t knock it until I’ve tried it. So I did.

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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Linux for real people

IT seemed like a perfectly geeky thing to do, so I braved rain and the Saturday night traffic to get to the Ubuntu Release Party at the Ortigas Center.

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Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Trouble at Pirate Bay

Is the world at a tipping point that is moving us away from free file sharing? The smart money says no. Anyone who remembers the days of Napster, Audiogalaxy and Kazaa, realizes that for every file sharing site the entertainment industry takes down, a dozen new ones will spring up, some of them introducing new technology that is even more difficult to pin down. In the wake of laws that compel Internet Service Providers to reveal information about customers who upload or download heavily, expect newer peer-to-peer networks that support anonymous or private file sharing.

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