Here’s a picture of my “Mac mini”.
You can make your own paper mini Mac by printing and cutting out the paper craft PDF. The origin of this paper craft is in Japanese.
Link:
Mac paper craft
Direct download to paper craft PDF
Archive for November, 2005
I just saw an actual Segway Human Transporter in action today in our school affairs — it’s so cool! 
I’ve seen Segway HT several times on display; seeing it in action just made me wanna ride one! Seriously, I really want to ride it. The darker side of me had the intention of grabbing one Segway HT from the lady circling around the courtyard but that would look so stupid and cruel. 
Link:
Segway Human Transporter
Huh?
Well, I saw an Apple advertisement this afternoon along Skyway which goes like this: “The truth is Mac is for everyone. Get a Mac today.” I scratched my head and tried to understand its meaning. Obviously that’s part of Apple’s marketing, and marketing is not the most honest job available out there. Sometimes marketers sell products they don’t even use!
If we consider the rise and fall of the Philippine economy, who would buy Mac these days? Not unless you really are dying for Mac. Maybe a handful of enthusiasts and solid supporters will never think of the price. It’s an investment anway. Even though Macs are generally more powerful than a PC side-by-side when raw power is considered, not everyone is willing to trade their PC for a Mac because most Mac softwares available here in the Philippines are not found along sidewalks. If you’re lucky enough to find one they are three to five times more expensive than an average PC CDs sold in Quiapo even if they are pirated. Take note that the prices of original softwares in Mac and PC are about the same.
An average Filipino would use their PC for assignments or office documents, surfing the internet, chatting with friends and occasional gaming. Oh, did I mention games? That’s probably the downfall of Macs in the Philippines because most popular games here, specially those online games that reign the Philippine gaming market, run only in PC (Windows). Licensed softwares in Mac are considerably more expensive than PC and if you’re one of the geeks who run Linux in your PC, then all your softwares are free. There are free softwares in Mac too, but there are more softwares in PC. That’s one reason why PC achieved its dominance not only here in the Philippines, but also worldwide. In addition, upgrading your PC is relatively easy once you’ve learned the basics. Not everyone is willing to shell out more money just to buy a beautiful box. More importantly, many Filipinos are kuripot (stingy).
I like Macs — they do the job well specially in graphics, video editing, design and development but they are not your average computer. Macs are more or less designed for technophiles, designers, and style-conscious computer users. Macs are not cheap so it attracts less buyers than PCs. I’m very willing to buy a Power Mac G5 but I don’t have the luxury yet. Practically any sub-20000-peso PC can do all the general computing tasks a Mac can do, so why buy a Mac? Getting in the Mac bandwagon is not the best reason to get a Mac either.
So, going back to the advertisement… “The truth is mac is for everyone. Get a mac today.” Nah… It can’t be true. Yeah sure… Mac can be for everyone only if they have the budget, and if many Filipinos embrace authentic softwares. I’ll bet that large percentage of computer users in the Philippines don’t even know what Mac is until they see that advertisement. On top of that, I think that Apple is just using the popularity of iPod to sell Mac. In my opinion, even if iPods are selling like hot pancakes, Mac won’t be able to compete against the popularity and practicality of PC in a country where most buyers are kuripot.
At the end of the day it all depends on you, the buyer.
P.S. I want to add that the most affordable Mac you can buy today is Mac mini which is about P40,000 (retail).
UPDATE: I try to be as fair as possible in writing this. I like Mac and I love to have one. If you are a poweruser, it’s good to have both Mac and PC for development and testing purposes. The whole point of this entry is figuring out why the slogan does not fit with the current economic situation of our country. Even if the selling point of Apple is ease of use and beauty, they do not count on people with tight budget in mind.
Links:
Apple iMac
Apple Mac mini
Apple Power Mac G5
Apple iBook
Apple Powerbook
Apple, Mac, Philippines, Skyway, Advertisement
I discovered Meebo as early as September 14 when it launched its alpha version. It is an AJAX-powered instant messenger that enables you to use your favorite IM just about anywhere. It didn’t appeal to me so much because it’s dangerous to save user information in their servers. For instance if their network was penetrated by a hacker, the hackers might obtain certain information about me, my chat logs and other personal stuffs. I’m sure that many people are aware of this but they continue using Meebo anyway.
This morning, there was a commotion in our laboratory because someone had discover this great online instant messenger. I was not surprised; rather, I was amused that I didn’t realize they are using Meebo until now. No wonder some of my classmates are online in Yahoo Messenger even if its their Cisco laborarory. Later, I used one of my old YIM account to try how it really works, and it really work like an ordinary IM. Meebo team claim that they don’t save the user information in their server and they don’t collect chat logs. I’m still skeptical on what they do to username and password though. How will Meebo monetize this web application? How will they survive? Premium subscription is possible, but I’m still cautious on sending username and password over the internet even if the site utilizes SSL. In fact Meebo uses 1024-bit RSA key encryption, which is very secure.
Meebo just works and it’s interface mimics that of the desktop famous IMs. Everyone who had used either YM, MSN, Jabber, AIM or ICQ will be familiar to it instantly. I read from user feedbacks that there are users who experience lag on sending and receiving messages. I think this is normal if there so many concurrent users using the service at the same time. Meebo team can still improve the reliability of message transfers. They can also improve the native support of smilies for each IM protocols.
There is no added functionality in Meebo alpha yet. It’s just a plain instance messenger but advanced features will be added soon as it matures.
Link:
http://www.meebo.com
The officers of our home owners’ association are pathetic — our subdivision had not paid Meralco for 3 months already and they didn’t do anything to catch up with the delayed payments. So yesterday, Meralco disconnected the electricity from all our street lamps. Now, darkness consumes our village and as the night goes deeper the sense of foreboding escalates. Our subdivision is very eerie at night without street lights. Many of our neighbors fear that thieves might take opportunity of these unfortunate event. Hopefully the street lights will be operational again soon.
Now there are two panes At Del.icio.us — recent bookmarks on the left, popular bookmarks on the right.
Here’s the home page when you’re logged out…
And here’s the appearance when you’re logged in….
Yesterday I was at Digg.com and there was buzz over Wordpress.com that is already out of beta and is now open for registration. Of course I look at the website and I saw that it is now open for registration. Without wasting any minute, I registered some subdomain and I looked inside its features.
At the Dashboard, the topmost options are: Write, Manage, Links, Presentation, Profile and Options. It seems like an early version of Wordpress 2.0.
Write includes Write Post and Write Page. Under this option you can write your entries and pages as usual. The way the options are presented are now different. There’s no more “Advanced Editing” feature because everything is already there at your own disposal. Even the upload image is now in the Write Post section which makes image upload a lot more convenient. After you have uploaded your image, the upload form will automatically create a thumbnail and when you drag it to your visual rich editor it will be added immediately in your post. If you click the thumbnail it will create “Link to Image” and “Use Full Image” that you can drag to visual rich editor too. “Link to Image” will create a link to your image while “Use Full Image” will use the full size image instead of the thumbnail. You can delete the image using “Delete”. Categories can be easily added on-the-fly in Write Post as well. Options like Trackbacks, Custom Field, Password-Protect, Post Slug, Post Status and Post Timestamp are also available here.
In Manage section, you can manage your posts, pages, categories, comments, referers and spam protection using Akismet.
Nothing has changed in Links. Here you can manage links, add links, organize links in categories and import links.
Presentation is very limited in Wordpress.com version of Wordpress because it only allows you to choose from pre-defined list of themes. Currently there are only 9 available themes. However the default Wordpress theme can be altered using “Current Theme Options”. Unfortunately, this is limited to header only. If they will add theme editor similar to Blogspot and Tabulas, that would be awesome. This is also the disadvatange of Wordpress.com because you cannot add plugins and advertisements in your account… for now. Perhaps in the future version of Wordpress.com, those options will be available.
Under Profile, (take note it is singular) you can only modify your account. It’s just a single user account. This is very disappointing because Wordpress is well known for its multi-user support while this version of Wordpress in Wordpress.com does not support multi-users. Well, that’s probably a way of enticing users to get a full version of Wordpress at Wordpress.org and host their own blogs.
Options allow you to customize your general settings, similar to previous versions of Wordpress. It irriates me that you cannot change the e-mail address used in administrative purposes. Once you registered your blog in Wordpress.com, there’s no way to edit the initial e-mail you used in registration! What if you are going to hand your blog over to someone else? Your e-mail is stuck in that blog. Although you can change your e-mail under Profile section, I think that users should be able to edit the e-mail used for admin too.
So in summary, the only thing I don’t like in Wordpress.com is its inability to edit templates, no multi-user and fixed admin e-mail. Adding plugins is not really necessary but I really thought this free blogging service supports multi-users and template editing because I was too familiar with Wordpress already and I thought it comes by default. Having no option to edit the admin e-mail is just annoying. These shortcomings are very disappointing for a seasoned Wordpress user but new bloggers will find Wordpress very attractive. And because it is very new you might be able to reserve your own subdomain. Take note however that once you have created your subdomain, there’s no way to delete them yet, and you can’t register another blog using an email more than once, so be careful on choosing your subdomain.
Wordpress.com is very new, so expect that it will have more improvements within several months. In the meantime, Wordpress 2.0 Beta is already out, so if you want to try it, download it from Wordpress.org and install a test blog now.
Link:
Wordpress.com: http://www.wordpress.com