BlackBerry Bold 9700 (Onyx) Review November 3, 2009
Posted by Chris in Blackberry.Tags: Blackberry, Reviews
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The BlackBerry Bold 9700, codenamed Onyx, has been announced and is most likely to hit the shelves of the US operators before the end of the year. I managed to get my hands on a pre-production device and have been using it for the past week.
In summary, the device is the perfect BlackBerry for me. It is just the right size, has very good battery life, and is really, really fast. The device is loaded with the new, yet unreleased, BlackBerry OS 5 and its performance on the 9700 indicates that it is almost ready for prime time.
New HipHouse Mixtape for Download! October 18, 2009
Posted by Chris in Music.Tags: mixtapes, Music
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I finally spent some time to put together a new mixtape.
The theme for this mixtape is HipHouse, which are House remixes of Hip Hop and RnB tracks. Because remix tools like Ableton Live, Acid, and others are out there, lots more people make remixes nowadays. Most of them are really bad, but you occasionally find something really hot.
So some of the artists here include Ne-Yo, Chris Brown, Akon, Pitbull, Lady Gaga, and a few others. My favorites in this mixtape are the remix of Chris Brown’s Forever, and the very first track, a mashup made by Laidback Luke of the classic HipHop track “Its Like That” with some house track that I dont quite know.
Head on over to the Music section to pre-listen to and download the mixtape! Leave a note to tell me what you think. Enjoy!
eeeMac: OSX Snow Leopard on Asus eeePC 1005HA October 7, 2009
Posted by Chris in Uncategorized.add a comment
If you have been following my blog so far, you will likely know two things about me: a) I am a Mac user, b) I have a fascination for Netbooks. Unfortunately, though, the two generally don’t go together. Apple has not yet, despite the rumors, come up with a netbook or tablet sized device (the latest news is Q1 2010), while OSX is not distributed to hardware manufacturers for installation in their products.
So what is a sub-notebook / Apple fanboy like myself to do? The answer is of course to invest some time and get OSX running on the netbook. There are quite a number of documented cases of this happening all over the net. The current stage of the process evolution is very similar to the second stage of the first iPhone’s appearance locally, where a number of early adopters have successfully been able to replicate their iPhone hacking success and peddle their services to the less technically inclined. As a side note, you may remember that the first stage of the above is when early adopters bought the iPhone and either used a hardware hack or some command line tools to unlock and jailbreak.
Tropical Storm Ondoy Relief Info September 28, 2009
Posted by Chris in Uncategorized.Tags: health
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The relief activities continue for the victims of Tropical Storm Ondoy (International Name: Ketsana). This is the worst weather disturbance to hit the Philippines in 40 years and is even stronger than Katrina.
Two Great (and FREE) Web Collaboration Tools September 28, 2009
Posted by Chris in Uncategorized.Tags: Business tools, mobile life, technology
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I was doing my mandatory surfing of the ‘net the other day to check on whats new and hot on the Web (another reason why I love my job!) and found a few great finds in the area of Web Collaboration.
The web collaboration market is dominated (at least in mindshare) by one brand — Webex. The Cisco owned brand is probably the most popularly known web collaboration brand today that the word “Webex” has now become a verb (other than Google I havent heard of any other).
However, there are a bunch of other great tools out there that offer a good web collaboration experience and, most importantly, are absolutely free!
Click on the jump to check out my two favorites.
The Nokia Booklet 3G Unveiled August 25, 2009
Posted by Chris in Business tools, Netbooks, Windows 7.Tags: Business tools, Netbooks, Nokia, Windows
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The Nokia Booklet 3G has just been unveiled! It is basically a netbook with full connectivity for WIFI, HSPA, A-GPS, Bluetooth, and HDMI. The Booklet will run on an Intel Atom chip and is rated to have a 12 hour battery life. Detailed specs and pricing are to be announced at a Nokia event in the next couple of weeks. However, sources on the internet point to typical netbook specs such as a 10.1 inch glass HD screen, SD card support, webcam, and other essential netbook features, encapsulated in a 2 cm thin aluminum shell weighing in at about 2.2 pounds. It will be running Windows 7.
BlackBerry Curve 8520 (Gemini) Review August 14, 2009
Posted by Chris in Blackberry, Business tools, Smartphone.Tags: Blackberry, Business tools, RIM, Smartphones
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The BlackBerry Curve 8520 is finally progressively launching across a number of operators around the world. The 8520 was previously codenamed Gemini with rumors about it circulating since third quarter of last year. The device is expected to be a major game changer for RIM as it brings to market its first real low cost BlackBerry device for both consumers and business.
I have had a chance to use the Gemini for a while and in general, its a great entry level device.
UPDATE: BB Messenger 5.0 Leaked Version Upgrade Experience August 6, 2009
Posted by Chris in Blackberry.Tags: Blackberry
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UPDATE 2 (8/7/09): Seems like a trick to get BBM 5.0 installed on a Javelin has been found! The trick is, instead of clicking Reboot after the installation, do a battery pull. Contacts should be saved then.
UPDATE 1 (8/6/09): We upgraded three devices to the BB Messenger 5.0 leaked beta software over the past few days. It seems that the software is getting a bit more difficult to find on the internet.
The main article on BBm 5.0 can be found on http://www.chrischengonline.com
Below is our experience:
- Bold 9000 – The device upgrade went on without a problem. One of the OTA links was used and the upgrade went very smoothly.
- Javelin 8900 (1) – The OTA upgrade was used for this device as well. While the update installed successfully, all contacts on this device were deleted.
- Javelin 8900 (2) – The OTA upgrade was done here, but upon restart, the app was nowhere to be found. The old BBM icon also disappeared. However, checking the Applications list showed that the new version was actually installed. After trying out a few things, which included another OTA install, a desktop install, and a few restarts, the icon finally appeared. However, all contacts were erased as well.
- Curve 83XX – The installation did not work at all.
Again, this is beta software. It is not guaranteed to work and there is no support for this. Make sure you do a backup of your BlackBerry using Desktop Manager before you try this upgrade.
Leaked BlackBerry Messenger 5.0 Review August 4, 2009
Posted by Chris in Blackberry, Business tools, Life with Tech, Uncategorized.Tags: black, Blackberry, Business tools, Reviews
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There is a new beta version of the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) application floating around the internet. The new BBM 5 version has not yet been officially released but can be found for download and installation. The new version is a significant change from the old BBM that we are used to and is definitely a worthy upgrade.
ONEcall: A PABX for your Office in 5 Minutes July 27, 2009
Posted by Chris in Business tools, Life with Tech.Tags: Business tools, Mobility, PABX
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There is this great new service that I’ve been working on since late last year which is finally being unveiled. The service is called ONEcall and is a mobile based phone system for companies. ONEcall basically takes the entire PABX infrastructure that companies would need to buy to setup an office phone system and does two things:
- It brings the PABX infrastructure to the cloud, which means that a company can have a phone system without actually having to buy the infrastructure. The PABX infrastructure is now hosted by a service provider. A company just has to sign up to setup the system over the internet, and the phone system is setup literally in 5 minutes.
- PABX systems typically are made up of local extensions on the desks of employees. ONEcall cuts the cord and gets rid of the local wired extensions totally. Company employees become reachable through their mobile phones, anytime, anywhere.
