HOLIDAY GADGET SWARM WEEK II: Intel is giving away a touch screen netbook
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at November 29th, 2010
If I had the option of working full time once more, I’d definitely apply with Intel. There really is no other way of putting it: in the IT industry, Intel is #1. From chip manufacturer to service provider to being “sponsors of tomorrow” they pretty much have their hands in everything to do with information technology today.
In the next few days I’ll be writing about my experiences with Intel and the people behind it, having just arrived from Synergy 2010, an annual conference sponsored by Intel and HP. Year 13 was held in Club Paradise and my hosts had so many interesting things to announce.
But for today, let’s go straight to the contest!
CONTEST TIME!
Intel is “sponsors of tomorrow.” But today they’re also sponsoring this week’s giveaway!
This week we are giving away a Lenovo Ideapad ST10-3T. This is one of the more interesting netbooks in the market because it comes with a touch screen interface, allowing you to transform the computer into a tablet. Either way you get more than enough features to get things done on the go.
Intel is definitely number one. As a chip maker and solutions provider, they ship over 1 million PC’s a day. So I was trying really hard to think of an interesting contest that captures Intel’s awesomeness and came up with this.
We can’t ignore Intel’s influence with the real world — from embedded devices on cars, to digital billboards (yes those are powered by Atom processors), to computers, net books, smart phones and servers — they’re all over the place.
Similarly, in the real world there is also an unstoppable entity that has claimed influence in almost all forms of pop culture. Ladies and gentlemen, presenting 2010 American Music Award for Artist of the Year winner, Justin Bieber.
JUSTIN BIEBER.
Contest Mechanics
1. Take a stanza (or more) of any Justin Bieber song and rewrite the lyrics into something Intel, showing how awesome the company is. There are so many things to talk about — from the days of the Pentium, to Core technology, to the new App Store optimized for netbooks, to integrated GMA graphics, to the USB port which was invented by someone from Intel! — there’s a lot! It doesn’t need to be technical — it just think fun! Winners will be chosen based on creativity by myself and someone from Intel.
Here’s a sample:
This is the rap portion of Ludacris from Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby’
Synergy’s at 13, Club Paradise was true love
Intel showing that nothing compared to what they were doing
From the USB to the DDR3, nothing could ever come above
They had me going crazy, oh I was geek-struck
They’ve gone a long way, since the Front Side Bus.
2. Rewrite the lyrics and post it in the comments section. Also, put the title of the original Bieber song so we have a reference as to what lyrics you used. You can enter as many times as you want.
3. This contest will be open from today till 23:59 of Saturday the 4th of December. This contest is open to residents of the Philippines, but you should be able to personally pick up the prize from Metro Manila. Remember to leave a valid email address.
And the winner of the SMART Communications Week raffle is…
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at November 28th, 2010What a week! With over 700++ comments it was really tough to decide the winner. I wish we could have given about 50 Galaxy Tabs because as I was listing the haikus down, that’s around how many caught my attention. Together with a short deliberation with SMART (with me having the final say) I’d like to congratulate “Reggie” for his haiku:
With SMART as my brush
Galaxy Tab as palette
An artist, I am
[source]
His haiku best captured the messaging I wanted to convey — that these tablets aren’t very useful unless you have a great data plan backing the hardware. Congratulations Reggie, I’ll send you an email on how to claim your spanking new Galaxy Tab from SMART Communications!
I do want to congratulate everyone for joining this week. For those who didn’t win, fear not! This is just the first week! We have more prizes to come.
i also want to congratulate SMART Communications for saying yes without hesitation to become part of this giveaway. My heartfelt thanks to Rezza’s team and everyone else in SMART who made this possible!
Next up is INTEL week and they’re giving away a Lenovo Ideapad worth almost PHP 30,000.00! W00t!!!
Stay tuned, friends!
A Thanksgiving Shoutout
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at November 28th, 2010As Thanksgiving was yesterday (it’s surprising that a lot of Filipinos I know celebrate it!) it’s apt to give thanks to someone from SMART who has helped me with excellent customer service for the past 8 years. Grace Plata is probably half the reason why I still have a SMART line for my primary number.
When the BlackBerry devices of circa 2000 were unheard of in the Philippines she helped me procure one for testing.
When the very first BlackBerry Pearl was still not available to the consumer market, I was one of the first to acquire it under a consumer (vs enterprise) plan.
When my SMART line approached its credit limit on an out of town trip, she fixed it.
Every time I’m due for a phone from my retention she really makes sure I get the phone I want despite the dwindling stocks. She even shows up personally in the Alabang SMART office to deliver the item.
When I was overcharged for data I didn’t know I was using, she refunded the costs and rescinded the plan to my original one without the need for me to sign any paperwork.
Ms. Grace is one of the best assets of SMART’s customer care. I’m glad she’s still there after so many years and I’d like to thank her for great service!
Use Facebook the whole day for PHP 20.00 with SMART
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at November 23rd, 2010
Back in January of 2009 I was involved with a training project with SMART. Together with Adel Gabot and Anton Diaz we were part of a spearhead group to launch the Sandbox portal. It’s been almost two years and a lot has happened. Like how Facebook is just getting bigger and bigger. Since a lot of us spend most of our online time with a Facebook tab open in our browsers, SMART encourages us to use it even more while on the go. You’ve seen the PHP15.00 for 30 minute charge on data, but check this out — PHP20.00 for a whole day of Facebook!
Text SURF to 211.
I guess that simplifies things.
HOLIDAY GADGET SWARM WEEK I: SMART Communications wants you to own a Galaxy Tab!
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at November 22nd, 2010EDIT: Contest closed at 11:59Pm last night. Some comments came in via email because something went wrong with the commenting system. It’s fixed and I got the mails. We’ll announce the winner later! I’m on transit from the Visayas Blogging Summit / Philippine Blog Awards for Visayas so expect an update tonight after I fly home.
This week, we will talk about SMART Communications.
I have been a loyal postpaid SMART subscriber since 2003 and have, on occasion helped them with a couple of things including the initial beta testing of the Sandbox service c/o BlogBank and also speaking in their internal trainings. That means that my relationship with SMART is really intimate. I’ve worked with really great people within the company including Arlyn, Wo, Rezza and many more. But let’s talk about that later. Right now we have something to raffle off!
For the first week of my holiday giveaway we’re giving away the highly coveted Samsung Galaxy Tab. After playing with the tablet, I realized that the device is really just half of the picture — to make it any more useful than a picture gallery or eBook reader, you need to have it fixed to a data plan (or a WiFi hotspot). This is why SMART is the first to offer the Galaxy Tab with an unlimited data plan.
These are good deals!
New Lines (Unlimited Data Plans)
Plan 1500 – Samsung Galaxy Tablet sells for P16,000
Plan 2000 – P4,000
Plan 3000 – FREE
Plan 4000 – FREE
Retention (Unlimited Data Plans)
Plan 1500 – P15,500
Plan 2000 – P3,500
Plan 3000 – FREE
Plan 4000 – FREE
And here’s the monthly cost:
CONTEST TIME!!!
1. Because SMART has the strongest signal across the nation, I’m making this open to everyone in the Philippines. Caveat: You will need to find a way to pick up the prize if you’re outside Metro Manila.
2. This contest will be open from today till 23:59 of Saturday the 27th of November.
3. To enter the contest you will need to compose a haiku expressing how amazing SMART is as a telco service. To keep things simple, let’s keep the definition of a haiku to three lines composed of syllables in 5-7-5. Since brevity is the soul of wit, let’s keep the haiku to three lines only. It can be in English or Filipino or Taglish.
Here’s an example:
I was a sad boy
Until SMART gave me a phone.
Simply amazing.
HAHA! I’m sure you can do better!
First line has 5 syllables. Second has 7. Third has 5. Let’s not get into the debate of the haiku needing an onomatopoeic and seasonal reference OK, philosoraptor?
4. You can enter as many haikus as you want in the comments section below. This isn’t a random raffle — we’ll be picking the most creative haiku after the deadline and announce the winner on Sunday. So yeah, you can bunch up your haikus in one post or stagger them if you want to see what the competition is submitting 
Just keep on submitting!
(n.b. You may or may not mention ‘SMART’ in the haiku — it’s really up to you.)
5. Please leave a valid email address in your entry / comment field so we can get in touch with you if you win!
How do you store your gadgets?
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at November 20th, 2010
Two things:
With the exponential increase in gear lying around the room, it made sense to find a worry-free way to store everything. After dabbling with an underwater DSLR housing, I NEED to become more OC when it comes to storage. The housing itself requires diligent maintenance at home.
Which is why I sent Jan Tan from JT Photo a Facebook message asking if she had any of these dry cabinets around. She did — and they’re much cheaper than the ones in ACE Hardware / True Value. I got one of the bigger sizes with four levels so I could store the strobe, housing and macro ports, two DSLRs and much more. It’s a really good investment if you’re meticulous with preventing molds into your lenses. I remember my dad stored several of his old lenses away and didn’t know that moisture had eaten into the cabinet — *poof* he lost some really good ones. Hopefully, not happening to me.
For those interested, here are the many models. I suggest buying something that’s bigger than what you think you need. Get them from Jan. She sells them much cheaper than ACE Hardware.
Question: How do you store your gadgets?
Philippines: Bongga Ka Dive! My idea on how to boost tourism
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at November 19th, 2010EDIT: Because I believe in localization, the vernacular tagline is now PHILIPPINES: BONGGA KA DIVE!
As a diver, I am biased. Beyond the traditional way of viewing the Philippines as the “land of the smiles” and having some of the “best hospitality in the world” and “great beaches” one of the recreational activities that isn’t highlighted is the SCUBA diving. Sorry if I’ve been hankering about this for weeks but if there’s anything that the Philippines has that most countries don’t have — we have the best reefs in the world. We are a world class diving destination in the same way that the Galapagos, Palau, the Great Barrier and Indonesia are as well. But we aren’t just “one of those” other diving sites. The Philippines is situated at the center of the center of the Coral Triangle, one of the centers of biodiversity in the world. We’re world class. It’s all just beneath the surface.
This is an idea I’ve been bugging some dive friends for months and since the recent ruckus about the DOT campaign, I’d like to lend some expert advice on how to do the following:
1. Promote the Philippines as a world class diving site
2. Organically grow the diving community
3. Contribute to the knowledge of tracking and recording marine life for their preservation
Concept
What I’m essentially proposing is a community portal for divers, targeting first the local and tightly knit diving community. The site’s goal is to help divers be more informed about the surrounding flora and fauna underwater. It goes like this:
Divers can upload photos and videos of their trips. These are then tagged (in the same way we have Flickr tags) according to what they saw, when they saw it and where.
For instance, I can upload this photo:
and add the following tags:
Subject: Clown Fish Amphiprioninae Pomacentridae
Date and Time: November 15 at 3:00 PM (EXIF data can take care of this)
Dive Site: Secret Bay, Anilao
On a collective effort, photos that are uploaded (either locally or through mere links from Multiply, Flickr, IMGUR) can be sorted through tags, dive site and date and time. The result is a database of critter information which you can sort just by mere tags (I was thinking of applying this via Google Maps or Bing but I honestly think geo-tagging is too complex for us regular folks).
Here’s the best example — I always wondered if the whale shark that we saw in Pescador Island travels to other places (i.e. it’s said to have come from a site called Dolphin House which is also nearby). Looking through the crowd sourced photos and video from divers who frequent Pescador, you’ll eventually be able to track a pattern in the whale shark’s movements. This data can be useful for both recreational divers and for scientific study since marine biologists in the Philippines are very scarce given our enormous coast lines.
How does this help tourism? Seeing is believing. You now have a one stop shop for foreigners to go through to read user generated content from fellow divers. Pygmy seahorse locations? No problem. Is that whale shark the same one going around three dive sites? We’ll know. Coral bleaching and COTS sightings? We can track the degradation of the reefs because of the date and time tags. And the best part about this is that the divers don’t feel like it’s work. It’s practically fun. It’s all about how the data can be used by the WWF and the Marine Wildlife Watch. So there. We help tourism. We encourage more people to dive. We help the environment.
If I’m a foreigner and I want to dive the Philippines I can easily plot my trips and get tips from other divers on which resort has this certain house reef as well as get insider information on who they can hire as the best spotter for that flamboyant cuttlefish.
This isn’t a campaign. It’s a site that can be used to build campaigns. I don’t believe that we can promote tourism the traditional way. We need to get smarter when it comes to using the Internet to attract tourists. I’m not an expert in travel, but I do love the diving — and many other foreigners I dive with stay here for months to learn and to dive.
P.S. I know there is risk of me posting this idea out in the open. If you’re an angel and want to fund this project, I’ll build it. My email is jayvee[dot]fernandez[at]gmail[dot]com. What I’ve written here is merely one component of the site. I have figured out a monetization scheme as well to make it self sufficient to run forever. I’ve tried setting meetings with Mr. Bertie Lim and Mr. Romano way back but it seems that having a site “sponsored” can have its pitfalls (meeting never pushed through). So there. That’s one component on how to help tourism. I have more ideas. This is something I believe in and I want to build it. Anyone interested?
And now, a special message from the author of this blog
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at November 18th, 2010Dear readers,
I’ve served as the resident blogger and proprietor of A Bugged Life for the past 5 years. Even longer if you count my original domain at http://20six.co.uk/abuggedlife (sadly I don’t have the password anymore). I thought long and hard to see how I could celebrate this milestone and decided that there are really two reasons why this blog has grown to what it is today. Note that I never intended A Bugged Life to be a site for tech news. It was originally intended as a repository of my articles before Mobile Philippines was revamped (those were the good ‘ol days). As I got into the blogging groove, 2007-2008 became the year of SEO so updating the blog almost daily and concentrating on keywords became tantamount. Also, sticking to your niche for Adsense purposes.
The blog changed in 2009 where I realized that I wasn’t happy “reporting.” In truth, the site was always more like a personal blog to me which is why I also do insert some of my geeky cravings (such as reverse vacuum coffee) and of course, diving in the Philippines.
For the holidays I wish to celebrate Christmas by giving away a lot of things. I love gadgets. So do my readers. In a way it pains me that none of the things I will be giving away go to me, but I guess that’s really what giving means — IT HURTS! Netbooks, Android phones, an Android Tablet, an iPhone … well the list goes on. These are all prizes worth winning and I wanted to make sure that every prize is highly coveted.
During the months of December to January I will be holding a gadget raffle. These are all high ticket items from IT companies that have helped me out in the past 5 years in blogging. I had hoped to do this once a week but realized that December is a hectic month so we will be splitting the raffle into two parts — one that starts next week towards the middle of December and another that resumes after the holidays. On a side note I think bloggers should learn to take control of their sites. By this I mean that things like contests and events should be executed with them taking the lead, and not just on the client’s end. I am so happy to have several companies supporting this effort and if it is successful I’ll probably do this regularly throughout 2011.
Next week we start with SMART Communications. They’re giving away a Samsung Galaxy Tab. Stay tuned 
I think speakers should use this as a backdrop to introducing themselves before they speak
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at November 17th, 2010
I’ve been waiting to get my hands on a beta invite for about.me. First heard about this from a TWiT episode with Ryan Block of Engadget and GDGT fame as one of the guys behind this project.
i guess if the Facebook of way way back was implemented today, this would be it (good points here, Lia). It’s a splash page where you can really show off. And that’s why it works — they help you look good.
I’m at http://about.me/jayvee
Grab an invite.
How far would you go to buy your gadgets?
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at November 17th, 2010I have a friend who flies to Hong Kong on a semi-regular basis. He takes the first flight in and the last flight out on the same day. He takes a big bag filled with a change of clothes and his camera, so that the authorities, at least, don’t find him suspicious of TNT. Upon touchdown he makes his way to the camera shops and splurges on several lenses for his Canon 5D Mark II. He has lunch (authentic siomai!) and then makes his way back to the airport. He justifies this by saying that it is still much cheaper to buy all your lenses abroad + the plane ticket than it would have been to drive to Hidalgo.
I have another friend who makes a little bit of business by flying to Singapore (EDIT: it also works in Thailand apparently) where certain mall purchases allow for a 10% (or was it 7% when I was there?) rebate. His friends give him a list of items to buy — cameras, MacBooks, phones and after completing the list, he’s able to log several receipts worth of gadgets. He usually does this during the Great Singapore Sale but to be honest I feel that the deals are pretty good all year round — it’s almost impossible to navigate through SunTec Plaza during the sale season. Anyway, what he gets in return is the airport rebate for the effort he put into getting around to fulfill the wish list. Or he’d offset his own gadget costs with the rebates. Neat!
Since we’re looking at deals, I’d like to do a shout out to anyone willing to let go of a 100mm macro lens for a Canon system. I recently bought this:
… and I’m looking for a second hand lens to shoot macro.
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Two weeks with the Medal of Honor Reboot
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at November 10th, 2010I’m not sure what was more annoying — getting spammed with cheap knife kills in Modern Warfare 2 or getting one-shotted with semi-auto sniper rifles in Medal of Honor.
But nonetheless, EA’s latest shooter has gotten me hooked. OK a bit of perspective — I’ve been playing the MoH series since Allied Assault in 2002. This really upped the bar of first person gaming with its cinematic rendition of the Omaha beach landing. At that time, a game that could live up to the experience of Saving Private Ryan was an A-OK in my book. Then came the rest of the series — Spearhead, Pacific Assault, Airborne … and parallel this was Activision releasing the Call of Duty franchise. And thus was planted the seeds of competition. With two successful releases of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2, EA was left with a reboot of their Medal of Honor franchise. Playing the patriot card, they decided to develop a Medal of Honor reboot according to a real world coordinated assault on the terrains of Afghanistan against the Taliban forces.
Medal of Honor’s single player is your typical run off the mill military shooter, with the Tier 1 boys fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan. You take on the role as several operatives from the army and special operations divisions, notably as ‘Rabbit’ who belongs to Tier 1 as a frontline sniper and infiltrations specialist. I was particularly surprised that the story arc, presented from different points of view of the assaulting forces, was well stitched, giving the overall impression that yeah, this is military stuff and we’re working with clockwork precision. I was afraid that it would be a Modern Warfare 2 ripoff, DICE’sDanger Close’s accurate portrayal of the real war on Afghanistan from the accounts of soldiers had its own merit.
Of course, military shooters are bought for its replay value. Apart from a Tier 1 mode that allows you to complete the game scenarios in record time and win medals, the multiplayer skirmishes is still at the heart and soul of Medal of Honor. Medal of Honor takes the fast paced arcade action of MW2 with a more simplified class system and vehicle-enabled combat from the Battlefield franchise. The result is a series of 10 minute skirmishes to attack and defend objectives, control point domination, and team death match games for quick fix in-and-out play. The leveling system is pretty much run off the mill allowing new loadout for weapons such as gun barrel customization and targeting mechanisms. A rally point system from kills also allows offensive and defensive assists for your team. If you accumulate 50 points without dying, you can choose to either call in a mortar strike or engage a UAV in the playing field to track enemies. At higher levels, you can equip your teammates with flak vests and ammo upgrades.
Medal of Honor is currently my source of 10-minute escapes from reality. The game runs smoothly on my MacBook Pro amazingly (with Windows 7 Ultimate on BootCamp) and still looks great on a GeForce 320M graphic card. It’s a no-regret buy for less that PHP 1,500.00.
I guess the real question is, how does it compare to Call of Duty: Black Ops?
