Driving a Ford Fiesta: How I select my favorite radio station …
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at February 28th, 2011I’m a happy Honda City owner. Bought it last year. I’ve been hearing news about new cars especially about the 2011 Hyundai Accent which everybody seems to love. I’ve been listening to podcasts in the USA talking about Ford’s Sync (renamed and upgraded to the MyTouch system) technology which really turns your car into a new digital ecosystem. I sent Anika Salceda-Wycoco (congratulations on newly married life!) a text asking if she has any more information about this. Nothing on My Touch yet but the Sync technology is alive in the Ford Fiesta.
I recently bought a car. If I let this go in the next 5 to 10 years this will be a ripe time to buy into the new technologies that turn your car into a real computer. The current My Touch system from Ford allows iTunes tagging, HD radio, built in WiFi, several LED screens, RSS feeds, Internet browsing and much more. If all things remain constant, Ford is definitely top of the list.
I’d like to know: does anyone own a Ford Fiesta? How is it as a car? How’s the after sales service? Is it competitive with the current offerings? I was only able to drive it for a few days but for me this wasn’t enough to form a full opinion about the car because the geeky features blew me away. 
Current Audiobook Pick: The King’s Speech
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at February 28th, 2011
I bought The King’s Speech yesterday on Audible. Found out today the movie won an Oscar. The book is narrated by Jamie Glover who also did voice work for the Star Wars gaming franchise including Star Wars: Battlefront and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic I and II.
Another version of The King’s Speech is being released on Amazon read by veteran Simon Vance. I would have preferred this version but well, it isn’t out. Vance is most famous for narrating two of my favorite books on tape, The Millenium Trilogy and the improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
A book like this shouldn’t be read. It should be listened to
The irony with MWC ’11 was …
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at February 26th, 2011Despite being the venue for telcos and everything wireless, the irony of it all was that Internet in Barcelona was a tad crappy. I guess that’s what happens when you have 60,000 people trying to connect at the same time. You should have seen the behind the scenes — my blog posts were written in TextEdit and pasted on to WordPress when it finally loaded. I’d wait for the opportune moment for Internet to kick in (c/o trusty Menu Meters) and then press publish. Hence it was next to impossible to upload YouTube videos (I was only able to squeeze in one or two). So now that we’re back in Manila, we have over 150 videos in 24 gigs shot using two Canon S95′s. Andi and I have a bunch of vides to show so I decided to start with an appetizer…
This video is guaranteed to brighten up your crappy day
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at February 24th, 2011You know what would suck? If you were the next in line and the truck left. HA! But yeah this is pretty cool. It was inspired by another ‘Happiness’ video done in a school campus:
The World is Just Awesome (Boom De Yada) done WWF Philippines style
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at February 23rd, 2011Thanks to Joanne Ignacio of WWF Philippines for sending me the raw file on Facebook. Hamilo Coast in Nasugbu, Batangas is one of the areas heavily tended by WWF Philippines for conservation projects. I had joined the WWF team before for a giant clam seeding SCUBA run in December 2009 and a crown of thorns extraction / cleanup in Hamilo in May of last year. WWF Philippines is composed of a brilliant team of visionaries. .
Add WWF Philippines on Facebook for several projects you may want to be involved in.
Original text from Facebook:
Chances are, you’ve already seen Discovery Channel’s “The World is Just Awesome” station ID – the one with the catchy “boom de yada” lyrics. Yes, this is the one where their hosts as well as people from different walks of life proclaim why they love the world. And, chances are, the song probably stuck around as your “Last Song Syndrome” for a couple of days.
This year, Discovery Channel is airing a different version of their popular “The World Is Just Awesome” station ID – WWF-Philippines style! Of course, our National Ambassadors Marc Nelson and Rovilson Fernandez and even staff from WWF and Hamilo got in on the action!
Thank you Discovery Channel Philippines and Hamilo Coast for helping us make this happen!
This is THE Book =)
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at February 23rd, 2011
THE BOOK
30 Pages (15 spreads) of my Underwater Photo Collection (Volume 1)
10 x 20 inches per spread
www.thebook.ph
NUDI Night: Even for non-divers!
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at February 21st, 2011
Even for non-divers!
If you’re interested in diving and photography, NUDI Night is probably something you can add to your list of to do’s. Although we’re mostly divers, we also have non-diver friends join us for our monthly meetup. If you’ve always been curious about SCUBA and have been wanting to try it out, this is a good venue to get together and meet the community of divers, instructors, dive masters and their non-diver friends.
So, if your Tuesday evening is still free, do drop by! There’s a small charge of PHP 500.00 to cover for food, beer and the venue.
When: Tuesday, February 22 · 7:00pm – 10:00pm
Where: Unit 217 (Closed Pavilion) 2nd Flr. LRI Design Plaza 210 N. Garcia St. (formerly Reposo St.), Bel-Air II Makati, Philippines
25 Years of Zelda
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at February 21st, 2011
I loved everything except the water temple.
Why do the water temples always have to be so frustratingly difficult?!
4 areas that will determine Netphone’s success in the Philippines
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at February 20th, 2011
After drinking the Kool Aid and taking a step back to absorb my Barcelona trip (I’m at the Cathay Pacific Business Class Lounge!), here are some things that SMART should consider to make the Netphone a success in the Philippines:
Affordability to Mass Market. We’ve seen the first Netphone — a touch screen Android 2.2 device. How much do you think this costs? Affordable for everyone reading this blog, but to the mass market who earns an equivalent of one Wendy’s Baconator a day, would they even consider using this device? Before we even talk about features, can the masses even afford it? How much should the entry level 3G-enabled phones cost? PHP 3k? PHP 2k? PHP 1k? Remember, the Netphone is SMART’s solution to the adoption of 3G for the mass market so before we start looking at our BlackBerries and HTC’s being Netphone enabled, let’s take a step back and see how SMART will push these to the tingi market.
Utility. I was having lunch with Mantosh Malhotra of Qualcomm a week before MWC and he told me that the adoption of 3G for the mass market will only succeed if they can find a real benefit for it. This isn’t about Facebook or Foursquare or Twitter “conversations”, but having applications that give the daily market price of fish to fishermen so they don’t need to go through a middle man. It’s apps that have a direct impact to their livelihood. 3G isn’t an end in itself. 3G is a mere headfake when you bring real benefits to people who don’t see the value of using Facebook.
Strong Developer Relationships At the end of the day, a platform is only as good as the apps made available in the ecosystem. During the MWC panel on the growth of Apps, Bong Mojica of SMART mentioned that telcos in general have been very unfriendly with developers in the past and in the new web, this has to change. The “telco 2.0″ is a web company, focusing on developing relevant applications using its handsets (not individual operating systems) as a unifying platform. It’s about having independent developers see the telco ecosystem as a viable source of income (so they can quit their day jobs and focus on being creative), rolling out apps for entry level, mid-range and high end phones within the telco’s stable of devices.
Strong Community Relationships If you read through the Netphone’s features you will be blown away with opportunities for community building. The Global Address Book, Chat and eCommerce facilities have huge potential. But beyond all these services are the people, divided into the many organizations and clubs they are a part of. If SMART will be investing a lot of money into the marketing, it should target communities that are able to adopt the Netphone as a platform in the same way most communities and businesses make use of Twitter and Facebook as their home on the Internet.
The Best Motivational Poster …
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at February 19th, 2011
When life is tough … chicken.
OK, BlackBerry PlayBook time. Please read.
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at February 18th, 2011
The BlackBerry booth was one of the last booths we visited simply because everyone wanted to play with the ‘Book. In that hall, the only other show stopper was the HP webOS demo but nobody could touch anything. On the other hand, RIM had so many PlayBook units available for demo but because of the overflow of geeks, we only got our hands on the units after a bit of waiting.
So is it good? Well OK, the multi-tasking features is spot on. You move your finger down the center of the device to enlarge the current window, slide it up to unveil Window mode with all the other apps. It pretty much does what it is supposed to do. Does it stand up against the competition we saw here? Well, if BlackBerry can find a way to leverage what they have with their smartphones (i.e. share the ecosystem with their line of phones) then they may have something going. There’s an article about how BlackBerry may be able to run Android apps in the future. Well guess what, remember the WAC initiative we talked about? That could be it.
P.S. Check this out dude. Research in Motion is part of the WAC initiative. That means we might be seeing a PlayBook Netphone. Wow. (HAHA, psyched na ba??)
