Month: April 2011

Categories
Mostly Everything

SMART Communications launches LTE

By the time you read this post, I’m still in the middle of the ocean, finishing our last day of diving Tubbataha Reef. When I get back, I fly, almost immediately to Boracay. I’m there with my partner-in-crime Andi9 so we’ll be streaming live soon!

SMART is launching LTE technology and doing the entire demo in Boracay.

LTE is a modulation technique that is designed to deliver 100Mbps (DL) per channel and give individual users performance comparable to today’s wired broadband. It was bound to happen. The question was when. To put things into simpler terms let’s have a look at a short history of how mobile phones work:

2G GSM Technology
Remember your Nokia 5110 and 3210? There. Calls and SMS. That was 2G connectivity.

2.5G Technology
This was the first shot into surfing the Internet with your phone but we were using WAP sites. Remember WAP? Yung parang pangit na website designed for mobile phones using GPRS? That was it. Add your ringtones and picture messages. It got a little better when phones started using EDGE connectivity (popular with BlackBerry then) but that was still not …

3G and 3.5G Technology
This is Internet today. It’s workable but not comparable to the wired connections we have at home. You could surf, email, chat, do your social networking, but it was honestly a bit hard to do things like online gaming and downloading huge files.

4G Technology
This is the next generation of connectivity. 100MBPS. On your phone. Built on top of existing technology. No, you cannot use your current phones or USB dongles to access these speeds. The only phone I know that’s capable of accessing this network is the HTC Thunderbolt. Yeah I think SMART is deploying LTE at the same time as Verizon in the USA. Not sure if the Thunderbolt is launching here though because there’s a slight difference in setup with the LTE here and the one in the USA. I heard they’re shipping in dongles.

So yes if you’re planning on buying a new USB dongle for mobile Internet, I suggest you wait a few. That’s because you can practically achieve faster speeds with costs similar to your current plans.

I’m not sure when exactly SMART is making the commercial announcement (i.e. data plans and rates) but if you leave a comment here they will probably get back to you as a number of them read this cute site.

Oh and just one more thing. In case you’re wondering what the difference between LTE and WiMax is, well the former is GSM-based technology: phones. While WiMax involves a completely new set of hardware and is designed for WiMax-enabled devices.

Categories
Underwater

NUDI Interview on ANC Mornings

Jan Acosta and I guested on ANC Mornings to talk about the fast growing underwater photography club in Manila. NUDI or the Network of Underwater Digital Imagers (check us out on Facebook and yep, here’s the link to our site) is an underwater photography club that was formed to get diver-photographers together to share techniques and experiences in shooting underwater.

The Philippines is a biodiversity hotspot and the things we find down there are simply amazing. We talked about diving as a viable hobby in the Philippines, conservation, our gallery exhibits and the SNUPS competition that we’re co-organizing this year.

Categories
Mostly Everything

My epiphany about smartphones and data services

So I had an epiphany a couple of days ago. And this began with me coming home from a business trip racking up a bill of PHP30k worth of roaming charges. And that was just for 2 days of use. Of course the cost is charged to the company but waiting for the bill to be settled incurred my line being cut for 2 days. I was alternating between two phones: my HTC Mozart (which you can get in SMART’s Rockwell branch on plan 1800) and a HTC Desire S (the new Android 2.3 device which SMART let me pull out for testing).

Anyway, the feeling of not being able to call or text was a tragic one. My phones, for all intents and purposes were dead. They were only good for Angry Birds. Well, at least the Android phone. BUT not when I entered a WiFi hotspot. It’s like the phones magically came to life whenever I entered wireless hotspot, plugged in the password and went online.

My “no text” was solved using a combination of sending Twitter DM’s and chat using Kik Messenger. Since Kik works across multiple platforms, I’m pretty much solved. If not, the DM on Twitter solved the gap.

My “no calls” was easily solved with Skype and Fring (well actually I barely used it as I’d send DM’s to everyone telling them to call if needed).

Couple that with being able to update your Facebook status, Foursquare, Plurk and surf the web, I barely noticed that my SIM was inactive. Oh, and I have complete guarantee that my messages were sent, unlike SMS that at times doesn’t make it.

Have we entered an age where GSM is slowly becoming obsolescent? Not obsolete, mind you? Obsolescence is when there’s nothing wrong with a product or service. It’s just that there’s something more efficient that makes the previous service redundant. It’s just like how SMS replaced the pager. People have defined “smartphones” as phones that allow you to install apps and do more things than call or text. I think this is fairly accurate.

But I do like my own definition: it is a phone that doesn’t need to use 2G technology (i.e. calls and text) to send messages and call. Smartphones take advantage of more advanced infrastructures such as 3G, HSPA (3.5G) and LTE. You know that USB dongle you bought to connect your laptop to the Internet? That’s essentially a smartphone stripped of all other functions except Internet. I think this is precisely why telcos are offering pure data plans on SIM cards as we unconsciously move away from the “text and calls” generation towards data.

This post was inspired by a conversation I had with Chrina Cuna on my weekly tech show on defining what exactly a smartphone is. You can catch this show every Wednesday from 2PM to 4PM on Flippish. If you aren’t online at this time, you can always watch the archives.

I hope they settle my bill soon 0_o.

Categories
Mostly Everything

Aqua Obscura II: Our second underwater exhibit at Gallery 7 (Eastwood Mall, Libis)

“Underwater photography is considered a difficult practice. Because it is a specialized art, very few photographers attempt it. Down there they can capture rare and vivid images we cannot simply find up here. Underwater photography is truly “A Whole New World.”

Gallery 7 and NUDI present over 30 beautiful examples of underwater photos, created by talented NUDI photographers. All works are printed on canvas and mounted on wooden stretcher bar frames.”

Continue reading “Aqua Obscura II: Our second underwater exhibit at Gallery 7 (Eastwood Mall, Libis)”
Categories
Mostly Everything

The first original game I bought … was CRAP.

At home I have these big iBox containers which I use to store my junk. I have 6 of these stacked up at the foot of my bed. It’s semi-OC: one has all the plugs and cables, another has gadgets, and manuals, another one with my lens filters, so on and so forth. Rummaging through my stuff (I was packing for a long trip next week) I found the box of my very first original PC game titled “Rise of the Robots.” Anyone remember this? I remember buying this in a gaming shop in Hong Kong during the mid 90’s. It was this vs Wing Commander IV. At that time, I had no patience for flight simulators and the thought of robots beating each other up in the area was absolute childhood fanfare.

And so this is the box (sadly contents are lost in time):

Continue reading “The first original game I bought … was CRAP.”