Pages

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Keeping up with multiple sites

There are so many social networking sites today that its hard to keep up with all of them.  Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to just stay in one?  Maybe in a perfect world or perhaps when one has no choice. On the other hand, one would question why bother to keep up with all of them.  For one thing, some friends or relatives are on one site while the rest are on another or the next.
We would like to keep to one website but there are some many formats to choose and each has its advantages.  Also, the other reason for me is that I want to try out different things specially as I need to be able to explain to clients what are available and what does which.  So like right now, I have my original site using Joomla and this one using WordPress.  I’m trying to get my thoughts posted but unless I can get everyone to remember my site url and visit this, nobody would know what has been updated.
So after some playing around with the wordpress plugin, I found this site called LinksAlpha.  This will allow you to post to your WordPress account and once you publish your blog, it will update the different social networking sites that you have linked to it.
Linksalpha prides itself with the slogan “Post Once. Publish Everywhere”  and can publish to more than 30 sites so you don’t have to go to each one.  But for the free one account, you can have up to 5 sites with choices from Twitter,  Facebook.  Linkedin, MySpace, Identi.ca, Foursquare, Windows Live, WordPress , among others.  The other sites however don’t come free and these include Tumblr, Yahoo, Yahoo Meme, and Google Buzz.
This is my first post with Linksalpha so we’ll see if this shows up in my Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Incidentally, LinksAlpha can be accessed as http://www.linksalpha.com/

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Huh? – Canon warranty and promo stupidity

I recently purchased a camera and then emailed the scanned warranty card together with the invoice to their email address as indicated on the card.  I got a reply from them that included this note:

To register the 3-year warranty, kindly visit our website at www.canon.com.ph and click the  Promo Redemption Portal.  By the way, the PS G12 comes with a 2Gb iPod Shuffle.  The said items can be redeemed by also registering online.  You may also click the link below:
Please note that the email address only accept yahoo or hotmail and the maximum size to upload the sales invoice is 500kb only.  By the way, please do not use slash (/) or dash (-) in the form to prevent error and the serial number it must be digits only.

Do they have an exclusive tie-up with Yahoo or Hotmail that we can’t use a different domain?

Friday, September 10, 2010

Connection Problem to Livestream using Sun Broadband

I’ve seen Livestream broadcast using Smartbro from the Celebration of Life service for Dr. Luis Pantoja Jr. the other week and thinking of the Sun Broadband can also do the same.
We attempted to do it once before during our high school batch reunion but the signal of Sun is terrible in Taguig where our event was held.  Last night, Anvil Business Club had for its guest speaker the former country manager of Procter & Gamble Philippines, Johnip Cua.  Since I had my MSI Wind and the Sun Broadband usb dongle, I thought to give it a try.  The event was held at the Astoria Plaza Hotel in Ortigas so the signal was fairly good.  I got a steady blue light on the dongle.
I was able to connect to the Livestream website but when I tried to setup a channel, I got a black screen.   I thought it might have to do with the browser as I was using Google Chrome and so I downloaded Mozilla Firefox there and installed.  I would guess the problem might be the speed as even downloading Firefox which initially was estimated at 2 minutes took more than 10 last night. I tried some speed tests and I got a download speed of .63mbps to Metro Manila which points to SkyBroadband and .23mbps to Texas.
I guess Sun Broadband is not yet cut out for heavy duty usage like video streaming.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Ghost Month

In the Chinese lunar calendar, the seventh month is considered the Ghost Month.  During this time, the Chinese almost don’t do anything new or start a project or go on a trip.  You won’t get any invitations to wedding or engagements.  The reason for this is that in Chinese culture and tradition,  this time, the gates of hell are open and the spirits come out to this world.
The 15th of the month, which was yesterday, is the day we celebrate the Ghost Festival.  Since my parents hail from the mainland, they observe the day as they have in China by preparing food and burning incense and paper money for the spirits.  Usually a few days before the 15th, my mom will go to the cemetery and put offerings and burn incense and paper money at the graves of relatives and friends.
Last night, while attending a dinner with members of the board of directors of the Philippine Kho Association, one of the guests mentioned that its a Ghost Month and people should not be going on trips.  This is the reason for the tragedy that happened the other at the Quirino Grandstand.
Another one told stories about the Ghost Month.  In some places in China, the whole town celebrates the whole month, each household cooks food and anyone can go in and eat.  Its like a Filipino Fiesta!   He also mentions that if you will notice, one always has this feeling of weight or tiredness on oneself during the Ghost Month.  He said this is because there is a spirit that is clinging on one’s body.  I forgot to ask how to get rid of that spirit though.
But then again, being Christians, we know that there is only one who has power over spirits, Jesus Christ.

Monday, August 9, 2010

New email spam using Yahoo groups

Just saw a new format of spam that is hitting our servers.
Instead of the email containing the contents of the actual spam text or image, or a link to their own spam site, spammers are now putting in just a link to a yahoo group message screen like:  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/<some_random_words>/message
This is the spammer’s attempt to bypass spam filters but the question is how effective is this spam?  Its more of an annoyance for mail readers as they can just delete the email without even going to the site to check what the spam content might be.    Of course, there are those who just keeps on clicking links without thinking.
I wonder if a particular page can be blocked so these users won’t be able to visit those sites.  We can’t block yahoo groups outright.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Nokia N900 woes: Cannot answer the phone immediately

Sometimes I don’t know what the unit seems to be doing.  This is because sometimes, I’m not using it and a phone call comes in and I can’t open it  to answer the call.   The screen just remains blank and I have to wait a while longer before the screen turns on.  Even sliding the switch doesn’t help.  Some times it takes so long that the caller has already hanged up and I have to return the call instead.  Its ok if the caller is using a Globe which I’m using an unlimited plan, but if its a call from a Smart line, then I have to pay extra on my monthyly bill.
I don’t know if this has to do with its multi-tasking ability such that there are a number of processes running in the background, specially softwares which are supposed to be still in Testing or Development?  That was the warning given when install softwares from these repositories.  But then again, if I did not start the program, then they shouldn’t have been running in the background.   I guess I have to check each of the programs and kill those runaway processes and see if the load will go down.

SSH on the Nokia N900

When visiting clients to check on their systems or problems, I usually bring along my laptop so i can hook into their network and troubleshoot.  Now, I can do without bringing it.
With the Nokia N900, I am able to connect to the client’s network via wifi and test their networks.  Also with its X-terminal and SSH, I am able to login to the linux server and remotely check on errors in the logs to track down the problem.
This is very convenient as I don’t have to lug around a bag with the laptop.
Next step is to find out if I can use the N900 as a bootable drive and boot off it  into a computer.  Right now, I do this using a USB pendrive.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

My Notes on Tumblr

Tumbler, Facebook, WordPress, Mambo/Joomla… Still undecided which to settle into.  My original posts were in the Mambo/joomla CMS so moving away means loosing my old posts.
This is the reason why when I was testing out wordpress with my own install, I used http://www1.purity.ph.   Now with Tumblr, which I found I can change to the domain that I have, I customized the domain on my Tumblr account to http://notes.purity.ph

Update June 26, 2013
I've decided to delete the Wordpress site and consolidate the contents here.  Moving each article so some of the contents may no longer apply. 


Friday, May 21, 2010

From Palm Treo to a Nokia N900

My faithful Palm Treo 650 has occationally been acting up so I decided to get a replacement.
I would wish to get the Palm Pre Plus or the Pixi but the price is on the extreme end & it has not exactly come to the local shores. Hopefully with the purchase of Palm by HP, they will bring it in at a more affordable price.
Due to being accustomed to the convenience of a qwerty keyboard & touchsceen of the Palm, my minimum criteria for getting a new phone was those. This ruled out both the Iphone & the Blackberry. I also need to be able to read & write in Chinese since a number of my contacts have Chinese names & sometimes need to receive sms in Chinese.
So searching for alternatives led me to the Nokia N900. One of the main reason that this made it attractive for me was the underlying OS that is linux. Being opensource means more freedom to choose & free software.
Shifting to the N900 takes a lot of getting used to. the qwerty keypad has bigger keys & the width spans the length of the phone in landscape mode so the thumbs have to move across more area. The texture is a little rough so using the fingernails like I do on the Treo makes the feel a bit weird.
Among the first things I need to do was to ensure that I got Chinese support in so I can read & write with it. I installed mscim-googlepinyin & I was able to enter the characters. The problem though is that it conflicts with the virtual keyboard so I am stuck with using the qwerty for the english input.
Once the chinese characters are working, its time to migrate my data. on my Treo, I’m using KeySuite from Chapura rather the built-in Contacts. KeySuite allowed me to sync the data to Microsoft Outlook & the full range of data fields like 19 phone numbers & emails plus personal details like spouse & anniversaries. Nokia on the other hand uses PC Suite to sync Outlook with the phone. There is a new alternative called Ovi Suite but it currently does not support the N900.
After installing PC Suite & syncing the data, I realized I have big problems. A lot of the data are missing like Middle Names, Title, Suffix, Spouse, Anniversry, children. These fields I’ve used to the fullest on the Treo. To migrate, the least I have to change is to edit the Middle Names & move the phone numbers around. Other those, I won’t be able to access all the information I’ve collected over the years. Also, it appears that the N900 does not even have a basic search function for its contents. This is one nightmare for me since all my data are stored.
Now I’m editing all my contacts just so I have the basic names and still trying to find an alternative program that will allow me to have all my data and be able to sync with Outlook. If you know one, let me know.