Globe Brings Star Wars BB-8 Toy to PH as Exclusive Telco Carrier

Wazzup Pilipinas!

The BB-8 is now available for pre-order at the Globe GEN3 Store Greenbelt and will soon be in all GEN3 Stores nationwide. Welcoming the Star Wars BB-8 at the Globe GEN3 Store in Greenbelt Makati are Globe Retail and Transformation Management Head Joe Caliro (right) and Sphero Channel Director for Asia Pacific Aurelien Joly.

Globe Telecom has once again upped the Filipino digital lifestyle experience by signing an exclusive deal with Sphero, an industry-leading robotics toy company which creates connected toys that fuse emerging technology with the latest innovations in robotics. Globe is the only Philippine telco to bring the revolutionary Star Wars BB-8 app-enabled droid to the country, much to the delight of Filipino Star Wars fans and gadget geeks.

Customers can already pre-order the Sphero BB-8 at the Globe GEN3 Store in Greenbelt Makati and soon in other GEN3 Stores nationwide. Offered at P12,499.75, the BB-8 is iOS and Android-compatible, housed in a durable polycarbonate shell and boasts of a Bluetooth smart BLE connection of up to a 100-feet range.

BB-8 was a character first revealed in the first teaser trailer for Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens in November last year. BB-8 is an astromech droid, which operates approximate 30 years after the Battle of Endor. It has a domed head, similar to the R2 series of astromech droids, with the bulk of its body made up of a ball that the droid rolls on. The BB-8 has something unlike any other robot: an adaptive personality that changes. Based on its user interactions, the BB-8 will show a range of expressions, learn the obstacles in an environment, and even perk up when given voice commands. 

Mobile Photography in Bohol with the Prestigio 5508 Smartphone

Wazzup Pilipinas!

What do you do when you get a hold of a smartphone with a rear camera of 13 megapixels?

The obvious answer is to use it for mobile photography. Without any doubt in mind, just seeing the screen display and the shots it was able to take, the Prestigio 5508 smartphone was a very useful tool in documenting my travel adventures in Bohol.

The photo above is an example of a shot taken using the said smartphone, and you'll see more of the amazing shots I took here in this particular article. I've actually posted a lot of them in real time while I was in Bohol but it is only now that I'm sharing about my mobile photography experience.

It so happened that I was invited to several days of media familiarization tour in Bohol to accompany delegates from the previous Diving Resort Travel Expo featuring underwater photographers from different countries namely who were all invited to be part of the expo as either speakers and/or journalist so they can write about the Philippines and how wonderful the waters of the Philippines for diving. Some of the organizers of the expo were also with us in Bohol so we were a big group of 16 individuals.

We stayed at the magnificently Amorita Resort with a great view of the beach. We will be spending time exploring the diving spots of Bohol, and will get to tour the countryside as well before we go back to Manila. You can imagine my delight being able to capture the beauty of these sceneries using the very handy Prestigio 5508 smartphone - it was created with selfies and groupies in mind, so you can have several marvelous photo ops.

Houses And Paychecks: How Long Filipinos Should Work To Buy A Home

Wazzup Pilipinas!

Ever wondered how far your income could go when planning to purchase a home?

Di you know that a salaried Filipino with more than 20 years of work experience may need 128 years’ worth of his salary in order to afford a house in Makati, the Philippines’ most expensive housing market? This information is according to global property website Lamudi Philippines (www.lamudi.com.ph).

On the other hand, this same salaried worker only needs 4.16 months’ worth of his salary in order to afford a home in San Jose Del Monte, Bulacan, one of the country’s most affordable markets based on average home price.

At the other end of the salary spectrum are minimum wage earners, who need to work a staggering 1,449 years in order to afford Makati’s uber-expensive houses, while 3 years’ worth of their income can buy a house in San Jose Del Monte.

These are some of the findings of Lamudi’s latest analysis using its second quarter 2015 listings data, which involve close to 15,000 houses for sale in 289 cities and municipalities across the Philippines. Lamudi’s analysis focused on the top 32 cities and municipalities with more than 100 for-sale inventories.