Wazzup Pilipinas News and Events

Friday, December 28, 2012

RH Bill Already Signed Into Law by Aquino

"So was the #RHLaw signed already? Kuryente ba, not just confirmed or official na?"

I've read from some social media sources that the controversial RH Bill has been signed into law by President Benigno S. Aquino III last Friday (December 21).

It's now known as the Republic Act 10354: The Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012.

Principal authors of the law from the HoR confirmed it on national TV earlier.

Even Rappler has certified true copy of the bill signed aleady yet palace not confirming it.

Wazzup Pilipinas!

The official website of Italianni's Philippines has the following as an introductory: "Traditionally, Italian restaurants have been owned by families using recipes and cooking skills inherited from the old country and served with warm-hearted hospitality. Italian restaurants have become synonymous with warmth, friendly atmosphere which aims to please their guests and make them feel right at home. At Italianni's, we believe in making our guests feel like they're in an Italian family villa."

We had a small gathering dubbed as a Christmas party with a few acquaintances and friends at an Italianni's Restaurant in Greenbelt 2 earlier and I have to say we enjoyed all the dishes served to us - from the large pizzas to the tasty Sicilian salad with grapes, from the crunchy and soft Tuscan bread slices to the exquisite colorful drinks of bright red, orange and blue with slight mixes of alcoholic drinks, it was a delightful afternoon meal shared with old and new acquaintances.

Check this out!

A photo of Anne Curtis Smith wearing a Francis Libiran see-through gown has been going viral on social media networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

It has already garnered thousands of comments in a matter of hours after it was posted online.

The dress' see-through material exposed the actress' cleavage and the sides of her thighs up to her waist.

If the DoH is serious about cracking down this thing, they should do a study of the total explosive power of these firecrackers, a scientific way of proving their damage potential and categorize them as unlawful "explosives"

The fireworks you see in a fireworks show are done in a controlled area; almost all of those fly up the sky, not detonate on the ground unless by accident.

These things however were made to blow up where you throw them, splash damage, area-of-effect. Same principle as a dynamite. It's technically a homemade bomb wrapped in Merry Christmas package. What a devious and terrible way to do business.

“One More Try” was proclaimed Best Picture during the 38th Metro Manila Film Festival Awards night held at the Meralco Theater in Ortigas, Pasig City on Thursday, December 27.

The Star Cinema movie bested the film “Thy Womb,” which was originally predicted to win several major awards.

Overall, “One More Try” won six awards, including the inaugural Fernando Poe Jr. Memorial Award for Excellence.

Huawei Ascend D1 quad XL and Ascend G600 to Hit Stores This Week

Huawei introduces the new Ascend D1 quad XL and Ascend G600, which give more functionality and longer battery life for people who expect more from their powerful device, at affordable prices.

“Huawei Device strives to combine what we know people want in a smartphone with our experience in delivering against those expectations. As part of our Ascend series of best-in-class smartphones, the Ascend D1 quad XL and Ascend G600 allow consumers to experience speed, long battery life and exceptional mobile entertainment in a high-quality, lightweight package. In addition, our more than two decades of experience has allowed us to optimize the Ascend smartphones’ network search algorithm and its base station auto-search technology, improving the speed of the phone’s signal detection to further extend battery life,” said Johnson Ma, country manager at Huawei Device Philippines.

Joining the growing members of the Ascend family -- Huawei’s strong portfolio of best-in-class smartphones – Ascend D1 quad XL and Ascend G600 are available at PhP18,990 and 13,990 suggested retail prices, respectively.

Huawei Ascend D1 quad XL – 4-core performance, incredible battery life

Stunningly designed and crafted, the Ascend D1 quad XL is a performance dynamo, combining good looks and performance with an exceptional audio visual experience. Combined with its ultra-powerful 2600mAh battery, it delivers an impressive 15 hours of talk time and 500 hours of standby time. The Ascend D1 quad XL keeps you on-the-go with 30% more battery power than the industry average by adjusting power consumption according to usage needs.

Powered by Huawei’s HiSilicon HI3620 quad-core 1.4GHz processor, the Ascend D1 quad XL offers a mobile cinematic experience like no other, with its high-definition 4.5-inch, 1280 x 720 Toshiba screen providing crystal clear images even under direct sunlight. The Huawei Ascend D1 Quad XL is a feast for all the senses, with Dolby® Mobile 3.0 Plus sound enhancement and Audience earSmart™ voice processor for a superb audio experience.

Providing what everyone demands from today’s smartphones and more, the Huawei Ascend D1 quad XL certainly exceeds expectations.

Huawei Ascend G600 – the more the better

Huawei Ascend G600, a.k.a. Honor 2, builds on the success of Huawei Honor that offered three days battery life on a single charge. Offering more visual clarity, more speed, and more power, this mid-range Ascend brings Honor to the next level.

The HUAWEI Ascend G600 provides more of the features that improve peoples’ mobile phone experiences, everyday. The mega 4.5-inch IPS qHD LCD screen with 960 x 540 pixel resolution brings unsurpassed visual clarity. Powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core CPU with industry-leading 1930mAh Li-Polymer battery, the Huawei Ascend G600 can be fully charged in four hours, powered on in five seconds, and with Huawei’s power saving technology, provides more than 15 days of standby time.

SPECIFICATIONS

Huawei Ascend D1 quad XL

· OS: Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich

· Display: 4.5-inch IPS + HD (1280 x 720) auto roatte (G-sensor) touchscreen

· Processor: Quad core 1.4GHz Huawei HiSilicon processors

· Memory: 1GB RAM + 8GB ROM +upto 32GB via microSD

· Multimedia: Dolby Mobile and Dolby Digital Plus, earSmart Voice Processor, Dual Mic noise reduction

· Camera: 8MP Back Sensor Illumination (BSI) rear facing camera with autofocus, Flash LED and High Dynamic Range effect optimization + 1.3MP camera front-facing camera + 1080p video recording and playback

· Connectivity: WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0

· GPS: GPS, AGPS, GLONASS

· Battery: 2600mAh

· Size: 129.9mm x 64.9mm x 11.5mm

· Weight: About 145g (including battery)

· SRP PhP18,990

Huawei Ascend G600

· OS: Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich

· Display: 4.5-inch IPS + qHD (960 x 540) + 16M colors, Corning Gorilla Glass protection

· Processor: Dual core 1.2GHz Qualcomm MSM8225-0-AA processor

· Memory: 4GB ROM + 768MB RAM +upto 32GB via microSD

· Multimedia: DTS Surround Sound

· Huawei Apps: All Backup, Security Guard

· Camera: 8MP Back Sensor Illumination (BSI) rear-facing camera with autofocus, Flash LED and High Dynamic Range effect optimization, 0.3MP front-facing camera

· Connectivity: DLNA, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0

· Battery: 1930mAh

· Size: 134mm x 67.5mm x 10.5mm

· Weight: About 145g (including battery)

· SRP P 13,990

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Sencha Demonstrates HTML 5 Can Be Faster Than Native iOS or Android Apps

You've heard that Facebook switched from HTML 5 to "native" apps on iOS and Android recently to "speed them up." That pissed off the developers from Sencha http://www.sencha.com/

So they built a Facebook app completely in HTML 5 that's even faster than the native Android and iOS apps that Facebook released.

Sencha builds HTML 5 programming tools and the video discuss the market for app developers and the choices they have to make.

I've high hopes for HTML 5! A little caveat though - this is a promo for Sencha. But still...

If they can make an HTML 5 web app that is/can be faster than native apps, then why can't we? Practice time!

Native apps > HTML 5 in terms of responsiveness. Also some native functionality will not work with just HTML 5. Native apps will still have the full capability to access the phones hardware and make full use of it.

Didn't James Pierce of facebook worked on Sencha? (something doesn't make sense). Maybe he did, but if he did, there's no connection! Pierce does developer relations for Facebook, not product. He did say he did give feedback to the main engineering team when he was in Manila (maybe just a spiel I guess).

From what I could figure out, the Sencha software architect guy came up with an out of the box solution. The Facebook guys were still thinking in the box in this case At any rate Fastbook was released before the last Android build of FB - havent seen a performance comparison of Fastbook and that new FB build yet!

1. Webview vs browser performance is a different story
2. In the video, Sencha preloaded the threads vs FB loading on the fly
3. They used high end/faster phones so the delay won't be that noticeable
4. You also encounter the limitations of the functionality of Sencha platform
5. It is also important to know that Sencha is NOT a free product
6. Since it's webview/browser based, different browsers Safari, Chrome, Firefox, IE treats layouts differently.
7. Some HTML 5 frameworks use native calls like list view just to make it work faster but if you just coded it directly that wouldn't be an issue
8. HTML 5 apps have problem with memory handling which is a big issue in terms of performance
9. HTML 5 apps crashes once it gets to big ... native simply has to unload it
10. HTML 5 are have a lower chance of getting approved in the AppStore (based on experience)

Just downloaded FastBook (android) - it's really fast. As far as a proof of concept goes, it's really impressive. Handset used to test was a Galaxy Nexus.

Can anyone report if its working on windows phone ... It's not working on my Nokia Lumia 710 maybe just a glitch or its for Android and iOS platform only, maybe. But they said it's working on Windows phone but there's a little strange.

Asus Vivobook X202E Windows 8 Touchscreen PC Review

A review from a user who just recently purchased an Asus Vivobook X202E.

Initial Impressions:

1. Very responsive touchscreen, no lags, no missed touches.
2. Viewing angle is bad. You need to be looking straight on the screen.
3. Touch pad not so good. Too sensitive Asus smart gesture. I would always accidentally activate the charms bar at the right using the regular scrolling on the touch pad.
4. Start up and shutdown, a bit slow. I think an SSD drive would have been better.
5. Windows 8 is really cool. Downloaded Start8 for the start menu. What's good about this is that it has multilanguage support.

Overall, solid feel, nice brushed metal texture.

For those who wants to upgrade, the Wi-Fi card and hard drive are the only parts upgradeable.

I plan to use SSD, so to be sure I opened it up. You would need a 7mm thick SSD. My initial intention was to use an Intel SSD 330 but that's 9.5mm so I might just opt for a Samsung SSD 840 instead.

This is a great laptop, especially if you're just into web browsing and more on office works only.

Price ranges from 26,995 to 27,500 for credit card and 24,800 to 25,500 for cash purchase. That's for the Core i3 unit. You should really get one though the only thing that might hold you back is the screen. Its also similarly priced like the Lenovo S405 and Samsung Slimbook Series 5.

If you plan to do some Photoshop, the smaller screen might be an issue for prolonged use.

Cons:

1. The 2-cell battery would last only between 3 to 4 hours.
2. The fan seems to be continuously running even on idle mode.
3. The HDD seems a bit noisy - that's why I switched to SSD.

Windows Experience Index

Upgrading: Replaced the HDD with an SSD. From the Read/Write speed at 85MB/s, its now a lot faster as seen below using Speed Test Pro. Read is now 430 MB/s and Write is 135 MB/s.

Below are the actual original specifications before the upgrade to SSD:

Asus Vivobook X202E specs:
11.6 inch LED display @ 1366×768 pixels
Intel Core i3 3217U Ivy Bridge 1.8GHz
Intel HD 4000 Graphics
4GB DDR3 RAM
500GB HDD
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
2 x USB 2.0 ports
1 x USB 3.0 ports
30.3cm x 20.0cm x 21.7mm
2.9lbs
Li-Polymer battery
Windows 8
Php26,995 (suggested retail price)

There's a lower model also avilable for this model.

Asus Vivobook X202E specs:
11.6inch LED display @ 1366×768 pixels
Intel ULV Celeron 847 1.1GHz dual-core
Intel HD Graphics
2GB DDR3 RAM
500GB HDD
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
2 x USB 2.0 ports
1 x USB 3.0 ports
30.3cm x 20.0cm x 21.7mm
2.9lbs
Li-Polymer battery
Windows 8
Php20,995 (suggested retail price)

Tried a stress test on the GPU using AIDA64 and I just confirmed that the GPU clock indeed goes up from 350Mhz default clock speed to 1.05Ghz on full load. It just confirms that you can really perform some light gaming on lower settings for newer games and even play on max settings with some older games on the X202E.

But I do recommend using a laptop cooler if you are planning to play some games on this little monster.

Accessories:

Laptop cooler - My current temps using CMC3 cooler is now lower by around 6-8C.

I uninstalled Asus' Power4Gear Hybrid to enable Intel Speedstep for lower temps and better battery life. Even at Battery Saving mode P4G doesn't enable Speedstep and I suspect incompatibility issues of P4G with Windows 8.

Use Windows 8 Built-in recovery tool to get a backup of the recovery partition. No need for any other third party tools.

1.) prepare a external HD with at least 20gb space
2.) go to Control Panel > Recovery
3.) Select Create Recovery Drive & tick the copy the recovery partition from PC to recovery drive
4.) follow the succeeding prompts & it should do the trick

*credit of content and photos to peterjommel, ccl 2003, dm1179 of TPC

DOH Erik Tayag Dances the Oppa Gangnam Style

Before, we saw him dance to the tune of Maroon 5's Moves Like Jagger, now we see him dance ala Korean rapper Psy of the hit song Oppa Gangnam Style. He even made a live telecast in an ABS-CBN morning show (Umagang Kay Ganda). He is one guy who would do anything to promote Health and specifically safety against the dangerous and deadly firecrackers (though there's a new firecracker that's called Gangnam Bomb - or something to that effect).

I really think blowing up things in celebration of any festivity is a crazy idea we just inherited from our ancestors. They have this superstition or belief that it helps drive away evil spirits - another crazy idea.

We respect the tradition but not to the extent of taking property limbs and lives in the process.

Should entrepreneurs just give up on their app ideas, simply because Facebook could eventually clone them and crush them with a billion users? Of course not, and anybody who thinks that Facebook (or any other big company) cloning a startup's product spells Armageddon for that startup doesn't know what they're talking about.

Remember when Facebook tried to make a Foursquare competitor? How about the time it tried to make a Groupon competitor, and it went nowhere? The same is true of its Quora competitor (Facebook Questions) and even its Craigslist competitor (Facebook Marketplace).

I could go on and on, but the point is clear: a big company launching a clone can be scary, but it doesn't mean Armageddon. There are two other factors to consider: defensibility and vision.

My point is this: it takes a lot more than a clone to take out a scrappy startup. It also takes a long-term commitment by a juggernaut. Don't be afraid of the juggernaut entering your market, entrepreneurs. If you have a long-term vision, focus on defensibility and build faster than the competition, you'll eventually become the juggernaut.

"As long as u have a good product and is accessible (damn those with 10000 page registration), combine that with complete dedication and competence, there's no need to fear. Quality and word of mouth goes a long way."

Read more of why startups shouldn't be afraid of Facebook cloning them:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-33617_3-57560622-276/why-startups-shouldnt-be-afraid-of-facebook-cloning-them/