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Mobile shift

December 29, 2013December 29, 2013 Max Limpag Leave a comment

There is a big chance you’re reading this on your phone. A bigger chance this year than in 2012, anyway.

A common pathway to this article would be from social networks like Facebook and Twitter, services that people are increasingly logging into through apps on their phones.

This year, an article in the BBC announced, is the year “we all went mobile.”

And it isn’t just about using small screen and portable devices, it’s about a state of mind, said the article written by business reporter Matthew Wall.

“We’re talking mobile workforces staying connected in an out of the office and using their devices for work and play. We’re talking mobile data, stored in the cloud; and mobile corporate structures trying to adapt to the new age of data sharing, collaboration and crowdsourcing,” the BBC article said.

Tablet, smartphone penetration in Philippines

While the Philippines may be behind richer countries in gadget adoption, we’re headed there.

TABLET ADOPTION. Photo above shows an LG GPad, a great Android device for its price range. Tablet adoption in the Philippines more than doubled from just 6% in 2012 to 14% in the first quarter of 2013.

A first quarter 2013 survey by Ericsson ConsumerLab said tablet penetration in the Philippines more than doubled, from just six percent in 2012 to 14 percent at the time of the survey. Nielsen placed smartphone adoption in the Philippines at just 15 percent in a survey reported in September. While still low, this will definitely speed up as the months go by, fueled by low-cost Android devices that are flooding the market.

Have you seen the phones and tablets being sold by local brands like Starmobile, Cherry Mobile and Cloudfone? The gadgets in their mid-range are nothing to scoff at. They are actually pretty good.

In the Cebu launch of a local tablet in 2012, the press relations officer of the company actually seemed apologetic that the raffle item was one of their tablets. He had invited a few well-heeled friends of his and he had to explain to them that the tablet was actually good. It was.

Low-cost Android devices

These devices, some designed in the Philippines but manufactured in China, others rebranded white-label products assembled also in China, are fueling mobile adoption.

More people will go online using mobile devices than through desktops and laptops.

I don’t have the comprehensive figures for usage in Cebu or even for the Philippines. What I have are anecdotal snippets of how increasingly, phones and tablets have become people’s main computers.

Just look around you and count the number of people using a smartphone (what’s a smartphone, you ask? Any phone that can connect to the Internet and download apps is a smartphone.) I don’t know if it’s because of the circles I find myself in but when I do this exercise, I always find that more than half of people within my vicinity use a smartphone.

Shift to mobile

That shift from desktop to mobile will have far-reaching impact on a lot of things.

This may not have been the year when Filipinos all went mobile. That may happen next year or the year after. But the shift is underway. And along with it will come threats and opportunities that will disrupt industry after industry.

RESOLUTIONS? THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT. Tomorrow midnight, many of us will do our annual ritual of promising to do better – to finally exercise, quit smoking, read more and be a better person.

And as with anything at this age, there is an app for that.

Lift, which you can download from the App Store and in Google Play Store, allows you to keep track of habits you want to either start or lose. It allows you to keep track of milestones and provides motivation as well as community support.

With the app, you “check in” to a specific habit – like Run Daily or Drink More Water or Spend More Time With The Kids – and track how close you are to your goal.

After you come up with this year’s batch of resolutions, download Lift and start tracking the things you want to do using the app.

Happy New Year!

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Cebu developers harness tech to help in Yolanda rescue, relief efforts

November 13, 2013November 13, 2013 Max Limpag Leave a comment

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THE day after super typhoon Yolanda battered Cebu, developer Albert Padin of Sym.ph went to their office on Escario St. to play games and work on some personal projects. Saturdays, Padin said, are days when their team does hackathons on projects that do not involve their day-to-day jobs.

While combing through news and social network updates, Padin read a call on geekli.st for developers to pitch in coding skills to build a system to help in relief efforts. Since he already had a team that was ready to build things, Padin said they decided to hold a hackathon to build a website to help in relief efforts.

They started the hackathon at 2 p.m. on Saturday with the goal of wrapping up by 5 p.m. They finished at 10 p.m. instead because they worked on 2 things: 1) a system that can help track the search for missing persons and 2) a site that can centralize relief and rescue information in the different areas ravaged by super typhoon Yolanda.

They later closed the person finder service and redirected people to the Google People Finder website. Padin said the Google system was better and the people running it had experience using it in previous disasters.

Cebu-based developers work on a website to centralize Super typhoon Yolanda damage and relief information.

But the team was able to deploy the Bangon Philippines website at bangonphilippines.appspot.com by Saturday night: providing a dashboard to the grim statistics of missing persons, casualties and destruction while offering data and links to relief efforts. (Note: I was told rebuilt site will be available soon. Link will be shared here once the website is live)

The team continued working on the system but another developer, Caresharing Mark John Buenconsejo, sparked a discussion on Facebook about setting up a system that will allow people to organize their own relief efforts and plug into a system that will centralize data and help guide people into pitching in contributions. Padin volunteered to turn the Bangon Philippines website into such a system.

The group then organized a hackathon and issued a call for volunteers to go to the Sym.ph office inside the building beside Capitol parish church.

Albert Padin talks about their plan for the new Bangon Philippines website.

Instead of improving the Bangon Philippines website, the group decided to rebuild it. Padin said they chose rebuilding because of the expanded needs for the system’s backend – which will now offer APIs that will allow people to grab data the project will generate and build apps and services on top of it.

After a discussion over pizza and coffee, the team of hackers decided to focus on the following problem: “Not everybody knows what everybody else is doing so relief efforts are not evenly spread out.”

Padin said efforts were concentrated on Tacloban and people did not know the situation in many other areas on Yolanda’s path.

The group’s solution? “Find out what everybody is doing and put it online.”

Padin said in an interview late Tuesday that they aim to gather as much information as they can on damage reports and relief efforts and would need “a lot of volunteers.” When asked for an update tonight, Padin said it will likely be up in a few hours.

During the interview, Nicole, Padin’s new wife and his co-founder of SpellDial, along with Paola Galan and Vicky Saguin were scouring online news reports and social media postings for information – any tidbit of information – on relief efforts. People’s generosity was overwhelming, the online spreadsheet containing the listings refused to add more cells to contain data during the interview.

Padin said they would need a lot of volunteers to collect information. Those who want to help can send an email to nicole@sym.ph or text 0932 605 8175.

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The LG G2 is a great high-end Android phone

November 3, 2013November 3, 2013 Max Limpag Leave a comment

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THE first thing that strikes you when you turn on the LG G2 is how beautiful the display is. It is sharp and vibrant and comes on such a big screen. It’s almost realistic you’d find yourself gingerly pressing the glass.

And as you start using what is currently LG’s flagship device, the next thing that will strike you is how responsive it is. Opening apps, switching between applications and moving between screens feel fluid and seamless.

And as the day wears on, you’d find the phone’s large battery capacity kicking in, allowing you to use the device for an entire day without having to recharge.

I tried the LG G2 for several weeks and found the phone, which comes with Android Jelly Bean, a joy to use.

GREAT ANDROID PHONE. The LG G2 packs a formidable processor with high capacity battery to make for a great mobile device.

As a heavy phone user, I use my phone as my main computer. It’s the first device I check in the morning and the last one I open at night. Throughout the day, I use it for various work and personal tasks. The phone is my main email and reading device. And as a journalist, the phone is a personal newsroom where work and play coexist.

Excellent phone display

Coming from an iPhone 5, the G2’s screen really stands out. It’s just about right for reading on the phone – big enough to make the reading enjoyable and small enough to still be handy.

The LG G2 comes with a 5.2″ Full HD IPS display with a 423 pixels-per-inch resolution. The company said the Full HD screen will give you an “authentic view of whatever you’re looking at.”

The G2 is a great reading device that comes with an auto-brightness capability that works. Whether catching up with news on Flipboard or Zite, going through long reads saved in Pocket or reading ebooks on the Kindle app, reading is a great experience on the G2.

The G2’s HD display also makes viewing movies on the phone a great experience. I store movies at home with a network attached storage and stream these using an Android app – a setup I took full advantage of with the G2. I watched episodes of Agatha Christie’s Poirot (at 1 hour and 30 minutes each), Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (55 minutes each) and The Blacklist (45 minutes) in bed and find the phone still on when I wake up. On the iPhone, I’d find the battery drained.

GREAT DISPLAY. The LG G2 comes with a sharpand vibrant display with a screen big enough to make reading enjoyable and small enough to still be handy. Above, the phone shows the Android app version of our Sinulog Guide.

Battery capacity

Battery capacity is one standout feature of the LG G2. It comes with a 3,000 mAh battery unmatched by phones in its class. With the G2, I could leave home without a charger, confident the phone will last me the day. This is particularly useful for my job – as a journalist I need to be constantly connected to keep up with news and updates and to do work.

The battery is the bane of modern phones but with the G2, it is its best feature. Even with my son playing graphics-intensive games on the phone, the G2 still had enough power for me to do work.

And power is one thing the G2 has plenty of – it comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 Processor with 2.26Ghz quadcore CPUs. For people of a certain generation reading about processor specifications of desktops that used to be launched annually, it boggles the mind to find these numbers on today’s mobile devices.

The processor serves the G2 well, allowing you to indulge in the vice of modern living – digital multi-tasking – without the device freezing or slowing to a stuttering display.

13-megapixel camera

The G2 also comes with a good camera: a 13-megapixel device that comes with an optical image stabilizer technology to steady the image, even with our shaky hands while doing selfies. It also comes with multi points auto focus to help you get clearer shots.

SAMPLE PHOTO. This photo was taken with the LG G2. This image has been edited and scaled down. For the unedited version, check the image in Flickr.

The G2’s controls are different from other phones – the buttons are placed at the back of the device, right where your index finger is when holding the device during a phone call. It needs a little getting used to, and for me it took a couple of days.

The phone also has a different way to wake up. You just need to double tap on the screen to make it active again.

It also comes with audio zoom that will allow you to focus on an audio source by zooming in on it while recording the video. LG said the feature “uses three stereo mikes, which amplify sound from the specified angle and deemphasize the surrounding noise, so you can zoom in on the sounds you want to hear, and tune out those you don’t.”

Quick Window case

The LG G2 also has a unique phone case with a “quick window” capability. It offers you a peek, via a small cutout display on the front cover, on such things as the time, missed calls and messages. The Quick Window case comes free with the G2 package as part of the company’s promotion.

The device comes with a plethora of features: high-speed connectivity with LTE, NFC-capability, plug and pop that presents icons related to listening as soon as you plug in a headphone, guest mode to allow other people to use the device, among other technical specs.

QUICK WINDOW. The LG G2 comes with a free phone case with Quick Window capability.

What I don’t like about the device is its lack of a memory card slot to expand storage. But this is easily dealt with by cloud storage services and apps. I wasn’t sold on its default launcher and Android customization but, in fairness and to be honest, I never gave it a chance. The first thing I’d do on any Android device is to replace its home launcher. My current choice is Nova Launcher, which worked well with the device.

But all in all, the G2 is a top-class Android phone. It’s suggested retail price is P29,990, which is not bad compared with other devices in its range.

The G2 is a top-class Android phone. Its suggested retail price is P29,990, which is not bad compared with other devices in its range.

If you’re considering a high-end Android device for your Christmas phone upgrade this year, the LG G2 should be among the first devices you should consider.

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New #30DayChallenge: Write in Markdown

October 8, 2013October 8, 2013 Max Limpag Leave a comment

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I’ve always wanted to learn and start using Markdown in writing. For some time, it hovered near the top of my to-do list but I never got around to actually starting to use it.

I use a Markdown-capable online writing tool – Editorially – but I never used it for that. I used it purely to manage articles and to allow me to work on a post in multiple workstations.

When I write, I compose only in plain text. As soon as I’d finish the article, I’d go over the post again and manually code the HTML tags for blog or website publishing.

Markdown, a “lightweight markup language” created by a writer – John Gruber, simplifies that. It allows you to to easily mark up documents and export these into structurally valid HTML.

I’ve always filed using Markdown as one of the tasks I’d do in a future #30DayChallenge.

I finally got around to using it more extensively this month when I became more active in using Github to manage my projects and work files. I fully realized its utility when I started processing the Sun.Star Cebu News Style Guide and uploading it to its repo so that newsroom editors and reporters could start working to update and improve it in preparation for turning it into a mobile app.

MARKDOWN. It took me days to code this dated Sun.Star Cebu Style Guide in HTML. With Markdown, it took me hours. If you do a lot of writing, especially for digital media, Markdown is something you should consider using.

If you do a lot of writing, especially for digital media, Markdown is something you should consider using.

It took me days to manually code the old version of the Sun.Star Cebu style guide in HTML. With Markdown, it took me hours.

What’s more, Markdown is easy to do – it’s something I can ask other editors and reporters in the newsroom to use in updating our style guide. After introducing them to Git, anyway. But hey, our editor-in-chief now uses Github.

There are many Markdown editors available for free download. On the Mac, my favorite is Mou. On Windows, it’s MarkdownPad. On my Elementary OS Linux desktop, I just use an online Markdown editor like Dillinger or Markable. Here’s an exhaustive list if you want to try out other editors. Here’s the Markdown syntax reference if you’re interested.

As part of my 30-Day Challenge this month, I plan to use Markdown in all my writings and create a workflow that fits my needs.

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Elementary OS, my dear PC

October 6, 2013October 6, 2013 Max Limpag Leave a comment

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IT used to be that you’d never find the words “Linux” and “easy to use” in the same sentence.

Linux, to the unfamiliar, is an operating system – the basic software that allows you to use your computer. It’s like Windows (although that comparison probably made a lot of its developers and users cringe).

The main difference between Linux and Windows is the way these are developed. Windows is a proprietary system built by a single company- Microsoft. Linux is built by a global community of users under an open source license – a framework that encourages sharing and collaboration.

Unlike Windows, Linux is free. By free, it not only means that you can use it at no cost, most open source programs are free. More importantly, you have certain “freedoms” with the software: you’re free to run it for any purpose, free to study how it works and change it, free to share it and free to improve it. Think of it as “free speech and not free beer,” advocates are wont to say.

The elementary OS desktop is one of the most beautiful and easy to use out-of-the-box Linux distributions.

To install Windows, you need to buy a CD and pay for a license. I checked with a local store and was told that a Windows 8 single-language license costs P3,850. A Windows 8 Pro costs P6,800. You pay this much and you can only install it on a single computer. The system bars you from installing it on another PC. The technical-savvy who are able to do so is committing an illegal act of software piracy.

Linux distributions

To use Linux, on the other hand, you just download it for free. A typical Linux installer is about 700mb and comes in an .iso format that you can burn on a CD or use with a USB drive. I personally prefer setting up a bootable USB using UNetbootin.

Unlike Windows, Linux has a lot of variants called distros or distributions. Among the popular distributions are Ubuntu, which is supported by the company Canonical; Fedora, the community edition backed by Red Hat; CentOS, Debian.

Ubuntu is the most popular distribution. And no wonder – the goal of its developers was to create an easy to use Linux distribution with a predictable release cycle of 6 months.

I’ve been using Ubuntu in my various work stations for years. I was, for a time, caught up in the 6-month release cycle and would immediately upgrade all my workstations to the latest Ubuntu version.

But when Ubuntu started using the Unity interface, I started looking for another distro that had the more traditional desktop interface. For a time, I used Linux Mint with the Cinnamon shell.

UPDATING PACKAGES. One of the first things you should do after installing a Linux distribution is to upgrade packages.

elementary OS release

But then I found elementary OS.

Elementary OS is based on Ubuntu and started out as a collection of themes for the distro before becoming its own distribution. The OS offers the best-looking out-of-the-box experience among the Linux distributions that I’ve tried.

It copies a lot of elements of the Mac OSX so any user of the Apple desktop or laptop will find the desktop interface familiar.

Elementary OS has a dock that allows you easy access to frequently-used programs. But it stands out in its implementation of Workspace switching, the that best I’ve tried across all OSes. This feature allows you to easily segregate your tasks among different Workspaces and toggle between them.

What’s different about elementary OS is that it uses only a single mouse click to do tasks that you needed to double click in Mac or Windows. It can be a bit unsettling to first time users.

Elementary OS also does not have desktop access in the traditional sense of having the ability to put things on your desktop with icons that serve as shortcuts to applications or files. The desktop’s function is to only display a beautiful wallpaper (albeit, you can access it using the file manager).

WHO NEEDS PHOTOSHOP? Or even for that matter, Gimp? Online editing applications like iPiccy, which you can install as a Chrome app, meet the needs of most users. Here I’m editing a photo for a blog post.

Default applications

Elementary OS also stands out with its choice of default applications: Midori for the Web browser, Geary Mail for email and Plank for its dock. It does not come with an Office suite but you can just download and install LibreOffice.

Elementary OS is based on the Ubuntu long term support released last year and may have issues with newer hardware. If you do encounter problems, however, you can just install a new kernel, a process that is documented in various websites. It worked really well and the OS is responsive in my 4-year old desktop PC.

I’ve been using Elementary OS for more than 2 weeks now and I love the experience. If you want to try Linux for the first time, this is the distribution that you should choose.

Right now, my dream portable work setup would be an ultrabook running Elementary OS. If only manufacturers would produce more Linux-compatible Intel ultrabooks instead of focusing only on Windows.

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