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iRiver’s PMP-100 series

12 Dec 2004

Along with their completely-redesigned website, iriver has pulled the wraps off of their newest babies, the PMP100 series.

Now, outside of the Archos Gmini, this is the only multimedia player available that you can carry in your pocket (albeit just barely), and being the latecomer in a contest of two, iRiver’s device has one distinct advantage over the Archos: its TFT screen is 3.5″ wide running a 320×240 resolution. The GMini’s display is only 2.2″ wide with a resolution of 220×176. The catch of course, is that the PMP is one-inch longer and wider than the Archos (PMP: 5.4″ x 3.3″, Gmini: 4.2″ x 2.4″), and almost twice as heavy (PMP: 280g, Gmini: 160g). The PMP does promise up to twice the battery life though, so at least we know why it’s so damned big and heavy.

I’m not honestly sure if this is a worthwhile upgrade for me when it comes out here next year. Ordinarily I hate watching videos on small screens, especially since a significant number of the films I watch have subtitles that, you know, you kinda have to read in order to understand what’s going on. I tried this for a time with my old ipaq, watching episodes of Enterprise and any other stuff I happened to have lying around on a 3.5″ wide screen using PocketMVP. Ultimately, I decided that this was only good for situations wherein I was truly desperate for entertainment and hell, if I was really, really bored, there’s always cigarettes right?

I like how the PMP has solved a lot of the stuff that people didn’t like about the Gmini though (no kickstand, short battery life, small screen), and maybe if my lifestyle becomes more mobile in the coming year I might reconsider getting one. Maybe.

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Lenovo > IBM

8 Dec 2004

IBM’s PC business has been up for grabs for a couple of months now, and the US$1.75-billion acquisition was formally announced a few hours ago. The buyer? The rival Chinese company Lenovo, whose former position of eighth biggest computer manufacturer in the world has been elevated to third after the massive buyout.

What do they get for their money? The world’s third most recognizable brand name, right after Coca-Cola and Microsoft, as well as all of IBM’s personal-computing-related product lines (Aptiva, Thinkpad and ThinkCentre, for example). Business for the PC pioneer has been going downhill for the past decade, and 2002 saw them selling off their hard-disk division to Hitachi, so there’s nothing really surprising about this sale.

The landmark acquisition is telling of the current tech industry, where many of the powerbases have slowly shifted to Asia over the past decade. Brands like Samsung, ASUS and Creative have overtaken many of their American or European rivals, but what I’m really waiting for now is an Asian brand to come up with something to directly rival Apple’s elegant, elitist image. We’ve got the hardware already, it’s just the look and feel that still needs work.

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Belkin Tunecast II

6 Dec 2004

I spotted a Belkin Tunecast II at the Apple Center in Rockwell yesterday and bought in on impulse after reading the marketing blurb on the back for like 30 seconds. For the uninitiated, the Tunecast is an FM transmitter that accepts audio signals from devices such as portable jukeboxes, PDAs or anything with a 3.5mm headphone jack. It then broadcasts that signal to any FM Radio within 10 feet (up to a maximum of 30 according to the writeup, although I’m doubtful this is even possible), allowing you to play music from say, your iPod, and hear it on your car stereo (or any other audio box with a built-in FM Radio). Usually it does this over a preset frequency, e.g., 88.7 kHz or some other un-used channel.

I’ve been using a similar device — the iRock — for over a year, but the Tunecast II just blows this thing away. (Of course, I bought it for twice as much, so I’d expect nothing less.)

My favorite feature is the automatic on/off; the Tunecast II wakes itself up when you plug it into an active audio source, and then turns itself off if it doesn’t receive a signal for 30 seconds. With the iRock, I found myself repeatedly running the batteries dry whenever I left the car, because I’d remember to turn off my iPaq or iRiver, but I’d forget to turn off the iRock.

Of course, power-saving isn’t much of an issue anymore because the Tunecast II also comes with a car-lighter adapter, so you can use it without the AAA batteries. Considering that each pair of dry-cells will only last you about 10 hours, this is a really important feature and is the real reason I bought it so quickly. (The iRock I bought didn’t come with a car adapter, although I noticed that they’re currently offering models with the adapter included.)

I guess the only downside to this device (and actually, all the other FM-based wireless music adapters) is that the medium it chooses to broadcast over isn’t exactly known for its high-fidelity. Your near-CD quality music will sound exactly like it’s coming from a radio station, complete with the occassional hiss if you happened to move the transmitter around. It’s not a bad trade imho, because there’s currently no other way for you to get your non-iPod jukebox connected to your car’s CD player/stereo (unless you happen to know how to jury-rig a line-in jack), and being able to broadcast your music over some other guy’s component on-the-fly is a pleasant bonus.

Posted in Hardware | 2 Comments »
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Honeypots and Firewalls

5 Dec 2004

This really interesting honeypot experiment bears mentioning because it’s a great motivation to keep that firewall on:

The experiment involved monitoring six “honeypot” computers for two weeks — set up to see what kind of malicious traffic they would attract. [...] The machines tested were [...] four Dell desktop PCs running different configurations of the Window XP operating system, an Apple Macintosh and a Microtel Linspire, which uses the Linux operating system.

Within the first 4 minutes of the experiment, the Windows XP SP1 machine was broken into by an automated intruder, and within the first day, the machine had been rigged to start churning out its own intruders. In contrast, the XP SP2 machine (with the built-in firewall activated) was never compromised over the duration of the experiment, although it still came under attack several times per hour. Apparently, having that firewall on is enough to stymie any of the automated attackers, although it remains to be seen how useful it is against a real hacker.

As can be expected, neither the Apple nor the Linspire machines were compromised, although the Mac did come under attack as much as 300 times per hour. Being in the minority tends to serve as an even better protection than a software firewall sometimes, because malware writers won’t bother building something that will only work on less than 10% of the computers in the world.

Keep in mind that the numbers (attacks and frequency) are significantly larger than what people connecting from the Philippines would experience. So no, you won’t necessarily be attacked within your first hour of going online because there are far fewer internet-connected computers here than in the US. Still, there’s nothing like being prepared.

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When being Number 2 isn’t so bad

5 Dec 2004

It’s news to me that Sony-Ericsson is nowhere among the Top 5 cellphone manufacturers in the world, and it’s even bigger news that Samsung has apparently edged out Motorola for the first time to take the #2 spot. Nokia is still, of course, at #1, but their 30% market share is getting smaller by the quarter. I wouldn’t be surprised if, by the middle of next year, we’ll be seeing them slip another 5% or so, because their recent lineup of phones kinda suck.

In other cellphone news, Moto’s classic StarTAC model may be making a comeback next year. I like the spiffy new look, but I’ve yet to see any real specs on this thing so it remains to be seen whether this will be a viable option for me when I go cellphone shopping next quarter.

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iPodPhone

2 Dec 2004

This article on a possible iPod-cellphone hybrid more or less falls under the realm of “baseless conjecture,” but it’s fun to talk about it nonetheless.

If you think about it portable jukeboxes, cellphones and PDAs are all just transitory devices that will eventually merge into one powerful handheld product that can run all the same software as your average desktop. It could happen within the next three years, or as soon as obstacles such as battery life and heat dissipation have been adequately solved, and souping up the world’s most famous music player with cellphone technology could be the first step to making this utopic geek-dream a reality.

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Pa-Siyam

1 Dec 2004

Reviewing local films is always a tricky thing to do, because I can’t help but feel guilty whenever I point out all the myriad flaws and inconsistencies that plague your average Filipino movie. Like making fun of a retarded child’s drawings, it’s almost too easy sometimes.

Case in point: Erik Matti’s noble attempt at a horror-drama, Pa-Siyam.

Luis’ Official Capsule Review: Pretty Shitty. (And quite literally so.)

Good stuff first, because it’ll only take 1 short paragraph: I thoroughly enjoyed JA Tadena’s cinematography, and I loved all the moody, low-light sequences. I thought the steadicam was a bit overused (the jitter was so pronounced in some scenes that it was becoming distracting), but overall the photography was some of the best I’ve seen. The music was a perfect match too, although I couldn’t find the composer anywhere in the credits.

Unfortunately, my list of good stuff ends where the story begins. I’m not going to ruin this for anyone (it’ll do that all on its own), but suffice to say that there is nothing in this movie that comes as a surprise or feels like a genuine plot twist, no matter what Director Matti claims. I spent half of the film predicting what was coming next, often a good 15 minutes before the director decided to reveal that particular “secret”. It’s never a good sign when the audience starts yelling advice to the actors (”Stop sleeping in that bed, you stupid bitch!” or “It’s all behind the wallpaper for chrissakes!”), because it implies a certain amount of disrespect on the part of the filmmakers. After all, why write a stupid story if you didn’t think your audiences would be too stupid to notice?

One scene in particular had me in stitches: during the second act, they bring in a new character whose only function is to describe each of the other characters’ personal backgrounds, in one long, spirited monologue. Instead of revealing these secrets a little at a time over the course of several scenes, they had a fastfood sequence and did it all at once. Maybe they were scared that if you didn’t have someone broadcast the information, the audience wouldn’t retain it. Or maybe, the movie was too long, and this was the only way they could make it all fit. A real testament to the laziness of screenwriters, if I ever saw one.

Oh, and credit should be given to the great Aubrey Miles, who is hands-down the most retarded actress to play a retarded person ever in the history of film. What did she do, eat a tube of paste to prepare for this role? It boggles the mind why they would fill a key role with such an inept actor, whose idea of “playing a retarded person” involves placing a finger near her gaping mouth and saying “gah, gah.”

I realize that it’s unlikely anyone will bother to watch this movie after reading this review, but I do hope that some of you at least think about doing so. Why? Because it represents one of those clumsy, awkward (but altogether necessary) steps in our local filmmaking evolution. I’m not saying that 5 or 6 years from now, we’ll actually see a genuinely deep Filipino horror film, but this movie was certainly headed in that direction.

In a journey of a thousand steps, it leaped forward a good 3 or 4.

Posted in Movies | 2 Comments »