October 2007 when I blogged about the US$99 PDA-Phone from Palm called Centro in this post. I was jubilant, looking forward to retire my four-year old Palm Treo.

But I was disappointed when earlier this week, the Palm Philippines website featured the Centro with a price tag of Php17,490.

What? I thought it will just be US$99 or something? But with the current ForEx of Php41 = US$1, that will be somewhere around US$426++

Shall I blame the government for the bureaucratic tax system, making the Centro’s price blow to Php17,000++? Or is it because in the States, Centro is being offered at US$99 that comes with a phone plan locked for two years (thanks to Sprint)?

I wonder when will the local telco’s offer Centro in bundle. Oh, another thing, the unit that is available locally comes in white color only. How I hate gadgets colored in white. I guess my Palm Treo will have to wait for a couple of months more before retiring.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Thanks to Jojo Ayson of Microsoft Philippines, my @live.com.ph is back online! Microsoft’s Hotmail introduced the live.com.ph domain for Philippine residents last December 2007. Just after sign-up, I noticed that my @live.com.ph email address is not able to receive messages from any email address. This was immediately reported to Hotmail and to Microsoft Philippines, and later on the incident was escalated internally by Jojo Ayson.

Popularity: 20% [?]

I know you are tired of cleaning your portable hard drives and USB thumb drives from nasty worms and viruses that attach themselves via the AUTORUN.INF file. Now, here’s one way to combat worms and viruses from infecting your USB storage devices, and at the same time, provide customization to your portable disks.

1. Create your own AUTORUN.INF file. The autorun.inf file executes itself, by default, whenever a disk (CD-ROM, Flash Disk, Portable HDD, etc) is attached to your PC — if you disabled the Auto Play or Auto Run feature from your Operating System, this may be useless for you You may use Notepad to create your own autorun.inf or for the hardcoders, launch your Command Prompt (for Windows users, go to Start > Run > type CMD and click on OK. At the command prompt, go to the drive letter of your USB device, say Drive E. Once you are there, execute the command EDIT AUTORUN.INF and the Windows Editor will fire up.

2. Type the following commands inside the AUTORUN.INF file:

[autorun]
icon = .\youriconfile

3. Change the “youriconfile” with the filename of the image that you wish to use as the icon for your USB Storage Device (in my case, I used my very own pic — love your own!). If you have an image that you wish to convert as an icon (.ICO) file, you may use the services of http://www.convertico.com — it converts any PNG file to an ICO file online, for free.

4. Save your AUTORUN.INF file and disconnect your USB Storage Device from your PC. Then after sometime, plug it back to your computer and you shall notice that your own icon is the one used for your USB Storage Device.

Now, how does this combat worms and viruses from infecting your USB Storage Device? If you already have an AUTORUN.INF file, you deprive hackers and virus writers the privilege of writing their own AUTORUN.INF file to the root (base) of your USB device.

Popularity: 25% [?]

Yesterday, I dropped by Smart Wireless Center in SM Mall of Asia to renew my Smart Broadband contract (huh?! you may say, but Smart Bro is serving me good for my personal use). As a token of their gratitude, they gave me an LG KU250 Prepaid Phone Kit (costs around Php5,000 and it is 3G). I always wanted to try connecting to the internet via a PC/laptop and a mobile phone. I am NOT successful with GlobePH, so I wanted to try this time with Smart.

The Customer Service Agent at MOA gave me the dial-up number *99***1#, so I immediately created a dial-up connection with this number once I reached home. First try, nah! It didn’t worked. Called their Customer Service Hotline, and gave me a new dial-up number *99# — still does not worked. Then finally, a second call to their Hotline, the CS Agent told me that I need to install the LG PC Suite to use 3G dial-up.

So I tried to install the LG KU250 PC Suite using the mini-CD-ROM provided, but the next problem I encountered is that the LG USB Modem Driver provided is NOT Windows XP Certified — it won’t install on my PC (running Windows XP 2nd Edition with SP3). Surfed the internet and landed on a possible solution. Tried re-installing the USB Modem Driver, and wallah! It worked!

Now, here’s the settings in the LG PC Suite that worked my way connecting to the internet via 3G:

My Windows XP Internet Connection status tells me that I have a 115.2Kbps connection, but speedtest.net reached somewhere between 250Kbps to 350Kbps.

Popularity: 83% [?]

Did you know that there is a hidden trick in every PHP installed on any server?

Try adding ?=PHPE9568F36-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42 to your URL if PHP is installed on your server, and you will see that instead of the usual PHP logo, a dog will appear instead

Popularity: 24% [?]

Were you too eager to try and test Google Custom Time .. well, sad to say but the feature will never arrive in your mailbox for the near future .. Happy April Fool’s Day — from Google!

Now, there’s an added feature to Google Docs, just not sure if this is still part of their usual April 1st joke(s). Try creating a New Document in Google Docs. Once the newly created document appears, click on New and you will see the option to either create a New Document or a New Airplane. Try it.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Google had just announced a new feature in GMail called Google Custom Time:

How do I use it?

Just click “Set custom time” from the Compose view. Any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient’s inbox. You can opt for it to show up read or unread by selecting the appropriate option.

Learn more at http://mail.google.com/mail/help/customtime/index.html

Popularity: 23% [?]

Just testing my newly installed gallery ..

[Show as slideshow]

Robyn at WOTC 2008

Robyn during his First Month

Popularity: 28% [?]