Filipinos continue smartphone transition; adoption up by 146% -- GfK
Gathering data from retail stores in the Philippines from April 2012 to March 2013, GfK said as much as 5.7 million smartphone units were sold in the country.
September 15 is Software Freedom Day
September 15 is Software Freedom Day, SFD for short. It’s an annual, international celebration observed on the third Saturday of September (i.e. this coming Saturday) to promote the use of FOSS, or Free Open-Source Software. This September 15, parallel celebrations …
Land of the Cyborgs: Thoughts on MIDI Controllers
I spend most of last week playing with this controller I have: the Novation Launchpad. Essentially, it’s an 8 x 9 grid of lighted buttons that plug into your computer . You can see it in action here. The video …
Sotto and a thing or two about copyright
Amid the online outrage against Philippine Senate Majority Leader Sen. Vicente C. Sotto III over claims of plagiarism and copyright infringement, it is high time that we discuss here the basic tenets of copyright, particulary involving the Internet. The senator has been …
Spamming and the liability of service providers
Spamming or the unsolicited commercial communications using electronic means is one of the content-related offenses listed in the controversial House Bill No. 5808 or the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012. Hands down, spamming is intrusive and is a modern day …
GAME REVIEW | Darksiders 2
The drought is over. As the rains over Manila start to die down, gaming has picked up with big releases on the second week of August; one of which is Darksiders 2. This is the big sequel to THQ’s action …
Rainbow Moon — A downloadable PlayStation exclusive
If the recent gaming drought has you feeling impatient, you might be tempted to pick up Rainbow Moon, a tactical role-playing game by SideQuest Studios. A PlayStation Network exclusive, there is no doubt that this game promises great value: 35+ …
On the Net, Google is god; but is SEO really dying?
I woke up to the sound of rain pouring heavily outside my window. It was a wet Sunday afternoon and I was feeling slightly disoriented. I should’ve been somewhere else that day but my head decided to be an ass …
Laboratorium Zero: Art and coding in the Age of Facebook
Last August 1, Tengal (the festival director of the media arts showcase Fete dela WSK) called for people to come to Terminal Garden, (the name he calls his house when it’s functioning as a social center/headquarters for his various projects) …
How should the Cybercrime Bill regulate online defamation?
The House of Representatives recently passed on third and final reading House Bill No. 5808 or the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012. One of the most controversial issues about the bill is the last minute inclusion of cyber threats and …
The hardest button to button. Thoughts on interface design
How do you know what is what? Whatever else design is supposed to do, clarifying this question is, to me, one of its most interesting tasks. In fact, you could probably say that its answers to this question are the …
Philippines not a signatory to UN resolution on Internet freedom?
The United Nations Human Rights Council has recently adopted its first resolution on the promotion, protection and enjoyment of human rights on the Internet, almost four months after it held its unprecedented high-level panel discussion on the topic.
How newspapers win or lose over Google in Belgium
Soon, I will start writing my master’s thesis for my program. It will look into how freedom of expression and intellectual property have shaped the evolving and expanding roles of Internet intermediaries such as social media, blogs and news aggregators …
Racism, lookism and all that shizz in cyberspace
Race has always been a touchy subject. It’s a topic that’s best left alone unless one is prepared to invite differing, oftentimes scathing, opinions. Recently, cyberspace has come alive again with controversial issues that have moved the opinionated among us …
Limits of copyright protection for computer program tested
A recent ruling from the highest court in the European Union (EU) on a case involving a software giant has upheld the limitation of copyright protection for computer programs. If it were decided differently, the decision could have paved the …
On misspelled words, writing in Tagalog, and Dinuguan
I recently discovered this writer on the Internet: one Lynda Barry, a pale, freckled, red-haired, 55 year old American cartoonist who is one quarter Pinay. She’s relatively unknown in the present, but in the eighties, she was famed as the …
Are Filipino online consumers protected?
With the Internet becoming the modern marketplace for an increasing number of Filipinos, do our existing laws provide enough protection for the growing online consumers? This crossed my mind after sifting through the latest European Union (EU) directive for one …
Top 5 Philippine-branded mobile devices of Q1 2013
We sifted through what seems to be a huge pile of those launched — but not necessarily available — in the first quarter of this year and came up with five that have tickled our fancy.
