Once, Twice a winner

Early this year we won a mobile development challenge. The contest platform is for Ericsson SIP/IMS. It was co-sponsored by Globe Telecoms. We won that contest,Globe 3G Multimedia Challenge

After that event, Globe had sponsored another challenge, this time using their "opened" SMS/MMS API. When I say "opened", it is open to verified developers. You can not just register and grab the API and scrutinize it.


We won again the second challenge,Globe Labs Challenge. We feel the second challenge will be tougher because we have a title to depend and more developers were present during the launch.

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Dec. 1, 2008, 7:00pm.

If you looked at the sky on this date (night time) you find our celestial neighbors smiling. Yes, the moon and two planets, Jupiter and Venus forming a smiley. The sky is smiling even the hardships we are experiencing in our country. It gives us hope that all these things will come to pass.

I took a snapshot of it, take a look.

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Testing the Chrome Browser

Ok, ok, I will blog about Chrome.

I tried to resist on making blog on Google's latest but I needed to check it out. Browser war have come and gone and now this new kid on the block just started it again.

I downloaded the installer and for some reason when I ran the installer while my Firefox browser is still active my PC's Internet was suddenly got disconnected. I have to restart the machine.


I already read several comments about Chrome, the style, the color and performance. Just like any other browser that's just started, it has birth pains. Existing plug-ins I have in my Firefox are not by default running or not yet supported. I have to download them all over again.

Just like IM, I already have several browsers installed, Firefox, Safari, IE and now Chrome.

I find Chrome easy to use, lighweight and fast but I'll give it more time and I hope overtime it will not become memory hog just like Firefox.

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@Nokia Forum Code Camp

Last two days, August 26, 27 was the Nokia Forum Code Camp, sort of preparation for developers on the Globe Challange. They held the place in Intercon Hotel and the place was attended by many developers. Saw some familiar faces but most are new to me.

On this Code Camp, we got interested on severals topics, there are swell ideas that are great to incorporate to projects.

Topics like SVG and GPS on Nokia Selected Symbian phones were most interesting part of the Code camp. Read more!

I Smell Something Fishy

Last weekend was a long weekend, Monday was a holiday. We decided to go to Manila Ocean Park. The park was newly built, and I told my wife that we will not go there during the time where everybody wanted to go there. So last Monday was the perfect day to visit the park.

I already heard that the park is not yet complete in a sense that some marine life are not there. Turtles and Octopus where the obvious one.

Nevertheless, we still enjoyed our weekend together at the park.

Check the pics.



My family and I :)














After visiting the park, we ate at The Aristocrat restaurant along Roxas Blvd.

Here are some pictures of the most interesting sea creatures. Read more!

Startup is bad for your Health

Being in a good bill of health is the best investment for yourself and for your family. When starting up a company, the founders and the employee pioneers forget or just ignore this one. Not that they do it intentionally but due to to necessity. With several startups under my belt, I have my own tales and horror stories.


Startup company is always an informal company, mostly if the company is just small and no big funding to boot. The organization is always almost flat and execution is fast, although if it involves buying something it will depends on the budget. Most startup are top-heavy, the founders that act as CEO, CTO and COO. Then some top-notch pioneering employees pirated or hired from other companies. All of my startup company days were in IT industry, where the products or services are always into niche market. This where the problem starts, most of the time your target customers are not segmented, doesn't even know what you are pitching to them and no budget for it since they don't know what it is all about.Development, customization, integration and understanding of customer's system is very vital for startup company and the customer themselves. Customer doesn't want to tell you all about their system, but startup needs it. Customer's doesn't want any changes and surprises to their existing implementation of technologies but startup services and products always require changes and customization. This introduces long hours of work, stress and pressure to make the system work or else the company will close shop. Tell that to your wife and you will double the problem.

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Biryani Rice

Biryani Rice for weekend match with meat barbecue. I tasted my first Biryani rice in a Persian resto in Makati and fell in love with it right away.

I introduced it to my wife and kids and they love it too. Cooking Biryani rice is almost the same with Chinese or Japanese fried rice but Biryani has this ingredients that are so exotic than the usual oriental fried rice.


The usual rice used is the Basmati rice from Pakistan but any rice will do. Basmati rice is so expensive check it out in your favorite supermarket. So last weekend, we made our home cooked Biryani rice (our own version).














The ingredients are:

1. Rice (of course :P )
2. Cashew
3. Raisin
4. Cinnamon
5. Onions
6. Garlic
7. Salt

For some, you might want to add these;

1. Curry
2. Cloves

For some, shortcut is to buy Biryani paste in your favorite supermarket. :)

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Open is the Word of the Day

Today is a long day for me. There are two prominent names in the IT industry that are publicly presenting their business direction. Globe Telecom and Microsoft, two big names opening their doors to local developers.

In Globe, this is the second day of their Globe Innovation Convention being held in Edsa Shangrila. There are more developers this time than their last event.

While Microsoft is being held at MCafe in Makati City. See pictures after the jump.


These two companies have the same direction, ironically, our company have done already the preliminary projects of something like this before this public announcement of these companies.

Both initiatives are open to developers, Globe and Microsoft provides laboratories that a small developer can use to test their wares. A very good move, this will surely make software and mobile development much better than years before.

Pictures from Globe Convention:
















Pictures from Microsoft:

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iPhone 3G Launching on August 22 under Globe Banner

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Apple addict, Apple iPhone 3G will be landing on August 22, under the banner of Globe Telecom. Check the official site www.iphone3g.globe.com.ph.

Although iPhone have been available for quite a while here in grey market but it doesn't stop Globe in bringing-in the iPhone 3G version. We will see how this device will fare on the market and there will be some lining up on Globe's door. Wow, look at the plans available.

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Globe Innovation Convention

Today is the first day of the Globe Innovation Convention in Edsa Shangrila, it is a two-day event, the first day is gears toward the business area of the innovation and tomorrow is made for VAS providers, developers and programmers. This is one of the series that Globe's have been doing on their Globe Labs Innovation initiative, last June 6, 2008 Globe Labs awarded the winners for their first 3G Multimedia Challenge. We won the grand price of that contest of Globe Labs.

Invited are some 700 businessmen and Globe Executives. It looks like an IT convention with all the IT vendors' booths lined up in and speakers ready to do their spiel on technology and products. It is a whole day event, it supposed to start at 8:30am, but it was delayed. Even the lunch was delayed.:(

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Laughing Out Loud

Last Friday was my partner's birthday and his sons and daughters gave him a different party. They invited several stand up comedians and they performed after dinner. My partner's son asked me to bring my family, my wife and my kids. Although, we decided that we won't bring the kids, it was raining hard and we know hat the party will be past bedtime.



Actually, everyone enjoyed the party, where I and wife had good laugh. One comedian was actually done a opening act for the famous FilAm comedian Mr. Rex Navarrete. As shown in the picture was one of the comedian, Stanley.

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Today, 7:00am I attended the Philippine Ventures Capital or Philvencap forum at AIM. I arrived a bit late and I have to no excuses. :)

This is a recurring event that happens every last Thursday of the month. The format of this forum is very much unique. The forum is all about meeting someone who has capital but has no business ideas and with people who has project but no capital. It is somehow like an elevator pitch thing. Presenter are given 4 minutes to discuss his presentation providing the following, What's the project? How much do you need? and ROI.


However, this forum does not stops there, it also looks at the current trends and try to spot business opportunities to those trends. Some ideas are wild to think about and the others are already in mainstream. If you are venturing to became an entrepreneur, you can attend this forum and check it out. Lighter side of the monthly meeting was hearing jokes from the host and the audience themselves. Attendees varies, from old time members and plenty of guests. No membership fees, you just have to be present for 4 consecutive meetings to become certified members, to resign? just be absent for 4 consecutive meetings also. :)

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SONA sonamagun!

What an insult to middle income family like me, here we are taking all the heat and hit of high oil prices and commodities and our government is so proud of making SMS price to P0.50.

To add to that, it was the most applauded portion of the SONA. Stupid! Aargh, boohoo no one's caring for the middle income families.

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Cuil, more than meets the Eye?

Every so often every 5 to 7 years, the Internet as we know it is disrupted by great idea and by great invention. Today, several bloggers, pro or not are discussing Cuil, the latest Search Engine in town. It boost that it is three times as many than Google and ten times as many than Microsoft.

It proud itself of not peeking on users viewing history, thus making your searching always private.

So how will this new search engine company going to dislodge the current king of searches?

Checking their website, www.cuil.com I checked the features and they are as follows;

Drilldowns
Roll-over definitions
Tabs
Navigation Suggestions

Their philosopy;

"The Internet is getting bigger and more disorganized every day. Cuil’s goal is to solve the two great problems of search: how to index the whole Internet—not just part of it—and how to analyze and sort out its pages so you get relevant results."

So there you go, they will index the whole Internet.

For me, I will just have to wait and see.

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My Weekend Cooking

I love Gindara with Teriyaki Sauce. Last Saturday we bought Gindara fish in South Supermarket. It's been a while since I cooked my favorite fish and weekend is the perfect day to cook it. Check out my Gindara Recipe. :)

I wasn't able to get the best Gindara slice but for me any part of the fish will do. Maybe next time I will get lucky. My first taste of this delicious fish is from a Japanese Restaurant in Makati and the cost was very expensive for a small piece of fish. I said to myself, I'll cook this one for me and my family. My first try is not bad at all although my ingredients are not complete but just the same my love ones ate my Gindara with gusto. The second try was great! So for those who like to cook fish, here's how I cook my Gindara.

Ingredients:

Gindara Fish Slice
Teriyaki Sauce

How to make Teriyaki sauce

Ingredients

1/3 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 cup beef broth
1/3 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 cup white wine

Mixing the ingredients here is my way:

1. Dissolve the sugar and ginger in the broth and soy sauce.
2. Bring to a boil.
3. Blend the cornstarch in the wine. Add to the broth.
4. Simmer until thickened.

The recipe of Teriyaki Sauce was pulled from the Internet, I can no longer remember where.

Enjoy! :)

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3D Authoring Tool TrueSpace

I received an email from Caligari that their flagship product TrueSpace 7.6, a high-end 3D Authoring Tool is now available at no cost. Wow! Last year I bought their 5.2 version and now they are giving away the latest version!

I have a new toy, yay!

I can't believe it, this is first and let me borrow the founder's own message from Caligari's forum.

===
At a time when other companies are removing their low cost products to make it even tougher to get started in 3D, it gives us great pleasure to enable all artists regardless of age or income to create 3D in whatever field they dream of. We hope you enjoy your copy of trueSpace7.6.

Roman Ormandy
Founder
Caligari Corp
===

Sample images of TrueSpace 7.6

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Online Interment

When we were starting my previous company in 1999, we had thought of putting a digital tombstone. A service for hosting dead people's information. Creepy to think in those days, however it was a good idea and can serve also for those people that are too far to attend and pay last respect to his/her love ones.

People just have to pay a service subscription or a time frame so the they can store the images, eulogy, and videos of the deceased. Bottom line of the service is just renting disk space. Unfortunately we didn't pursue it due to many reasons.

So seeing this ad last Sunday brings back our crazy idea to mind. So it wasn't crazy after all. Read more!

It's PSP! No! It's PS3! No! It's VIAO.

Sony FW VIAO sports the Xross Media Bar UI. From PSP, PS3, Bravia LCD TV to new Sony Viao FW series. Sony is standardizing their menu system to this UI.

If you have played PSP or PS3, you'll find Xross Media Bar UI a very intuitive interface. Kudos for Sony for that. However for a notebook with mouse and keyboard? Hmmm will same user experience holds true in Notebook? I can't tell, I think Sony FW Viao is not yet available in the Philippines.



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Create a better Creature!

I like to play computer games, this one really caught my fancy. SPORE from EA. Great idea, surely the little ones back home will love this one. I already made my own creature and uploaded it in their server.

Check my creature, its name is RORK :P


Here are some snapshots ;


This is just a preview of their game, I hope one of my creatures get selected.

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Go Fly a Kite!

Last weekend, I had done something old and new to me. I made a kite for my little tyke. It brought me back to memory ville, when I was young I used to make different types of kite and flew successfully some of them. I can not ask my father to build me one, he was a busy man so I have to be resourceful that I have to build my own to the envy of seeing beautiful and expensive kites I see flown by my other kids.


My little boy was asking me to buy him a kite, I said no need to buy I will build your own. He was amazed that I can build one. He's familiar of already ready made kites available in toy stores and hearing that I will build his kite excites him.

There so many types of kite, and one kind of kite that I wasn't able to build and make it fly is the "Filipino Kite" a tail-less one. Yes, it is named after us Pinoys. This type of kite in colloquial word is "borador" its big cousin is called "guryon". I am not a Kite expert so correct me if I am wrong.




This type of kite really fascinated me because when I was a kid I see how graceful this kite flies, it has commanding presence as compared to diamond shape kite with long tail. It resembles like fighter plane in the sky.

So it was a challenge to build this one for the kiddo and of course for me. This type of kite is very difficult to build as a kid, it requires good perspective and getting the right materials. From the frame to building it, string is attached to both end of the bows, this string controls the shape of the wings.

It was still a challenge for me, even I thought that I have grown and my artistic faculty is greater than when I was a kid. This stage was the hardest part of building this kite.

Skinning the kite was much easier (I thought it was, not!) but I noticed that the paper that I used to use to make a kite is very much gone thinned these days. This "papel de hapon" was so fragile that just a small amount of paste applied to it will basically ruin it. So I have to apply the paste very carefully.

By this time, the kid was so amazed and keeps on saying "kite" every 5 minutes or so. After 20 minutes of skinning the kite, time for it to get dry.

My big reward, a big smile from the little guy. :)

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Applying for the new SSS ID for the first time

I tried to apply for my new SSS ID in Makati but unfortunately what they only have is just an application form, there's a sign stating "ID Capture not available" so anyone would like to apply for SSS ID you have to go their main branch in East Avenue Quezon City.

This institution is so big, with almost 12 billion Pesos(?) of revenue but can not get their ID system working in a "major" location the Makati CIty Business District, the business capital of the Philippines.

Rainy days and Mondays.....
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Another offer from Microsoft to Yahoo!

Microsoft and Icahn on new offer to Yahoo! buying the search business. Yahoo board rejected the offer. The score 0-2. :P

http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/07/13/microsoft-msft-makes-another-offer-for-yahoo-with-icahn/
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The movie "Untraceable"

I saw the movie 'Untraceable", a serial killer movie starred by Diane Lane. Diane is cybercrime specialist FBI. The serial killer is a very talented criminal, knows programming, electronics, DNS hacking and other stuffs that is so hard to believe he can do it himself. While killing his victim, he video stream it over the Internet.

What really catch my attention is the DNS exploits he done, the movie was release January 25,2008 and while in real life there was a security advisory about DNS cache poisoning just early this month. It means that any cracker/hacker out there can basically alter the legit traffic of a server to a bogus one. Imagine a ecommerce server, payment system and credit cards.


While in the movie, the hacker was able to "owned" thousands of machine running DNS and dynamically changing his machine IP address (warning: geek speak). This made the FBI impossible to track the killer down. The killer only allow US viewers only, blocking foreign IP addresses. The FBI doesn't even know what to do on tracking this serial killer. They didn't even talk to ISPs or NAPs, or the CERTs and CSIRTs, Domain Registrars.

DNS records needs to be propagated before it become the new IP address gets reflected, the killer video streaming change IP address automatically and gets it working after FBI blocked the current IP address. Can it be done? hmmm

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GSMA 3rd Party Access Project

From time to time, I try to see what's cooking in the GSM Association (www.gsmworld.com) and recently I found this interesting news or initiative - GSMA 3rd Party Access Project. I got curious about this initiative and click right away the registration link, skipping to read the entire post.

I register and was told that an email with username/password will be sent to my email address. I waited......nothing.


I forgot about it and then out of nowhere I received an email containing my account and password to the portal after a month(?). Well the email contains the reason of the delay and I shrugged and tried out the portal.

It's barely populated yet with information or entries, (what do you expect for portal just started?) However, it made me think about it, will this initiative fly? I can imagine what this project can do and how it will make a big difference to service providers and content providers.

Working with multiple Mobile Operators is big pain and cost a lot of resources, with the promise of standard API, the Mobile Operator can expose what's needed and useful information to a 3rd Party.

I don't know if this has to do with Globe's opening up through their new Globelabs initiative because it is somewhat similar.

Anyway, hope this help the industry.

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My blog Title

Wondering where did I get my blog "Forever Startup" Title? Well, the words was coined when I and my dear friend Abet started another IT startup. This was after the first one that we did not see the fruits of our labor.

The experience was exhilarating, tiring and exciting at the same time. If you have experienced setting up a startup company or either have worked in a startup company you know what I mean. Long day, work, long nights,work, pizza and coke, and more work.

However, the term Forever Startup has a different meaning for us. It became our "mantra", a call that we should be on that stage. The burning passion to succeed whatever it takes.

That was 9 years ago, and I want to believe that passion of Startup is still in me. We have parted ways with my buddy and I believe we will again to start a great company once more.


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A New Beginning

My new home. I will be spending more in this blog than my older blogsite. Hope to post better topics and attract readers in my blog.
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