Steve Jobs, 1955–2011

It must be something when my first reaction during the day as soon as I woke up today is shock, because the most recent tweet I saw in my Twitter gadget was the unexpected passing of Steve Jobs, former CEO and co-founder of the largest tech company in the world today. While I’m not exactly a fan of his creations, I do acknowledge his contributions to tech, and his role in shaping the field by making innovative products that set the standards against which everything else will be compared.

His inventions easily and almost single-handedly defined Apple as a company. All of these devices were built on solid hardware, and I think this is Apple’s definitive edge over its rivals: Microsoft, which is primarily a software company, or Google, THE Web company. Heck, Apple devices managed to challenge other hardware companies as well in other fields, such as Nintendo and its handheld game console.

[Humor:] What’s with Microsoft’s Longwinded Software Names?

I had a few laughs a few days ago while browsing my favorite tech sites. Well, on ArsTech, MS just unveiled the newest version of its Windows Embedded OS. And I dare you to pronounce the complete name correctly on the first attempt. It’s Windows Embedded Compact 7 public Community Technology Preview.

RSS: Why It’s Important For You

RSS means Really Simple Syndication, referring to web feeds. They are used by sites that frequently updates their contents, such as news, blog and some social network sites to notify and show new content. Subscribing to RSS can save you time because you don’t need to constantly open the site from your browser to check for updates.

The feeds, or each individual unit of information, typically contains capsule version of the actual update in the site, but they may also include other form of media such as images, audio or video, or even download links to uploaded files. Sometimes, audio is used in place of text, and if that’s the case, the feed is called a podcast.

Most browsers will automatically search for feeds, and if they’re able to detect one, they will usually display the RSS icon, either on the actual page or on the browser’s address bar.

However, to view the actual feeds, you will need a RSS client. The good news is that a lot of programs has this feature built-in, such as web browsers, Outlook, widgets/gadgets, media players and even as a built-in feature in most mobile phones. However, if you want a dedicated program for RSS, you can always install some programs. The latest versions of Opera Mini have support of RSS. As for native clients, most Symbian users recommend MobiSpine (direct dload link). For Windows Mobile, the best one is BeyondPod. Both are freeware.

To subscribe to the RSS of a site, you must first determine the URI of the feed (kinda like a website’s URL). You can do so by clicking the RSS icon. Select the format (RSS or Atom, you can choose whichever format you like, most of the programs recognize both anyway, since both are based on the Internet standard format XML). Take note of the address in the address bar, that’s the feed’s URI. By default, all of the blogs created from Globe Circles have RSS feeds. The URI of each blog is as follows: http://hxwf5.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/rss.jpg[url_name]/feed, where you have to replace [url_name] with the appropriate term (for example, mine would be siegfried, for Mr. Mobile’s page, it’s mobile, and for Anime Nation Clan, it’s edgarluvitug)

Direct Dload: Windows Media Player 11 *FOR SYMBIAN*

Program: Windows Media Player 11
Platform: Symbian
Compression: ZIP
RAW Format: jar
File Size: 138KB
License: Freeware
Description: can play most audio and video formats
Instructions: Click image to download

Free Browsing [Update]

I tried browsing again today on zero load and much to my delight, my phone’s net connection has both local and Internet connection:

I was able to update my antivirus software and even scrobble my Last.fm cache. Anyway, I didn’t do anything special to my GPRS settings, I’m using iNet using a proxy. I have no idea regarding the mechanics of free browsing, but to contribute something useful, I’m going to state some of my observations and also formulated the following pointers:

• All of the FB sessions happened at night, at around 8pm to 11pm. I tried connecting at various times of the day, but it seemed it only happened between those times. Also, on one instance, the FB disconnected at around 12 midnight
• Successful FB is a matter of luck, but to avoid any complications, it’s better to connect on zero load. Hell, if you have a spare Globe SIM, you can use this specifically for browsing. Then, try and try until you succeed.
• You can still browse some sites even when FB is not activated, including G-Blogs, Globe Corporate site, myGlobe, myGlobe Forums and Pixlink. Yahoo Mobile used to be browseable as well, but I can’t open the pages for a few months now [EDIT: ummm, apparently Yahoo Mobile is still browseable, I didn’t realize I was inputting the wrong address, it’s http://ph.m.yahoo.com/, not mobi.yahoo.com.ph or m.yahoo.com.ph
• I think you can only do FB using a desktop-class browser, such as Opera (Mobile or Mini) and some other browsers out there.

Favorite Mobile Apps (Open-Source)

Mobile apps? Sure, the iPhone may have its App Store as one of its killer features and boasts of having more than 20,000 apps already, but it’s pretty pointless when only around 1% were deemed useful. In the meantime, I have always thought that Symbian apps were mostly a joke. For a platform that’s based on weak hardware, has poor multitasking skills and a confusing file system, Symbian OS should be best left as a phone OS, rather than expanding its capabilities to other territories.