The Geekette Speaketh

Sometime last year I received snail mail stating that I had recently won in a raffle. I was quite surprised by the news since I hardly remember entering any contest. Nonetheless, the letter was real and after a month of waiting, I finally got the word to pick up my prize: a new 10.1-inch netbook. It's a far cry from the former 8.1-inch netbook that was loaned to me by my best friend. Finally I have a more decent travel gadget in the form of an Intel Atom processor with 2 GB of memory and 160 GB of hard drive space. The bigger footprint made typing easier. I also started experiencing problems with my touchpad.

It's been several months since we last had our Android tweetup thanks to Migs Paraz. So now I feel like it's high time we have another one. Whether you're a newbie, enthusiast or experienced user/developer, feel free to tweet me on my twitter account that you'd like to come over and have a cup of coffee or tea with us! Don't forget to include the hashtag #AndroidTweetup when tweeting me about it!

This is just going to be an informal tweetup. Hacking is optional. No specific tutorials on how to program. Well, there might not even be any tutorials. Throwing around ideas is highly encouraged. If you have any initial applications you're working on, you can show them off as well. I'll bring my G1 so you can test your app on a real handset if you don't have one yet. If you have Android handsets, feel free to bring them along as well.

If you're just a user, what luck! You can give your opinions on what you like (or don't like) in some of the apps or ideas that are out there. Show us your favorite apps even!

Bottom line is, we're meeting up to have fun and mingle. Not an Android user but curious about it? Or perhaps you just want to be there for the tweetup part of the whole thing. You're still welcome to join! We'll be hanging out at Starbucks Ali Mall (Cubao, Quezon City) for an afternoon of coffee and fun. I'll let you know through my twitter account when we'll be meeting up!

I recently decided to take up freelance writing projects again. That said, I wondered if there was a text editor out there that was made for writers. Something lightweight yet still retain some of the features found in word processors. Searching through the net for the writer's text editor, I came upon TextRoom.

There are a lot of online storage providers nowadays.  All of them taking advantage of cloud computing.  I first started off with Dropbox and I've yet to try out Box.net.  Sometime in May 2009 I signed up for yet another online storage provider.  Ubuntu One is similar to dropbox. It offers free 2GB of space just like Dropbox.  They also offer a paid plan of 20GB for a monthly fee of US$10.  A tad more pricey than Dropbox's 50GB for US$9.99/month.  So, why pay more for the same thing?  Well, it isn't the same thing.

I got this from the Philippine Linux Users Group (PLUG) mailing list today. Apparently the New Zealand government is thinking of allowing the unlimited patents of software. If this pushes through, it can be a big blow to the future of open source development. But we can do something about it despite the fact that we don't live in New Zealand. In fact, we SHOULD do something about it.

Google, along with Globe and Ayala Foundation, recently hosted a developer event last June 20, 2009. Not wanting to miss any new stuff that might be discussed during the event, I headed on over there with a box of brownies in hand as well.

• 14:03 Experiencing major orgasm moment right now. First local Android phone (HTC Magic) to be available to Smart Gold subscriptions in June 2009! #
• 17:30 W00T!!! The olympus pen has turned digital! Oh my gosh! It's so bee-yoo-tee-full! ow.ly/em2b #
• 17:34 As usual, Olympus comes out with a 2-lens kit for their newest baby. You know, this would actually be a perfect on-the-go camera! #
• 18:08 The Olympus E-P1 two-lens kit is $899. Hmm... How much can I sell my E-500 + 1lens? #
• 19:09 Interview with Akira Watanabe, product planning manager of Olympus's SLR division at the E-P1 launc h event in Berlin. ow.ly/emAo #

• 12:10 Got my facebook username: www.facebook.com/headgeekette #

• 12:56 Heinz introduces World's Smallest Microwave, and it's USB-powered! is.gd/YzMu #

It's been raining hard lately. Power has been cutting out on us and a freak tornado in one of the nearby cities made things worse. So I decided to pull up this post from my old blog. Every now and then I'll be putting up some old (yet timely) posts from the former TGS website. Thanks to the Wayback Machine for giving me a way to dredge them all up again.

Today's blast from the past sets its eyes on Palm. Thoughts on the imminent death of Palm OS were looming about some three years ago. This month, Palm put forth on the US shelves their newest baby sporting the WebOS. I wonder now how the early adopters are liking the new operating system on the brand new Palm Pre.