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Bisaya poetry e-book “Skina Balak” launched today

January 11, 2013January 11, 2013 Max Limpag Leave a comment

InnoPub Media, the journalism start-up I co-founded with Marlen, and literary group Bathalad, Inc. have published an e-book anthology of Bisaya poetry written by its members.

The anthology, “Skina Balak,” will be launched tonight in Persimmon in Mabolo, Cebu City in time with the opening of Tahas art exhibit.

Skina Balak is an anthology of Bisaya poetry that you can download to your smartphone, tablet or e-reader.

Skina Balak can be downloaded to your smartphone, tabler or e-reader from sites like MyCebu.ph. I also included the download link below.

The e-book can also be downloaded via phone scanning of QR or quick response codes printed on posters, desktop standees and other materials.

The anthology includes poetry by Adonis Durado, Anthony Kintanar, Cindy Velasquez, Delora Sales-Simbajon, Ernesto Lariosa, Gerard Pareja, Greg Fernandez, Ioannes Arong, Januar Yap, Jeremiah Bondoc, John Biton, Jona Bering, Josua Cabrera, Karla Quimsing, Michael Obenieta, Nancy Noel-Nacua, Noel Rama, Noel Villaflor, Pantaleon Auman, Radel Paredes, Rolando Morallo, Romeo Nicolas Bonsocan, Temistokles Adlawan, Vicente Bandillo and Vince Cinches.

The e-book also contains tuba on paper art paintings by Josua Cabrera.

Note: Depending on your connection, downloading may take some time. You can check the address bar of your phone to monitor the progress of the download.

To download th e-book, choose the appropriate file format for your device below.

1.) .epub format for iBooks for the iPhone and iPad and Aldiko, Stanza and other e-book readers for Android and other devices.

2.).mobi format for the Kindle.

If you’re having a hard time downloading the files, you can leave your e-mail address by using this form (click here) and we will send you the e-book. It may take some time, however, for us to e-mail you the file.

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Open source for the win

January 6, 2013January 6, 2013 Max Limpag Leave a comment

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ON Christmas Eve, I cobbled together a network-attached storage (NAS) at home to enable everyone in our house to have a shared directory for school, work and personal files. This shared directory is also accessible from outside the house – like a rudimentary personal “cloud” for our family.

It wasn’t complicated — you can go to my blog for the article on the process — because the setup was a matter of connecting an old portable USB drive to a cheap CD-R King wireless router and setting things up using a visual interface.

The magic sauce in the setup is the Tomato firmware that runs on the router. Tomato is a Linux-based router firmware that allows you to manage your device on such things as filtering and setting quality of service rules for certain types of connections so that people browsing websites don’t experience crawling connection when someone downloads using a torrent.

HOME NAS SETUP. The CD-R King router CW-5356U runs the Tomato firmware that simplifies the setting up of a network-attached storage. (Photo by Max Limpag)

The Tomato firmware that comes with the CD-R King router that I use, a CW-5356U model, simplifies the setting up of a NAS by allowing you to plug a portable drive into the router’s USB port. You can set the system to auto-mount any drive that you plug into it and make it shareable in your network. You can also designate a password for your shared drive so that not everyone who connects to your Wi-Fi can access it.

The system also assists you in setting up an FTP (file transfer protocol) server that will allow you to access that drive outside of your network. You can, with the setup, access your home files from the office or even on the go.

Promise of open source

What’s even more fun is that you can view movies stored on your portable drive over your iPhone or iPad.

The router also has a facility that will allow you to connect a printer to its USB port to turn it into a network printer. It also allows you to set up complex rules that can, for example, bar your children from accessing Facebook during class days but allow you to continue using the social network.

For just P1,280, the wireless router trumps the features of branded and more expensive models.

I think the CD-R King router illustrates the promise of open source software.

Tomato firmware is open source, meaning it is released under a license that encourages sharing the software and collaborating to make it better. Any wireless router manufacturer can use the Tomato firmware for its product. By using Tomato, the manufacturer no longer has to spend to develop and maintain its own firmware. Instead, it can just concentrate on the manufacturing side of the business.

By using Tomato, CD-R King is able to manufacture a router that’s really top-class for such a low price.

But if there’s an open source project that’s really making such a huge impact, it’s Android. There are phones in the market today that are powerful and advanced and yet cost less than P10,000. Cherry Mobile’s Flare, for example, costs just P3,999 but comes with formidable specs: Android ICS, 1.2 Ghz dual-core processor, five-megapixel camera and dual-SIM capability. It was such a hot item during the holidays that stocks were wiped out.

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To do: Install to-do apps on phone

January 4, 2013January 4, 2013 Max Limpag Leave a comment

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(I wrote this for an article on digital to-do lists for the Sun.Star Cebu Weekend)

I arrived home to the ding of my phone reminding me to run 5K and finish writing this article on to-do lists and a blog post on Inbox Zero.

My phone flashed the reminders because it detected, through global positioning system (GPS), that I was home.

Beyond calling, today’s phones have become our main computer. For many people, it already is the main device to read or send e-mails. Increasingly, it is how people access social networks like Facebook.

If there’s one task phones are really good at, it’s keeping to-do lists. Even before smartphones, people were already keeping to-do lists via the SMS editor, alarm system, calendar feature or the rudimentary notes facility built into some phones to keep track of tasks.

CHECKMARK. The app, which is available only on the iPhone, allows you to set location-based reminders. The images above, taken at various times, show notifications flashed by the app.

Productivity apps are a dime an unli-SMS bucket today and you’d have a hard, albeit fun, time figuring out which app works best for you.

What makes the task of choosing an app even harder is the tight competition for features and users, with developers releasing updates every few months or so in a frenzied apps race where users, millions of users, are the top prize.

I’ve gone through the gamut of the top productivity and to-do list apps. My failure to stick with one isn’t as much as being fickle as making sure that I’m using the best app currently in the market, or so that’s how I justify it to myself. And I also need to constantly try out applications for my blog and technology column.

My current trifecta to handle tasks consists of a small notebook (of the paper kind) and the apps Checkmark and Podio. I use Checkmark for location-based reminders and Podio for project management and collaboration. But ask me again a few months from now and I’d likely name different apps – only the paper notebook is constant.

Here are some apps that I’ve tried in using apps and digital tools to keep track of tasks in the past couple of years.

Checkmark
The app allows you to set reminders by locations. The technical term for this is “geofencing.” The app is still exclusive for the iPhone and costs $4.99 but I got mine for free when the developer held an “end of the world sale” last Dec. 12. Thank heavens for Mayans, if only because I got the app for free.

Getting location-based reminders is already part of the feature of the iPhone’s built-in Reminders app but Checkmark simplifies the process.

Checkmark is beautifully designed and easy to use. Adding locations is just a matter of zooming into a map, dropping a pin and deciding on the radius. The app also allows users to designate recurring reminders.

I find the app so useful that I actually turn on my phone’s GPS, which eats up power and allows systems to keep track of your movements, so that I could use it.

PODIO. Podio is among the best project management systems available on the Web today. It allows you to customize your space to fit your workflow. It’s iOS and Android apps are also very good and can be customized.

Podio
For project management and collaboration, nothing available for free today beats the features of Podio, a project management service with premium paid plans.

Podio is a very useful app for companies or groups. It offers the usual task management and tracking and the accompanying bells and whistles for collaboration but excels in one thing—it allows you to add functionalities via free apps you can download from the Podio app market or build on your own using a visual drag-and-drop editor.

Podio has good apps both for iOS and Android that you can also customize.

Any.DO
Before I got Checkmark for free, Any.DO was my to-do list of choice. It works on iOS, Android and the Web and keeps everything in constant sync.

Any.DO segregates your tasks by deadlines – Today, Tomorrow, Upcoming and Someday. The app is great-looking, responsive and easy to use. In Android, the app has the added functionality of listing your tasks in a homescreen widget, allowing you a quick look of pending duties.

The Chrome app also makes it easier to enter tasks or manage existing ones.

Any.DO recently added location-based reminders on the iPhone but it isn’t as polished as Checkmark. That will change, I think, in the coming months and when it does, I’ll swap apps in an instant.

Astrid
Astrid is a robust productivity tool with collaboration capabilities. It is a Web-based service with apps for iOS and Android and Google Chrome.

Astrid was picked the most popular to-do list manager last July in the Hive Five of Lifehacker, the favorite portal of geeks and productivity nerds.

I used Astrid for some time last year and the mobile app was fast. The only reason I left it for Any.DO was because the latter’s widgets on Android were better. To get bigger Astrid widgets on Android, you need to buy its premium pack.

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Tabula rasa

January 3, 2013January 3, 2013 Max Limpag Leave a comment

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What better way to start the year than with a clean e-mail slate?

I went through my e-mail accounts on New Year’s Day to process it back to Inbox Zero – the state it was in weeks ago, which I wrote about in a blog post here.

INBOX ZERO. Merlin Mann, who cooked up Inbox Zero, said, “Just remember that every email you read, re-read, and re-re-re-re-re-read as it sits in that big dumb pile is actually incurring mental debt on your behalf. The interest you pay on email you’re reluctant to deal with is compounded every day and, in all likelihood, it’s what’s led you to feeling like such a useless slacker today.”

It took me less than a day to process the e-mails that had accumulated in December. It took much less time because I had done the grunt work in September. For weeks after that initial work, I was able to maintain the Inbox Zero state of my main e-mail account with regular reviews.

The emails, however, started accumulating in December as I rushed to meet one deadline after another heading to the holidays and could hardly keep up with processing messages.

It’s the start of the year and the blank slate tells the universe I’m ready to take on even more challenges.

If you are drowning in e-mails and want to process your accounts to Inbox Zero, check out my earlier post here: Inbox Zero. The Guardian also published an excellent guide on how to clear your inbox: “The definitive eight-point guide to email inbox nirvana”

“The point is to think of the inbox as somewhere that emails pause, temporarily, en route to somewhere else, rather than as a place where you store them. How frequently you actually clear your inbox isn’t so important. The key is to cultivate a very mild degree of stress about every email in your inbox: like a greasy mark on a mirror, or a heap of dirty laundry in a hamper, it doesn’t belong there: it needs, eventually, to be dealt with.”

Oliver Burkeman: The definitive eight-point guide to email inbox nirvana

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App-y New Year

December 30, 2012December 30, 2012 Max Limpag Leave a comment

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Mobile exploded in 2012. US consumers now spend 1.8 more times in mobiles apps than on the Web, according to Flurry, a mobile analytics company. Flurry said that between December 2011 and December 2012, “the average time spent inside mobile apps by a US consumer grew 35 percent, from 94 minutes to 127 minutes.”

Closer to home, the Philippines recorded a 326 percent increase in smartphone sales, the fastest growth in the Southeast Asian region, according to research company GfK. The Philippines is also the country “with the highest jump in smartphone market share within a year, from 9 to 24 percent,” GfK said in a press statement last September.

To mark the end of this year of mobile, let me riff on a Pinoy New Year’s Eve tradition by offering you my favorite apps in 12 task categories, in no particular order:

NEWS APPS. (From left) Zite, Prismatic and News.me harness social networking connections to match news stories to users’ interests.

1) Zite. This is my favorite news app. Zite, from the word “zeitgeist” or the spirit of our times, learns from how you interact with content and then serves you with news stories that match your interests.

My other favorite news apps are Flipboard, Pulse, Currents and Prismatic. AP Mobile, meanwhile, not only has extensive news coverage but also gives breaking news alerts. I also love News.me and Curate.me, which keep track of how people in your social networks share content and use this as signal to determine which news stories to send you via e-mail. Recently released RockMelt also looks promising.

2) Evernote. For managing notes and jotting ideas, nothing beats Evernote, a web service with apps for Android, iOS, Mac and Windows.

3) Stitcher Radio. This app simplifies the downloading or streaming and listening to podcasts.

4) Viber. I personally prefer Kik, which is faster especially on lower-end phones, but people are on Viber. The app allows you to call or send a text message to another Viber user for free. Other messaging apps that I use with certain groups of people include WhatsApp and GroupMe. Facebook’s Messenger app is also very useful, especially if you need to contact people who are always on that social network.

5) Smartr. This contacts service and app populates your contacts with data grabbed from LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. It then shows you complete data on a specific contact–photo, job title, company details–and your email history.

6) Pocket. The service used to be known as Read It Later and allows you to save articles, without the ads and other distracting elements, for reading later.

7) Checkmark. I got this app, which normally costs $4.99, for free during its “end of the world sale” last Dec. 21. Checkmark is a location-based reminder app that’s so easy to use. Any.DO has started to implement this but it’s nowhere near the ease of use and polish of Checkmark.

8) Imo messenger. This app allows you to log into all your instant messaging accounts on your phone. Among the IM apps that I’ve used, imo.im provides the best experience.

9) Podio. I work on several projects with different sets of collaborators and rely on Podio to keep track of tasks. It is a robust project management Web service with good apps for Android and iOS.

EVERNOTE. The Evernote applications for iOS and Android allow you to manage your notes on the go.

10) Runkeeper. The app keeps track of your walking or running mileage through your phone’s GPS.

11) Google+. Sure, people are saying it’s a ghost town but the Google+ app offers a better social networking experience for me. Among its great features are the automatic photo uploading, Hangout, Messenger and Communities. Path is another good mobile social networking app.

12) Project Noah. Whether keeping track of a typhoon or deciding to do the laundry, weather information is crucial, especially at this time of climate change. Noah stands for Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards and is a DOST project that has apps for Android (created by a Davao-based developer) and iOS (developed by ABS-CBN).

I also asked a few people on their favorite mobile apps and these were what they shared:

Entrepreneur Jay Aldeguer: SoundHound. “I like listening to music and often times I don’t know the artists behind them; SoundHound gives me all the info I need just by “listening” to what’s playing.”

Sports writer John Pages: Flipboard. “All articles come with photos. You can customize the topics you want to read. It is frequently updated. Sources are divers. It’s free. And as its name implies, easy flipping between articles.”

Meralco vice president and chief information officer Marthyn Cuan: MMDA app and Meralco MOVE. “I love the MMDA app as this allows me to navigate through traffic. Meralco’s MOVE app keeps me informed on power maintenance schedules and appliance consumption.”

Port Restaurant chief operations officer Evangeline Hayco: Jango. “You can type in an artist or genre and it will play all kinds of songs similar to it. I never have to full up my iTunes library ever again. It’s free and play only one advertisement a day.”

Photographer James Go: Hipstamatic and Snapseed. “I use Hipstamatic for food shots, specifically the foodie pack expansion. It just works, food looks way better with just one press of a button. For everything else, there’s Snapseed. I have full control of my image editing, even sophisticated adjustments.”

Bankers Association of the Philippines president Abet Villarosa: IBreviary. “It contains the breviary prayers for morning, daytime, evening and night prayers. It also contains the mass and its readings. I have in my small iPhone 5 all that I need, which otherwise I would have to bring two large prayer books for.”

Smart public affairs manager for online services Nick Wilwayco: Project Noah Mobile for Android. “It’s everyone’s responsibility to be prepared plus it was made by a DOST scholar who gave back to the country.”

Photographer and blogger Estan Cabigas: Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare “for updates on the go.”

Megaworld director for strategic marketing Harold Geronimo: Metro Traffic. “It makes driving around Metro Manila easier because I know which roads to take during peak hours. It’s so updated and accurate.”

Blogger Nancy Cudis: Instagram. “It’s easy to use and I can readily post and share my photos on my Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. I also enjoy seeing fun photos of my friends.

Lawyer Cecille Soria: TweakDeck on Android. “I live in Twitter. It’s useful for marking life updates, catching up with friends, discussing news and whatnot and as links dump stuff to read. Tweakdeck is robust and can handle multiple accounts. This is useful since I also help manage @PHNetDems Twitter account for the Magna Carta for Philippine Internet Freedom.”

Smart senior manager Menchie Quiñal: Maps. “I travel a lot these days. When I do my travel plan, I check the map first and mark the must-visit places and food strips before I book my hotel. From there I can best manage budget and time.”

Sun.Star Cebu editor-in-chief Isolde Amante: Kindle app. “It allows me to spend less for books that are delivered in under two minutes rather than three to four weeks.”

Cardiologist Alex Junia: MyFitnessPal “so I can record my food intake and exercise.”

Golfer Bayani Garcia: Viber and WhatsApp. “It’s a great way to communicate with people. It’s much more fun with the group chats with my friends. Also, it’s such a convenient way to send photos and videos.”

MyNimo.com president Wesley Chiongbian: Waze. “It’s a GPS app that gives you real time traffic updates from other ‘Wazers’.”

Programmer and start-up founder Mark Buenconsejo: Tweetbot and Pocket. “Tweetbot is one of the best developed app for iOS. Everytime I use it, I can feel the passion of the developers, who made sure I have the best mobile experience. It also integrates nicely with Pocket, Camera+ and Cloud app. I like to use Pocket because it integrates nicles with Tweetbot, Twitter and BufferApp. My workflow starts with Twitter and if I find something interesting to read, I add it to Pocket. Pocket works and does not get in the way. It’s free but I’d be glad to pay for it so they can continue to make the best Web reader out there.”

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