PogzLabs

I landed in LA around 5 days ago, because we were ahead by a week from my sisters arrival, we were out of plans and out of things to do. My sister normally does all the planning and moving from one place to another.. During the first days, me and my dad tried to catch up all the lost sleep we had from the plane and did some minor body clock adjustments. All the time doing nothing was kinda getting depressing. Its a good thing that I got to go out today and set out traveling around a place I don't know, alone. I did my research beforehand and I think part of a decent survival kit (normally for first world countries) is first to know your way around. Back then, we get to go around using maps, but now I think we have Google to thank for Google Maps. The only problem is, you need consistent stream of data so you wont get lost. With my laptop, I checked out a nice place to visit that is either walkable or accessible with just one bus ride probably a kilometer or two away from my pla...

I honestly dont know how I reached 1000+ Facebook friends but if I would recount a previous conversation with a friend, I realized that I have been too involved with so much things in my life that eventually led me to have different circles of friends. The conversation was actually about how problematic a wedding would be if considering that one should invite different people from different circles. I came studied gradeschool in San Beda Alabang (formerly known as St. Benedict College which was formerly known as Benedictine Abbey School --Hopefully thats the last name change they'd do) and then moved to Don Bosco Technical Institute Makati. I headed to De La Salle University (then Manila) for college and continued for graduate studies. I've been involved with several groups of people, like our local country club swimming team which really felt like a close knit family and there's also FORMDEV from college and the Nettrekker people whom I met during the times I was running...

To those who have been my friends since time immemorial, you would have realized that I have been blog hopping since the time I started writing. From my self made blog page back in 2003, to my LiveJournal account, to my scattered secret blogs, of blogs composed of letters to someone and of blogs dumped in Friendster and then everything dumped back into my again self made repository of writing. Everything from 2003 to 2006 has been archived there. After a while, I then settled down to the then famous Multiply site where I had a bunch of pictures shared to friends and mostly blog posts both private and public. September 9, 2006 was my first ever entry in my Multiply site which overlaps with the Friendster blog which is already at my archive site. The last post there was dated October 18, 2006. Before Google's minimalistic approach to things came into light, most web applications or most of the websites have one gauge in measuring effectivity: site traffic. Websites back then su...

I've been having a lot of inflow of ideas recently. I'd also be helping a friend develop his existing system into a web based one. I think this is a good time for me to get back to coding and learning about new things since most of the ideas would require Facebook integration and Google APIs in development. Perhaps I could shoot in a little overview on the projects and track them from time to time and see which ideas are progressing. Quotes - I have this thing for saving quotations and back then I had a local site which I store my favorite quotes but I think there's a better way of storing and sharing quotes. I've checked out some sites which does quote saving and sharing like quoteabl.es but it lacks a certain function I need like importing quotes from e-readers like the Kindle or the iBooks app. They say that they have a plug-in for highlighting quotes and saving it but on my previous examination of the service it still lacks a lot of features. One annoying thing t...

Several months ago, me and some friends were talking about Chatroulette and how frustrating it is that, we never thought about doing something so damn simple. A friend ranted that it was just some dumb randomizing algorithm then outputs two different people with their webcams on. Around that time, the founder of Chatroulette was already headed for New York to meet with investors or with people interested in buying his company. Fast forward to several weeks back, I met with two other people who wanted to throw in some ideas at the table and start brainstorming and getting feedbacks from each other on how to proceed with the idea.. We all said our take regarding each others idea and decided on how we should proceed. Fast forward to today, I received an SMS from one of the two which reads that his idea was already launched by some local company. At first I shurgged the thought and told myself "Hey, whats the worse that could happen? They probably built some sucky product that would...

Finally, after the long, agitated wait for the jailbreak.. Its now released folks! Important note though, there is no UNLOCK (Ultrasn0w) yet. Just wait for the new Pwnagetool so you could create IPSWs without the baseband updates.. Proceed with caution. This will just jailbreak your 4.1 (and possibly beta 4.2) device. Ola! From the Dev-Team blog: Dev-Team Blog - redsn0wier

I got surprised when I saw this email. I didn't know that these tricks were still being used. Its a dangerous world out there people, be careful! One of the oldest phishing trick.

I called my credit card company earlier this evening to either have my credit card discontinued or have my annual fee waived. Due to the problems I had with that company, it was not really my loss if they didn't waive my annual fee. Everything went smoothly and as the transaction completed, got home, started browsing, I came across this very nice article about cyber security (ironically) courtesy of Microsoft and (more ironically) released for free. 12.3MB downloadable here . Then I thought, I think there's a bit of a security hole in those companies policies. I remember Kevin Mitnick and his book, The Art of Deception. You see, banks asks about details which identity thieves could easily obtain. Take for example, I was asked for my credit card number and my full name. Credit card numbers could be easily listed down by some employee of a merchant you bought some goods on, so is your full name (its on the card Sherlock). Even that 3 digit CVV2 code behind the card. So make...

If you've been into computer games for several years now, you've probably heard about the Duke Nukem franchise. I remember playing the 2d Duke Nukem side scroller on my old 386 box and heard about the new FPS Duke Nukems though popular PC magazines. So if it was a popular franchise comparable to Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy and other games in that era, what the heck happened to it? Image courtesy of Joystiq  Much like software development, it deteriorated because of ambition and the ever changing technologies involved in software development. The development suffered a fatal blow shifting from one game engine to another. Its a bit tempting to use modern technology halfway through the development given the mindset that "hey the new engine would probably cut the development time into 1/4 so I don't mind sacrificing the time wasted developing with the old engine" But then again, the implications of such would be having to learn the new engine probably leaving you...

I heard that Google is launching movies through YouTube but I didn't realize that it was already available. Head on to: http://www.youtube.com/movies for your fix on documentaries, bunch of horror flicks, cartoons, Bollywood, Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies. Now, don't you think that those media boxes with YouTube support are now worth the investment?

Before the location services of Facebook was launched, there was a neat little option in your Facebook app that could lookup your Facebook account and download and set photos of your friends on your phone. Before Facebook had location services, this is an outright privacy concern. At first I thought, "Hey, thats pretty neat!" then surprisingly as you switch on that Synching tab it will prompt another message regarding privacy concerns. Clicking I Agree would send your whole contact list to Facebook. Scary. This kinda creeped my out. All my contacts details are going to be sent to Facebook!? This is insane! All that information just to get my contacts corresponding Facebook picture? No thanks. I backed out when I saw this message but perhaps, people would just skip through this message and hit 'I Agree' immediately. Looking at another perspective, Facebook could have done it in a less privacy invasive way. Instead of sending out your contacts information to...

After the acquisition of Gizmo5 by Google, everybody knew what was about to happen. Google will expand to the realms of VOIP which is currently dominated by Skype. Its not about a question of if, it was a question of when. Finally, after the long wait, Google launches Call from Gmail. From the comfort of your own Gmail account, you could call the US and Canada or free. Hello there little Call Phone button! By default, if you're not a Google Voice subscriber, your number will display as a generic number. But Google will offer you to upgrade your account to a Google Voice account for free and you get to pick your own number. But theres a catch, you need to have a US number. I tried ringing my Google Voice number from my other account. You will be offered a Google Voice number if you want to be reached easily. I circumvented this problem by using our Magic Jack number so I could reserve a number with POGZ in it. Also, there is that error that says Google Voice is not av...

Seriously, people are looking at things at a single perspective. I really cant blame if thats their opinion on things but come on. Not just because you saw it on your friends Twitter page, your classmates Facebook status updates, your neighbors Tumblr account doesn't neccessarilly mean that it is the truth. I love the commercial of Inquirer and motivates people to keep 'inquiring' and not just settle with whats spoon fed in your mouth by some convenient source. It just irks me so much that everything is spreading like wildfire. First point: Mendoza was the bad guy Oh come on, cut the guy some slack. If you scavenged the web for more readings and asked yourself, "What made him tick?" You could have gotten a better answer. Take for example this  article from Inquirer on how Mendoza was a good man, a decorated officer and probably just another policeman at the wrong place at the wrong time. Heck, he could even be someone who was 'crabbed' by other envio...

Even if I dont have access to the TV, I could get a clear picture on whats happening. You could check out the trending topics that we again are talked about on the intarrrwebz.

Ive seen Pogoplug for quite some time now but what discouraged me is at 100+ USD, the price is pretty steep. With this I've resulted to just tediously setting up my home server and/or avail of the limited space of Dropbox. Courtesy of Pogoplug.com Good news though, Pogoplug dropped its prices (perhaps in anticipation of a newer version) and is on sale at 48 USD. Well, the drive you put is not included but come on, how much is a flash drive at CDRking. Check this link if you're interested to buy Pogoplug: http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=213816247 And check this link if you want to know about Pogoplug: http://www.pogoplug.com/home-en-whats-pogoplug.html

Thanks to Butch for telling me this: http://site.globe.com.ph/iphone4 So wheres the price? Well, its not yet disclosed. What is this for? Probably Globe's way to estimate how much they'd import to the Philippines. Image courtesy of Globe At least they say that they'll contact those who pre-registered when the pre-ordering happens. Yeah, whatever.

Since my car is broken, ive been a bit lazy to go to Alabang at the usual branch where I pay my HSBC bills. I told myself that within this week, I'd find time to pay both my Globe and my HSBC bills since both are due some time next weekend. HSBCs ATM Branch Service Locator Surprisingly, I liked HSBC's branch locator website which uses Google Maps API to map out different branches, the services offered, banking hours and even a picture of the branch itself. Its pretty great how companies takes advantage of Google Maps API. Try it out for a spin! Click here to go to the website. If you want to know more about Google Maps API, you could visit the link below: http://code.google.com/apis/maps/index.html Another website containing tutorials and examples could be found here: http://econym.org.uk/gmap/ Developing applications using Google Maps API is much simpler and you only need a bit of HTML, JavaScript and XML knowledge. Well, feel free to go wild in expanding its c...

Last night as I finished watching The Last Song, I noticed that Nicholas Sparks had a paradigm shift into something to older generations. I rummaged through my stuff and made an inventory of my books. I noticed how many Nicholas Sparks novels I still havent read but already bought. If you're interested in checking out books I currently have, feel free to visit this link. Going back.. See, Nicholas Sparks has been those romance authors who tends to focus on teen relationships. It gives readers (and viewers, for the movie) a heart tugging experience which, somehow, if you've read a number of his books would probably find some sense of monotony and probably uniformity on his stories. It seems like, hes not an avid fan of unhappy endings too. Save for A Walk to Remember, but it would probably be left in the decision of the reader/viewer to qualify on how they would take the ending. Its not as point blank trample your heart endings like the movie Prime, nor the anime 5cm per Se...

For some reason, Webmin doesnt work well with Ubuntu 10.04. Everytime I configure a static IP using Webmin, it throws an error at boot. Ive reinstalled several times hoping that it was just a glitch. Maybe for some reason, there was a misconfiguration in the network modules in the source code perhaps. Anyway, getting around this, I decided to be a command line ninja once more. Logging in as root, edit the /etc/network/interfaces file an tweak as needed (I removed the last octet for security reasons, replaced with x and y). # The primary network interface auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static
 address 192.168.1.x gateway 192.168.1.y
 netmask 255.255.255.0
 network 192.168.1.0
 broadcast 192.168.1.255 You could actually just copy some of the values when you're on DHCP by entering ifconfig -a as a sample, heres the data I got (I removed some values and replaced the last octet of the IP with x). eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr -- removed --  ...

I have 2 servers which I wanted to talk to each other, one is a web server running Ubuntu and the other a Windows Server 2008. My task was to be able to create Active Directory users using PHP and from what is available, I found a very neat library for PHP called adLDAP . It had all the necessary functions needed to manage your Active Directory save for the very troublesome fact that you need to use LDAP over SSL in order for the module to be able to create accounts and change passwords. Everything else works without LDAP over SSL. At first I was trying my hand out in making it work without the LDAP over SSL. But after some research, I found out that it is required by Windows Server itself to accommodate account creation. Knowing a bit about certificates and on how modern browsers typically screws over displaying the page due to those 'certificates cannot be verified' errors, I had little choice in this matter. At first I thought maybe that error prompt could be a minor nui...

For a week now, I've been going on and on about the Kindle 3. Amazon launched the new Kindle several days back which was available for pre-order. It wont be until next month 'til those who pre-ordered will get their hands on the new and shiny device. The new Kindle 3. Image courtesy of Amazon.com A 6" monochrome eBook reader? What about it? People would say that the iPad would be a better option, but why do I want this piece of thin monochrome reader? Perhaps, the biggest selling point for me was Whispernet. Whispernet is Amazon's free 3G internet spanning different countries which you could use (primarily) to download eBooks. But, Whispernet is not limited to just downloading eBooks. There is a small phrase somewhere in the product description of the Kindle which says: New WebKit-Based Browser – Free 3G web browsing (experimental) Coupled with something a bit on the upper part of the product page: Includes free 3G wireless: No monthly payments, no annual co...

The wonderful people of iPhone-dev Team (or I think they're called just DevTeam now) has realeased their iPhone 4 carrier unlock. What this means is you can unlock the iPhone 4 s you've purchased from any locked countries like the U.S.(with baseband 1.59 ).  iPhone 3G and 3Gs also benefits from this release which unlocks phones with basebands 04.26.08 , 05.11.07 , 05.12.01 and 05.13.04 As an excerpt from their blog post : Version 1.0-1 of ultrasn0w works for: iPhone4 baseband 01.59 3G/3GS basebands 04.26.08, 05.11.07, 05.12.01 and 05.13.04 (If ultrasn0w doesn’t show when you search Cydia, add the repo:  repo666.ultrasn0w.com) Quickest solution to unlock your phones is to visit www.jailbreakme.com which uses an exploit to jailbreak your device, and once you get the Cydia app, download (or add the repository if you havent) ultrasn0w. Restart and enjoy carrier freedom. Perhaps another implication of this with the iPhone 4 market now is that those people selling iPhone ...

Well, its good to hear that the incident regarding the imitation of Kevin Butlers (aka the vice president of everything) montage advertisment was settled through peaceful trash talking over the internet. At least Sony was a sport in responding to TV3 use of their montage concept advertisement without any bloodshed of cease-and-desist orders being issued. They say imitation is the best form of flattery, Kevin Butler doesnt think so if they're not copying the thing correctly. The original PS3 ad with Kevin Butler The TV3 "Montage" copycat ad Kevin Butler jokingly mocked the copycat advert in his blog though a series of 'constructive criticism' which pointed out the following: 1. No title for your guy? VP of Big Bigness? PS3 Commercial Tribute Manager? Details, folks. 2. The TV3 version was completely lacking in PS3 video game footage. Clips from Uncharted 2, MAG, God of War 3, or even clips of our upcoming releases Killzone3 and Twisted Metal would have re...

A batchmate of mine has this awesome collection of food reviews in his tumblr account. He's been reviewing a whole lot of restaurants, though most of the time he gets his food from the delivery services around the vicinity of Taft. Hats off to Gelo Reyes for compiling a very good review for those people wondering what and where to eat. Credits to Gelo Reyes and his tumblr blog http://geloreyes.tumblr.com/ Come to think of it, its lunch and I haven't decided where to eat yet. If you have suggestions, drop him a line. He entertains your questions too, maybe you'd like to ask for a good date spot with good food. Now I'm really hungry.

Heres a demographic on where you could get your factory unlocked iPhone 4 and at what price. HK seems to be the best option and the second placer is Singapore. Waiting time to get a unit is around 3 weeks. And you need to have it shipped to someone who lives there. Get it? Good. Click for larger size

I feel like this is just both cute and stupid at the same time. Well, some girls really dig geeks you know. Whatta pick up line! Elite Four huh? Lifted from this Kotaku post.

During my usual window shopping runs this evening, I was thinking about the idea of purchasing a project car me and my dad (since he's a mechanic) could work on during weekends. He knows a lot about automotive technology and I think that its a good practice to pass on the knowledge to the next generation. The first car that popped into my head when I was thinking project car and cheap was the old Beetle. A lot of people were saying that its kind of a warrior car that, until now, is still a workhorse for the Filipinos. Then I thought to myself, "heck, I'm not going to look hip and young driving those clunkers." Though it just dawned on me just now that it might be a reasonable project car because of the widely available spare parts. Considering that, I still don't want it though.  Vintage, but reflects the youthfulness and the rebel in our generation. It seems that thinking about that made me go back to the Devil Z . It's a Nissan Fairlady S30 Z  or sometime...

The United States Library of Congress now allows jailbreaking (your iDevices) and rooting (your Android devices) and an added bonus, ripping your DVDs (for educational purposes of course). You may visit this site for more legal mumbo jumbo or head on to this Engadget post for a more humane translation of all those legal jargons you may come across reading the press release. If you're one of those who asks, " I want to start jailbreaking, so where do I start?" Good question. Back then, it was way confusing even just to identify what iPhone you have or what iPod Touch you're holding. Thanks to this very helpful chart, all resources are now available in one page. image from http://www.jailbreakmatrix.com jailbreakmatrix.com simplifies the identification tasks of knowing what device you have, what generation and what software to use to jailbreak. It also has a guide for you to follow on your jailbreaking escapades.