Ed Uy

A NEW YEAR means new gadgets, and for technology enthusiasts, the first week of the year has become synonymous with the Consumer Electronics Show (CES),

DO you still remember those “pakibalik po ’yung load” scams or those nasty messages saying that one of your relatives/friends got into an accident modus? Or maybe you’ve been tricked into being “textpals” only to ghosted when it was time to meet up?

OF all the new brands I’ve been able to work with this year, I have to say that finally being able to work with Bose and getting to try some of their speakers has been one of the highlights of my year.

“HAVE you ever heard of the “Five Gift Rule?” 

DID you know that the term “metaverse” originated in the 1990s? The term was coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash, where humans control programmable avatars to interact with each other and software agents in a three-dimensional virtual space.

IN 1996, Bill Gates wrote an essay that changed the course of digital marketing. Titled “Content is King,” he suggested most of the money generated on the Internet would come from content, much like broadcasting.

JUST like how much we love having milk tea and boba on summer days and can’t resist Starbucks’ special minty brews during the holidays, there’s always a great time for just about everything and that includes job hunting.             

Adapt or die.” I vaguely remember the entirety of the movie Moneyball, but this quote by Brad Pitt’s character Billy Beane captures the most crucial lesson businesses need to learn to survive this post-pandemic world.

“COME with me if you want to leap.”

Bandwidth hogs—every family has one.

THE vivo X80 Pro is my favorite flagship of 2022.

“WHEN life gives you lemons, make lemonade—make it pink to be unique,  or take out the seeds, plant a whole orchard, and start an entire franchise.”

AND you thought things couldn’t get stranger.

FRANCE, the country of the Enlightenment, the land of human rights, the Eiffel Tower, the Notre Dame Cathedral, and Paris—the City of Love.

LAST week, SM Supermalls kicked off its 100 Days to Christmas countdown by creating a circle of happiness among its shoppers, marginalized communities of women, persons deprived of liberty, artisans, cause-oriented organizations, and select local government units.

AS if on cue, my high-school classmate sent me a message the morning after Apple’s “Far Out” event to ask if I already had preorder details for the new iPhone 14 series.

AS the iPhone 14 launches this week, we take a look back at one of the innovations Apple introduced when it launched the iPhone X—Face ID. The facial recognition system that retired the beloved home button became the main biometric authentication for unlocking your device, making payments, accessing sensitive data, and providing detailed facial expression tracking for Animojis. Apple claimed the probability of someone else unlocking a phone with Face ID is 1 in 1,000,000 as opposed to Touch ID at 1 in 50,000. There were initial apprehensions but as expected, Android phones eventually followed suit, and now even cheaper devices flaunt Face recognition as a key feature.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.”

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia—As I am writing this on a Wednesday night in my hotel room, I realized this was my first international trip after more than two years. Tomorrow, together with 30-plus other publications/web sites and content creators from the Philippines, I’ll be attending the launch of the Xiaomi 12 Lite.

FOR the longest time, our educational system has remained basically the same since the time of our great grandfathers. Despite the use of new technologies and various reforms, students still followed the same routine: wake up in the early morning, head to school, sit in front of the teacher for the rest of the day, then go home to do more homework. Dress codes, school facilities, and technology may have changed but what students and teachers actually do has not.

THERE are but a few technology brands that could compare to the growth and success story of realme. From being a relatively unknown newcomer when it first set up shop in the Philippines in 2018, it is currently the No. 1 smartphone brand in the country—an achievement it accomplished in less than three years.

TWENTY-SIXTEEN will forever be remembered as the year when Leonardo DiCaprio finally won an Oscar and Stranger Things introduced many of us to binge-watching (and gave us Winona Ryder back). That same year, we also found Dory, had an all-female Ghostbusters, and realized both Batman and Superman’s moms were named Martha.  Lastly, it was the year that got everyone out and walking about hunting for Pokemons. Oh, and we also got two Ds that were elected President—Donald and Duterte.

The ToysRUs community, for one, was a lot of help, as I could chat with them to ask if they still had stocks of some figure I was looking and they would point me to the nearest branch. I could then call the branch and arrange for pickup. I didn’t mind if it took a few hours for them to reply; after all, I’d rather wait for the next day’s reply on Viber than spend 10 minutes listening to hold music.

SAN JUAN, La Union—Located 277 kilometers north of Manila, the province of La Union is considered as the surfing capital of Northern Philippines. It has also been called the “Garden Coast” due to its bountiful botanical gardens.

“I gave my father $100 and said, ‘Buy yourself something that will make your life easier.’ So he went out and brought a present for my mother.”—Rita Rudner

POP culture was once dominated by wizards, vampires and zombies, but in the past decade there is no doubt that we have been fascinated with superheroes. From mainstream movies that bring to life the characters from Marvel and DC comics, to animated series, like Invincible and my current favorite. Amazon’s The Boys (it’s a bloody-gore watch) “supers” seem to be the key ingredient to success.

EARLIER this week, listeners could not access many of their favorite podcasts due to an outage on Megaphone, one of the more popular podcast hosting platforms on Spotify. The outage was due to the company’s failure to renew Megaphone’s security certificate—a simple mistake that cost podcasters thousands of lost downloads and ad revenue.

WHEN the Covid-19 pandemic struck and the government implemented those repeated strict lockdowns, we were all forced to stay home—but not everyone spent those months just sitting on the couch watching Netflix.

TOMORROW I’ll be 46, an age I don’t particularly find exciting because it means I’m closer to 50 instead of the “younger 40s.” I also thought it wasn’t an interesting age, until I did a quick “Bing” of people who are the same age as me.

WHENEVER there was a demonstration of some smart home device or appliance or a demo for the Google Voice Assistant, I would often comment how my yaya was still faster than any of them. But last week, after visiting the especially-designed PLDT Home Fast Hub, I think my yaya (even after by two cups of coffee), has found her match—Google Voice backed by PLDT Home 10,000Mbps Internet speed.

EVERY year, Xiaomi releases an onslaught of smartphones that covers every single price point, so there should be a Xiaomi phone for every Android user, no matter what their budget is. And because of their specs and pricing, their midrange lineup have often been dubbed as “flagship killers.” 

WHAT do you miss most about going to the office?

DURING Holy Week last year, I remember Metro Manila and “NCR Plus” were again placed under strict enhanced community quarantine because of the rising cases of Covid-19.

It’s been a year since the announcement of the realme 8 series, so everyone was anticipating the arrival of the successor to realme’s number series. What we didn’t expect was that this time, realme was introducing a Pro+ variant as well.

IF it’s not about the election colors, or the recent “slapgate,” my feed is starting to get filled up with all sorts of information about crypto. I must admit that like a lot of people, I do have crypto FOMO (fear of missing out) especially when you hear about those very early retirement stories, but even the best digital currency evangelists admit that investing in bitcoin and its brethren remains a largely speculative bet on an unknown future.

Huawei has always set the bar when it comes to product launches, and after more than two years of being stuck on Zoom, the company finally held its first live event last week at Shangri-La The Fort for its newest smartphone, the nova 9 SE. 

GROWING up in the 1990s, there was one summer activity that I never got to join—no, it is not the Santa Cruzan, but those Inter-Barangay Basketball tournaments. Most of my uncles were good basketball players, and they’d share stories of how they would go around challenging the neighboring barrios to make some money. I knew how to play, sure, but I didn’t have the speed or the stamina to play competitively.

OF all the smartphones I’ve reviewed last year, I must have used the realme 8 Pro as my daily driver the longest. It was a pretty good all-around phone with a nice display, one of the best cameras (for its price), and that “Dare to Leap” branding emblazoned across the back pretty much described the brand’s bold ambition.

THE influence of YouTubers, vloggers, and even TikTokers is at an all-time high, and there is no denying how YouTube has formed an important part of the appeal to children and young people. It’s also become quite a lucrative career that even famous celebrities have created their channels and have started vlogging.

WITH the NBA All-Star last weekend and the ongoing FIBA World Cup qualifiers, it’s a great time to be a basketball fan and even better because you only need one app to watch all the games—GigaPlay.

ON May 9, 2022, 65.7 million Filipinos will go to the polls to vote for the country’s 17th president who will take the reigns from President Rodrigo Duterte.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

Since it launched in September, the Smart GigaPlay App has delivered some of the most exclusive sports and entertainment content for subscribers. Last month, it transported subscribers to New York City and Seoul, as I watched the iHeart Jingle Ball and the 2021 Mnet Asian Music Awards (MAMA) that featured Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa, the Jonas Brothers, Doja Cat, Lil Nas X, as well as K-pop stars ENHYPEN, TXT, aespa, ATEEZ, and many others via the live streaming app.

To Jab or Not to Jab.

TWENTY-TWENTY One has been a quiet year for Huawei smartphones. Except for a couple of Y and nova series releases, the once-second biggest smartphone company in the world seems to have turned its attention on its ecosystem products, such as the Matebook, Matepad Pro, smart watches, wearables and other AIoT devices.

OF all the Xiaomi releases, it’s always the “T” series that gets me excited.

IN our last column, I started our traditional gift giving guide with a couple of budget smartphones: the realme 8i and infinix HOT 11s. To help you further with your gift choices, I talked with the big boss of Kimstore herself, Kim Lato, to ask for some tips and the best-selling devices during the holiday season. From its humble office in Tondo to its present-day Quezon City office and Valenzuela warehouse, Kimstore, after 15 years, remains as one of the most reliable and trusted online gadget stores in the country.

WITH less than a month to go before Christmas, many of you are probably expecting your 13th month pay and bonuses in the next few days, so you better get that nice list ready and check it twice.

IN a century dominated by social-media apps like Facebook, Instagram,  Twitter and  TikTok, it’s fascinating that games are the top apps used by smartphone owners.

AS we enter the busiest season of the year, expect to see the color yellow joining the orange, green, blue, and red fleet of couriers as they flash through traffic to deliver your latest budol.

Another year, another iPhone, followed by another “which organ should I sell this time?” joke.

IF there was one device that got a renewed lease on life because of the pandemic it’s the almost forgotten Android tablet. Offering a larger screen than a smartphone’s and a relatively cheaper price tag than a PC or laptop, tablets became the perfect device for students studying from home.

IN the first part of our review we talked about the build quality and the excellent display of Huawei’s most premium tablet. After using the Huawei Matepad Pro 12.6 for another week, let me share with you my thoughts on its audio quality, performance, cameras and, most importantly, the HarmonyOS experience.

IF not for the pandemic, those travel restrictions and the fear of getting infected and dying from Covid-19, my partner and I would have traveled back to Taiwan and HongKong, visited Japan or Korea in the winter, or ticked off several more provinces in the country.

LAST June, the Philippines increased the number of nurses and health-care workers allowed to go overseas to 6,500 annually, as demand for our health-care professionals continued to increase.

THE Covid-19 global pandemic is a tragedy—except for the almost forgotten tablet.

THIS is the second part of our interview with Vince Golangco, founder of WhenInManila.com and one of the top 100 Axie Infinity players in the world.

THE founder of  When In Manila, Vince Golangco is one of the top 100 players of the popular crypto-based game Axie Infinity. He also has about 20 Axie “scholars” and is looking to add more from the WIMPlays (When In Manila Plays) Facebook group.

EVEN before the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting global economic crisis, offline retailers have already been engaged in an intense battle against e-commerce players. Those challenges have now accelerated at staggering speed and retailers need to stop expecting businesses to return to “normal.”

“DO you sleep on your side? That side where you have the rashes on your face?” Doc Claire asked me.

IN the HBO series Game of Thrones, the Hand of the King (or Queen), is the most powerful appointed position in the Six Kingdoms, second only to the King in authority and responsibility. The Hand is the King’s closest advisor, appointed and authorized to make decisions in the King’s name. If you’ve watched the series, you know how crucial that character is.

IT has been a stressful week of thunderstorms, floods, earthquakes, the threat of another Taal eruption, the Delta variant and perhaps another impeding lockdown, but in the midst of it all there was one piece of news that made us forget all the dreadful stuff happening.