Free ebooks on Philippine history
Posted by Scout on February 23, 2009
In my last entry, I outlined some steps to turn your netbook/laptop into an ebook reader. After writing that post, I did a bit of searching around Project Gutenberg, and I’m happy to say that I found lots of interesting ebooks for budding scholars and curious bookworms alike (in short, nerds like me). I didn’t realize until recently that PG has a treasure trove of Philippines classics, for example:
Doctrina Christiana - The first book ever to be printed in the country in 1593(!). Doctrina was probably second to the Bible in terms of religious importance to the early Filipinos, if not more. While I’m not at all religious, I’m glad at least a copy of this survived for future generations to study. The text is available in Spanish, English, and Tagalog.
True Version of the Philippine Revolution - Written by Emilio Aguinaldo himself. Why did he need to publish a book with such a dubious title? This book was dedicated to the Americans, and published just when the Philippine-American War was starting. In it, he defends himself against issues about his conduct as president, justifies our revolution against the Spaniards, and basically tells the US that he wants to be friends. Hmmm.
Decalogue for Filipinos - Written by Apolinario Mabini, also known as the brains of the revolution. It’s a short list of “10 commandments” for Filipinos to follow to show their patriotism, and was an accompaniment to a draft of a constitution which he prepared as well for the young Philippine Republic.
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - A 55-volume work, compiling notes from some of the earliest Spanish conquistadors that have set foot in the country. The books detail their observations of the people, as well as the changing religious, political, and economic landscape in a span of four centuries. It’s safe to say that only the most determined scholar would read it in its entirety, but isn’t it wonderful to know that it’s out there?
Catalogue of Violent and Destructive Earthquakes in the Philippines - Written by Miguel Saderra Maso and published in 1939. If you like watching the National Geographic channel, you’ll probably like this. At least I think my geologist friend will.
The Woman and the Right to Vote - A speech by former senator Rafael Palma in 1919, in which he urges his colleagues in the Senate to pass the bill for women’s suffrage. That is, finally giving women the right to vote. Inspiring. Sometimes, politicians can be statesmen, too.
Of course, there are also several works of Rizal:
The Indolence of the Filipino - A book in which José Rizal gallantly defends our race from accusations of laziness, among other things, from foreign observers.
Noli Me Tangere - Available in English as The Social Cancer, and in Dutch as Noli me tangere Filippijnsche roman.
El Filibusterismo - Ibarra comes back ass the grittier Simoun in El Fili, available in English as Reign of Greed.
» Filed Under Freebies | 2 Comments
How to turn your netbook into an ebook reader
Posted by Scout on February 19, 2009
Amazon has just released the Kindle 2 - a sleeker, better version of their original ebook reader. At $359 (PhP18K), however, it still feels impractical for a dedicated reading device. For the same amount of money, one can buy a decent netbook which can act as a fully-functional PC, and is sufficiently light to carry around as an ebook reader. All you need to do is follow some very simple steps:
1. Get free ebooks online.
There are tons of sites on the web where you can legally download free ebook copies. These are either old works that have defaulted to the public domain, or new works by contemporary authors who have made their books free accessible. Examples are classics by Homer, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, to modern suspense thrillers, self-help books on computer programming, Internet marketing, and just about every subject under the sun. Some of the more popular sites are Project Gutenberg, Free-ebooks.net, e-Book.com Australia, PlanetPDF, and the eBook Directory.
2. Download an e-reader software.
Ebooks come in a variety of formats, but the most common are .txt, .html, .pdf, and .cbr. Different ebook readers have been optimized to make reading onscreen a little easier for each of these. FBReader is good for text and webpages, while Adobe Reader is obviously for PDFs, and ComicBookReader is the prime choice for comic page scans. All of these are available for free, as are many other altenatives.
3. Install EEErotate.
Reorienting displays is not new, but the problem is that it’s incredibly frustrating to navigate when your trackpad inputs clash with the screen orientation. EEERotate enables you to flip the trackpad readings along with the screen, making it much, much easier to navigate in Portrait Mode. This program was originally developed for Asus EEE PCs, but they should work fine for other netbooks and notebooks. Check if your video driver supports display rotation, though.
4. Press the magic keys, voila!
Launch your reader application, load your favorite ebook, and press the following simultaneously:
ALT-CTRL-RIGHT: Rotates display 90 degrees clockwise.
ALT-CTRL-UP: Rotates display back upright.
Here’s what my EEE PC 1000H looks like, when I’m reading Japanese manga. Sugoi!
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Philippine anti-piracy drive to go after downloaders next
Posted by Scout on February 17, 2009
After all the raids on Quiapo and Greenhills shops, and even corporate offices in Makati, the anti-piracy suits are aiming squarely at end-users. The Inquirer has reported that the Pilipinas Anti-Piracy Team (PAPT) will be going after those individuals downloading music, movies and software over the Internet, even if they do so for personal use.
Were talking hundreds of thousands, or maybe even millions of folks here. My question is, do they have enough legal funds to keep their lawyers happy? Do they have the patience to see all these potential court cases through in our painfully slow justice system? Even the RIAA, which did a similar campaign in the US suing music downloaders left and right, has changed its tactic because 1) it didn’t work, they weren’t able to scare people from downloading, and 2) it was costing them a fortune.
Another thing going against them is that currently, there’s no law that categorically says these downloads are illegal. The country’s Intellectual Property Code is silent on the issue, as well as the more recent E-Commerce Law. They’ll have to lobby in Congress for this one. However, even if they do manage to amend these laws, that fact is that people’s perceptions and expectations when it comes to digital content has changed, especially the younger generation. Companies can still make money out of them, but they’ll need to evaluate their business models to keep up with the times. A little creativity on their part is called for. Beware: beating people into submission will only earn you enmity.
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64GB SSD drive now available in CD-R King
Posted by Scout on February 15, 2009
Early this morning, I saw this picture on the front page of CD-R King’s website: a re-branded external 64GB SDD drive, with SATA and USB 2.0 interfaces. It looks like they’re experimenting on putting out affordable solid state disk drives, which is a move I welcome. I haven’t even seen SSDs being offered on Gilmore shops, but maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough.
Price is the number one reason this type of drive isn’t popular yet locally, but recent significant price drops mean we’ll probably be seeing more of these later in the year. The website lists the drive as selling for P5,800, which seems reasonable, but it’s still more than twice the price of conventional spin-type hard drives. Does the promise of more ruggedness, speed, and power-saving justify the premium?
Not much info is listed on the product page for now, but I do hope someone buys it and put up a review soon. I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for this one.
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Sun Cellular now offering unlimited 3G for as low as P799 per month
Posted by Scout on February 10, 2009
Sun is known for their budget-friendy mobile services, and with their entry into the 3G business, things were bound to get interesting. They have recently upgraded their wireless broadband network to reach speeds of up to 2Mbps, putting them on par with Smart and Globe. Better yet, they are now offering different unlimited 3G plans designed to encourage mass adoption. The table below breaks down the three subscriber options.
The two versions of Plan 799 seem very reasonable and the choice I guess depends on how much you can pay upfront. Personally, I would much rather pay the P2,500 one-time charge (presumably the subsidized cost of the USB 3G modem) than be locked in for 24 months, when other better services might have already come up. Commitment is great with relationships, but not so with telecom subscriptions.
Plan 999, meanwhile, lets you get both a 3G modem and a lower-end cellphone for free, in exchange for P200 more monthly. Not bad if you want to hit two birds with one stone, or to be kind to the birds, hit two scoundrel politicians with one jail sentence.
Currently, Sun’s high-speed 3G (or 3.5G) network covers Makati, Manila, Mandaluyong, Quezon City, Las Pinas, Paranaque, Pasay, and Pasig, but they will make it available in all of Metro Manila very soon. So, if you live in the province or travel quite often, you may be better off with Smart’s nation-wide 3G coverage. However, if you largely stay in Metro Manila in the aforementioned areas and looking for a cheap solution for broadband Internet without needing a landline phone, Sun 3G is the way to go.
Good on you, Sun. Here’s hoping Smart and Globe drops their unlimited 3G plans to compete. Shouldn’t take long now.
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Dutch study says that file sharing is good for the economy - no argument here
Posted by Scout on February 6, 2009
Torrent users should find this research interesting. The Netherlands government commissioned a study of the social and economic effects of peer-to-peer downloading. The results were published in Ars Technica.
These are some of their findings:
- downloaders buy as much paid content as nondownloaders; for games, downloaders shell out even more
- for music, unpaid downloads can be thought of as “samples” - the downloaders might eventually purchase a song or album if they like what they hear
- sampling doesn’t work as well for movies, as once they have been watched, people are unlikely to want a repeat viewing
- buying rates for previously downloaded content are low for music, movies, and games; unpaid downloads do not translate into lost sales in anything close to a one-to-one ratio
- still, the study concludes that the effects are strongly positive because consumers get to enjoy desirable content and also get to keep their cash to buy other things; because the consumers save much more money than the producers lose, the net economic effects are positive
- the report makes a number of recommendations like supporting the development of new economic models for rights holders, not criminalizing file sharing for personal use, and others
Personal Thoughts
In developing countries, software piracy is probably the most beneficial to its citizens (I’m sure Microsoft and the OMDB would beg to differ). Students in particular, get the chance to use otherwise expensive programs and learn skills that would make them competitive in the job market. These kids nor their parents can’t afford a licensed Windows OS worth hundreds of dollars - they’d sooner buy rice and pay the bills. Knowing how to use Photoshop is a great thing, but the package costs thousands of dollars, enough to buy a used car.
Of course, open-source alternatives exist, and I hope they grow in popularity here in the country and around the world. Their features, stability and user-friendliness are starting to rival paid applications. Once user adoption picks up, maybe the big software companies will think twice about their hefty price tags.
» Filed Under News | 2 Comments
Free Ebook: Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference
Posted by Scout on February 4, 2009
Why go pirated when you can have a great operating system for free?
For those who have been itching to try Linux, Ubuntu is probably your best bet. It’s a user-friendly Linux OS that doesn’t need any technical know-how to install, thanks to WUBI, which enables you to dual boot Ubuntu with Windows by installing it as a regular program. If you need other how-to guides, there are many out there written by an awesome and extremely helpful Ubuntu user community.
One such thing is the newly published Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference, written by Keir Thomas. The printed version is on Amazon for $9.94 a pop, but he’s made it available online for free download for all you budget-conscious geeks. Can’t argue with free, especially if it’s legal.
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A list of my favorite free software
Posted by Scout on February 2, 2009
These are just some of the programs I use everyday. My rule when selecting programs is that they have to be free, stable, and light on resources since I’m using a low-powered laptop. For example, I switched to Paint.NET after I realized that Photoshop is an overkill for the kind of light editing I do (mainly resizing, contrast adjustments, and a few effects). I also got tired of how slow Photoshop is, and I was pleasantly surprised at how snappy Paint.NET performed.
As for VLC, I don’t know how I can live without it. It plays almost every format there is, smoothly and without much fuss. Wish I could say the same for Windows Media Player. I’ve also learned to love OpenOffice 3.0, which is much, much better than its predecessors. Since switching, I have not missed Microsoft Office at all. Here’s my list. Care to share yours?
Compression Manager: 7-Zip
Anti-Virus: Avira AntiVir Personal Edition Classic
Video Converter: Any Video Converter
Disc Burner: Ashampoo Burning Studio 6 Free
Torrent Manager: Bitlord
Comic Book Reader: CDisplay
FTP Client: Filezilla
3D Design: Google Sketchup
Browser: Mozilla Firefox
Office Suite: OpenOffice 3.0
Ebook Reader: yBook
PDF Reader: Sumatra PDF
Media Player: VLC Player
Image Editor: Paint.NET
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Finally, a disk encryption standard
Posted by Scout on January 30, 2009
Wish they figured it out sooner. On Engadget today:
We’ve seen quite a few hardware-encrypted disks hit the scene lately, but to be honest, we’ve always thought they were a risky investment, since all the systems were proprietary — we wouldn’t want to store our encryption-worthy data on a disk that can’t be read at all in a few years, after all. That’s happily about to change, though - the Trusted Computing Group has just announced that virtually every drive maker has agreed on a set of 128-bit encryption standards covering SSDs and HDDs. That’s Fujitsu, Hitachi, Seagate, Samsung, Toshiba, Western Digital, IBM, Wave Systems, LSI, and ULink Technology, if you’re keeping score at home (and we know you are). Ideally this means that we’ll see easy cheap disk encryption filter onto mainstream consumer storage, which would basically invalidate all those “I’m stealing this hard drive out of your laptop and using it to log into your Facebook account” crimes of passion we know the kids are into these days. Best part? Fujitsu, Seagate and Hitachi are all already shipping drives that support the TCG standards.
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Study forecasts explosive growth in netbook shipments
Posted by Scout on January 29, 2009
Various firms have come out with their predictions for the coming year, including the continued strong momentum for netbooks. The most conservative estimate comes from Gartner, which forecasts a mere 8 million unit shipments for 2009. IDC Corp., meanwhile thinks the figure is going to be around the 21 million mark. However, the most optimistic prediction belongs to New York-based ABI Research, which pegs the value of netbooks shipments this year at 35 million units. The figure seems a little too high, but I’m sure ASUS wouldn’t mind.
Going a little further, ABI Research forecasts that worldwide shipments will reach an incredible 139 million by 2013. To give you an idea of the current environment, there were about 16 million netbooks shipped in 2008 alone. That’s remarkable given that this category of small and cheap notebooks was introduced just a little over a year ago with the EEE PC.
Although I’m pretty bullish myself about this segment, 35 million seems a little too high, especially when you consider ABI reasons. Among them is the mushrooming of several $200 netbooks with processors from FreeScale, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, all packed with Linux, to lure certain parts of the market. I’m not as convinced as those same manufacturers were interview at CES, and their estimated time-to-market for their products is the second half of this year, in time for the start of the next school year (for the US) and the Christmas season. This might be too late to reach the lofty 35 million figure.
If I were to venture a guess, I would put 2009 netbook shipments at around 25 million units. Additionally, as the prices continue to drop, expect the bulk of those shipments to swing from Europe to Asia. No doubt ubiquitous sub-$200 and even sub-$100 netbooks will come, but in 2010 and beyond. Then, the One Laptop Per Child dream will be reached, albeit in a most circuitous manner, and a little longer than was hoped for.
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