Gadgets Magazine | The Philippines' First Tech-Lifestyle Magazine

All-new Ford Focus revealed in Bangkok

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26 Mar 2012

The all-new Ford Focus was revealed today to eager members of ASEAN media that were flown in to Thailand for the Bangkok International Motor Show.

Following the Ford Ranger launch that is set for March 29 at the MIAS, the Ford Focus will be the second of the eight all-new global vehicles to be introduced in the Philippines within five years under the One Ford Program.

Set to go on sale in the region by Q3 of this year, the dynamic Ford Focus will be produced at Ford’s new USD 450M – state-of-the-art manufacturing plant in Rayong, Thailand, which will be supplying the entire ASEAN region as well as other export markets.

Loaded with technology usually reserved for the mid and high-end vehicles, the Focus has evolved from the first-time buyer’s car to the best car available at that price point. “The all-new Focus represents the strengths and benefits of our global One Ford strategy in serving our customers across the region,” said Joe Hinrichs, president, Ford Asia Pacific and Africa. “We’ve gone further in every aspect of this next-generation vehicle to give our customers quality, fuel efficiency, safety and smart technology beyond their expectations.”

The new Focus is loaded with smart and affordable technologies that are segment – and even market-firsts.

Ford SYNC lets you connect almost any mobile phone or digital media player to your new Focus via Bluetooth and USB connection respectively. Control your music, make and take calls by just using your voice – with eyes on the road and hands on the wheel.

Other notable safety features are the Active City Stop, the Active Park Assist, Blind Spot Information System (BLIS), Smart Keyless Entry, Ford Power Start and Torque Vectoring Control.

The all-new Focus is fitted with a completely new Duratec 2.0-liter Ti-VCT GDi engine that uses the latest powertrain technologies to deliver 20% more power than the previous model while delivering a significant improvement in fuel economy.

While the exact specs and price range of the Philippine version is still under wraps, a certain tall executive mentioned that it is safe to say that most of the features will be onboard.

Yeay for Ford! We can’t wait to test dive one of these babies. Go further.

[album: https://gadgetsmagazine.com.ph/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/dm-albums.php?currdir=/wp-content/uploads/dm-albums/[email protected]/Ford Focus reveal in BKK/]

Review: Lenovo B470

GadgetsLab

Gadgets Team

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26 Mar 2012

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By M.R. Gavin

I recently bought a new game and tried it on the Lenovo B470 test unit. Unsurprisingly, I got more than what I expected.

For a game fan like me, it has always been hard to find the perfect laptop. I always stumble upon notebooks that don’t support enough graphics or keeps lagging. I almost gave up finding one, until I got my hands on a Lenovo B470.

I was able to play my games properly, thanks to the B470’s Nvidia GeForce 410M that delivers amazing graphics. Its 13.3-inch screen is just enough for any kind of laptop needs. Although a little smaller than the average 14-inch notebook screens, but it certainly works well with almost everything.

There are plenty of ports on the sides like VGA, Ethernet, HDMI, 4 USB 2.0 ports (one of which is an eSATA/ USB combo drive), audio ports, 6-in-1 card reader, and optical disk drive and burner. The keyboard is chiclet type and a bit curved in for easier typing. The touchpad is wide with two separate mouse buttons which makes it easier to navigate.

I tried running multiple applications all at the same time and it doesn’t lag. Even high-definition movies were not a problem at all. I can see all the graphical details on the games. I usually have to adjust the brightness of my notebooks to make it just right for the eyes and to save on energy consumption but this notebook is really clear and bright despite the fact that it was on power-save mode. Its 1366×768 resolution is capable of 720p HD viewing, and can go as high as up to 1080p HD when connected to an HDTV.

The B470 comes with an integrated 3G and Wi-Fi makes connectivity easier while on the go, but the short battery life is a downer. It could only last three hours on full charge. If you carry around this Lenovo notebook, be sure to bring the AC adapter.

Lenovo B470 has the second-generation Intel Core i3 processor with Sandybridge graphics. It is also packed with Lenovo’s business features such as OneKey Rescue System that can protect and restore data in case of a crash and DirectShare for syncing files with another computer without using the Internet connection. It also has RapidBoot technology which makes startup and shutdown faster.

A fingerprint scanner is situated on the lower right of the keyboard; this gives additional protection for the laptop and the users. This makes it safer from hacking or unauthorized usage of the notebook.

While I was using it, a friend even admired its metal finish that looked classy and elegant. Definitely, the Lenovo B470 combines work and play with its features and special add ons. It’s design makes it sleek and stylish without sacrificing good functionality. There’s even an option to get a B470 bundled with Windows 7 home Premium or Professional.

Specifications:
OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 7 home premium or professional
PROCESSOR: Intel Core™ i3-2310M Processor ( 2.10GHz 1333MHz 3MB )
MEMORY: 4 GB PC3-10600 DDR3 SDRAM 1333MHz
DISPLAY: 14.0” HD Glossy

What’s Hot:
• Curved chiclet-type keyboard
• Clear and bright screen
• Nvidia GeForce 410M

What’s Not:
• Short battery life

Bottomline:
In a very reasonable price, Lenovo B470 is your lappie either for home or for business.

Buy Meter: 9.2

[This review originally appeared in the June 2011 issue of Gadgets Magazine]

Pimp your BlackBerry PlayBook with 4 pinoy made apps

Technology

Gadgets Team

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25 Mar 2012

1

Pimp your BlackBerry PlayBook with 4 pinoy made apps

Alright, so you’ve updated you BlackBerry Playbook to OS two-point-oh. Now what? Well, you can cram it with weird, semi-useful apps or you could download these four pinoy made apps that’ll help and amuse you. Not a hard choice is it? Among the growing number of pinoy made apps is the MMDA Navigator (handy for knowing and avoiding the clogged streets in the metro) PH Weather, Deal Detector (which gives you the lowdown on the latest deals in town) and a digital version of an old pinoy boardgame standby, Dama. All four apps is now available for download at the BlackBerry App World.

[album: https://gadgetsmagazine.com.ph/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/dm-albums.php?currdir=/wp-content/uploads/dm-albums/[email protected]/BlackBerry Pinoy Apps/]

Google wants to patent tech that listens to background noise to deliver better ads

Technology

Gadgets Team

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25 Mar 2012

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There’s creepy tech and then there’s really creepy tech, and Google’s looking to patent the latter – The Next Web reports that the search giant is looking to patent tech that listens to background noise during phone calls and then promote the appropriate ads. Titled “Advertising Based on Environmental Conditions,” the proposed new tech will be able to listen to background noise such as a raindrops, yapping dogs and such and deliver context sensitive ads such as umbrellas and pet related products, for example. While the new tech sounds incredibly invasive, the patent application mentions that Google will not be actively listening to calls, and instead will use real-time monitoring tech to deliver the ads. Efficient or really, really creepy? You decide.

Source: The Next Web

YouTube third biggest online destination for Pinoys

Technology

Gadgets Team

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25 Mar 2012

0

YouTube third biggest online destination for Pinoys

We knew that YouTube is one of the biggest online destinations of Pinoys, but we really didn’t know how much traffic the online sharing site was getting from our country till now. Research firm Effective Measures is reporting that the massively popular file sharing site is currently the third biggest online destination for pinoys online, right after Facebook and Yahoo. Exactly how much traffic is YouTube enjoying from our country? Well, the firm says that it racked 9.7 million unique browsers in January, which translated roughly to about 800 million video views on the PC. The firm also shared a couple of interesting statistics, which showed that males still held the majority of the audience share (54.4 percent versus 45.5 percent) while users aged from 21 – 30 years old were the site’s core audience (44 percent). Interestingly, the study also said that YouTube was accessed mostly from home (66.7 percent) which meant that the file sharing service is now competing against traditional TV as an entertainment tool.

King of Figthers now on Google Play

Archives

Gadgets Team

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24 Mar 2012

0

For some kids growing up in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, SNK’s King of Fighters franchise was the only game to play in the arcade. What the 2D-fighting game lacked in pizzaz more than made up for in the technical skill required to successfully pull off combos and win matches. Now SNK’s long running fighting game has made its way to the Google Play store, and can now be yours for a measly Php 260. Five gameplay modes and 20 fighters are on tap, with other bonus content available as the game goes on. What are you waiting for? Head over to this link and grab the game today.

[album: https://gadgetsmagazine.com.ph/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/dm-albums.php?currdir=/wp-content/uploads/dm-albums/[email protected]/KOFAndroid/]

NComputing M300 provides rich PC experience to 3 users simultaneously

Gadgets Team

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24 Mar 2012

0

NComputing M300 provides rich PC experience to 3 users simultaneously

We’ve talked about Virtualization company NComputing before, and how their products allow cash-strapped organizations (like schools) provide a complete PC experience at a fraction of the cost. Now the company has just released their newest virtualization tool, the M300 which they say allows 3 people to enjoy a rich PC experience at 1/3^rd the cost, using 1/3^rd the power and 1/3^rd the networking ports compared to PCs and other thin clients. The new device uses the Second generation Numo™ 2 SoC (System on a chip) that provides PC-quality HD video streaming without excessive host-side processing, as well as HD video performance (up to 720p) and multimedia experience on standard Windows or Linux environments, including YouTube and other web multimedia content. The device has an SRP of PHP 5,600 per seat.

Cooler Master 20th Anniversary Bash

Archives

Gadgets Team

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23 Mar 2012

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Cooler Master just turned 20 today, and to commemorate the occasion held a celebratory bash with members of the media, select enthusiasts and resellers earlier tonight. Aside from being a fun thank you to all the people who’ve made the brand the choice of serious and discerning gamers, the event also served as a showcase of sorts for distributor Iontech (who carries the Cooler Master line) to show off their other products from other vendors, which includes ECS, Kingston and BenQ. New products from their CM Storm line were also present, which included hi-end PC peripherals such as mechanical keyboards and gaming mice.

[album: https://gadgetsmagazine.com.ph/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/dm-albums.php?currdir=/wp-content/uploads/dm-albums/[email protected]/Cooler Master Anniv/]

Samsung outs Galaxy S2 DUOS in China, hi-end dual-sim Android phone

Gadgets Team

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23 Mar 2012

1

Samsung outs Galaxy S2 DUOS in China, hi-end dual-sim Android phone

Dual-sim phones aren’t usually held in high regard – and are usually relegated to secondary phone duty. So it was kind of surprising to learn that Samsung recently introduced the Galaxy S2 Duos dual-sim Android smartphone in China. The phone supports both CDMA and GSM, and is equipped with a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, 4.52-inch Super AMOLED+ display, 8-megapixel camera and a beefy, 1800mAh battery to compensate for the dual radios. Want one? Too bad – it seems like this particular device will be only available in China.

Source: Ubergizmo

GeForce GTX 680 madness – Asus, Gainward and Palit bring out the big guns

Gadgets Team

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23 Mar 2012

0

GeForce GTX 680 madness – Asus, Gainward and Palit bring out the big guns

As is customary with any big GPU release, NVIDIA’s partners have their own interpretation of the new Kepler based GPU up and ready to go. Asus, Gainward and Palit already have theirs on shelves and ready to go (not on local shelves, sadly). There’s not much to differentiate these products from one another sadly, as the first wave of GPU releases are usually just reference designs with a few minor tweaks in them (which usually means different coolers and designs). Nevertheless, if you’re the sort of person that wants to be the first one to own NVIDIA’s latest and greatest, you can always just hit online electronic stores overseas, as long as you’re prepared to shell out $499 bucks for the privilege (without shipping and handling, obviously).

[album: https://gadgetsmagazine.com.ph/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/dm-albums.php?currdir=/wp-content/uploads/dm-albums/[email protected]/GeForce GTX 680/]

Volvo welcomes Jeremy Lin as new brand ambassador

Technology

Gadgets Team

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23 Mar 2012

0

Volvo Cars has recently announced that the rising Chinese-American NBA star known as Jeremy Lin has signed a global brand endorsement contract to become the company’s brand ambassador. Over the next two years, Jeremy Lin will not only be appearing in advertisements but he will also be participating in the company’s corporate and marketing activities.

Volvo Cars views this new endorsement as another milestone in its revival and growth in the market, especially in China and the United States. The company plans to enhance its brand image with its new vision to become the world’s most progressive and human luxury car brand. Indeed, the ambitious Harvard graduate Jeremy Lin perfectly fits Volvo’s brand strategy of intelligence, perseverance, sportsmanship, and understated luxury with a human touch.

Philippine distributor of the Volvo brand, Viking Cars, is also looking forward to welcoming Jeremy Lin into the Volvo team, especially in the Philippines where basketball is a big part of the culture and lifestyle.

NVIDIA officially releases Kepler based GPUs, GeForce GTX 680 officially the fastest video card in the planet

Gadgets Team

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23 Mar 2012

1

NVIDIA officially releases Kepler based GPUs, GeForce GTX 680 officially the fastest video card in the planet

Remember that event we couldn’t talk about a few days ago? Well the official embargo has been lifted and our lips are now unsealed to detail the arrival of the fastest and most power efficient GPU ever made: the GTX 680. The new GPU is based on NVIDIA’s new GPU architecture, codenamed Kepler that uses the company’s new 28nm manufacturing process. NVIDIA says that the GTX 680 is not only the fastest processor that’s currently out in the market, it’s also the most power efficient. To put the improvements in perspective, the GTX 680 is 300 percent faster in DirectX 11 tessellation performance (when compared to AMD’s Radeon HD 7970) and up to 43 percent faster in games like Skyrim.

The new GPU also brings a couple of new technologies to the table, the most exciting of which is GPU boost. Put simply, the new tech allows your card to boost performance if there’s still available headroom in terms of TDP (thermal design power). Think of it as Intel’s turbo-boost technology but for GPUs. Obviously we’re oversimplifying it a bit, but in theory it performs the same way – as long as there’s enough available headroom when it comes to TDP and automatically adjusts the clock speed based on the power consumed by the currently running app. The card that automatically overclocks itself, basically.

Another new tech that comes with Kepler is TXAA. TXAA is a new anti-aliasing tech that NVIDIA has invented that’s even higher than traditional anti-aliasing modes. TXAA combines the raw power of MSAA with sophisticated resolve filters similar to those employed in CG films. In addition, TXAA can also jitter sample locations between frames for even higher quality. In TXAA 1, gamers get the performance of 2xMSAA and quality that’s on par with 8xMSAA. TXAA 2 ramps that up even more, giving gamers the performance of 4xMSAA with quality even higher than 8xMSAA.

The Fermi series of GPUs were much maligned due to their limited two monitor limit when using multiple monitors. That’s not a problem anymore – NVIDIA’s new Kepler GPUs are now able to support three monitors for gaming, with an option to add a fourth one for web and IM.

From what we’ve seen in Malaysia last Monday, NVIDIA has managed to strike a homerun with the new GTX 680. Though we haven’t had a chance to actually play and test it to our satisfaction, we like what we see on paper. We’ll update you guys as soon as we get our grubby little mitts on it.

Filipino students win top prizes in Kaspersky Lab’s student conference on cybercrime in HK

Technology

Gadgets Team

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23 Mar 2012

0

Filipino students win top prizes in Kaspersky Lab’s student conference on cybercrime in HK

Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of secure content and threat management solutions, announced that students from the Philippines bested 12 other finalists from various countries in the recently concluded regional preliminary round of the Kaspersky Lab Asia Pacific and Middle East, Africa (MEA) Cup2012, an annual event that brings together students and young professionals from around the world in a collaborative environment to present and discuss issues relating to cybercrime.

The research papers presented by team leaders 21-year old Joshua Arvin Lat and 19-year old Ranyel Bryan Maliwanag won the first and second prizes, respectively, at the conference held on March 14 to 16 at the City University of Hong Kong (CityU), a leading university in Asia in professional education and research.

Both Filipino students are from the University of the Philippines Department of Computer Science (UP-DCS). They said they carried out their researches at the department’s Computer Security Group.

Veniamin Ginodman, Kaspersky Lab head of educational programs management (left) poses with top prize winners Joshua Arvin Lat (center) and team member Rod Xavier Bondoc during the awarding ceremonies in Hong Kong. Not in photo is third team member Kevin Charles Atienza.

The top research paper written by Lat and his partners Kevin Charles Atienza and Rod Xavier Bondoc entitled “SOUL Sytem: Secure Online USB Login System,” recommended a secure online authentication system involving a two-factor authentication scheme using a password and an ordinary USB flash drive as a security token. The group took home US$1,500 in cash prize for their winning paper.

Veniamin Ginodman, Kaspersky Lab head of educational programs management (left) with second prize winners Ranyel Bryan Maliwanag and team mates Mariah Strella Indrinal and Marynyriene Silvestre during the awarding ceremonies in Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, Maliwanag and his team, composed of Mariah Strella Indrinal and Marynyriene Silvestre, created an application that uses voice recognition. Their research entitled, “Vox-Grid: A Mobile Voice Verification System,” which proposed a mobile voice verification system to improve the security of the username-password authentication scheme, won for the group a US$1,000 cash prize.

Third place winner was the research paper entitled “Mining Modules’ Dependencies for Malware Detection” by Masoud Narouei from the Shiraz University of Iran which won for him a cash prize of US$750.

This is the first time the Philippines joined the annual conference, which has this year’s theme of “IT Security for the Next Generation.”

Their wins in the Asia Pacific and MEA Cup 2012 have earned for Lat and Maliwanag their respective spots to represent the Philippines in the 2012 Kaspersky International Cup of the IT Security Conference for Young Professionals to be held at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands on May 11-13, 2012. Kaspersky Lab is sponsoring the all-expense paid trip of the team leaders to the global round.

Fallout Vault Dweller Dunks is music to your… feet.

Archives

Gadgets Team

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22 Mar 2012

0

Fallout Vault Dweller Dunks is music to your… feet.

Hardcore Fallout videogame fans may want to check out these custom kicks created by Jacob Patterson. But these are more than just sporting a few logos and designs unique to the game – the shoes have iPod Touches sewn into the tongues that play music from the actual game and anything related to it.

From the artist:

The tongues feature jailbroken iPod Touches that have been given sounds, themes, apps, music, and related materials to fit the Fallout universe. Originally I had planned to sculpt or paint the tongues out to look like the actual Pip-Boy device, but it was too noisy. Instead, I trusted the Pip-Boy theme to do the job, and it does in a much more subtle way. On the sides are painted a soldier in Power Armor from Fallout 3 and a Ranger from New Vegas.

Source: Trendhunter

All-new Ford Focus debuting at the Bangkok Motor Show

Gadgets Team

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22 Mar 2012

0

All-new Ford Focus debuting at the Bangkok Motor Show

The all-new Ford Focus is the next of eight all-new global One Ford vehicles to be introduced in ASEAN by mid-decade and is set to make its debut at the Bangkok International Motor Show next week. After hearing that it’s equipped with more affordable smart technologies and features than ever seen in this division, we’re definitely excited to see it for ourselves.

The all-new Ford Focus will take center stage along with Ford’s comprehensive line-up of vehicles, which will include the class-leading Ford Fiesta and the most awaited all-new Ford Ranger.

The motor show will be from March 28 to April 8, 2012 at Impact, Muang Thong Thani, and Gadgets will be there to cover the event so stay tuned for our more in-depth coverage!