Are you an executive who is always on the go? Then the Sony VAIO Z is definitely the notebook for you if you are this type of person. At 3.42 pounds and battery life of up to 6 hours, the Z is designed for go anywhere mobility. And not only that, with its multi-layer carbon-fiber casing, you can be sure that your notebook is protected from knocks, bumps and accidents which is a norm for people on the go.

Specs:
Up to 2.53GHz Intel® Core 2 Duo
1066Mhz Front Side Bus Speed
3MB - 6MB L2 Cache
10Base-T/100Base-TX/1000Base-T
Integrated V.92/V.90 Modem (RJ-11)
Wireless LAN: Intel® WiFi Link 5100AGN
Up to 320GB hard disk drive available
Up to 4GB DDR3 SDRAM
SDTM/Memory Stick DuoTM card slots
Microsoft® Windows Vista®
13.1" LED backlit display
Built-in DVD-RW drive or Blu-ray Disc RW drive
6-hour battery life, weighs 3.42 lbs

Before, SONY introduced VAIO as Video Audio Integrated Operation. "Now we are re-introducing the VAIO as the Visual Audio Intelligent Organizer. We want it to be also known for how it easily becomes part of one’s lifestyle," according to Mr. Nosaka the company’s Senior Sales Manager in the Philippines

The Sony VAIO Z has a suggested retail price of P109, 990.

This gadget is really cool to look at (I even thought this is a mobile phone or a PDA). The Kodak Zi6 is the newest in Kodak’s line of cameras. But I’m sure you have heard of the saying don’t be deceived by looks. That’s what I’m trying to point out here. Yes, it looks great, like most of the new gadgets in the technology world. But as always there are pros and cons when it comes to gizmos and everything else. This camera is really sleek, 2.5 × 4.5 × 0.9 in and weighs 107 g.

Rest of the specs are:

3 MP picture quality

4.1 mm, f/2.8, fixed focus lens

2.4 in. LCD display

128 MB internal memory

SD/SDHC card expansion slot(up to 32GB)

HD60: 720p at 60 fps - 16:9 video capture(max)

JPEG picture format, MOV format for video

USB 2.0 (high speed); component output; AV output

uses (2) AA batteries

But the cons are:

LED on charger stays lit always and it takes 12 hours to charge the battery.

The Zi6 Video Camera does not show how much time or how many pictures you can still take with the memory.

You cannot put a date or time stamp on the picture or movie (talk about memories).

And sad to say it does not have an optical zoom.

This is what happens when someone plays around at work. Photos of the mysterious “iPhone Girl” first appeared on MacRumors.com, a popular forum for fans of Apple products, posted by “Markm49uk”. He claimed that when he opened his iPhone 3G he found a photo of the girl on the home screen, and two more in the phone’s photo album.

The identity of the “iPhone Girl” is still unknown to us but an unidentified representative from Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group who has its factory in the southern Chinese boomtown of Shenzhen, which assembles most of Apple’s iPhones and iPods, confirmed that the girl was one of its employees. The pictures might be test photos that were left in the phone’s memory accidentally according to the representative.

“She might have done nothing more than flashed a smile to her colleague testing an iPhone’s camera on a Chinese production line. But it seems the colleague forgot to delete her photos, and now worldwide iPhone fans are gearing up to locate her.” – published in the China Daily

Though the “iPhone girl” is yet to be traced, her popularity continues to grow. Someone has even created an English-language Web site, iPhonegirl.net, updated with global media reports on her.”

For all those who want to get a free copy of the Oracle Magazine you can get it for free. You need to fill out some forms though but its just worth it isn’t it? Anyway the subscription is free once you submitted the form and you qualify.

Oracle Magazine contains technology strategy articles, sample code, tips, Oracle and partner news, how to articles for developers and DBAs, and more. Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's largest enterprise software company.

For more information about Oracle, please visit their Web site at http://www.oracle.com. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Get your FREE copy now!

The highly popular Scrabble clone Scrabulous was pulled out from Facebook in the United States and Canada. It is also being done over the weekend in other local versions of Facebook. This happened after Mattel Inc., one the rights owner of Scrabble made a request to Facebook and Scrabulous developers not contesting the action.


The game is still available in Facebook India where the creators, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, of the game are residing.

Had you grown tired of clicking a thumbnail image from your album in your photo-sharing to get a bigger picture? Or tired of waiting for the slideshow to transition to display the next picture? Then wait for the newest in photo-editing technology. Wait and meet Photosynth, Microsoft Corp.'s newest Web tool which is designed to give viewers a much zippier way to view and share their photos.

How does it work? You have to download the program to your computer, works on Windows only, and then select the pictures that you want to be “stitched” together. The software crunches the files using the local computer's processing power, looking for pixels that are the same in each photo. Then, Photosynth stitches together the images into a panoramic scene. One catch though, when the photo is printed you’ll get a taped-together photo prints. It’s best viewed online since the result shows like a photo gallery and movie altogether. The software crunches the files using the local computer's processing power, looking for pixels that are the same in each photo. Then, Photosynth stitches together the images into a panoramic scene.

Photosynth, which was due to launch late Wednesday, August 27, doesn't yet allow more than one person to add photos to a "synth," which means strangers can't easily pool photos of a certain place or event, as is commonly done using tags on sites like Yahoo Inc.'s Flickr.

The long wait is over for Filipinos out there. The iPhone 3G is now available in the Philippines as of today. Filipinos can now experience this technology right from the Philippines. The iPhone 3G is exclusive to Globe Telecom subscribers only. That’s the official carrier of Apple’s hottest phone. Yes, you might see some other phones that are using other networks SIM but those really are from the black market.

Globe Telecom is offering the phone as both prepaid and postpaid plans. The prepaid plan kit is available for P37,599 for the 8GB unit and P43,799 for the 16GB unit. For the postpaid plans you can check Globe’s website for the details. I can’t enumerate here since there’s just too many to mention.

I’ve come across this really cool camera from Olympus. The Stylus 850 SW is what an every active person needs to keep up with their on the go lifestyle. It’s not only sleek and stylish but it is also shockproof, waterproof and freezeproof. But of course there are always limitations for this. You can safely drop this digital camera from a height of 5 feet. Take pictures under water up to 10 feet without the worry of corroding the camera. And it can withstand below-freezing temperatures up to 14°F. So this makes it ideal for the upcoming winter. It also has a face detection technology, which track faces and automatically focuses and optimizes exposure for sharp, brilliant portrait pictures. So I guess that makes it idiot-proof as well. How about shaky hands or blurry moving pictures? No worry since this camera also comes with digital image stabilization that means blur-free images.

Before iPhone 3G, I guess the MacBook Air is the next best thing that Apple Inc. had to offer to the world. It’s always been a surprise when Apple rolls something out. It just simply makes a stir for everybody in the technology world, even the Philippines is not left out.

MacBook Air boasts a very thin design. It can easily fit in a manila envelope. It has been streamlined to an almost unimaginable thinness. But the thinness did not compromise the features which is one thing that I like about Mac. Casing is made of anodized aluminum, whatever it is its strong enough for a gadget so thin. Of course, for something this thin it weighs less at only 3 pounds. It still boasts the 13.3-inch LED backlit display with a 1280-by-800 resolution. Port available for you to use are: USB 2.0 port, a headphone jack, and a micro-DVI port that supports DVI, VGA, composite, and S-video output. Its powered by 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. It has more than enough RAM of 2GB and an 80 GB hard drive. If that’s not enough then brace for the 02.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR built in the computer. Battery life is at 5 hours.

That really took my breath. I’m still looking forward to what Monsieur Jobs will be rolling out in the future.

Ants, small as they may be can wreck havoc to your electronic equipment. Who’ll ever think of ants eating up your computer, air conditioner, freezer or other electronic devices. Sounds unrealistic but this is true for the Crazy Raspberry ant which can be found in Texas.

The ant is commonly called the Crazy Raspberry ant or Raspberry Crazy ant, whichever you’d prefer to call it, named after the exterminator Tom Raspberry who first dealt with this type of ant way back 2002. The species is named Paratrechina species near pubens by scientist for now, believing that they are closely related with the Caribbean crazy ant. These ants are about one-eight of an inch long and are covered with reddish-brown hair. They have multiple queens in a colony which makes it hard to terminate them. Having multiple queens, they also reproduce faster.

These ants are so notorious in wrecking electronic devices, you can practically find them in “bundles” inside your computers CPU. Even the Johnson Space Center had seeked the help of Raspberry in an attempt to keep the ants out of their facilities. But it’s too late. Rasberry found three colonies at the NASA site, but all have been small enough to control.

What attracts them to electronic equipment is still a mystery. There a couple of theories though. One is, it might be the magnetic field that surrounds the wires with electronic current flowing through them. Second, it might be the heat produced by the wires as a byproduct of resistance. Whatever it is, these ants short circuits electronic equipments after they chew through the insulation and also they can cause overheating and mechanical failures due to their sheer number present in a device or equipment.

Have you been looking for an online resource lately? I have this site where you can actually receive a free quarterly e-newsletter with exclusive articles on how Cisco IT uses its own products and solutions to enable the business. Get an insider's view on the business reasons for Cisco implementations, including best practices, lessons learned, and tangible benefits. Find out first what is new in the world of Cisco on Cisco.

Be in front of the line and beat others on the latest in Cisco. Get ahead of others. Subscribe now for free!

Check out other titles.

A new Trojan horse called Troj/Dloadr-BPL are being spread in Facebook according to Sophos Senior Technology Consultant Graham Cluley. The Trojan horse is being concealed as a Google video link in a user’s Facebook Wall. Unsuspecting users can easily be deceived by this link since it appears as a legitimate video link. Once clicked, the user will be directed to another Trojan horse, Troj/Agent-HJX, which is an image of a court jester sticking out his toungue.

Quoting Cluley, "People have got to learn that clicking on links in messages can lead to a malware infection, whether the messages are in your email or on a site like Facebook. There has been a flurry of malicious email recently posing as links to videos -- so there's really no excuse not to know that this trick is being commonly used by hackers at the moment."

Text below is taken from Sophos website:

Troj/Dloadr-BPL

Aliases

* VirTool:Win32/DelfInject.gen!T

* TR/Crypt.CFI.Gen

Category

* Viruses and Spyware

Type

* Trojan

What to do

* If you've received an alert for a virus or spyware, then follow the instructions for removing the threat.

Affected OS: Windows

Security is among the top things that Facebook should consider especially now that Facebook is expanding worldwide and aiming to dominate the social-networking sites.

Officials of Microsoft Philippines and the government’s Commission on Information and Communication Technology announced last Thursday, August 7, 2008, that the software giant will establish an open source interoperability laboratory in the Philippines which is actually considered as the first in the region. It will be located at the National Computer Center (NCC) in Quezon City. The said lab will not be operational till September of this year.

So what’s the function of this laboratory really? The lab enhances Microsoft technologies to support the Open Document Format (ODF) and collaboration with non-profit open source groups, Microsoft said in a statement.

NCC Director General Tim Diaz de Rivera said, “The interoperability lab is essential to the industry in that it encourages IT professionals and enthusiasts to explore the possibility of interoperable technology. This will be a good venue for them to be creative and imaginative, and to explore technology without boundaries."

“Microsoft's interoperability efforts pave the way for the development of more products that leverage on our technologies and are able to work well with other solutions," said Ken Wye Saw, Microsoft Vice-President for Sales and Marketing, Microsoft Asia Pacific.

The first mobile “all-in-one” messaging in the Philippines was launched last month by Smart Communications. The service dubbed as Uzzap, which is talk in English, is flat-rate unlimited messaging service.

Uzzap is actually an application, which is IP-based, which you can download to your mobile phone and allows you to merge several messaging services like SMS, Instant Messaging (IM) or YM, and email. And one good feature of the service that I do like is the forwarding feature. This means that if the application if off, messages sent to the user will still be received either in the SMS inbox or in an email address predefined by the user.

The application is compatible with handsets running Symbian or high-end Java applications. It can be downloaded and used for free using any PC with internet connectivity. Sorry but its not yet compatible with Mac. Text UZZAP to 7272 for download instructions.

The Uzzap service is available to Philippine subscribers only.

Good news to Filipino Software Engineers, there might be a job waiting for you right here in the Philippines. That is if Japan-based Brother Inc, a manufacturer of printers, will push through with its plans. The company had already sent representatives to explore the possibility of hiring Philippine Engineers to develop software applications for its printer.

Brother Inc will open its office in Davao City, Philippines on August 8, 2008. However there is still no plans of opening a factory here in the country. Though a statement from Toshiaki Ishayama, Brother Philippines general manager, stated that “it’s better if the company moves its software operations to the Philippines because its main markets are the US and Europe,"

Brother International Corporation is one of the premier providers of products for the home, home office and office. These products include an award-winning line of Multi-Function Center® and printers. Brother also provides the number one line of facsimile machines in the U.S. and is the leader in electronic labeling, with its full line of P-touch® Electronic Labeling Systems.

Have you heard about Cuil? Are you having difficulty in pronouncing it? It is actually pronounced as “cool”. I’m not sure about the name but its definitely going to be a big one, I assume, if what the creators of this new search engine is claiming is true. Cuil was just launched a couple of days ago, that was last July 28, 2008. Its developers, former Google employees, Anna Patterson, Russell Power and Louis Monier along with its CEO Tom Costello who has worked for IBM, claims that the new search engine have a larger index than any other search engine.

The home page looks like this:

Cuil displays the search results by content and it will display relatively longer entries. And not only that, it will show the thumbnails of pictures as well in the search results. It will show tabs as well for search result suggestions. It also has a roll-over definition if you’ll be using the Explore by Category. Try it for yourself and see if it suits you.