The Geek Brewery

As of October 31, 2009 5am, the center of typhoon Santi is 60 kilometers south-southeast of Metro Manila. It is moving West Southwest at 24 kilometers per hour. For more information on the typhoon, visit PAGASA’s website.

Advisories

Due to typhoon Santi, airline flights have been cancelled. (more…)

After performing a full format on my Windows Vista partition (I have a separate one for Linux), I reinstalled the usual Windows applications I use — specifically those software I use for freelance projects that doesn’t have a good Linux alternative. Obviously, I did not settle with my project essentials. I still installed my favorite time wasters; Instant Messaging software, games, etc. I installed the latest version of Google Talk and the Vista-version of Yahoo Messenger.

Choosing the “Yahoo Messenger for Vista” instead of the old version 8 (which had no ads embedded to it) I always loved was one of the greatest reversible mistake I did. Yahoo Messenger for Vista, was indeed, a crap — worse than the previous versions of Yahoo Messenger.

Yahoo Messenger for Vista is a memory hog (memory pig, memory hoarder). Running the program is almost the same as running a decent PopCap or Yahoo game. On a rather average machine, everything just turns sluggish once it logs in. But on a pretty fast one, it’s doing okay.

It has a trying-hard eye candy interface. The term trying hard is there as eye candy is not a right term basing on it’s definition that is visual images that are pleasing to see but are intellectually undemanding (wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn). I bet Yahoo’s designers tried their best to make it as attractive as possible; but mind you I was never astonished by it. The heavy typeface applied on the items of the messenger list just suck, plus the bad choice of font.

The notification popups are no less than annoying. Previous non-Vista versions of Yahoo Messenger has this small notification popup whenever a buddy signs in or out. This feature has not been removed in the Vista version, but instead made it a lot bigger and more distracting. It just annoys me the way it is, I hope Yahoo would revert it back to the smaller ones on the next releases.

The visual effects were good. The effects are attractive and soothes the eyes. The windows are non-rectangular; unlike the typical windows we have. Translucency (partial transparency) is also evident especially whendealing with popup menus.

Most of the features are not outrightly visible. To change the chat text font, one still has to click the intuitive “A” font icon on the conversation window. To add a friend or perform other contact-related options, one still has to click the very unintuitive downward pointing arrow. Everything is unfamiliar.

Given all those observations, an assumption that Yahoo tried to concentrate on the visual appeal to the extent of compromising stability (yes, it’s unstable plus it’s nature of being a memory hog) can be concluded.

They should also consider putting the essential features outright on the window and not hide them behind menus. Yahoo should redesign the said application putting balance on the visuals and stability.

Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Friendster, Plurk and Twitter.

First, there was Yahoo. A lightweight portal and search engine. Then came the n00b search engine Google. Yahoo could have been threatened by Google’s birth and so they bloated themselves with lots of unnecessary services. Google struggled to fit the mainstream, and eventually it did.

Years later, Yahoo was used by millions of users. In fact, Yahoo is the most-visited website in the Philippines (and the World). Meanwhile, Google remained the choice of the so-called “Internet elites”.

The “internet elites” tried they’re best to persuade people to use GMail (Google Mail), but the “internet masses” preferred to stay with they’re “user-friendly” Yahoo with all those eye-candy RAM hog interface (which slows down your computer to death). A few adpoted the minimalist yet very usable GMail — and ended up super-satisfied with it.

Following the flow of the story were Friendster and Facebook. The “internet elites” first liked Friendster but eventually adopted Facebook when it was released out in the World; while the “internet masses” continued to patronize the very Asian Friendster.

Facebook, during it’s Global release (it was initially available in US only), was like Google – simple yet usable. But through the years it started becoming Yahoo. To date, it is bombarded with tons of unwanted applications that fills your inbox like flashflood.

Out of the blue, Twitter joined the party. Twitter introduced itself as Google way back in 2001. Again, a simple yet usable website. Then came a competition which surprisingly was not a super-bloated Yahoo. It was Plurk, a present-day Google. A very usable but not bloated, improved version of the 2001 Google. No doubt it was better to Twitter for some, like me.

The_ ______ ______ ___ ______.

The Web 2.0 Tales’ pages started to become unreadable as the trying-hard, capitalist Microsoft tried to join the story. And this concludes my Web 2.0 tales.

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I know it’s crap, but deal with me. You may not agree with my binaries: the “internet masses” and “internet elites”, the “Yahoo” being associated as bloated and “Google” as minimalist, and the likes. This post is based on my opinion, the opinion of Conrad Miguel E. Gozalo.

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I hope present-day “Google” websites will remain “Google” and not evolve as “Yahoo”.

Hey guys.

Several few hours ago, I delivered a shout-out during the 2nd Mindanao Bloggers Summit held at Family Country Hotel and Restaurant in General Santos City.

The slides I used for my presentation is available here. Please don’t expect a lot from it since I made it on-the-spot, like 3 hours before my shout-out.

Hey guys!

The 2nd Mindanao Bloggers Summit is less than a week away. The organizers and volunteers (including me) are starting to get busy, really busy. Kuya Avel and company is brewing something big, bigger than the tuna in GenSan.

Aside from the post-summit events (tour, Sashimi night, among others), there is certainly more reason to attend the said event. I will be speaking for the shout-out in the afternoon — will rant about my blog, my blog life (blogger’s events, etc) and life as a student blogger.

I, too, am very excited for my shout-out. In fact, I’m now starting to outline what I’ll be saying. For parties interested on getting the outline, I’ll post them on my blog right after my shout-out (yes, there’s free wireless Internet connection in the area powered by 802.11a/b/g technology).

Weeeee, exciting! See you there!

Tomorrow noontime, I’d be leaving Manila en route to General Santos for my semestral break. I’m pretty excited right now, with all those stuff I can do at home.

I’m gonna have nonrestricted Internet (bandwidth-hog websites no longer blocked) spiced up by the one-to-one child-to-laptop/PC ratio. This means no need to compete for a PC. Adding to the excitement is the home-cooked food I surely missed. Not to mention the new motor-vehicles at home, at last my lil bro will teach me how to drive one (but I know the basics of driving a car [he doesn't]).

Before I could leave, I still have to pack my stuff and clean up my mess. It’s quite hard to clean all my mess since I’m occupying three rooms in the dorm – three rooms to clean, amf!

I’ll be flying with Cebu Pacific for the second time. Departure is by 1230 PHT which is scheduled to arrive by 1420 PHT. The flight will be using the controversial newly-opened Terminal 3 of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. I guess the aerial vehicle to be used is an Airbus 320 Family Member (could be A319).

Exciting!! Weeeee.

Woot!

I just came home (dorm, my second home) from a Google event at Manila B of Shangri-La Makati. In contrast to most of the events I attend, I went to the venue all alone this time since the slots were too limited that I was not able to tag anyone to go with me.

The Google event was their launching Power User Launch of their new product Google Map Maker. In a conversation with John Pinette, Google’s Director of Communications in Asia Pacific, Philippines is the only South East Asian region where Google Map Maker has been officially launched – although it is already deployed in some countries such as in Vietnam. (more…)