The Geek Brewery

Last year, the search-engine giant Google launched Google Map Maker in the Philippines. It is an online mapping tool where people collaborate to map the world. Since it’s launch in the country, there has been a lot of moderated user-generated content that Google decided to push the Philippine Map Maker street-level data in some cities to Google Maps. Relative to other online collaboration tools such as Wikimapia, Google Map Maker has lesser vandals courtesy of their reputation and moderation algorithm designed by Googlers.

So what does this mean to the Philippines? To be short and concise, better Google Maps (Google Map Maker, and Google Earth) for us!!!

Google Maps Mobile can be easily installed on Sony Ericsson, Nokia and other compatible phones. All it takes is to download the mobile Java application and poof, you have a map in your hand! That was a lie; the data still lies on Google’s end so you need to have an active data packet connection (preferably 3.5G or 3G but GPRS would do) which I think all telcos in the Philippines offer for a competitive rate (despite different pricing scheme, it still sums up to 20/hour).

With Google Maps, you search, browse and hop thru different cities around the world. You can even plot your location on the map without an embedded GPS on your phone although having one gives more precise coordinates. In the absence of GPS or weak GPS connection, Google uses the cell information [further reading, Youtube video] on the header data of the packets sent by your handset, although this one gives less precise measurements.

There has been a countless times where I personally found this tool useful. I’ve used it to find buildings in the wilderness of the long Ayala Avenue. Another potential use of this app is for route mapping, which sadly isn’t supported yet in Metro Manila.

What do you think about Google Maps on Mobile? Have you used it? Share your insights.

Some few days ago, I started working on my other office. My other office was a lot better than my first one for several reasons; it had an aircon, food and drinks was on reach, arcade one stair away (Timezone) and coffee can be requested in less than 10 steps.

Working on my other office made me realize of so many things. Even though my operating cost on my new office was a lot bigger than my previous one which was virtually free, I was able to earn lots of bucks. Based on my experience, I could safely conclude that my operating cost is exponentially proportional to my income. COOL!

I believe my office gave me a heavy dose of FOCUS, one thing I can’t achieve on my old but still functional office. I don’t know why, but it’s very contradicting – I focus more when there’s more distractions. Hahaha.

Hey guys, I found a new office for Build that Geek and Associates (and my other blogs). My new office is located just in front of U.P. Diliman along Commonwealth, the U.P.-Ayala TechnoHub.

Below are two photos; (left) photo of one of my new office spaces (got lots of them), and (right) my old office.

It’s a hundred times cooler, safer and comfortabler [I know the word comfortabler does not exist] in here than in my other office. What do you think?

I admit that I am bitter with the results of the Mensa IQ Challenge I took sometime last month. It was a BIG slap on my face, after self-proclaiming myself as a geek. I don’t believe you have to pass Mensa to be a full-pledged full-fledged (as corrected by Aldrin, point well taken) geek. Hahaha. Here’s something geekier than Mensa.

After two sessions of training on our new “programming guild”, I’ve encountered tons of intellectually challenging programming problems. The spectrum of problems were very wide; from counting descendants of a person in a family tree, to beating a greedy opponent on a game, to getting the height of a rocket model using three ground observers using a theodolite, and the list goes on and on.

I admit those problems were new to me and I think it was the best answer for my hunger for knowledge. Those problems squeezed my neurons to the highest level, thus greasing up my brain. Those were the problems that made me realize I still have a lot lot lot more to learn. I mean, A LOT!

To all other geeks out there who have a background on any programming language (preferably C or Java), I dare you to solve the problems on real ACM International Collegiate Programming Competition (ACM-ICPC). There are a lot of problems available there from ACM-ICPC contests around the globe.

So far, I have only solved four ACM-ICPC problems. My goal is to solve at least one per night. Good luck to me and have fun with those problems.