My all-time favorite Hayao Miyazaki’s earlier work/classic is now available in its entirety for FREE! Thanks to Google Video… Here it is! It’s a must!
Blogging via Android: WordPress for Android
This is just awesome!!! I can now blog straight from my Droid X!! Hopefully I will blog more from now on.
Motorola Droid X: Review
My old HTC Touch (in Verizon, it’s called XV6900) has been acting up and battery doesn’t hold charge anymore and the Internet is intermittent at best. So when I heard that the new Motorola Droid X was coming out on July 15th, I started to wait. My 2-year contract ended back in June so at midnight of the 15th, I pulled the trigger and got i on Friday!
Others seem to be not as lucky as now, it won’t ship till the 25th. 😀
Here are the box shots and Droid X shots… The camera is an old Sony that doesn’t seem to take good shots so please do excuse me.
Now the shot out of the box…
The battery came fully charged! And since I output all my contacts into CSV file and then imported it into Gmail account, syncing and updating my contacts was a breeze! Not to mention that once you set up all your social networking accounts, Android 2.1 updates all the Facebook friends as well! It was even sweeter once I learned that from the contacts list, you can see all the social networking friends’ updates!
Here are some of the generic shots…
There are 7 windows where you can swipe through for different types of “setups”. One for weather, one for social networking widgets, one for media etc. I like that. I also enjoyed the screen. 4.3″ screen is quite an ample size. And yes, it has 512 MB of ROM memory, 8 GB internal & 16 GB SD card storage, along with 1 GHz processor! On top of that, Verizon’s 3G network was a champ! Android Marketplace worked just fine and all the apps installed quickly and w/o any hassle.
Default browser wasn’t very attractive. So I installed Opera Mini from the Market and I was happier then! 🙂 Also it did play DivX file just fine but I wanted better support so I searched for MKV in the Market and found a player called Rock Player. Almost no hiccups at all, even in playing large MKV 720p files. I am loving this!
The screen is beautiful. Pictures don’t do justice. aGPS works well and with Google Maps, it went well! MP3 works well. And since I have unlimited 3G, I gave Slackware a try. Just search for it on Android Market! 😉 The music will download and play seamlessly. The overall experience was great. However, there are two things that I didn’t like…
First is the heat. When in use, it gets hot! Especially where you are holding it. Dang it. Second is the battery. It doesn’t last very long. Yeah, they say you can talk for very long and such… but I gave it a moderately heavy usage and after 7 hours, battery color changed from healthy green to uh-oh orange and then to flashing green top bar and it was unresponsive from there. I will probably carry the USB cable with car adapter and charge it in the car and at work. So I suppose it won’t be terribly bad but still…
So my final score? 8.5 / 10
This thing delivers! Here is the summary…
The Good: Everthing. 3G, widgets and apps, Android Market, seamless integration, smooth multimedia playback.
The Bad: It gets hot! And battery drains fairly fast.
My Favorite Podcasts
This is the 21st century folks. Let’s make that clear. With that, things are moving to all sorts of new directions. One of those is a new style of show distribution called “podcasts”. It’s a talk show of sorts that talks about just about anything. Here are some of current favorites that I recommend.
Car Enthusiasts
- Car Talk – By far the best car-related podcast anywhere…. hands down!
- Autoblog – A great resource of new cars and other related things.
Consumer Technology
- Engadget – A very entertaining way to keep on top of new tech on a weekly basis.
PC Gaming
- PC Gamer – Entertaining way to keep up to date with the PC gaming world.
- Gamers with Jobs – If you can stand their dirty mouths, these guys are very honest and fun to listen to
MIT Researchers Find New Electricity Production Means
Even more awesome news! I hope such innovative technologies gain momentum and acceptance in building better ways to save energy and, in this case, store energy!
Super-critical Fuel Injection!!
Now we are talking!! Innovative and (relatively) inexpensive way to increase fuel efficiency and cut CO2 emissions?! Sign me up!!
According to this startup company called Transonic Combustion, they created a way to make conventional engines at least 50% more fuel efficient!! Sign me up!!
How to Spread the Non-profit Goodness Around the World
In the past year, I have become more and more involved in helping promoting non-profit groups. And in this days of digital age, a group has to do some strong promotion through online mediums…
I will discuss 3 groups that I have been helping with and some of the key things that any non-profit groups should have (and are easy to do).
This is my home church in Houston. We are by definition a non-profit 501(c)3 and to promote communication and growth, website is a must, and have since moved onto the likes of popular social networking sites including Xanga and Facebook. It has helped garner support and spreading the word around. Facebook is especially helpful as you can “suggest” to your friends and what not.
OURS stands for “Organizing and Uniting to Restore Shalom” and is a Christian non-profit 501 (c)(3) organization dedicated to empowering at-risk youth to bring about holistic change in their communities through creative partnerships with individuals and institutions.
I came across Danny through mutual friends and he needed someone to help promote the organization. Having learned of the group and its purpose, I jumped in. In both cases of OURS, Inc. and Pathways, both needed a means to accept donations online. PayPal, as much as some may criticize it, is naturally the best ways to do that. Most would be shocked that they take 1.9 to 2.9 % of the transaction plus 30 cents per transaction. However, for non-profits, PayPal limits it at 2.2 % (for under $100,000/month volume). Read more Nonprofit Resources FAQs here.
Do keep in mind that when you do sign up as a non-profit status group, you need to provide PayPal such proofs. 3 typical proofs required are:
- Bank statement and/or cancelled checks
- Non-profit status proof from appropriate state governing body
- Statement of purpose
When you send them, they will only allow picture formats so you would need to do some combinations of the following.
For bank statements, most banks allow you to download PDF version of the monthly statement. You can then convert it to some sort of picture format using “File” -> “Export” -> “Image” and then choose any of the picture formats.
For non-profit status proof letters and statement of purpose, you can scan it and save it as a picture file.
PayPal then allows you to simply upload those picture files in the 3 categories. Just remember that when exporting a PDF file into picture files, it saves each PAGE as a picture file so be sure to include them all. Another limitation is the file size of each picture. I don’t think they can be bigger than 1 MB.
In addition to PayPal, Facebook also has a Cause application that is good for accepting small donation amounts (remember that Paypal has minimum of 30 cents transaction fee so if you do $1 donation drives or something similar, you lose at least 30%! Cause application also has similar proofing process like PayPal but once you are through and accept donations, they also have fees but at least you won’t lose as much if you are doing something like “Donate a dollar” drives.
Another huge incentive in using Facebook is in presence. One Day’s Wage has become huge since launching on Facebook and has now several hundred thousands of followers! In the end, one has to be creative. To help word across, Danny from OURS launched what he calls “Penny Campaign“. Since he does most of his work with the youth, he decided to challenge them to sign up sponsors who would give a penny for each peson that joined the Facebook Fan page. It’s a simple but effective at two fronts. One, it gives the kids a chance to really see the difference they can make. Since the launch about 10 days ago, more than 1400 people have joined! That means $14 per person that have signed onto the campaign, but more importantly, it gives visibility to the cause and brings the people in.
I know this wasn’t exactly well-laid out attack plan but I hope other non-profit groups will take advantage of all the help that is out there… Some day, maybe I will become a consultant of sorts on this… Oh wait, I am already one. 😀