Talkin' Tech [re-plugged]

Visit my new blog eBookster.  There, I will discuss eBooks in general but I will also write about other subjects that is related to eBooks.

What could be better than this?

While driving this afternoon, I was tuned to an AM radio station (DZMM to be exact) when the radio commentator (Vic Lima?) talked about an Egyptian woman who was buried alive together with her children by her own husband simply because the wife was reading the bible.  According to the radio commentator, the woman died but days after the “burial”, the kids were dug up alive – and that a “man in white with wounds on his hands” had fed them all throughout their ordeal.  Right then and there I was thinking “bullcrap!”.  But given that the the radio station I was listening to is part of one of the largest TV/Radio/Print company in the Philippines, I still gave it the benefit of the doubt.

Now, their TV station is almost done with their primetime newscast, there is no mention of anyone being buried alive in Egypt nor in any country for that matter.  A quick Google (my best friend online) with the keyword “egyptian woman buried alive” yielded me this result.

In short, the long story I heard in the radio is simply that: BULLCRAP!

In a span of a little more than a week, I received a lot of SMS SPAM from one particularly annoying company and to top it off, I just received an SMS-based scam!  Here’s the latest SMS SPAM I received:

From: +639152037070

Need cash fast? For employees, self-employed and professionals. Borrow 30K to 1M! NO Collateral, NO co-maker, NO pretermination charges! For the requirements, pls text bak or email chinatrust.loan@gmail.com. Apply via fax or email. 2-5 days processing. http://chinatrust.sulit.com.ph - CLAIRE

Here’s another SPAM:

From: +639152780189

Good day! This is to inform you that you need to claim and activate ur REWARDS AND PRIVILEGES at Prudential Market Resource Corporation – Rada branch, makati city ASAP. This is in line with our Thanksgiving program, of which, you are chosen to receive a: 1. FREE scholarship voucher fr0m Datamex Institure of Computer Technology 2. FREE protection policy 3. A minimun of 5 RAFFLE COUPONS for a P50,000 CASH RAFFLE PROMO. For m0re details and for ur claiming code which you will need upon claiming, pls call today at 8935642, 8944388, 8942416, 8403968, 8934142 and look for Ms Ethel Sumaylo. Thank u! (pls disregard if n0t interested)

and finally a low-life, scum-sucking scammer sends this:

From: +639278531195

by SMSCaster.com:>hon d2 ka mag reply load mo ako 900pesos

My SMS inbox had been relatively clean for the past 5 months or so and these SMS only started to come in after I gave my cellphone number to a certain credit card company…  I’ll do a little sleuthing and will report back what I dig up.  In the meantime BEWARE!

It’s the buzzword that’s been going around since… well… a long time now.  “Cloud Computing” has had some sort of a revival with the Apple iPhone.  I for one has been unknowingly doing this thing for a long time now.  I’ve been doing some articles and submitting them using Google Docs, I’ve been storing pictures and videos through Flickr, Multiply, Picasa and other social networking sites. My bookmarks are stored at Google Bookmarks and now I’m dabbling with Microsoft’s Office Live service.

These things had been a virtual impossibility a few years ago because the bandwidth required to do cloud computing is a bit hard to come by.  But now, I realized that at least half of what I do on the computer, I do in the “cloud”.

Cloud computing is a godsend for netbook users (like me).  By providing software as a service (SAAS), cloud computing has somehow made a netbook with limited storage to still become useful.  My netbook, an Asus Eee PC 701 with a 4GB of storage is quite usable despite that “handicap” because I can still do word processing using Google Docs, I can still store images online, even store large files through online backup services.