Apps and Gadgets

The newest addition to the Asha line of Nokia was introduced recently - the Nokia Asha 501. This very small smartphone comes in different eye candy colors, is the first smartphone to be built on a brand new, developed from the ground up, Asha platform that is meant to give its users a whole new and fun mobile experience. The Asha 501 on the outside The first thing you notice is the Asha's size. It fits comfortably in the palm of a hand and weighs almost nothing (98 gms). Despite its small size, it sports a 3.0" QVGA TFT capacitive display with scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass. The Asha's colorful shells are interchangeable. This appeals to women like me who want to mix and match our phones to what we wear. And there are 6 colors to choose from - bright red, yellow, black, bright green, cyan and white (I fell for the bright red!). It comes with a 4GB memory card, upgradable to 32GB. The Asha's 3.2MP camera may not be that impressive in the world of smartpho...

Music lovers, heads up! Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart) just clinched the first-in-the-world ever deal with MCA Music (the world's number one music company) to offer MCA Music's over 3 million tracks from its global catalog exclusively to subscribers, both postpaid and prepaid, of Smart and its other mobile brands (Talk 'N Text and Sun Cellular). Through the Smart Music portal at www.smart.com.ph/music , downloads of original, licensed and full music tracks from the entire MCA Music global catalog are now possible. We get access to the widest offering of music tracks from international and local music artists and can download these into our computers or mobile phones for as low as  FIFTEEN PESOS PER TRACK ! This has got to be the lowest rate in the digital music market today. New releases will be slightly higher at PhP 20 per track but that is still roughly half only of what it would cost you on other online music stores. MCA Music's catalog spans eras and...

If you are like me, with at least 2 mobile phones and just as many telcos, you will want to check out Samsung's line of four (4) Smart Choice Series smartphones , all of which are dual sim . Not only can you now get your 2 mobile phone numbers into just one gadget but the price range is budget-friendly while still packing some pretty advanced features. At the most affordable end of the series is the Samsung Galaxy S Duos (priced at PhP 7,990). It runs on Android 4.1 Ice Cream Sandwich, has a built-in organizer, photo and video editor, and document viewer. It sports a 4.0" WVGA screen and runs on a 1 GHz single-core processor. A slot for a microSD card allows you to expand the phone's capacity up to 32GB. It sports a 5 MP rear camera and a VGA front camera. The battery is 1500 mAh. Galaxy S Duos, PhP 7,990

You'd think a Globe MySuperPlan could not get any better. It just did... The operative word, I think, in this newly launched best-ever MySuperPlan of Globe's is... CUSTOMIZATION. Now, subscribers can choose plans with plan values that are almost twice what they pay for. Each plan now comes with a corresponding 'peso value' (PV) based on the value of prepaid load. This PV can then be converted into a combination of call, text and/or surf services, free or discounted gadgets, and a monthly consumable amount for even more calls, texts and surfing. I went to www.globe.com.ph/postpaid to try it out. Here's a sample plan I designed for myself: Step #1: I clicked on the link "Create My Plan" to begin.

Much as I love the digicam I have, my beef with it can be summarized in 2 ways: one, it lacks the ability to immediately share my shots on my social network sites and two, the lens will always have a distance disadvantage which makes me unable to zoom in without compromising clarity. Recently, Samsung introduced the Samsung NX300 smart camera - a great solution to just such a dilemma for social media people like me. This is a DSLR camera in a digital camera body. With its WIFI connectivity as well as an NFC (near field communication) feature, sharing on social networking sites is as easy as Point-Shoot-Share . And like a DSLR, it has interchangeable lenses! Front view Side view Top view Interchangeable lenses

Smart postpaid subscribers have now been given even greater flexibility by the introduction of Flexibundles - a newly launched offer that allows subscribers to customize monthly plans and manage their usage and budget. All active postpaid plans of Smart can use Flexibundles (Smart All-in Plans, Unlimited Data Plans, iPhone Plans, Unli Postpaid, Plan 349, Freedom Plan, and the Family Circle Plans). The different promos, referred to as buckets can be subscribed to via an SMS syntax. There are buckets for unlimited call and SMS combos, tri-net or all-net buckets, and volume-based data plans. All in all there are over 20 bundles to choose from. Mind you, these are not  fixed at all. Every month, you can pick and choose, mix and match the buckets you need for the month. All you need to do to subscribe is to text the code of your Flexibundle bucket. If you're All-in, the buckets you choose are part of and charged within your consumable amount; for other plans, the buckets are cha...

Have you ever used Flickr to store photos before? I have. I began with the free version but when I maxed out the 200 photos it could show at any one time, I decided to buy Flickr Pro ($24.95) for 2 years. Flickr had a great photostream widget for blogs and I loved it. But somewhere along the way, I stopped using it. There was Facebook. But now, there is a huge reason to reactivate my Flickr account. You now get FREE one terabyte of storage! If you still have your old Flickr account, it works. I just logged on to my old one and immediately got a notice that I had 1 terabyte worth of storage. Wow! Of course, new sign-ups get the same storage too. And what is new? User interface - Flickr has an entirely new interface. The homepage shows you pictures recently uploaded by your contacts. For every contact, you see one photo enlarged with 4 other thumbnail photos on the lower left corner in case you want to browse more photos of that contact. You can now put a cover photo and a ...