D2

Fire up your own BlackBerry smartphone with BB App World

id you know that there are two distinct cultural traditions of Dragons: the European and Chinese Dragon? Fire up your BlackBerry smartphone with BlackBerry App World to welcome the auspicious Dragon during this Chinese New Year! Download Chinese Zodiac to read about your fortune for 2012 and it might just boost your red packets! Oh no, a relative gave you a red packet in foreign currency? Use XE Currency to find out how much the red packet is really worth! Now that youre done with red packet collections, entertain yourself with Chinese Checkers or Mahjong to avoid conversation with the nosey aunt. Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Technews
Convert more than 180 currencies on-the-go with the XE Currency converter for your BlackBerry smartphone! With live up-to-the-minute rates, this currency calculator is simple, powerful, and best of all, FREE! XE Currency is free and can be downloaded from BlackBerry App World. Chinese Checkers Chinese checkers is a popular family board game that can be played by two to six people. The objective of the game is to place ones pieces in the corner opposite their starting position of a pitted hexagram by single moves or jumps over other pieces. Mahjong for PlayBook Mahjong is a classic Chinese tile game usually played by 4 players. This is the solitaire version where you try to match pairs of unblocked tiles while you attempt to clear the board. Mahjong has several different tiles sets to choose from, including celtic, hieroglyphics, flags and playing cards. This app is free and can be downloaded from BlackBerry App World. AS VEGAS -- Every year the camera manufacturers set up huge booths at C.E.S., where they display an impressive array of tiny, powerful cameras. And every year this exercise seems a bit more quaint. Thats because the camera industry is still very much about better picture quality - megapixels and zoom lenses - even though the story these days is not just what the image looks like, but what you do with it after you take it. People want to share those pictures instantly on Facebook or Instagram, or through e-mail. And they can do that with the camera in their smartphone. Some point-and-shoot cameras now do come with some sort of wireless connectivity. At the show this year, Kodak, for example, unveiled digital and video cameras that allow you to send pictures instantly and post them on social networks. But Polaroid is taking a somewhat different tack. At its booth it is showing off the Polaroid SC1630 Smart Camera, a device that tries to blur the lines between a point-andshoot camera and a smartphone. The Smart Camera hews closely to the basic tenets of phone design: Its a black rectangle controlled by a touch screen, designed to slide into a pocket. It has a heftier lens than most smartphone cameras, with an optical zoom, And with 16 megapixels, it is also more powerful. This makes sense; otherwise why would

EVERY MONDAY January 23, 2012

A camera phone, sans phone

Chinese Zodiac Chinese Zodiac is a Chinese astrology and horoscope application that converts your western birth date to Chinese lunar birth date and finds out your animal sign, giving you a detailed report that includes your health, career, relationships and lucky numbers! XE Currency

anyone buy it? But Polaroids camera is designed to mimic a smartphone more than distinguish itself from one. The device is powered by the Android operating system for phones, allowing it to run apps. The camera can connect to a 3G network, in addition to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Polaroid is still working on securing partner-

ships with wireless carriers. The company declined to discuss prices, and said only that the camera would be out this year. Once it is, users will be able to snap pictures, edit them with apps and share them on social networks or over e-mail, just as they can with their smartphones. But you cant use it to make a phone call. (NYT)

By Len Amadora

IT makes sense
ong weekends hardly come by; that is why for the first long weekend of this year, whether you chose to go out of town or just stayed home, one thing was for sure; we all made the most out of it. For hubby and I, catching up on old movies and TV series were part of the agenda. My kids on the other hand, finished up games and started on new ones on their playstation. Sound so ordinary? Not quite because all these activities were taken to a whole new level with the aide of the InFocus IN112 Projector. Of course, we all know how well projectors work on board meetings, presentations and seminars. But how do you think itll fair as part of a home theater system? The truth is, we werent really expecting much on incorporating a projector in our simple theater system. Trying to reproduce a theater-like experience and mood in the comfort of ones home is a shot in the dark, but surprisingly with only a simple 5.1 home theater system, a Playstation 3 game console, a WD TV Live Hub and the InFocus IN112 projector, we were able to pull it off. Consider features of a high quality projector such as being able to transmit high quality images and true-to-life colors with DLP technology and InFocus Brilliant Color implementation, 3000:1 contrast ratio, high resolution display of SVGA (800 x 600), 2700 lumens and 3D ready, all these are in InFocus IN112 pro-

Theater experience

Apple-Android love-hate relationship

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak proclaims his praises on Android, and wishes Apple could do what Android can do in features such as voice command and built-in navigation. This, however, does not mean he has turned his back on Apple. Woz says he still thinks Apples iPhone is the best overall smartphone, but he says there are ways in which Android has leapt ahead of Apple, reports Dan Lyons at www.thedailybeast.com. "I used to ask Siri, 'What are the five biggest lakes in California?' and it would come back with the answer. Now it just misses. It gives me real estate listings. I used to ask, 'What are the prime numbers greater than 87?' and it would answer. Now instead of getting prime numbers, I get listings for prime rib, or prime real estate," said Wozniak. In some ways, Wozniak and I have similar thoughts and opinions on Apple and Android. While Jobs Apple is easier to use, Android was able to build more capabilities and features due to its availability to many different hardware makers. Maybe we can call it selfish, but Apple has always created a wall that blocks other manufacturers or developers from gatecrashing into its hardware. Similar to the MicrosoftApple competition in the past where Microsoft clearly won over Mac, Wozniak notes that Apple is using the same playbook, tying its software tightly to its own hardware. And with Android, Apple is facing the same kind of foe that it once faced in Windows. He even added that Apple is up against a strong competitor, which might be a threat as theres not as big a difference between iOS and Android as there was between Mac and Windows. For consumers and mobile users, the perspective is placed on the quantity and variety of applications available, which is a huge number as compared to Android. However, when we put the light onto the application developers, most of them would comment that Apples bureaucratic approval process slows them down in one way or another. On the contrary, Android developers get to create and release the programs in a shorter time. Once they do, feedback would come in and the live environment experience would tell them to immediately start working on the apps improvements, tweaks, and updates. This might hugely be the reason why Androids applications arequickly growing in numberin such a short span of time. Unlike Steve Jobs who hated Android operating system so much that he even vowed to destroy it until his last breath, I admire Steve Wozniak for having an open mind to use and give commendations to his first loves competitor. Strange as it may be that the major leader of the Mac followers has given adoration to Android, but its good for Apple to realize that Android can be a reason of their downfall, especially that the observations came from their own camps patron saint. I do hope that Apple fans will be Wozniaks who wont always dismiss other operating systems and hardware as copycats or dying technologies. At the end of it all, we should get the phone and use the operating system that works for us not what works for the majority of people around us. (Glenn Richmond Ong)

jector, giving you more than what you actually paid for. We were able to install and incorporate InFocus to other devices that comprised our so-called home theater system without a sweat. It is lightweight and slim and its lamp actually lasts longer than its predecessor. It has an impressive lamp life of up to 6,000 hours when in Eco mode using less energy especially on low-light situations. Our room had a beige wall and even at that, InFocus transmitted clear and bright images. There were no instances of dimming. What was so surprising was that, it was able withstand long hours of use. Imagine after hours of marathon watching Tudors Season 1, my kids immediately followed suit and played games on the Playstation and still InFocus was performing well, giving out sharp, vivid, clear and bright images still despite long hours of use. What was written on its docu-

mentation included in the box was right after all: rated for 24/7 nonstop operation. Good to know, for my husband and I have 5 more seasons of catching up. Also, InFocus IN112 is easy to maintain. Besides having a long lamp life, this projector has no filters therefore there will be no need to buy nor replace one. For my family, even though we opted for a cheaper thrill and chose to stay home to watch movies and play games, we all did manage to have a good time. It was actually a stress-free weekend, having the best seats, being unconscious of time and not actually trying to catch up with a movie sched. Best of all, movies were all enjoyed by the whole family for free many times over. Now, that was a weekend well spent.

John Allyza Marie

Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012

ith the start of the new year, a majority of us are motivated to lose those extra pounds we gained over the holidays. So instead of sitting on that couch and watching TV, try working out with Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012. I, for one, cannot begin to describe how tired I was after a simple 15-minute workout. For a little background, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved was first launched in November 2011, and was the #1 fitness game on Kinect. This year, with the consumers feed-

back in mind, the game now returns with enhanced gameplay and more interactive workouts. Before starting, Kinect scans your body to store your biometric data. From there, you have the option to fill in your fitness goals. After that, feel free to explore the workouts available. Since your trainer will instruct you on the basic controls, it will be easy for you to navigate through the workouts. You can jog through virtual worlds, jump rope, practice your yoga and tai chi, do soccer training, go on a boot camp, crunch those

abs, and even go hip hop dancing with your trainer and a lot more. Almost every workout is available here. Who ever said you needed a gym? At this day and age, maybe all you need is your will. Happy sweating!