Category: Highlights

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AI Highlights

How AI led me to Carla Bruni

Spotify Carla Bruni
DISCOVERY. I discovered Carla Bruni through Spotify’s recommendation engine.

It had to be Edith Piaf, Madeleine Peyroux, or Joan Baez. It could also have been Eva Cassidy, Janis Ian, Sarah Jarosz or Joni Mitchell. More likely, it was my listening to all these artists that led Spotify to recommend Carla Bruni to me earlier this month. I have been listening to her songs since.

Before Spotify, I don’t think I would have listened to Bruni. All I knew before she ended up in my Discover Weekly recommendation was that she was a model married to the former French prime minister Nicolas Sarkozy.

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AI Highlights Mobile

The case for chatbots

Chatbot

Are you open today? What’s the number of your Ayala branch? Answers to these questions are easy to program as chatbot routines. Instead, here I am, after more than an hour of calling and searching on mobile on my way to and now attending an event, and none the wiser as to whether any of Union Bank’s branches in Cebu are open today and until what time.

Nobody answers the phones of the different branches I called (may be an indicator) and the branch listing on the site is a non-responsive table and text is garbled. I went to the Facebook page to send a message but saw the indicator “typically replies within the day.”

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Highlights Journalism

News: from medium to platform

Gone mobile
ATTENTION HOG. Mobile devices have become the primary screens of people, studies have shown.

For the first time ever, US consumers spent more time on applications than watching TV, according to Flurry Analytics, a mobile analytics company owned by Yahoo.

“After putting the desktop web in their rear view mirror, apps now reign supreme as the top media channel in the United States, even without the help of the mobile browser,” said Simon Khalaf, Flurry senior vice president for Product & Engineering, Publisher Products.

Writing “The cable industry faces the perfect storm: apps, app stores and apple,” in the company’s blog last Sept. 10, Khalaf said “fears surrounding the long-term prospects of the cable industry were well warranted.” 

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Highlights WebTech

Auto-update convenience: WordPress upgrades itself to fix critical vulnerability

WordPress updates
AUTOMATIC UPDATES. The email notification I got last night that the WordPress running one of my sites has automatically updated to the latest security release – without any trigger or interventions from me.

After yesterday’s upgrading of key WordPress plugins to fix a cross site scripting vulnerability, the WordPress team released version 4.1.2, which it described as a critical security release.

“WordPress versions 4.1.1 and earlier are affected by a critical cross-site scripting vulnerability, which could enable anonymous users to compromise a site,” the WordPress team said in a blog post announcing the release. The release also fixed 3 other security issues including an SQL injection vulnerability in some plugins.

I got the notification of the new release at past midnight. Years back, that would have meant that I’d need to stay up very late, download the latest release, upload the files to the server and perform the upgrade for each of the site I’m running.

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Highlights WebTech

WordPress security alert: vulnerability in multiple plugins; time to update

WordPress InfiniteWP
MUST-INSTALL TOOL. InfiniteWP allows you to manage multiple WordPress sites without having to log into each one of them.

Do you use WordPress to run your site or blog? You better head off to your dashboard to check for plugin updates. Now.

A cross site scripting vulnerability has been spotted in several WordPress plugins and themes, including popular ones like Jetpack, WordPress SEO, Google Analytics, All in one SEO, Gravity Forms, among others.

“The vulnerability Sucuri discovered would allow an attacker to send a WordPress user with administrative rights a link which could execute malicious JavaScript,” Jetpack said in a blog post announcing an update to its plugin. 

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DigitalNomad Highlights

#DigitalNomad

Alegria beach
WORK ON THE BEACH. This spot in Alegria has strong Smart mobile Internet signal, which allowed me to sneak in some work while out on the beach.

WHILE testing Smart’s deployment of its high-speed packet access (HSPA) network in Siquijor in 2009, it occurred to me that with the connectivity, you could actually relocate there and run your business or work from its beautiful white sand beaches.

Six years later, connectivity and technology have improved exponentially. Today, HSPA is being supplanted by the higher speed LTE or long-term evolution. More and more services are now in the “cloud,” which lends well to remote work. Equipment has also improved, with mobile devices becoming more powerful. Businesses have also started to become more open to remote work or collaborating with remote workers. Financial services have become more widely available and mobile.

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Government Highlights

Facebook governor

Governor Salceda
PROMOTING ALBAY. Albay Governor Joey Salceda shows Smart Communications, Inc. senior manager for corporate communications and social innovation Nick Wilwayco his Facebook page. Salceda extensively uses Facebook to promote Albay. Also in the photo taken inside the Albay Provincial Tourism Cultural Affair Office are poet laureate Abdon Balde Jr. and tourism officer Dorothy Colle.

AS SOON as Albay Gov. Joey Salceda wakes up in the morning, he greets his constituents on Facebook (“Good morning, Albay”) and cycles through the towns and component cities with a slew of hashtags promoting the province.

After the morning greeting, Salceda shares a “tigsik,” a short poem in Bikol, written by the province’s poet laureate Abdon Balde, Jr. The Palanca awardee posts the tigsik as early as 3 or 4 a.m. It covers anything Albay, from its beautiful vistas to its culinary wonders and cultural heritage.

Salceda will then post updates on the weather: key information for a province ravaged by typhoons and occasionally threatened by an eruption of Mayon Volcano.

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Highlights Open source

A different Microsoft

Don't count Microsoft out just yet - the tech behemoth is reinventing itself. (Creative Commons Photo: Nils Geylen)

ABOUT two years back, someone reached out to me because of our digital tourism initiative. He introduced himself as the open source software specialist of Microsoft Philippines. I choked on my midnight coffee. Until recently, one does not find the phrase open source in the same sentence as Microsoft, unless in opposition.

Among the many things former Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer is known for was his statement on the open source license under which Linux is being developed.

“Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches,” Ballmer was quoted as saying in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times. “The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source.”

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Android Highlights Mobile Review

REVIEW: Asus Zenfone 5 Lite: big-screen smartphone for the budget-conscious

Asus ZenUI. The Zenfone 5 Lite comes with the Asus ZenUI, the company's custom skin for Android.

BUILDING on the success of Zenfone 5, Asus recently released a cheaper version of the handset in time for end-of-the-year upgrading – the Asus Zenfone 5 Lite.

The Zenfone 5 Lite has a dual core Intel Atom 1.2 Ghz processor with 1GB RAM and an 8GB internal memory that is expandable via microSD up to 64GB. The phone comes with a 5-inch qHD display of 960×540. It has an eight-megapixel rear camera with auto focus and LED flash. It comes with a .3-megapixel selfie or front camera.

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Android Highlights Mobile Review

REVIEW: Starmobile UP Mini, UP Lite: good phones on a budget

The UP Mini (top) and UP Lite.
The UP Mini (top) and UP Lite.

Except for their prices, the Starmobile UP Mini and UP Lite don’t come off as cheap. Their build quality is excellent and the phones are very responsive.

Starmobile's UP Mini and UP Lite.
Starmobile’s UP Mini and UP Lite.

I passed the UP Mini around and asked friends and colleagues to feel its finish, check out the device’s responsiveness and guess its price: P15,000 said one, P13,000 said another. The lowest guess was P5,000 with most saying it’s price was higher than P8,000.

The UP Mini actually sells for P3,690 and what a device for such a price. It has a 1.3GHz quad core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU with Android 4.4, a 4GB built-in storage expandable via micro SD, 8MP rear camera with Backside Illumination (BSI) and 1080P at 30FPS video capture. The device is dual SIM with dual 3G standby.

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