Category: Highlights

Mobile app majority

comScore US media time — Share of digital media time in the US, according to comScore.

THIS year in the United States, majority of all digital media time is spent on mobile apps, Internet analytics company comScore said in its latest release, “The US Mobile App Report.”

The app majority milestone comes a year after comScore reported a “multi-platform majority,” when most American consumers started using both desktop and mobile devices. It was also around that same time last year that “mobile first surpassed desktop in terms of total digital media engagement,” comScore said.

This year, it’s all about mobile apps.

Transcribing interviews? You should try oTranscribe

Post author By Max Limpag
Post date August 20, 2014
No Comments on Transcribing interviews? You should try oTranscribe

oTranscribe Vince Loremia — Using oTranscribe to transcribe my interview with Tudlo and Batingaw founder Vince Loremia for my article “Vince Loremia shares startup lessons.”

As a journalist, I do a lot of transcribing of interviews. While I do scrawl notes, these are just to take down key points and summaries and not write what the subject is saying verbatim. It’s hard to keep up, especially with those who speak too fast.

When writing the draft, I’d arrange the key points of the story from memory, then consult my notes. After that, I’d listen to the audio recording of the interview to make sure I got the points, ideas and quotations right.

When I was still starting out as a reporter in 1996, I used a cassette tape recorder and a typewriter. I would rewind and forward the tape – usually just one pass because if you do it often, the tape would get tangled with the tape head – while writing key points of the interview by hand before hitting the keys to type the story.

Tags oTranscribe

Highlights Mobile

PH mobile Internet users growing fast: study

Post author By Max Limpag
Post date July 13, 2014
No Comments on PH mobile Internet users growing fast: study

Mobile Internet users in the Philippines are a “small but fast growing group of people,” according to a study by On Device Research conducted in June and released last week.

The research company surveyed 900 mobile Internet users in June for the report. All the respondents were Android users, according to a footnote in the report. That demographic likely had an impact on the findings. On Device uses mobile devices to conduct surveys.

Citing data from Tigercub Digital and Oxford Business Group, On Device Research said the Philippines has the lowest smartphone penetration in Southeast Asia at 15 percent. In contrast, Malaysia is at 80 percent, Thailand at 49 percent, Indonesia at 23 percent and Singapore at 87 percent.

Rapid growth

But the Philippines is expected to reach 50 percent smartphone penetration in 2015. The growth is rapid, with the Philippines increasing faster than Indonesia and Vietnam combined, the company said, citing the International Data Corp.

Tags On Device Research, Philippine Internet

Highlights productivity

On the road, in the cloud

Post author By Max Limpag
Post date June 8, 2014
No Comments on On the road, in the cloud

OFFICE VIEW. Mobile connectivity, modern technology and a slowly changing office culture will soon allow us to work from anywhere, including from this beach in Panglao Island, Bohol.

Picture yourself working on a bamboo table under the coconut trees on a beachfront in Bohol. Beside your laptop, imagine a scoop of Bohol Bee Farm avocado ice cream to refresh you as you finish a report due in three hours.

On this age of widespread mobile connectivity, this is increasingly becoming an option.

Many online freelancers, for example, make a living by working for clients from all over the world in fields ranging from design, writing, social media management and tech tasks from home or wherever they are, even on family vacations.

Increased productivity with remote work

Offices are also starting to allow remote work, with studies showing increased productivity in such a setup.

Tags Git, google docs, remote work

Highlights LifeHacks Personal

Day 1 of #48Days

Notes to an adventure. Looking forward to filling up these pages during my 48-day sabbatical from my day job.

Before you embark on an adventure, get a notebook, preferably one small enough to tuck into your back pocket. There is a sense of commitment in writing things down, almost like having a pact with one’s self.

I have several digital note-taking devices and services like Google Docs, Evernote and OneNote synced to the digital ether called the “cloud” and replicated on my phones, computers and laptop.

But digital, no matter how omnipresent and accessible, seems so fleeting, so deletable.

A recent study shows that people remember notes better if these are taken by hand rather than with digital tools.

Highlights Mobile

Think mobile

FACEBOOK PAPER. The social networking giant has more than a billion active mobile users monthly, according to its founder and CEO. (Photo from Facebook newsroom)

In announcing his company’s purchase of Oculus VR, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the social networking giant now has more than a billion active mobile users a month.

“Mobile is the platform of today, and now we’re also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow,” Zuckerberg said to explain the purchase of the virtual reality company.

That’s stunning numbers from a company excoriated in the past for not getting mobile. After their initial debacle with taking a hybrid HTML5 approach to mobile, Zuckerberg turned things around and had the company release native apps for the major mobile platforms.

Highlights Mobile

Mobile now

TOURISM GUIDE ON THE PHONE. There are a lot of things that you can do better and differently on mobile. Among them is guiding tourists. Photo above shows Sinulog Guide on a Windows Phone. The guide is part of the Digital Tourism program of InnoPub Media, a startup I co-founded.

MOBILE isn’t the future; it’s the present. That’s the gist of recently released Internet usage reports.

Last month, more Americans used smartphones and tablets than desktops or laptops to access the Internet, according to a study by analytics company comScore.

Also last month, Nielsen released its Digital Consumer Report that found, among many other things, that Americans in 2013 spent an average of 34 hours every month using apps or mobile web browsers on their phones as opposed to 27 hours using the Internet on personal computers.

Tags mobile-web

Highlights Startups

Looking ahead: 2014 in tech, startups

Post author By Max Limpag
Post date January 5, 2014
1 Comment on Looking ahead: 2014 in tech, startups

Cebu hackathon — CEBU HACKATHON. Cebu developers work on their projects during a hackathon at the Exist Tech Bar in IT Park to build projects to help the country deal with destruction wrought by super typhoon Yolanda. (Photo by Max Limpag)

Over the holidays, I’d often find our youngest kid, 10-year-old Lennon, hunched on the sofa watching YouTube episodes of a cartoon series on the phone. Once in a while I’d offer to download the episodes for him so he could watch it on TV. “Naah,” he’d say. Watching on the phone was enough for him.

Look around and you’ll see people, mostly the young, starting to use phones and tablets more and more for most anything – playing games, watching videos, listening to music, reading stuff and connecting through social networks.

Will 2014 be the year of the mobile shift – when more people use portable devices rather than desktops to access the Internet – in the Philippines? It has happened in many countries abroad. But are we there yet? I think momentum is building for the shift but 2014 may be a bit too soon. Give it a year or two.

The mobile revolution will be an exciting and disruptive time that will have profound implications across industries. It is this mobile shift and how we seize the opportunities that come with it that I look forward to the most this year.

Highlights Mobile

Mobile shift

TABLET ADOPTION. Photo above shows an LG GPad, a great Android device for its price range. Tablet adoption in the Philippines more than doubled from just 6% in 2012 to 14% in the first quarter of 2013.

There is a big chance you’re reading this on your phone. A bigger chance this year than in 2012, anyway.

A common pathway to this article would be from social networks like Facebook and Twitter, services that people are increasingly logging into through apps on their phones.

This year, an article in the BBC announced, is the year “we all went mobile.”

And it isn’t just about using small screen and portable devices, it’s about a state of mind, said the article written by business reporter Matthew Wall.

Tags LG Gpad

Highlights WebTech

Cebu developers harness tech to help in Yolanda rescue, relief efforts

Post author By Max Limpag
Post date November 13, 2013
No Comments on Cebu developers harness tech to help in Yolanda rescue, relief efforts

Cebu-based developers work on a website to centralize Super typhoon Yolanda damage and relief information.

THE day after super typhoon Yolanda battered Cebu, developer Albert Padin of Sym.ph went to their office on Escario St. to play games and work on some personal projects. Saturdays, Padin said, are days when their team does hackathons on projects that do not involve their day-to-day jobs.

While combing through news and social network updates, Padin read a call on geekli.st for developers to pitch in coding skills to build a system to help in relief efforts. Since he already had a team that was ready to build things, Padin said they decided to hold a hackathon to build a website to help in relief efforts.

They started the hackathon at 2 p.m. on Saturday with the goal of wrapping up by 5 p.m. They finished at 10 p.m. instead because they worked on 2 things: 1) a system that can help track the search for missing persons and 2) a site that can centralize relief and rescue information in the different areas ravaged by super typhoon Yolanda.

They later closed the person finder service and redirected people to the Google People Finder website. Padin said the Google system was better and the people running it had experience using it in previous disasters.

Tags Albert Padin, hackathon, Typhoon Yolanda