Dolphy, 83

DOLPHY

1928-2012

Thanks for the gift of laughter. From Jack en Jill to John 'n Marsha to Home Along da Riles, you brought funny and familiar moments to many of us.  May you rest in peace.

Stache Labbit Plush Yellow and Purple

Look what Frank Kozik came up for Kidrobot this time! Two color variants of plush mustachioed labbits.  In yellow or purple, this cuddly labbits scream CUTE and I just want to get my hands around one of them.

Available in 7 and 14-inch sizes, these icons retail for US$17.95 and US$39.95 respectively, hopping on shelves at Kidrobot stores, kidrobot.com, and select retailers July 26.  I wish one of the local specialty toy stores bring them here soon.

Anyway, whether you are looking for some yellow sunshine or purple haze, these mustachioed and vibrant labbits are good clean fuzzball fun.  

(all images from kidrobot.com)

PH Finally Gets its iTunes Store

Apple announced this week the launch of iTunes in several Asian countries including the Philippines.  This is good news for us who have an iOS device or two as we now have access to songs, apps and movies that were previously unavailable to us.  These include music from local artists, of course.  Not only that, we can now also shop for books under the iBookstore.

It is only about time that we have our own iTunes Store.  Before this, I can only populate my iPod through ripping my CD.  The only way I can download music and books from iTunes is to ask my sister to get me an iTunes Music Store prepaid card or buy one from an online seller at a higher price.  Now, I can use my local credit card to gain access to all of the goods.

Moreover, Asia is one of the fastest growing markets for Apple products.  Since many of their gadgets now come sans optical drives, Apple users here have no option but to download iOS and Mac OSX software from iTunes or the Appstore.  

iTunes music store has been online since 2003 and after almost ten years, it's here.  Well, better late than never.  Welcome to the Philippines iTunes!

Severe Thunderstorms down Instagram, Pinterest

Thanks to Mother Nature two of my favorite  web sites went down today.

Severe thunderstorms in North Virginia caused an outage to the Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, which took down Instagram, Pinterest, Netflix and other cloud based sites.  

Although the sites have a local hub here in Asia, it appears that all services are still routed to North America. Hence, this problem. 

I tried loading some pictures on Instagram and either I waited for eternity for the site to come up or I just got pieces of it.  Netizens expressed their frustrations on Twitter and and the affected companies also took to social networking sites to send their messages that they're having some technical problems and were fixing it.  

It's not the first time that Amazon's cloud server was affected by outages due to weather. Many tech experts are beginning to worry that this may lead some industries to have second thoughts on embracing the cloud technology.

Micrsoft Unveils the Surface

Microsoft recently announced its own tablet called the Surface.  It is a 10-inch tablet that comes with a touch screen.  The Surface will come in two flavors - one with an ARM processor that will run on Windows RT, and the other powered by Intel's Ivy Bridge chip running on Windows 8.

Another difference between the two machines is their thickness and weight.  The Windows RT Surface comes in at 9.3 mm thin and weighs 676 grams.  The Windows 8 Pro version is a bit heftier at 13.5 mm and 903 grams.  Microsoft touts the casing as a product of a unique approach and calls it the VaporMg (pronounced as Vapor Mag) which resulted to the thinner form factor of both machines.  It also enabled the inclusion of a kickstand to its design.

And yes, it has a 3 mm touch cover that clicks in on the spine of the Surface.  Microsoft took a swipe at Apple by saying that the pressure sensitive technology on the touch cover allows a user to touch type faster than on an on-screen keyboard.  The user can also add a thin click on cover that will make typing more natural.

It's not even out in the market yet but there already those who give this new gadget the death sentence.  One of them is even a Microsoft partner: an Acer executive declared that the Surface will be a total flop.  Online analysts believe that this must have stemmed from the fact that the company will now directly compete with its hardware manufacturing partners.

We'll find out about that once the machine hits the market.  For now, Microsoft has not even announced when the Surface will, umm, surface in the market and at how much.

(all images from microsoft.com/surface)