Loopt!

This is sooo cool. I can't wait 'til it comes out next month but I heard they'll release iPhone 2.0 firmware before iPhone 3G. Best of all, Loopt is FREE in App Store!!!

Mid-monthly update

Fitness
All I do is work, work and WORK! I don't have time to go to the gym anymore and I havn't been to my kickbox cardio class for almost a month now. I just get sooo lazy everytime I get home.. I cant even cook.. I just sit at the couch and watch TV. I think I gained a lot of weight coz we always order to go.. but they say that I lose some. Strange.. but I feel restless, overworked and stressed out.

Solution: Wii Fit.. Yup! We just pre-ordered it and we'll pick it up on May 21. Actually, at first I dont wanna get it coz it's just a game and it's so expensive. But when I found out that Best Buy and Walmart just run out stock, and it's selling in eBay for twice its price, I was kinda challenged to look for one. Darwin read from a tech forum that Blockbuster is still pre-selling it, so we went and bought two. We'll sell the other one on eBay =P



Dining out
We missed our weekly-scheduled date night last Friday because Lakers was playing against Utah Jazz for the playoffs. Both of us are Lakers fan, we already have a flag attached to our car window and we don't miss any games. If we're out of town, we Tivo it and watch it via Slingbox. Anyways, the series is tied at 2-2 and we're praying that we'll win this Wednesday.

Solution: Date night will be changed to Thursday temporarily. I'm thinking of going to The Americana in Glendale which just opened a couple of weeks ago.



Recent Date nights:
April 25 - Pho Cafe (Vietnamese) - a lot of beautiful peeps, the look like actors trying to make it in Hollywood.. we're the only Asians there =P

May 2 - Indo Cafe (Indonesian) - I used to take National Blvd when I come home from school and didnt notice this resto. They are Zagat rated and Indo food tastes like Thai food.

Beef Rendang

Ayam Panggang


Parties
April 19 - Janetti celebrated her 23rd birthday last night and we had a blast!! We had dinner at Tokyo Delves then went to Minx to go clubbing.




The night before Janet's birthday, I worked from home for a project release that lasted for 4 hours (6-10pm). There's a lot of issues when we started integrating the first system and all project leads for each department are there. The release needs to be resumed the next day because the servers went down for maintenance. It's just so stressful that I thought I wont be able to make it to the party. I woke up at 7am, finalized all system testing and we're able to complete the release at 12nn. Whoo!

May 3 - We celebrated Cinco de Mayo a couple of days earlier. We had videoke, food, Rock Band, food, GTA 4, and more food!

May 10 - Homecoming for Chris! My cousin is finally back from Iraq. We missed him a lot!


with Chris
with AJ
with Char-Char and Haley


Tin's birthday is coming... something to look forward to this week.

Movies
Cloverfield, Dan in Real Life and The Great Debaters movie marathon. I was really touched by the last movie.. such a great movie. It's a must see!

I also saw Iron Man on May 5 at Arclight after Darwin's Toastmaster.. it's better than Transformers and Spider-man! You must wait for the after credits but I'm not gonna say anything about it coz I love y'all! (keepin it a mystery but I think most peeps know about this =P

We got the sweet seat (ie: best spot)

Tech News
iPhone 3G rumors are circulating all over podcasts, forums, etc. I had my iPhone for almost a year now and I love it! Web 2.0 apps is the best thing that ever happened to iPhone because of the free apps! I've got twitter, multiply, facebook, digg, wikipedia, etc that's customized for the iPhone browser. With the new iPhone SDK, more apps will be available.

More here:
http://darwin23.blogspot.com/2008/05/iphone-sold-out-3g-next.html

My answer: We'll see!

Random iPhone Pix (as I travel)

Updating my journal @ Third Street Promenade. I got this from my friend Abs

Election Season! I'm a democrat!

I love reading 'em! @ Barnes & Noble

Mac Book Air (MBA) @ Best Buy -It's soooo thin!

I reached my goal. 2miles in 32 minutes and burned 188 calories. wooh! (@ LA Fitness)

I (Heart) iPhone

The latest firmware 1.1.3 update is here! I've just updated mine. Sweet!

- Maps: New hybrid view, same as Google Maps. Satellite imagery and street mapping available on a single view.
- Maps: Location triangulation. Uses nearby WiFi access points and GSM towers (on the iPhone, anyway) to roughly guesstimate your current location.
- Web Clips: Web bookmarks can now be saved as home screen icons, including zoom and location information.
- Home screen: Icons on the home screen can now be rearranged (Enjoy the wiggling icons and the new links to webapps)
- Home screen: Up to 9 home screens can now be created and "flicked" between.
- SMS: A single text message can now be sent to multiple recipients; groups can be recalled for future use.
- iTunes: Movie rentals are now supported.
- iTunes: Support for lyrics.
- iTunes: Option to "manually manage" music and videos instead of synchronizing.
- Gmail IMAP is now officially supported.

iPhone update 1.1.1

I just had to do it! The only setback I had is that I will lose all my ringtones. But the updates will fix/add the following:

1) Louder speakerphone and receiver volume - love it!!
2) Wifi iTunes - I can now DL song straight to iPhone
3) Home Button double-click shortcut to phone favorites or music controls
4) Space bar double-tap shortcut to intelligently insert period and space
5) Mail attachments are viewable in portrait and landscape
6) Stocks and cities in Stocks and Weather can be re-ordered
7) Apple Bluetooth Headset battery status in the Status Bar
8) Support for TV Out
9) Preference to turn off EDGE/GPRS when roaming internationally
10) New Passcode lock time intervals
11) Adjustable alert volume
12) ability to play MP3 audio files attached to mail

Cool.

But I still want to forward SMS and the send-to-all feature on SMS. I hope they fix that too..



Lots of web 2.0 apps were added too such as multiply, beehive (I can chat through YM and AIM), Leaflets (flickr, del.icio.us, feeds), Mojits (online games), and a lot more!

iPhone ringtone

YEY! I have successfully uploaded ringtones to my iPhone and it was not that easy.. It took me 2 hours to do it =P I accidentally upgraded my iTunes to 7.4.1.2 last night and when I woke up at 4am. I tried to follow the steps on enabling the free ringtone, it keeps saying that the file is not compatible. After reading a few forums, I found out that it will only work with version 7.4. So I googled and came across to filehippo.com that archives old version of iTunes. Re-installed iTunes, converted my mp3 ringtone to AAC, renamed the file extension to m4r, synced my iPhone and there it is!!! I will never have boring ringtones on my iPhone =P

Thanks to Engadget !!!

Tech update

$100 credit to early iPhone users
You might have heard the news that Apple slashed the price of the iPhone last Wednesday from $599 to $399 after 69 days when they released it. A lot of iPhone users got really upset (including me) because the price markdown was drastic and really fast. The next day, Steve Jobs sent an open letter on their website saying that he'll give $100 store credit to all iPhone users. Better than nothing. Once we get the store credit, I'm planning to get the new iPod nano in red.




Movie cube
We saw this DVD rental vending machine on our way out to the grocery store. It only costs $1 to rent a dvd but you have to return it the next day or else it will incur $1 per day. For the sake of curiosity, we tried how it works. So first, you select a movie and most of it are the new ones, then pay through your credit card, then you'll get the dvd. We rented Black Snake Moan coz I already saw most of the movies on the list.



Dual screen
We do most of our training online through Interwise. I'm really bored when I took this picture. I have my laptop on so I can still work and read my email while on training. This is how my desk looks like =P I'd like to keep it as neat as possible.



Geek Squad
I went to Geek Squad at Best Buy to have my laptop checked. I already know what's wrong, the battery doesn't charge, but I'd like to make sure first before I buy anything. They did some troubleshooting and when the tech guy recharged my battery with a universal AC adapter, it didn't work. I got really worried coz the motherboard might be the one that's failing, so I went to Toshiba authorized service center the next day. They figured out that I only need to replace the AC adaptor. So I went to Fry's and Circuit City but it costs $75 for an AC adapter. I checked ebay and they only have it for $25. I bought it online =P But since it will take a week before I get it on eBay, I bought the one on Circuit City so I can use something over the weekend. Once I received my eBay order, I returned the one from Circuit City and got 100% refund.

New discovery

photo.jpg
Originally uploaded by mitzitomas

I got this web 2.0 apps for iphone yesterday while darwin is having his iphone checked by apple tech guy at the mall. I like it coz i can access my bookmarks in delicious and my flickr website that is customized for iphone. The look and feel is similar to the main menu of iphone. I hope they add more stuff like myspace.

Since we still dont have internet access at home, web surfing from iphone is the best alternative coz i can use the edge network without any cost. I'm blogging from my iPhone right now. Im loving it!

visit http://getleaflets.com/ from your iphone and you're good to go

Weekend shopping

Pix taken from iPhone

My iPhone experience

Pre-iPod launch, I told myself that I would rather wait for the 2nd gen iPhone instead of getting it right away because of 2 reasons: first, bugs and lots of 'em and second, it's too big for me and it looks soo heavy. On June 28, I saw this video from youtube about this tech guy's review on iPhone. It's all positive reviews except for a couple of things that are unecessary, like AT&T is the only one who offers it (we're on AT&T so we're good) and the battery isn't replaceable and you have to bring it over to Apple to fix it (this is not a really BIG problem). It sort of changed my mind a lil bit into buying one because of it's sleak feature and you'll get a phone + iPod with internet. How cool is that?

June 29 @ 7pm (Launch day), I came home from gym and Darwin told me to watch Attack of the Show and check out more iPhone reviews. It talks about anything techie and the host wants to get an iPhone too but he can't leave coz he has to do his job first. He's sooo funny when he begged for an iPhone from Steve Jobs. Nobody got any special treatment from Apple, even celebrities didn't get any free gifts from them. If you want it, you have to get it... =P Which I did!!! I'm 100% sure that I really REALLY like it. I asked Darwin to come with me and get an iPhone at Fashion Square mall. There was no line when we got there but we do not know if they have any in stock coz it's been 3 hours since they released it. They only have the 4GIGs left and it's Ok for me since 4gig is too much for a phone. So I got it for $499. I asked Darwin to get one too and I'll give it to him as a gift but he'd like to get the 8gig.. you know guys, they want the best out there... the bigger the better.. so we went to Santa Monica and they still have a lot in stock.. so we both have iPhones!

We got home around 11pm and we stayed up all night just to play around with our new toy. Here's my review:

1) LOVE the main menu screen. All you see are the things that you need like SMS, Calendar, Map, etc. On some phones, there's a lot of things cluttered that you dont really need and sometimes, they are confusing.

2) LOVE how you can view pictures by tilting the iPhone so you can have a larger view of it Also, it's cool how you can zoom in the photos just by sliding two of your fingers outwards. If you want to go to the next picture, just slide your finger left or right. Oh yeah, it's all touch screen.

3) LOVE the way you can search any business lets say.. Starbucks, which will show all listings near your area, how to get there and the option to call them and ask what time they close.

4) LOVE the traffic report. I've been wanting to have a this feature since I started driving here in LA. I take the freeway everyday and it helps to get an idea how heavy the traffic is so I can take an alternate route.

5) LOVE the way you browse the REAL internet using Safari. It's the way you see websites on Internet Explorer and not the distorted ones like WAP, etc. This is the main reason why I bought the iPhone coz I have limited internet access at work. Rigt after lunch, I accessed yahoo mail and friendster. Sweet!

6) LOVE the way you get alerts when you get NEW email. It's hooked to my yahoo mail.

7) LOVE the way you can listen to mp3 while doing anything like say, browsing the internet. It does multi-tasking.

8) More later.. I'm sure there's still more to discover.

LOVE IT!!! It has changed the way I use a phone. It has definitely stepped up the level on phone standards. I'll give it a year or two and this will become a standard phone for everyone like what Apple did with iPod as the mp3 player that everybody wants to have. =P

I had my 4th Gen iPod for 3 years now (it's an anniv gift from Darwin last 2004) and an upgrade to iPhone is worth the wait. Good job Apple.