The Roboteknik i100 (Patent Pending) is the first commercially available, locally manufactured underwater inspection robot and was developed by Filipino engineers. To date, it is the most affordable UIR in Asia. The robot is equipped with a video camera and a data recording device that is capable of capturing hundreds of hours of video feeds, recorded or viewed live on its surface unit. You can check out their Youtube Video for a demo.

Last February 2008, they were awarded first place in the 2008 Aquatic Technology Competition by the Philippine Council for Aquatic and Marine Research and Development (PCAMRD) and the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).

Just last month, they conducted an inspection of the artificial coral reefs in Anilao, Batangas, and Rosario, Cavite, in partnership with Yes2life Foundation. Aside from this, the underwater inspection robot may be used in oil pipeline inspection and maintenance, underwater structure inspection, monitor the fish inside the fishpen and spot holes or breaks in the net surrounding the fishpen.

Exhibits

This week (July 7, to 11), they are currently having an exhibit in the ASEAN Science and Technology Week at World Trade Center. The will also participate in the NAST Scientific Mtg Exhibit at The Manila Hotel from July 9 to July 10, 2008. Next week, they’ll be at UP Los Banos, Laguna to participate in the LBSC S&T Exhibit from July 17 to July 18, 2008.

Check our Roboteknik.com for more information.

ümobile is the first ad-funded mobile network in Asia. The said mobile network will go live in June 2008. A launch party was held last Monday at Rockwell tent where other PTB bloggers such as Rain Contreras, Anton Diaz, Mike Abundo, and yours truly were present.

For the first 6 months of the service, each subscriber will receive a free P100 load for the first 6 months.

Services

Aside from being an ad-supported mobile network, it’s difference is that there is no option for postpaid subscription. Thus, everything will be prepaid.

• Voice Calls
• Video Calls
• SMS
• MMS
• IDD
• Mobile Internet
• and other value-added services

Where can I get the SIM card?

As of now, the mobile network is by invite. Those who have received invites may send an invitation to their family or friends. The SIM cards are free until August 2008 and it will be delivered right to your doorstep. In addition, ümobile will limit their subscriber reach to 10,000 additional subscribers per month.

Why are the rates low?

According to the press release:

ümobile partners with corporations who wish to advertise or create mobile-based campaigns for a particular brand. A portion of the revenues generated from a brand’s mobile marketing campaigns will be given back to the subscribers who then can purchase or make transactions for ümobile services or avail of a brand’s product offer such as freebies, discounts and other rewards.

Facility Sharing Agreement with Smart

They’ve entered into a facility sharing agreement with Smart so that subscribers may experience nationwide coverage on day 1.

Partnership with Fring

From the press release:

Balderrama added that part of delivering a better mobile experience is providing subscribers with mobile broadband access to the internet, the use of Mobile VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) through a partnership with Fring which will allow mobile to mobile calls via VoIP and PC to mobile and vice-versa, and live chat with Skype, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, SIP, Twitter, Yahoo! and AIM.

Phoenix screenshot

Aviary is a suite of rich internet applications targeted to all artists (graphic artists, layout artists, musicians, writers, directors and the like).

1. Phoenix (image editor)
2. Toucan (Color swatches and palettes creator)
3. Peacock (Computer algorithm-based pattern generator)
4. Raven (Vector editor)
5. Hummingbird (3D Modeller and skinner)
6. Myna (Audio editor)
7. Roc (Music generator)
8. Starling (Video editor)
9. Owl (Desktop publishing layout editor)
10. Penguin (Word processing software geared towards creative writers)
11. Pigeon (Painting simulator)
12. Tern (Terrain generator (minitool))
13. Horus (Font editor)
14. Woodpecker (Smart image resizer using seam carving (minitool))
15. Rookery (A free, unlimited distributed file system network that anyone can connect to and store data in. It also powers our file search engine.)
16. Hawk (Digital content marketplace)
17. Crane (Custom image product creator)
18. Eagle (A smart online application that can identify complex data about an image based on the pixel patterns (i.e. which specific camera an image originally came from))

Amongst the applications listed here, Phoenix (image editor) and Peacock (Computer algorithm-based pattern generator) may be used. Aviary is still in its beta stage. You may want to try out Aviary while it’s still free.

Here’s an interesting April Fool’s special from Google. Introducing, Google Romance. Make sure to take the tour and try creating your profile.

Another Google prank is in Google Docs. Go to docs.google.com. Create a new document. Then click, File > New Airplane. See for yourself while it’s there.

Lifehacker posted top 10 harmless geek pranks. My personal favorites from Lifehacker’s list would be:

• Blue screen of death prank
• Total confusion pack for Firefox
• Turn web pages upside down

This is one prank from Google Blogoscope. Go check out Larry Page’s room.

PC World has also its own top 10 april fool’s day joke websites. My favorites from their list is Pod Shave and of course, Facebook’s Live Poke.

Digg has an April Fool’s joke that was noticed by this guy. Instead of seeing zero (as the number of votes) after submitting a content, you’ll see mathematical symbols instead.

Any good April Fool’s tech joke you have seen lately?

Introducting, the all new Chikka. They now have a web-based interface where you could send free text and chat to Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, AIM and ICQ buddies aside from your Chikka buddies.

I just made a test where I sent an SMS to my mobile number. I immediately got the usual Chikka text if I want to block it or not. I also received the SMS instantly to my mobile number.

Chikka made the right move to make a web application. Also, you could save some space and memory usage since you would only need to use your browser.

If you still prefer to use the desktop version, you may download the Chikka messenger (available only for Windows OS).

Nina reported that someone stole her content which was not under Creative Commons License. In fact, Nina produced a screenshot of it. Guess what, it was also posted on the same website who copied some of her photos in Flickr.

Quoting Nina:

kasi kung human yan eh bakit naman siya mag post ng photo na katulad nung pinost ko?

Translation: If the post is really produced by a human being, why would he post a photo like that I’ve posted.

And I realized that it’s indeed a splog. The splogger could have used this framework or perhaps made a hack on the available plugins for WordPress and abused it.

The next time you went blog-hopping, you may want to check if it’s a splog or not. Lorelle has a post about spotting a splog.

Lenovo answered the MacBook Air with a ThinkPad X300. It may be not as thin as the MacBook Air but it is still lightweight (around 3.1 lbs ). It has really good features and a better price tag with the 64GB SSD which is around 2,500 USD to 2,800 USD than that of the MacBook Air with the 64GB SSD. I hope they would have an option for a different hard drive since SSD is expensive.

It has the following features that the MacBook Air does not have:

- 3 USB ports
- Built-in DVD drive
- ethernet connection
- removable battery

Optional add-ons are:

- 3G Modem
- GPS receiver

via [ Mossblog ]

Sprout is a browser-based tool where you could build Flash online. It has pre-built templates, and enables easy asset management. It is easy to use because of it’s drag-and-drop interface. The most interesting part about Sprout is its components. With Sprout, you could add your RSS feeds by simply dragging the RSS Feed control to your working area and by pasting the URL of your RSS feed. Here’s a sample of what I’ve done. I was also able to create a photo slideshow. Check out the sample here.

Another neat feature of this is that it allows you to quickly post to the following social media sites:

1. MySpace
2. Friendster
3. FaceBook
4. Orkut
5. Tagged
6. Blogger
7. Hi5
8. Live Spaces
9. Piczo
10. Freewebs
11. LiveJournal
12. BlackPlanet
13. myYearbook
14. WordPress
15. TypePad
16. Xanga
17. Multiply
18. iGoogle
19. Netvibes
20. Pageflakes

You may also copy and paste the code to your website.

Tongits is a new game that runs on Adobe Air and was developed by Rico Zuniga. Listed below are its features:

• Drag & Drop Interface. The game feels like the real thing with its intuitive drag & drop interface.
• Realistic And Challenging AI. The computers play like live human tongits players.
• Innovative Way of Organizing Cards. Just like in the real game, you are free to group and organize cards in any way you like. This significantly improves your planning and strategy.
• Betting Simulation. Betting enhances the realistic feel of the game. It adds excitement and suspense and gives the player a sense of accomplishment and progress.
• Game Saving. The game is automatically saved after each round to preserve the precious progress you have made.
  Statistics. Relevant game statistics such as number of wins and money won, are saved for each player.
• Clear Card Images. The cards were designed to be easy to read and identify. This helps you easily spot important cards that you might need to win the game.
• A Solid Trainer. If you are a professional Tongits player, the game can supplement your training. And with the high level AI, you won’t need human opponents to practice with.
• Continuous Development. The game is continuously being developed and improved to further enhance the player’s experience.

The game is not freeware though. But you could try it out. However, the demo version only allows you to run the game 10 times. In order for you to enjoy unlimited play, you need to pay 15 USD.

Profy (still in alpha release) is a new social blogging platform where it enables one to post a new blog entry (duh!), comment on an entry, subscribe to your friends’ feeds whether they are using Profy or not, add friends from the Profy blogosphere. It does not have categories but it has tags like blogger.com. What’s noticeable about this blogging platform is that it has similarity with Gmail’s user interface.

In your Dashboard, you will see your latest posts, latest comments, latest messages and latest items in the feeds that you are subscribed to. However, it would be nice to see a dedicated latest profy news so that users will get updated if there are new features. Also, it would be nice to have an image upload functionality. What I’m thinking is that they could allocate a storage for every user (just like wordpress.com) or limit the monthly uploads.

In the future, I’d expect more widgets to be added . I just hope that they will make the API available and enable users to submit widgets.

By the way, here’s what my profy blog looks like.