[Infographics] How the Internet Works

I had a longer entry in mind for today about some of the games that I've been playing or even the various Transformers that I have around the house, but work has been getting in the way of things.

So instead, I'm leaving you with a rather informative (and animated) infographic from the folks at Open-Site.org regarding the nature of the internet. And while we all use the web for various things pretty much every day, most of us don't exactly understand the principles behind it and why it works the way it does.

So this should come in handy so you don't go making some gaffe about the internet being a "series of tubes" or something. Enjoy.

[Amazon] The Kindle Experience on Chrome

As both a Kindle user and a major Google fan, I'm increasingly happy with the many different ways one can enjoy one's collection of Kindle ebooks with the aid of the Google Chrome browser. And the current gloomy weather in the Philippines has me thinking about ways to help fellow bibliophiles make the most of Kindle on Chrome.

Some of my Kindle books

The long-standing option for Kindle users is the Kindle Cloud Reader. As a web service alone, it allows you to read your Kindle ebooks as long as you are connected to the internet, which is cool in itself. Your progress in this app will sync with your Amazon account so when you move on over to your acutal Kindle device or any other Kindle Reader App you'll be able to pick up your reading right where you stopped on the cloud reader.

And sure, this is just a website and you'd think Chrome has nothing to add to the experience, but there you're wrong! If you install the full cloud reader app via the Chrome Web Store, then you'll also be able to save a local copy of some of your books to your computer so that you can still access your titles in case you lose your internet connection. I've found this to be a great option when you're using a computer that is either (1) not yours or (2) one that you do not have administrative rights for in order to install the full reader apps. thus you can read your books easily even when you leave your Kindle at home (or aren't allowed to bring it out at the office, if you get what I mean).

Send to Kindle Extension Overview

And just today, the Kindle Daily Post announced that there's now the Send to Kindle extension for Chrome! This was a feature added to Kindle for PC sometime back and now it works for anyone who uses Google Chrome. This means that you can send news articles, blog posts or even just snippets of text to your Kindle with this handy extension.

Naturally it comes with a handy keyboard extension so that it's just a matter of triggering that shortcut to send the page to your Kindle for further reading when you have more time to enjoy the article or blog entry when you have more time. You can configure which Kindle devices or apps it will send the page to by default and you can also choose to save such snippets to your Amazon account - thus making it as an optional download for all other Kindle devices and apps associated with your account! Teh coolness!

So yeah, I'm know I'm a walking Kindle advertisement at times, but I love it so much it has made me quite the advocate (and proudly so!) Hope this helps you fellow Kindle geeks make the most of your Kindles!

[Gaming] Geek Trivia via Did You Know Gaming?

There's a new gamer geek trivia site called Did You Know Gaming? that features a wide variety of interesting tidbits about various games regardless of platform. I mean seriously, that have stuff for console games, PC games and even an Angry Birds factoid.

The Tumblr site is still relatively new (4 pages) but has been already making the rounds of various geek blogs (which is how I found out about it).

To get more of a taste for what the site covers, check out a few more interesting pieces of trivia after the cut...

[The Web] Don't Feed The Trolls!

Internet trolls have been around ever since the first BBS platforms came into being. While we often praise the benefits of how much more connected everyone is to one another through chat, email and all that good stuff, this has also led to us being increasingly exposed to the diverse opinions of others. Through sheer statistics, that means a lot of potentially good and bad conversation right there.

Before trolling was something that was primarily limited to web forums, news groups and later email groups. But with the rise of social media and the domination of the likes of Facebook and Twitter, exposure to internet trolls is now higher than ever. And worse, we're no longer dealing with the traditional trolls that would hind behind some persona or forum handle - sometimes it's your own social media contacts who seem to be living under a bridge - and they've certainly developed a taste for goats.

Even of the best of us will eventually lose their cool to a troll at one point in time or another. It can't be helped - they live for this sort of thing and do their best to target the most emotionally heated subjects in order to get a rise out of you.

There's a very fine line between healthy intellectual discussions and mud-slinging trolling sessions. And in the world of social media, everyone stands the risk of falling into troll tendencies as well.

[Web] The Continued Relevance of Forums

In the very early days, a lot of online interaction in the early days of the internet was limited to the BBS sphere - those very early bulletin boards that allowed people around the world to discuss particular topics, make new connections and basically tap the power of the proto social web to come to new insights and conclusions. Over the years our online interactions have shifted to email, instant messaging and now social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. But at its core, it's still the same principle of communication and coordination - someone leaves a message to be read by others and then this leaves the option open for comments.




And despite all these innovations in terms of new ways of communicating with others, the web forum or bulletin board continues to remains a very vibrant and active means of conversation for many people (this geek included). Even in the local sphere, sites like PinoyExchange continue to thrive as a web community where people can celebrate things that they love with fellow fans, talk about current issues or just try to find answers to their questions.

Along similar lines, forums remain highly relevant in technical support circles where people continually resort to such sites to document errors they're encountering in the hopes of someone having the answer to their questions. I've relied on a tech forum for such answers more than once mainly because it works - who needs tech support hotlines when the wealth of intelligence of the social web is always at your disposal, right? If you're diligent enough, you're bound to find the answers.




Recently I joined PinoyG4M given a friend of mine helps admin the board and I actually attended a party organized by the group. It's interesting to note that the story behind this particular forum is related to the shift of the original Guys4Men site to PlanetRomeo and thus the people who used to be active on those forums found a new refuge in this site. While the new PlanetRomeo site continues to serve the purpose of the original site, the need for these kinds of interactions on the forums still needed to be fulfilled. The site is certainly fun in its own way and I'm sure I'll get around to discussing the site at length, perhaps in a Technicolor Musings post some time in the future.

The forum continues to thrive and I doubt it will die out anytime soon. As long as people want to talk, share ideas and find answers to questions together, then forums will continue to exist. Even with sites like Facebook trying to adopt the forum-style concept within their own Groups function, the need for the standalone forum will remain.

So what are your favorite forums? Why do you continue to participate? When do you think a forum holds the answers that you need versus the popular social media sites? Leave your insights in the comments!

[Blogosphere] Revisiting The Coconuter

More than four years ago I wrote a piece on the Coconuter, which is sort of a travel blog written by Filipino-American David Poarch. At the time his goal of finding his proverbial "golden coconut" seemed nicely idealistic and reminded me a lot about other internet successes such as The Million Dollar Homepage and One Red Paperclip.




I recently received an email from him - yes, I actually wrote to him back then - and it was a quick note about him being back in the country and all. I wasn't expecting it and thus I ended revisiting his site to see what's what.

This whole things has me wondering if I should try to get back in the habit of featuring and reviewing blogs again. I used to do a lot of them while writing for Pinoy Gay Blogs back in the day. It was an interesting experience and I got to meet a couple of new blogging friends although in hindsight I'm probably only really in touch with just one of them.

[Social Networking] Why Giving Up Facebook Games Is A Good Idea

Image via Wikipedia

When privacy concerns over Facebook started to pick up after the OpenGraph annoucenment in April, I was one of those geeks out there who was a bit worried about how Facebook was doing business. Sure, I know I'm savvy enough to set the myriad privacy settings in Facebook to a level of sharing that I'm comfortable with, but I know not all my contacts are. Given the chances that access to them leads to access to me and the plain and simple fact that Facebook was offering our information to marketers around the world at our expense, I really needed to think about what I was doing.

While I didn't join the others on Quit Facebook Day last May 31, I have significantly changed the way I interact with the service. The main reason I remain on the site is the plain and simple fact that as a networking tool, it's hard to match. This is only because I have too many contacts (and not necessarily "friends") on Facebook related to my role as alumni representative for my high school class. So yeah, that sort of left me tired to the service, along with a few far-flung friends who didn't appear to be ready to jump on over to Diaspora or something.

So after the big announcement about simplified privacy controls, I felt a little better but still remained unconvinced that this would lead to everyone being smarter about their Facebook usage. Case in point, a friend of mine recently received an invite from a person who was not allowing anyone outside his network to add him. How weird is that, right? The challenges go on.

But beyond my decision to stay on Facebook, strip my profile of all likes and interests, cull my friends list of acquaintances that I didn't trust my data with and surf the site only using Google Chrome's Incognito Mode, I also made the hard decisions of quitting all my Facebook games.

It was the best decision of my social networking life.

[Social Networking] Is There A Market For A Local Geek Dating Site?

Image via Wikipedia

I have to admit that I consider myself a pretty lucky geek since I found another geek to share my life with. It's hard enough to find someone to share your life with period, what more a fellow geek, right?

Given that fact, a lot of my geeky friends of the queer persuasion tend to look to me for help in terms of finding a geek of their own. I have no idea why this is so - it's not like I am continually in locations when other gay geeks introduce themselves to me and thus since I'm no longer available, I'm free to pass them along to friends. But I'm as socially inept as I used to be and I know that finding a geek who loves movies as much as I do, knows how to play NetRunner, appreciates shallow comedies and runs role-playing games is pretty rare indeed.

So how do I help my friends now? I don't claim to be a very good matchmaker (not that I've tried for that matter) and I'm a bit scared to try given these are my actual geek friends that I want to be able to continually chat with to talk about the latest Transformers toy that I've acquired or why Pi Day is a great geek holiday. No, I don't want to ruin that but I do want to be a good friend.

What to do, right?

[Google] AdWords, AdSense and Analytics

Image by suzukik via Flickr

My more die hard Google loving readers will probably not need this entry. For the rest of you who get AdWords, AdSense and Analytics confused, this post may be for you. I'm not promising anything spectacular - I just wanted to take the time today to discuss what each one is.

Yeah, I guess I'm in a geeky training mode today. It is my job after all.

I will warn you - this entry is going to be boring, but highly informative. Honest.

[ImprovEverywhere] Grocery Store Musical

Thursdays are all about television and theater here at the Geeky Guide and it looks like we have yet another alternative musical on our hands!

Food Court Musical remains to be one of my favorite ImprovEverywhere stunts. Let's face it - I'm a sucker for musical theater in all its forms! I figured they'd never try to repeat a stunt like that, but I'm glad that I was wrong.

Looks like those crazy kooks at ImprovEverywhere decided to give the surprise musical another go, but this time they used a grocery store as their stage. The song makes a lot less sense than Food Court Musical did, but it's still pretty fun for what it's worth!


Grocery Store Musical

[Viral Video Chart] LIPDUB - I Gotta Feeling (Comm-UQAM 2009)

Ever since I first saw Feist's "1,2,3,4", I've learned to become rather impressed with the film making skill that goes into single-shot videos. Seriously, it takes a lot of coordination and planning to pull these kinds of things off, whether or not you're actually resorting to CGI or anything like that.

And so I totally loved this video given (1) I like the song, (2) it was also taken in a single shot and (3) it's the fun kind of video that makes you think that you can do. I can so see this happening with my geek friends somehow representing all the different fandoms or something, hehehe.


#3 - LIPDUB - I Gotta Feeling (Comm-UQAM 2009)

[Games] Zuma's Revenge

When Flash-based games get popular enough, they actually warrant sequels whether this is just for the free version online or for the paid versions one can download. And thus many gaming franchises have been born online and now we are all familiar with Bejeweled and Diner Dash in all their incarnations.

Then you get those games that geeks like us love but then they never seem to pick up on them and return to add on to them. Or so we think, at least.

I always loved Zuma and once thought that the game couldn't get any better, and thus the reason nothing was ever added to it. The concept was simple - a frog rotates around a dais and shoots different colored balls in order to make patterns of at least 3 balls of one color. Sure, it's not that logical in a real-world sense, but it is fairly simple.

This is one of those times I'm happy I was proven wrong.

Zuma's Revenge is the long-awaited sequel of that classic arcade game. Yes, you're still a frog but this time there are new stage concepts, new game modes, new special shots and a whole lot of fun. They certainly found many ways to expand the gameplay in order to warrant a $20 price tag.



There are some key things about the new version that I like the most:

Boss Battles - You now have to defeat different tiki guardians in major stages that require you to both form the usual Zuma patterns but also to shoot between the gaps between balls (Zuma players know these as Gap Shots) in order to hit the bosses under different conditions. It's a unique kind of stage that adds a healthy amount of difficulty to the game.

New Shots - Of course we expected them to add new shots to the player's arsenal beyond just the slow and reverse shots. Now you have shots that let you destroy one ball at a time (in order to trigger combos), or destroy all balls of a single color or even a tri-shot that fires once like a shot gun in order to clear several lanes of balls.

Alternative Game Stage Designs - In he original Zuma, you were always trapped in one part of the screen and left to deal with the balls rotating around you. In Revenge, you'll find yourself at the bottom of the screen scrolling left to right or in stages that have two dais for you to position yourself given there's a wall divides the stage into two partitions.

There's a lot more than just this that makes the game fun and it will certainly warrant hours and hours of gameplay. It's not for the faint of heart given the stages do get insanely difficult at times even during your first run through and naturally hardcore gamers are bound to aim to "Ace" each stage for more points.

Zuma's Revenge is a great sequel to a gaming classic and gets 4 evil Tiki guardians out of a possible 5.

[Philippines] Typhoon Ondoy Relief Efforts

The Philippines is no stranger to storms and typhoons - we're pretty much directly in the path of many of them and dealing with such weather phenomenons has shaped our culture and way of living. It's probably helped drive our strong sense of fatalism when it comes to such things along with the rise of the Catholic Church in this country.

That doesn't mean that the storms don't hit us hard or that we're immune to them. Each typhoon is unique in its effects whether it lasts for days on end or perhaps it brings fierce winds. This weekend the country was hit by what is locally known as Typhoon Ondoy and it brought the equivalent of a month's worth of rain within the span of 24 hours. Thus there was massive flooding all over the city and other parts of the country that has cost people their homes, their belongings and even their lives.

Google has set up a great page for information about the typhoon, where you can help out and where you can send relief goods and money. You can view that page here: Help for Typhoon Ondoy Victims in the Philippines.

If you're in the country, please make the effort to help out some how. There are many relief centers based in major schools, government offices or other such locations as mentioned in the aforementioned link. You can send your donations there or you can try checking with your local school or your office and ask about how you can help.

If you're not the country, help coordinate relief efforts or send donations using the links mentioned in the link above. Even celebrities like Neil Gaiman are asking for aid and support via Twitter and other such sites, which has been quite heartwarming in these troubled times.

I'm thankful for the strength of the human spirit and how amazing it is in terms of how the country has pulled together to help out. At the same time, my thoughts go out to all those in need and more so to those who lost their lives in this tragedy.

[Games] Treasure Seekers: Visions of Gold

Image via Wikipedia

The casual gaming market has certainly come a long way than just the idle games we played on early incarnations of Yahoo! Games and MSN Games. Beyond the free game angle that initially hooks people, full-featured versions that can be purchased online have become quite the revenue generator in its own right. Sure, it feels like only a few steps away from the micro-payment environment, it's still better than nothing.

Of course you get the big names like PopCap Games (Bejeweled) as having strong recall and other major players have memorable products like PlayFirst (Diner Dash) all getting their cut of the pie.

Personally, I'm pretty big on mystery, puzzle and strategy games and not just the arcade-style action games, and so I end up wandering into strange areas of the gaming world. This next game was actually introduced to me by my partner and I have to admit I'm hooked, and in a pretty good way too.

Teasure Seekers: Visions of Gold is another adventure-puzzle casual game created by Big Fish Games, the same folks who created games like Feeding Frenzy and other puzzle games like Mystery Case Files: Huntsville, which I also liked. The concept around these brands of mystery games is simple - you're given a rich photo environment and particular items that you need to locate on the page like the scene below:



So given a photo environment like this, finding particular objects can be tricky but not totally impossible. The entire experience is tied together by a loose storyline involving two kids who are trying to prove that their grandmother used to be a pirate. Yeah, it sounds a bit odd, but it's still a premise that hold some amount of water. To break the monotony of the image-hunting aspect of the game, the transitions between locations involve alternative style puzzles for the gamer to play.

Don't expect this game to totally make you obsessed or require you invest hours and hours of time trying to figure out complex puzzles. This is still positioned as a puzzle game and thus it's not meant to be highly complex or anything of that sort. It's the kind of game that one can visit after working on reports for a few hours, drain your brain and solve a puzzle or two then go back to work. You don't even need to closely follow the story either - it's just something incidental for the kiddies so to some degree the game still makes sense. When you do try taking a closer look at what the story's about, what you'll end up with are thoughts about child endangerment, apathetic parents who don't know where their kids are and child labor by not-so-mad scientists. Seriously, you're safer trying to ignore the story.

Treasure Seekers is a nice evolutionary step for this kind of casual adventure-puzzle game but it's nothing game-changing in terms of the market. It's nice to pick up if you're really into Big Fish Games' brand of mystery games but I'm not sure if I'd recommend this for everyone to go out of their way in order to have to pay for it. It's fun but not necessarily for everyone given the risk of the game becoming somewhat repetitive.

Treasure Seekers: Visions of Gold gets 3.5 pirate maps out of a possible 5.

[Viral Video Chart] Guy Catches Laptop With His Butt

I don't even know where to begin in terms of how to introduce this video. Seriously - only on the internet.

Just watch it if you dare.


#1 - Guy Catches Laptop With His Butt

I think the folks behind Idiocracy were absolutely right in terms of the current path of human (de)evolution.

[Videos] The Multicolored Multitask

There's more to life than just playing Guitar Hero. Apparently for this guy, it means trying to solve 2 Rubik's Cubes while playing Mr. Crowley on expert level on Guitar Hero. As much as you wonder how long it took this guy to master this (without leaving the confines of his home), you certainly have to give him credit for actually pulling it off.


#10 - The Multicolored Multitask (Guitar Hero + Rubik's Cube)

[Videos] The Ballad of G.I. Joe

The witty folks at Funny Or Die came up with this timely video supposing what the G.I. Joes and Cobras do during their off days in the form of a pretty strong ballad. You have to give credits for the accuracy of some of the costumes in this video - I'd have paid to see a Baronness like this, hehe.

The Ballad of G.I. Joe from Olivia Wilde

[Geeky Guide] Considering Regular Feature Categories

Hello Again Geeky Readers!

In an effort to re-organize the Geeky Guide and make it more meaningful to you, the readers, I was considering coming up with categories for the various articles and a more or less regular posting schedule that should make getting into the Geeky Guide a lot easier.

By now you probably realize that the bulk of my content centers around reviews of movies, books, games, comic books, TV shows and other items of geeky interest. I also post a lot of upcoming movie and game trailers, viral videos and quirky how-to videos as well. Beyond that, I do a number of political commentaries, observations of life here in the Philippines or in the call center industry and whatever else that comes to mind. I'm a major Google fan, but I also write a number of features about cloud computing, online solutions and various tech-savvy things that make gadget boys go oooh. Yes, the Geeky Guide is all this and more, depending on the day and how much time I have.

So now I want to better segment things so readers like you can visit the Guide on the days of the week that you expect your preferred content to appear. Perhaps I should have Movie Mondays when all movie reviews are posted. I could have Wired Wednesdays dedicated to the latest in web applications, social networking innovations and other online stuff. I might start hosting Fandom Fridays when I do more of my tribute entries to classics of yesteryear like cartoons from the 80's, great science fiction movies and franchises like Star Wars and the Terminator series. What about TV Thursdays just dedicated to on-going TV shows and speculations about new ones? Superhero Saturdays solely for the world of comic books and graphic novels? Or how about Transformer Tuesdays, where I can try to come up with new factoids or rants about Transformer news, developments and rumors?

There are so many possibilities, so many ways to share the geekier side of things with readers like you and I'd love to hear your thoughts on what direction you think the Geeky Guide should take. Do you want more reviews? Less viral videos? More LGBT features? Additional discussions about life in the Philippine call center industry? Leave a comment with your ideas or perhaps email me directly!

I'm looking forward to your opinions so don't hesitate to provide feedback!

[Viral Video Chart] United Breaks Guitars

Oh yes, this video is so worth sharing since the best way to vent your issues with the airline industry is to write a song about it and post a video on YouTube.

Go social internet complaints!


#20 - United Breaks Guitars

[Movies] District 9 Trailer 2

I'm not sure what got people so excited about the number 9 this year, but it's clear that we have to major movies with science fiction overtones related to the number, and personally I'm pretty excited for both of them. On the one hand is the animated film "9", based on a short film released some time ago by Shane Acker and somehow involving Elijah Wood. The other is a larger-scale production called District 9, that really promises to knock your socks off. Then again, this film is being produced by Peter Jackson, so that does indicate some pretty heavy guns behind the scenes.

District 9 is the odd story about an alien race made to live in not-so-great conditions on Earth in some sort of a community / refugee camp called District 9. Of course something is going to happen to disrupt the status quo, but why listen to me? The trailer does a heck of a better job of showing you just how potentially awesome this film could be.

Oh, and did I mention the mecha-style power armor?


#12 - 'District 9' Trailer 2 HD