General

Investing In The Philippines

By Jay Lagare on Friday, September 28, 2012

After the riots in China, both the FoxConn factory and the anti-Japanese riots, US and Japanese companies are finding out about the true costs of being in China. Maybe it’s time they focus more on the Philippines. There may be separatists down south and corruption everywhere but at least workers, and people in general, don’t have the tendency riot the way they do in China. Yes, not even with all that corruption.

For the US, the Philippines has been one of the destinations for business process outsourcing, why not manufacturing, too? For Japan, it has been one of the destinations for outsourcing manufacturing. And has something in common with: disputes with China over sovereign territory :P

General

Books

By Jay Lagare on Sunday, September 23, 2012

I love books. My siblings and I grew up on a steady diet of Dr. Seuss and The Bernstein Bears. This was followed by a whole lot of books from my parents’ bookshelf. There’s The Book of Knowledge, The Fascinating World of Animals, the dictionary (which I tried and failed to read from A to Zymurgy), a whole bunch of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, and so much more. You can say that that bookshelf to me then was what the Internet is to me today.

At around 7 years of age, I found and read The Hobbit. Followed soon after by the full Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I don’t know exactly when I finished it but I recall when I was 9, I was telling my schoolmates about lembas during recess. That means I could be in The Two Towers or The Return of the King by then. I even tried to read The Silmarilion. I’ve read many more novels since but nothing ever came close to JRR Tolkien’s books. They have a special place in my heart. And I sure hope Jeanne will read them someday, too.

Yes, books definitely were a huge part of my childhood. So I’ve always worked towards instilling Jeanne a love for books. I give her books once in a while and we read them during bedtime. Sometimes, on trips to the mall, we visit the bookstore. Today, we went there again, I sat down and she got book after book from the shelves and we read and read them. And she enjoyed it so much she didn’t want to leave. It’s great to see progress in your parenting.

General

Fragmentation

By Jay Lagare on Thursday, September 20, 2012

One word that Apple always uses against Android is the F word. Not the one that rhymes with ‘Duck’. I’m referring to ‘Fragmentation’. They’re referring to so many Android phones from so many manufacturers with so many different features (e.g. screen sizes), and to top it off, so many versions of the core OS with different “skins” applied by manufacturers to, you know, differentiate themselves. They say it like it’s what will bring about the end of Android and that Apple doesn’t have it.

But fragmentation has already been with iOS since the original iPad release back in April 2010. It’s just that iOS 3.2 then came with a built-in mechanism for supporting apps with non-dynamic UIs (upscaling). The same mechanism was used by iOS 4 when the iPhone 4 and its 640×960 display came out.

Most developers quickly came up with updates that target the iPad and the iPhone Retina display. Now with the iPhone 5 and its 640×1136 display it will be the same: iOS 6 comes with a built-in mechanism (letterboxing) and developers will quickly come up with updates that target the new display.

For most developers and even some customers, fragmentation is not a big deal. It’s nothing new. Just look back at Windows and PCs: A huge variety of hardware? Use device drivers. An assortment of resolutions? Use dynamic layouting. Different graphics chips? Use OpenGL or Direct3D. Been there, done that. Survived.

For many customers, it is a big deal and quite scary. But that’s just what fragmentation is: a scare word that Apple marketing came up with. If you’re afraid, maybe you can use a better word: ‘Diversity’. Doesn’t sound scary anymore, yeah?

General

No Easy Day

By Jay Lagare on Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Read Mark Owen/Matt Bissonette’s No Easy Day. It’s a narrative of the author’s getting into SEAL Team 6 aka DEVGRU, his eventual involvement in the assault that ended UBL, and some of the events afterward.The book is written in a first person perspective. Normally, I’m not a fan of the first person but it’s appropriate for this case and it’s written in a straightforward, easy-to-read manner. I was done in a few hours worth of reading.

There’s really nothing new in No Easy Day if you’ve already read a few SEALS books and you’ve already narratives of the UBL raid. Sure there were some deviations from other narratives but then pretty much all the narratives deviate from each other. It could have been just another narrative, just another SEAL book except for the noise the US government had been making. Only made the book more fascinating and even raised the author’s credibility. But with or without the noise, it’s an entertaining read.

Rating: 4/5

General

New Kindle Fires

By Jay Lagare on Friday, September 7, 2012

Amazon has announced a whole raft of Kindle e-readers and tablets. But the interesting ones to me were the tablets. There are 3 of them, the Kindle Fire 8.9″ HD with 4G, the Kindle Fire 8.9″ HD, and the 7″ Kindle Fire HD. The bigger Kindle Fire HDs compete directly with the iPad while the smaller competes directly with the Google Nexus 7 and the much rumored iPad Mini. The battle of the big three is heating up even more. What’s interesting is that while Amazon started with books, Google with ads, and Apple with songs, pretty much all of them are now selling the same stuff: books, ads, songs, movies, etc. But Amazon has a huge leg up: shopping. Google and Apple would do well to get into that, maybe by buying eBay?