My Top 5 Picks on Problogger's Group Writing Project - Day 2

Another day, another long list of entries for all those blog surfing. It is the second day Problogger.net's Top 5 - Group Writing Project and the list of entries has drastically doubled!

Sadly I was a little preoccupied with some school work that I only spent a total of 5 hours in reviewing the entries.

I picked out 5 entries our of the long list that have caught my attention and interest. Also keep in mind that there are a lot of great stuffs out on the other entrants, check out the other list here.

My top 5 list for the day is in no particular order.

Enjoy!

Types Of Games That Will Help You Live
Top 5 Things That Kills A Band
Top 5 Ways to Identify A Bad Listener
The Top 5 Google Whores I Want To Meet
Top 5 Best And Youngest Bloggers

I have also participated on the contest, you can read my entry here - Snatch! Top 5 Tips To Be An Excellent Phone Snatcher

My Top 5 Picks on Problogger's Group Writing Project - Day 1

It took me a total of 8 hours for me to finish reviewing the long list of applicants for the first day of Problogger's Top 5 - Group Writing Project. Finally, I could now choose which entries that I like most for me to share to everyone.

With careful consideration, I picked out 5 entries our of the long list that have caught my attention and interest. Still, there are a lot of great stuffs out on the other entrants, check out the other list here.

This list is in no particular order.

Enjoy!

- 5 Cool Things You Can Do With Your DNA
- My Five Fingers Ranked
- Top 5 Tips to be the Next Darren Rowse
- Top 5 Inspirational Quotes To Get You Believing Again
- Top 5 Sins

Also, please check my own entry into the event here.

Snatch! Top 5 Tips on How to Be an Excellent Cell Phone Snatcher

By Karlo Licudine

Cell phones are one of the best things that have changed the whole human living experience. They are hi-tech, mobile, entertaining, and useful. This revolutionary piece of gadget has also initiated a new form of crime, cell phone snatching: a quick and easy way for any felon to earn some quick and easy cash.

One way of protecting ourselves from this threat is to know who we are dealing with. Who are these people anyways? How do we stop them? Many say that the best way to know a person is to put yourself in their shoes. Find out how they think, how they act, and how they get the guts to do such immoral things.

I took the liberty of putting myself into their shoes just for a little fun and for us to understand their ways. The following is an article that I made while assuming the personality of a phone snatcher.

I hope you would enjoy this post!


Snatch! Top 5 Tips on How to Be an Excellent Cell Phone Snatcher
By Evil Karlo Licudine

Cell phones are one of the best things that have changed the whole human living experience. They are hi-tech, mobile, entertaining, and useful. This revolutionary piece of gadget has also initiated a new form of crime, cell phone snatching: a quick and easy way for felons like us to earn some quick and easy cash.

I took the liberty of compiling a list of top 5 tips that I have learned from different top cell phone snatchers in the world to help you in your quest of being an excellent phone thief.

Plan ahead
This is one simple thing that many cell phone snatchers overlook upon. Make sure to have a solid plan before going out into the open. Always plan your approach, know your targets, and make sure to have an escape plan. Sticking with this tip would guarantee a life away from those cold metal bars.

Be an opportunist
Of course, there are instances when there wouldn’t be time for making a plan. A good thief is always on the lookout for opportunity.

Fortunately for us, there are some people who tend to make things easier for us by making themselves an open opportunity for snatching. If you see an opportunity, grab it while you can. Just make sure you have your quick legs for a hasty retreat.

Be creative
Cell phone snatching is becoming very common nowadays. With this kind of heavy competition, one must do something different in order to stand out from the crowd.

A great cell phone snatcher once said in his blog, “Cell Phone snatching is an art, it is both a form of expression and a quick way to earn some dough”, he was also the man behind the snatch-a-phone-while-on-your-bike method (a really nice method if you would ask me).

Take on new ways and be creative in your own way, this would guarantee a spot on the spotlight,

Know your phones
It would be wise for any phone snatcher to be on the know on the different phones out in the market today. Know each phones features, its technology, and their price ranges, this would save you some time when choosing which cell phone between two people you should snatch.

Also, knowing the trading price on phones would help especially when you are going to sell your newly acquired phone to the underground market.

Have a personal training
It is a good thing to train yourself before engaging into cell phone snatching activities.

Familiarize yourself first with the basics and proper snatching techniques. One necessary skill to develop is the sleight of hand, do this by practicing picking up small things or a cell phone as fast and discreet as you can. Another vital skill would be your running abilities, this would ensure a fast and easy getaway.


These are some of the many things that I have learned in my line of work. They may seem very simple, still these steps are the basics that you need in order to become an excellent cell phone snatcher.

Goodluck!

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This is an entry for the Top 5 - Group Writing Project held by Problogger.net. If you are a blogger, why not join with the rest and share your thoughts! It’s a lot of fun!

Also if you liked my entry, why not leave a comment and bookmark my post! I would really appreciate it!

Never Install a Music Player on an Xpress Phone

Just yesterday, I tried to install a Music Player Application on my Nokia5300 Xpress Music Phone just to try things out.

The application was installed but was later removed because the particular application wasn’t as good compared to my phone’s built in player. Shortly after removing the installed app did I found out that my phone was already experiencing a breakdown.

I found out that all the files on my memory card were all corrupted. The phone repeatedly crashes every time I boot the system. People everywhere were screaming. It was a nightmare.

Out of desperation, I formatted my memory card and reset my phone back to its factory settings even without backup. The system failure warnings finally stopped and my phone was back to normal.

The lesson to be learned from all of this is to never mess up with your phone if you do not know what you are doing.

Mobile Application Review: MJBook Maker

E-books are becoming quite a trend nowadays. Those heavy and bulky books were a great help but won’t really do by today’s standards. Convenience has been one of the main reasons for the success of such a technology. And with their inclusion into the mobile world, it seems that e-books would be more convenient than ever.

The Review Choice
Out of the list of mobile E-book readers that I have gathered from the internet, probably the best choice for a review would be Repligo Mobile or MobiPocket Reader, two leading e-book applications in the e-book market today. However, I found out that both of them are only compatible for Symbian phones, as well as the other titles on my list. This is why I decided to review MJBook Maker, an e-book maker for Java phones, for all those non-symbian phone users.

The E-book Maker
The MJBook Maker proved to be a rare find. Look for an e-book application for a non-symbian phone and you’ll see what I mean.

The MJBook Maker is actually a Windows program that can convert a .txt file into a .jar file. On this program, you could specify the details of your e-book such as the title, information of the e-book, the author, etc. There are also the settings that you can change for your convenience such as the phone screen size, the font face and size of the document, the background color, the font spacing and more.

After you have specified the settings for your e-book, the program takes over and converts the document you selected into midlets.

The E-book Reader
The created midlets already contain both the converted document and the e-book reader. You can now send or install them into any Java enabled phone. This is a good feature because you can share your created e-book with anyone even if they don’t have an e-book reader.

The reader has all the basic features that all e-book readers should have. Features such as the auto-scroll option, the save/load bookmark, the backlight settings and the search feature. You could even change the background color of your document and the line spacing between letters. The information that you have created using the MJBook Maker such as the title, the information, and the author can also be viewed using the program.

Comments and Observation
This program is a great application with many good features. However, there is still room for improvements. Instead of being limited to conversion of txt files, it would be nice if it could also convert Word or PDF files (Still, there is always the copy-and-paste approach, you can copy the text from a Word document and paste it on Notepad). Also, it would be a great plus if it could incorporate images into the e-book.

Final Words
Having an e-book on your mobile really beats the days of old. This program is a must have for e-book lovers with Java enabled phones.

For more details and screenshots, visit this site.

Prank Message Causes Panic

A particular news caught my attention last night when I was searching the web, it was about the panic caused by a prank message in Pakistan last April 16 of 2007.

The prank message claims that a mobile phone virus transmitted through phones can kill recipients almost instantly upon receiving the said virus. This caused unrest among all cell phone users. Panic started to spread and many thought that the end of human kind had already begun. [Read full story at Reuters]

The story above was placed under the “oddly enough” category of the Reuters website. It seems that people see this kind of thing as an unusual and funny thing, but in fact pranks like these happen everyday it just so happened that it had a great effect in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Its neighboring country also had a similar problem, Afghanistan was also in a state of panic after a similar prank spread through their network. [Full Story]

Whoever made those prank must be proud of himself right now.

Mobile Companies Prepare For the Change

After my post on the negative effects of cracked mobile phone software yesterday, I accidentally stumbled upon a dated post from Mobile Monday Barcelona on the subject of the future of Mobile Gaming shown here.

The article is about an announcement of the already concluded Mobile Monday Barcelona Event last April 2 of 2007. It is already a little out-of-date but it is interesting to note that the industry is finally gearing up for the possible future of mobile gaming.

In spite of the many problems that the industry is facing today, it is nice to learn of the many great efforts that are put into pushing the industry forward. It looks like the future of mobile gaming wouldn’t be bad after all.

Cracked Mobile Phone Software = Bad

It’s bad but it’s widespread. Typical.

Let us say that you are looking for a particular mobile game that is fresh out of the market – The MobileKo Mobile Madness! – Or something like that. One way to acquire that particular game is through the internet. So you searched through a couple of sites and finally got a copy of the game. Later, you found out that the game actually has a trial period or a limit to it. Here, you are presented with two choices that many people face: it’s either you pay for the copy of the game or look for the cracked version of it. Sadly, many go with the latter.

My first time encounter with cracked phone software started when I got my very first phone. As a newbie at that time, I didn’t really know what it is or what consequences installing cracked software might bring. But as long as it gives me a full and working version of an application or a game for free, it really didn’t matter. Little did I know that when I was enjoying a cracked high-quality game, somewhere on the other part of the world a particular game software company was suffering from lack of sales.

What is cracking?
Software cracking is the modification of software to remove its protection methods like the trial/demo and registration security features. The cracking of softwares has been around for a very long time now. It doesn’t just apply to mobile phone software companies, it is a problem shared by the whole software industry. More on this here.

Why is it bad?

Mobile software companies could not earn money
Whether it is through direct or indirect methods of gaining profit from a product, the presence of cracking would always spell trouble on their sales charts. People would prefer getting a cracked game rather than paying it.

- Companies are afraid to take risks
With a market with very low revenue, the best possible way for a company to stay on the game is not to take risks. Many resort to using the same old tried-and-tested formulas that worked out in the past, resulting into a monotonous lineup of games.

- Slow technological growth
Without taking risks, the advancement of mobile phone game technology would be very slow. It would take some time before revolutionary advancements for games to take place.

- Mobile Software gets less attention
The problems above explain why mobile software development doesn’t attract much attention from other big time software developers. Even if they have, not much of their concentration are put onto these developments. This also applies to the modern consumer market.

- Slow death of the Mobile Phone Software Industry
With the rise of other types of high-tech gadgets and the slow advancements of mobile software developments, it would be hard for the mobile software industry to compete in the entertainment media scene. Soon, mobile phones would just be used mainly for communication purposes and their software would just be an added plus.

What should we do?
Although getting things for free are really a great deal, we should think first of the consequences of installing a cracked software. Developers put up trial/demo versions or registration features on their products so that consumers can be able to test it. These security features are their insurance that the full versions of their products will be bought. Supporting cracked software is like putting all their hard work on to the trash.

Spending a dollar or two for a good game couln't hurt. So say no to cracked softwares!

Got any reactions? Feel free to post them.

Tips on Finding the Right Cell Phone

Get the phone that is right for you!

With the long list of phones coming out of the market today, choosing the right phone for you will not be easy. It is all about finding the phone that will suit all your needs and tastes.

On my own search for my perfect phone, I came up with a couple of things to consider in buying, some sort of guide to help me in my decision. Finally, after days of careful consideration and consultation with the guide, I came home with a satisfied face and a brand new phone.

Out from that chicken scratch, I compiled my list and uploaded them here on my blog so that everyone could have a guide in finding their own personal mobile phone.

"What phone you buy?"

First Things First
Having a list or a guide could never hurt. It is actually effective and would save you time and money. Need I remind the regret if ever you get the wrong phone?

All you need is a pen, a piece of paper, and a lot of time to think things through. Remember, you might want to give some thought into this because cell phones aren’t really that cheap.

With that out of the way, let us now start brainstorming!

Points to Consider

Personal Preference - First you must consider what kind of phone you prefer. Make a list of your own personal needs and tastes. What kind of mobile phone features do you like? Here are some key questions to help you with your list.

Do you love music?
Do you love to play games?
Do you like to take pictures or videos of yourself?
Do you always make long hours of calls?
Do you like to stuff your phone with applications?

Practicality – It may also be wise to consider the type of phone that you’re going to use everyday.

Are you going to use it only for the purpose of communication?
Will you be using a personal phone or a business/corporate phone?

Phone Technology – It is already a common knowledge that mobile phone technology is the most rapid evolving technology to date. However, keep in mind that not all newly released phones can be considered more hi-tech than older ones. Sometimes older models could do.

Manufacturer – Different phone manufacturers offer different features on their products. You may want to browse different manufacturers available in your area, they might have something that others don’t.

Examples of Phone Manufacturers are Nokia, LG, Ericson, and Motorola

Phone OS (operating system) – The phone operating system has a great effect on a user’s personal experience. The more advanced the operating system is, the more features it has. If you are into installing applications and games, you may want to consider this carefully first before buying a phone. (More on PhoneOS will be discussed soon)

Examples of Phone OS are S60 (symbian) or s40 phones.

Mobility/Size – For cell phones, size does matter. More phone features always means bigger and bulkier phones. Although newer releases may reduce in size over time, you may still want to consider whether you’re going for mini or packed.

Overall Look – The reason why this is at the end of the list is because of the fact that functionality weighs more than appearance. Still, investing a little on this would be sensible.

Budget – Putting this at the beginning of the list would have already limited your choices. Put the budget into consideration only when you already have the list of your own personal preferences above. Remember that the budget can be stretched out when desired, so don’t let the budget restrict you.

Other minor things to consider

Screen size – You don’t want to be squinting forever do you?
Speakers – Consider this if you’re after a music phone or if you’re after loudspeakers
Battery Life – Depends on how you’re going to use your mobile phone
Connectivity – Cable, Blutooth, or Infrared?
Internet Connection – A great feature especially if you are always on the go
3G Enabled – 3G is slowly revolutionizing the mobile phone world
Phone enhancements – additions to heighten your mobile experience

Down to the think tank
After listing down the factors that would help in choosing your phone, you now have a clearer view of what kind of phone that you want for yourself. Take this list and search the internet for the type of phones that fall under your preferences.

Once you have a list of the phones with their details, narrow your selection down by weighing them against each other. Eventually, you’ll end up with the phone that is perfect for you.

It is not a rocket science, but it wouldn’t hurt to try. I hope this helps. Wish you luck!

Disclaimer: images taken from klab.caltech.edu

Quick Review: Mini Golf Magic

(Disclaimer: Game images taken from Jamster.co.uk)

Playing mini-golf has always been a fun sport. Sporting a piece of long stick as a club, we usually send any small round object flying through our backyards and into improvised holes that we make by digging into the earth. Well, at least that is what I do. Digital Chocolate lets us enjoy all the fun without enduring the heat right on our very own mobile phones.

A Hole in one

Mini Golf Magic is a Java game for the mobile phone which offers unique and challenging mini-golf courses with over four unique characters each having different strengths and weaknesses. From the traditional windmill to more insane obstacle additions like the whirlpool, Mini Golf Magic heightens the competition even more, providing a more challenging gameplay and longer replayability.

The objective of the game is to be able putt the ball into the hole with the lowest swings as possible. Just like in real life, the course is filled with obstacles that make it hard to score a hole in one. Get the hole in only one shot and you could get additional points and a chance to unlock a number of mini-games.

The four characters in the game all have different assets. The game starts off with Amber who has an accurate yet weak putt. Then as you progress through the game, you can unlock the three other characters and end up playing as Ethan, a power putter who is far less accurate.

The controls for the game are quite simple and easy to pick up making it a great game for all ages. The game is on 3d, allowing you to see and feel the course on different angles. And with that lively song on the background, it would be really hard to get frustrated if you miss that easy shot.

Quick Overview:

Pros
Beautiful 3d graphics
Wide collection of Mini courses
Easy controls
Can play up to 4 players

Cons
That old pesky rabbit
Hard to determine the power of the shot


Visual 8 Sound 7 Gameplay 8 Lifespan8

Tested working on Nokia 5300, Nokia 6233.