Gadgets and Tech in the Philippines

Archos, well known for it's portable devices, now enters into the portable gaming space with its Android powered Archos GamePad.  The GamePad has a 7" touchscreen display.  The GamePad will have no optical media, it will be a wi-fi only device.  The GamePad will be run on the Android 4.0 Ice Cream sandwich operating system. The GamePad will not only be for gaming, it will also have tablet-like features such as access to the web, applications and email.  The applications can be accessed or downloaded through the GamePad's access to Google Play. The GamePad will have physical buttons very similar to the Sony PSP and will be powered by a dual-core 1.5GHz CPU combined with a Mali 400 MP quad-core GPU.  The device will come with a Micro-USB port and a Mini-HDMI output port.  The GamePad will come equipped with 1GB of RAM and a microSD slot, expandable up to 64GB. The GamePad will be released initially in Europe this October.  Price will be $188, about P7,896.  No rel

I just got my hands on the brand new LG 50PM4700 50" Plasma TV .  The first thing I noticed (carrying the package home) was the package was quite heavy, and I realized that the one thing that made this TV set heavy, aside from the mere size of course, was the protective skin glass. Setting up the TV for first use was a breeze, the LG Plasma detected that it was the first time to use and asked if I preferred to scan channels manually or automatically, of course I chose the automatic scan.  I was very impressed since this LG was able to map the channels correctly as opposed to my previous TV which set the channel to the first blank slot it found. Picture quality is also very impressive, thanks to its 1024x768 resolution combined with its dynamic contrast ratio of 3,000,000:1.  You can choose between 8 preset video modes (Vivid/Standard/APS/Cinema/Game/ Photo/ISF Expert 1/ISF Expert 2).  I chose the Cinema setting for watching movies and the quality was crisp.  One compla

BPI Direct Savings Bank logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) One of the leading commercial banks in the Philippines, BPI or Bank of the Philippine Islands, in their thrust to provide more innovative services to their clients, has launched their very own Facebook application.  The application is being called BPI bankers online. The main goal of the application is to provide financial advise for Filipino Facebook users.  Through the application, BPI would like to improve the financial literacy of Filipinos and take advantage of the widespread use of Facebook among Filipinos.  The current estimate is that there are more than 27 million Filipinos already using Facebook. The BPI bankers online application will be like an online community using Facebook's current infrastructure where users will be able to ask financial questions online and get real time responses to their inquiries.  The questions will be answered by BPI's pool of knowledgeable bankers. The application is avail