The Canon Optura S1 may look like any other digital camcorder with its color and look but it definitely stands out in the ergonomics department. Placed side by side with other camcorders with flashier designs, this unit may pale in comparison and not merit a second look but a closer inspection may entice a buyer to purchase one.

Call me a square. But I have always ignored the portable audio player (popularly known as MP3 players) bandwagon. Come on! I’ve got my home entertainment system at home, my car stereo on the road, and my pc entertainment system (with subwoofer) at the office. I even have 128mb worth of songs in my mobile phone. Why else would I need a portable audio player?

Finally, the country’s IT professionals can now have their IT skills certified. In a memorandum of agreement signed between the IT Foundation of the Philippines (ITFP) and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) last 15 November 2005 at the Hotel Intercon in Makati City, TESDA appointed ITFP as the National Assessment Board for the Information Communications Technology (ICT industry). For the past years PhilNITS, formerly JITSE, has been the only recognized assessing body of the Department of Trade and Industry. The ITFP is the second Industry Working Group (IWG) TESDA appointed as assessors, the first being the Tourism IWG.

Ennui is defined as boredom; listlessness by the Scribner-Bantam English Dictionary. Synonyms as listed by Roget’s International Thesaurus include tiredness, wearifulness, jadedness, fed-upness, boredness, melancholy, dispiritedness and many more not contained in Microsoft Word’s dictionary.

I recently had the opportunity to teach at the Philippine Center for Creative Imaging. Though the class I handled was for Alias MAYA, the same software I teach at De La Salle College of Saint Benilde, this had an altogether different feel to it.

Making beautiful photographs involves nothing more than a bit of thought. While it often helps to have decent equipment, all you really need is to take a moment before each shot to think clearly about what you are attempting to capture or create. Perhaps you've been taking digital photos for some time, but never really got the beautiful shots you wanted. Maybe you somehow messed up the photos you took of important events, like weddings, birthdays or graduations.

Retz is a web developer doubling as a college instructor by day. He is also one of the country's fast-rising bloggers owing to the growing popularity of his blog focused on the top local reality TV show today, the Pinoy Big Brother. His site, found at www.retzwerx.com, is the one to go to if one would like updates and audience feedback on Pinoy Big Brother. Because of the show's huge following, the traffic to his blog has more than tripled and this is considered a great feat considering that Retz has only blogged for a little more than six months. Call it a good example of niche marketing. Let's hear more about what this young tech expert has to say in the following interview:

Is there really a need to get an I.T. certification in order to be competitive and secure in your job? A question that has been the subject of controversies and discussions among I.T. groups and companies. Both the government and private groups have been promoting the idea that I.T. professionals need to certify to uplift the quality standards of I.T. skills in the country.

You have been online for about 20 minutes and you are so “in the zone” tonight. You can’t miss! You are looking at one of your best scores ever and then it happens. You experience lag - the annoying internet phenomenon which causes your gaming experience to be choppy and unresponsive.

Imagine yourself sending an SMS message to a friend in France, and you want to impress him/her by sending the message in French. That would be easy if you know the language very well. But what if you don't?

Sony Ericsson is expanding its product line-up with the introduction of three new handsets offering a combination of design quality, ease of use and value that reaches out to a broad range of consumers with basic mobile phone needs for calling and texting.

Samsung will demonstrate WiBro (Wireless Broadband; Korean brand name of Mobile WiMAX) mobile phones and systems at the “2005 APEC IT Exhibition” during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Various applications such as broadcasting, home networking, video telephony, VOD, and navigations will be presented at the exhibition with Samsung’s latest WiBro (Mobile WiMAX) handsets.

Innovista Technologies Incorporated headed by its President and General Manager Mr. Alex Chan together with select group of Filipino businessmen recently visited the newly inaugurated Logitech Electronics facility in Suzhou, China. The visit was organized by Innovista to introduce to the group the new and high-tech multi-million dollar Logitech production facility.

Logitech recently launched the QuickCam Fusion and the QuickCam Notebook Pro, which come with the new Logitech Video Effect software that allows users to substitute themselves with 3D animated characters.

Whenever this writer pays a visit at Eastwood City in Libis and Greenbelt in Makati, he can’t help but notice several people doing something on their laptops. Be it closing a business deal or surfing the Internet or just watching their favorite DVD movie, the laptop has became a handy tool for people on-the-go.

All new Macs come with a 60-day .Mac (referred to here as dotMac for readability) free trial account. After the trial period, dotMac will charge you USD99 annually. Now, this is where a lot of new (and even old) users have a difficult time deciding on whether to renew their subscription or not. Today, I will present some of the dotMac advantages that made me renew my account for another year - and even better, I bought a 5-user Family Pack instead of the single account subscription.

I am currently attending a workshop on eLearning organized by Don Bosco for its faculty and staff, and because my sons are enrolled there, I got to join the activity. Dr. Dylan Dizon, Project Director of Educational Outreach through e-Learning (EDO), is facilitating the workshop.

In relation to my Reality Bites article entitled "Certification of Security", I talked about the appointment of the I.T. Foundation of the Philippines (ITFP) by the Technical Education and Skills and Development Authority (TESDA) as the National Assessment Board for the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry.

Question: I want to congratulate Manila Bulletin and to thank you Dr. J for this column, you are helping a lot of PC users like us by guiding and answering our PC problems. My question is I am trying to access my home computer from my work or from anywhere. I have DSL at home. Can I do this? More power. - Robert Suritan.

CANON introduced two SELPHY Photo Developers — the CP710 and CP510.

Do you ever wonder how they make those special effects in TV commercials and movies? I didn't realize that it only takes a few clicks on my computer until we got the chance to preview the recently-released Pinnacle Studio version 10, the latest in the line-up of home video editing products popular in the US and now available in the Philippines.