Maria Blogs

Zynga has a new game on Facebook – Fishville. Do you ever notice, fishes, farms and foods seem to be major trends in game apps on FB?

Zynga has Farmville, Cafe World and now Fishville. Playfish has Restaurant City and Country Story. I guess Playfish wanted to be a little bit unique and sprouted alienesque pets in Pet Society rather than building another tank. But it’s early goings yet, you never know who’s coming to your FB neighborhood tomorrow. Then there is Farmtown, Farm Pals, My Aquarium, Barn Buddy, Island Paradise, Happy Harvest. Trees are sprouting a mile a minute!

Fishville has pretty much the same idea as “MyAquarium” – you have a tank, you buy fishies, gotta feed them or they die, give ‘em some lovin’, decorate your tank, sell your fish to get more money and gather experience to level up. But so far, it’s a little ho-hum despite the nice graphics. Not a lot of options or bling to make it excitin Let’s say it’s a work in progress. Checked it out … so far, I don’t see myself visiting everyday.

The smoke has settled, somewhat uneasily on the crazy spin cycle Pirate Bay got itself in, including charges against the owners, their web host threatened with fines if they don’t pull down the site, and the not-so-straightforward dealings of the company that supposedly bought TPB.

In light of aggressive campaigns of big Hollywood companies like Disney in tryting to stop copyright materials from being shared and downloaded through torrents (a peer-to-peer file sharing method) – remember the woman who was fined $1.9M for downloading 24 songs (look up my previous entry “think before your share”) – I wonder if it’s wise for sites like QueenTorrents to launch a tv torrents site.

The site claims to have a powerful search engine and a smooth interface for people who are looking to download music, games, movies, tv shows, etc. Torrents in itself is not illegal as it only essentially tells you where the files are, but once you decide to get a torrent, it may start to download copyright materials contained in that torrent’s info.

The thing is to stay away from copyright material, but with media companies trying to sell season dvds for Gossip Girl or Top Chef or 24, even though these are shown on free tv, well, it still considered copyright material right?

Pronounced: Uhn-lee.

I came home a few months ago without a cellphone. I haven’t used one in a year at least. Deadly.

Oh how complicated life has become in the six years I’ve been away! While I was away I was baffled by groups like TxtPower and the things they stood for, I’m like, why, when telecommunications services in the Philippines is one of the best in terms of choice and service, there’s no charge for incoming calls or text messages unlike in a lot of countries overseas. Then”Unli” hit me.

Unli – short for “unlimited” – has become the norm for prepaid cellphone service. Whereas before, you can purchase an x amount of minutes without fear of expiration (unless you don’t use your cellphone for a year or something) these days, Php20 can last you a couple of days depending on whether you’ve subscribed to unlimited text and the prepaid service provider you have.

The sheer amount of choice overwhelms me and I don’t pretend to understand any of it – Globe Tattoo, Republika ng TM, Sun, Smart, Unlitext, Unlicall, duo (landline + mobile), valid for one day, two days, pasa load, broadband internet on a usb etc etc.

One thing I know, for somebody like me who’s main communication line is the internet and only ever uses a cellphone during the infrequent times I get out of the house, putting a twenty on my phone may well mean trashing that money if I but send one text or worse, not use the phone as I had it only for emergency. I have learned too that not only do I lose my minutes I am also always at the brink of losing my current number if I don’t use it or load money on it for a month (or less?).

This is so much worse! And something needs to be done more than the extension on minutes that had to take Senator Enrile losing money on prepaid load expiration before something was done.  TxtPower mga kababayan! (yes to txtPower consumer group!)

Insane. In a way it’s awesome for Filipinos whose lives revolve around the cellphone, but more work needs to be done cos these expired loads and unused expired loads supposedly used for emergency purposes mean a huge amount of money when added up.