Macs save the day yet again - in La Salle!

[Adel]

Kwento lang.

I gave a talk before students of DLSU yesterday afternoon in Taft, about Wireless Technology, as part of Hinge Media's ongoing Buhay Wireless Tour 2004, a wireless exhibit and seminar making the rounds of the schools and malls. Mugger Jayvee Fernandez, one of my co-editors at m|PH, and I spoke about Bluetooth and Wifi, and we had a very nice time in La Salle.

At one point, the organizers needed to show a video in the auditorium, but none of their laptops had a CD drive (!) from which to play the VCD. Enter my aging Titanium Powerbook.

I just plugged in the video projector cable into the back of the TiBook, set the Prefs to mirror the display and dialed down the resolution to fit the projector screen. I connected the audio cable to the headphone port, popped in the VCD, fired up VLC and hit Command-F - voila! Instant presentation!

No fiddling with cables and puzzling out the settings - true plug-and-play.

Seems like a ho-hum thing for most of us Mac users, old hat stuff, but seeing the subsequent speakers spend endless minutes and wasting so much time with their PC laptops try to get their Powerpoint presentations on the screen made me appreciate my Mac even more. I've done it before, but it always tickles me pink to have people see it easily done on a Mac and seeing the reverse on other hardware and platforms.

Also, during the Bluetooth portion of our talk and demo, I had the country's foremost PocketPC and Windows expert (and only official Microsoft MVP in the Philippines, I believe) Carlo Ma. Guererro (who's a good friend of mine despite our diametrically opposing preferences in technology) try to use his Windows-powered Pocket PC to transfer a file to my TiBook using Bluetooth.

I don't know what happened but Carlo spent minutes trying to get it to work. And during that dead time, I was so busy trying to help Carlo figure what was going wrong that I didn't notice that little file-transfer windows were popping up all over the screen of my TiBook.

The tech-savvy La Salle students in the audience were beaming me all sorts of files from their seats in the auditorium using their cellphones and PDAs, straight to my Powerbook. So when I finally looked back, there was a big laugh in the audience from my reaction at the stuff on my screen.

There where photos of little kids, a cityscape, some candid barkada shots - and even one of me giving the lecture! Some took a cellphone shot of me and beamed it to my Powerbook.

Animo La Salle indeed.

Its so gratifying to see technology work the way it should, no?

I know I'm such a geek when I say that this qualifies as a feel-good story for me. But ain't it a coupla nice techie Apple anecdotes?


(BTW, the next leg of the exhibit and lecture series happens late next week, in Eastwood this time. Give you the details later, in case you'd like to watch.)

[Edited on 10-22-2004 by Adel]

[poink]

hahaha!!! :P

anyhoo, i'd love to watch sa eastwood. will watch out for updates hehe.

[jayveef]

carlo shouldn't read this. hehe. but yup, it did take a while to establish a serial port connection via BT.


although in fairness, i had fun drawing cartoon trees on his tablet PC.

here's to my future mac purchase! arty:

[El CaMOTe]

Hey Adel,
Good that you passed by my Alma Mater. Yes, DLSC now DLSU was one of the first to have it's own 'mini' Mainframe. I believe it was a Vax something system of DEC (?).
And this was in the early 70's na.

The DLS Bro. that started it all was a guy named Bro J. Benedict Lidinsky, a compleat Mac user till his passing away early this year. I had the privilege of knowing him through high school, college, till he passed from this life.

Is it true that the whole DLSU Taft has a WiFi system for every La Sallite to use ??

Yep, they are on the techy side that school, and they seem to prepare kids well for the business side, ... now on the spiritual side of things, ... kulang na kulang !!

In future, these things ought to be announced so that we can participate also. Am looking for reasons to visit my Alma Mater, sayang... next time.

Cheers,

[Arel]

Hi Tom!

According to my batchmate, Reby of DLSU's Marketing Communications Office, it's true! But there are some "deadspots" on campus.

Oh well!

Originally posted by El CaMOTe
Is it true that the whole DLSU Taft has a WiFi system for every La Sallite to use ??

[elbert]

Originally posted by El CaMOTe
In future, these things ought to be announced so that we can participate also. Am looking for reasons to visit my Alma Mater, sayang... next time.

Tom, it was advertised in the papers. That's how I found out about the event.

[jayveef]

some pictures from the la salle event:

Adel and I explaining how ot cheat in exams using Bluetooth *snicker*


Adel: "Jayvee, buy a Mac na"


the m|ph booth is a good distraction from school


Adel explains Bluetooth with his left hand


Me explaining Wi-Fi with my right hand


thanks to Carlo G. for the pictures!!

[togi]

no wonder you guys were all smiles when you got back to the office of hinge.. arty:

[jayveef]

Originally posted by togi
no wonder you guys were all smiles when you got back to the office of hinge.. arty:

apart from the smiles, there were some silly grins when the model you brought left the office

wow!!! she's cute!

[Tarkuz]

Originally posted by El CaMOTe
Yes, DLSC now DLSU was one of the first to have it's own 'mini' Mainframe. I believe it was a Vax something system of DEC (?).
And this was in the early 70's na.

It was a PDP-8.