Filipino named head coach for the Miami Heat

As Pat Riley resigned from coaching the Miami Heat, he didn't chose ex-coaches or coaches from other teams to take over his position. Instead, he chose someone from his own organization, one of his assistant coaches, Erik Spoelstra.

Image source: Miami Herald

Erik is of Irish, Dutch and Filipino descent, with her mom being pure Filipina. He played four years for the University of Portland and was a player-coach for a professional basketball team in Germany.

He joined the Miami Heat in 1995 as a video coordinator before he became assistant coach and director of scouting for the organization. Pat Riley has been grooming this prodigy who was also responsible for the improvement of their superstar, Dwyane Wade during their championship year in 2006.

Erik is now the NBA's youngest head coach entering the 2008-2009 season, 69 days younger than current New Jersey Nets coach Lawrence Frink. Despite the age, Riley and the rest of the Heat players respects and believes in him to steer the team to the right direction.

''I believe in [Spoelstra] and have complete confidence that our team will succeed with him at the helm,'' Wade said.

Even veteran Alonzo Mourning, 38, the only player on the roster older than the head coach, said he is ''proud'' of Spoelstra and believes the rookie coach can "take the organization back to our winning ways.''

I hope that he would succeed and show the world how talented we Filipinos are. I'm excited for him and the Heat next season.

Additional Reading:
Erik Spoelstra: He puts the Heat on
Riley resigns as Heat coach; Erik Spoelstra to take over

Quick way to know currency conversion rate via Google

If you want to know the conversion rate of a certain currency where do you go? Newspaper sites maybe? Yahoo Finance? Or XE.com? Well, there's a quick way to know the current conversion rate of a particular currency via Google. No more choosing from drop-down menus or clicking multiple links.

Just type in what you want to convert in the Google Search box. For example type 1 Singapore Dollar in Philippine Peso and press Enter. You will be shown this info on top of your search result. Google can't provide the accuracy of the currency conversion but it is still a pretty good estimate.

Cool huh? Google can also provide you a quick way to convert measurements such as feet to meters or Celsius to Fahrenheit.

Adding the Bookmark button on each of your posts in Blogger

The Bookmark Button is a very helpful way for your readers to easily keep track of your blog or your posts. This button can help promote your site by allowing people to share your link or content to popular social bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Myspace and a whole lot more.

Installing this bookmark on each of your post is quite easy,

1. Go to www.addthis.com and sign up for an account (it's worth is so you can keep track of vaulable statistics)
2. Select the design of the button you want to use and the Blogging platform then click Get Your Free Button
3. Read the Blog Post Button instructions
4. Choose the type of button (drop-down or new page) you want use and put it in your template

I prefer the drop-down type of button as it is much quicker and allows your reader to stay on the page.

PROBLEM WITH ADDTHIS.COM's DROP-DOWN BUTTON

A problem that you might encounter on adding this drop-down button is that sometimes it won't appear in your posts. If there's nothing wrong in your copy-pasting then it might have to be your post title. See if it contains an apostrophe (').

To fix this, simply edit your post title and replace the apostrophe with these 4 characters & # 3 9 ; (remove the spacing) then save your post. You should now see your bookmark button.

Detect invisible Yahoo Messenger users

Ever wondered whether someone is really offline or just invisible in your Yahoo Messenger Contact List? Or maybe you want to check the status of someone not in your Contacts. Here's a nifty service that could do just that.

Xeeber is a professional online service that can help you recognize the status of all Yahoo users, to see who is online, offline or invisible mode easily.

UPDATE: It seems that Xeeber's down. I don't know if it's temporary or permanent. Anyway, here are some more sites that you can also try:

• Vizgin
• YahooStatus.org
  
• Invisiable.net
• Invisible.ir
• Invisible Scanner

Thanks to Alireza and oil karchak!

I don't know how they do it but it really works and they claim that their system is very reliable. Go try it out!

Another Pinoy received a standing ovation in Britain's Got Talent

What hit the local news is Madonna Decena, the Filipina who went to UK and tried her luck in Britain's Got Talent. But amidst talks of her performance, there's another Pinoy who also wowed the judges as well as the audience in the talent competition.

This time it's a 10 year old half-Brit, half-Filipino schoolboy, Charlie Green. Like Madonna, the audience loved him and his performance and gave him a standing ovation. Even Simon Cowell enjoyed his performance a lot as you see him snapping his fingers to the music.

Check out his audition.



His performance reminds me of Bessie Cursons who was a strong contender in last year's competition. But without a Connie Talbot standing in the way, Charlie has a strong chance to win this year.

David Cook's Always Be My Baby for your mp3 player

David Cook's fans can now enjoy his awesome rendition of Mariah Carey's, Always Be My Baby on their mp3 player or as their ringtone. I found the link where you can download the mp3's.

The studio version is more complete than the performance.

David Cook - Always Be My Baby (studio version)
MP3 | 5.35MB | 3:53 | 192 kbps

Here are the other studio version of his performances:

David Cook - Time of My Life (studio version of AI's winning song)
MP3 | 3.28MB | 3:34 | 128 kbps

David Cook - I Don't Want To Miss A Thing (studio version)
MP3 | 6.00MB | 3:43 | 192 kbps

David Cook - Hungry Like A Wolf (studio version)
MP3 | 4.39MB | 3:11 | 192 kbps

David Cook - Billie Jean (studio version)
MP3 | 6.52MB | 4:44 | 192 kbps

David Cook - I'm Alive (studio version)
MP3 | 4.85MB | 3:31 | 192 kbps

David Cook - Eleanor Rigby (studio version)
MP3 | 7.11MB | 3:06 | 320 kbps

David Cook - Day Tripper (studio version)
MP3 | 3.40MB | 3:43 | 128 kbps

David Cook - The Music of the Night (studio version)
MP3 | 4.29MB | 3:45 | 160 kbps

David Cook - Innocent (studio version)
MP3 | 4.91MB | 3:34 | 192 kbps

Here are the mp3's of some of his live performances as requested:

David Cook - I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (Live)
MP3 | 1.92MB | 1:55 | 128 kbps

David Cook - Dream Big (Live)
MP3 | 1.75MB | 1:59 | 128 kbps

David Cook - The World I Know (Live)
MP3 | 1.88MB | 2:05 | 128 kbps

Let me know if you want the other songs as well. Enjoy!

Related Content: Download the best songs from American Idol Season 7

Filipina shines in this season's Britain's Got Talent

Pinoys continue to show the world how talented we are. Recently, there's Arnel Pineda, Reynaldo Lapuz, Charice Pempengco, Ramiele Malubay and now we have another reason why we should be proud to be Pinoy.

Madonna Decena, left for UK six months ago to try her luck and earn money to send to his children who are with her parents back in the Philippines. She joined UK's top talent competition, Britain's Got Talent and completely brought the audience to tears and to their feet. Even Simon Cowell liked her and was amazed by her voice.

Here's the clip with her singing, "I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston.



Well she's no Paul Potts nor Connie Talbot, last year's two finalists, but she really has a fantastic voice. I hope she'll do well in the competition and will have other great opportunities there.

NBA Playoffs SopCast channels

Hey NBA fans, it's playoff time once again. Too bad for those who are still in Sky Cable like me that doesn't have the basketball TV channel anymore.

Anyhow, if you have a speedy DSL connection you can still watch the playoff games via SopCast. Yup, the same one I mentioned if you want to watch the Marquez-Pacquiao match live months ago.

The Sports Blog is listing links to SopCast channels that are broadcasting NBA Playoff games. Keep this bookmarked especially when it's time for the Finals.

Secure your Firefox passwords

If you're using Firefox as your web browser, do you use its Remember Always feature when logging in to your e-mail, multiply, etc.?

Do you know that passwords that you save in your Firefox browser can easily be seen by people accessing your machine? Yup, the passwords are in plain text for people to see along with your username and the URL that it can access.

If you go to Tools > Options > Security > Show Passwords, you could see something like this:

Go ahead, check it out first

Fortunately, Firefox also allows you to protect this feature with some sort of master password.
In Tools > Options > Security, simply check the Use a master password box. You will be prompted for a password that will be asked once per session when you access a site with a saved login detail.

This is extremely useful if you are using Firefox portable in your flash drive just in case you lost it.

How to Create a Real Blog List in Blogger

To all Blogger users, there's a much better way to display your Blogroll if you're still using the Link List gadget.

Do you know that Blogger has a gadget called My Blog List? Using this gadget to list other Blogger sites is much better since it can automatically show the latest post title of your links.

This is a Blogger gadget and not a 3rd party script so it's quite easy to implement. To use this:

1. Go to draft.blogger.com and log in from there
2. Go to your Layout page and Add a Gadget
3. You would see the My Blog List gadget and simply add it
4. Just add the URL's of your blog list and it will automatically grab the title of that page. (You also have the option to rename it if you want)
5. Set your preferences then Save

My Blog List in action

This would make your Blog List consume a lot of space if you have plenty of links but you can just segregate your Blogger links from others. There are also other nifty gadgets listed there that you might find useful.

I just wish that the gadget can also retrieve content from Wordpress-based blogs.

Wordpress or Blogger?

If you're new to blogging and can't decide what free blogging service to use (whether Blogger.com or Wordpress.com), here are some points you may want to base your decision on.

Wordpress.com (Not the Wordpress blogging platform that you could download)

PROS:

• Lots of templates to choose from
• Their dashboard is really helpful, intuitive and informative
• Excellent way to promote your blog with the use of tags
• It's quite easy to adjust images in your post
• Comments system is very convenient with built in anti-spam
  
• Categories are easy to manipulate
• Lots of nice built-in widgets such as recent comments and posts
• Allows multiple authors

CONS:

• Template design modification is very limited
• Cannot modify the CSS
• Does not support the embed and script tag
  
• Video support is limited to popular services

Blogger.com

PROS:

• Few starting templates to choose from but they are completely customizable and there are tons of free templates out there
• Google Adsense can be used for monetizing your blog
  
• Scripts are allowed in the html code
• Owned by Google so a lot of google tools can be incorporated as gadgets (widgets in Wordpress)
  

CONS:

• Comment system is cumbersome
  
• Have to rely on 3rd party codes for helpful widgets
• Category is difficult to edit if there are already a lot of posts
  
• Adding and manipulating images in the post can be improved
• No dashboard to summarize the activities going on your blog
• Does not allow multiple authors
  

So in summary, here's my take.

If you're planning to create a free personal blog with no frills and don't require a lot of customizing, Wordpress.com is really the number one choice. It's very convenient and user-friendly.

Blogger.com's selling point is that they allow scripts to run in the template. So you can add nifty tools and other scripts to earn money with your blog such as Google Adsense. Also, if you're a web designer or programmer, you really would enjoy customizing and personalizing the template.

Hope you have a better understanding on what to use now.

Creating a Handy Flash Drive

Have you experienced going into an Internet cafe or a friend's house but found out that their machines is lacking the programs that you need? You can't install programs on their machines but you really need that FTP client or that unRAR program.

Enter PortableApps. These are free applications you can install in your flash drive and are good to go when you plug it in a computer (provided that it's running the appropriate OS). The following are my top 5 applications that a flash drive should have:

• Firefox Portable Edition (25MB) - Now you can carry your own Firefox web browser with your bookmarks intact. Useful for storing those bookmarks you need for your thesis.
  
• 7-Zip Portable (2.1MB) - This is the file archiver (compression) utility that I use in my PC and it's nice to have this available wherever you go to access and extract those ZIP, RAR, GZ, ISO, etc. files.
• ClamWin Portable (20MB) - Anti-virus on the go if you don't trust other computers to have the latest virus definitions.
  
• Miranda IM Portable (4.2MB) - This is the portable version of the Instant Messaging App that supports ICQ, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, etc. Now you don't have to leave traces of your archives and buddy list on the host machine.
• VLC Media Player Portable (16.6MB) - A handy portable media player that can view MOV, FLV, MKV, 3GP, MP4, WMV, etc. video files.
  

There are other applications in the site that you may find useful such as a portable Apache server, FTP client and even a classic MAC OS.

Although not really required, it's nice if you also have the PortableApps.com Menu installed which allows you to have something like the Windows Start Menu environment for your portable apps. And also read their guide on safe portable app-ing which is very helpful.

Now you can still make your old 256MB flash drive sitting in your drawer useful.

Be sure to check my guide on how to protect your external disks from worms

How to download movies properly via torrents

Have you tried downloading a movie but finding out afterwards that it's a fake, or has poor quality or worse it's just pr0n? Here's a quick guide on how to find and download movies properly in uTorrent. This guide however, applies mostly to newly released or ripped movies.

First, check VCDquality.com whether the movie you want to download already has a DVD quality release. Or if you can't think of a movie, you can browse the site for the latest release. Here's a short guide on how to interpret info from VCDquality.com.

Next, after you find what you want to download (the latest movie releases will have the most number of seeders which is good), head to your torrent search site. Here are the ones I recommend:

• The Piratebay
• isoHunt (the one I'm using)
  
• Mininova
  

Search for the movie you want to download. For example, I saw in VCDQuality that Horton Hears a Who already has an R5 release which is of good quality and the group who made the release is iNQONTROL. So I would look for R5 and iNQONTROL as part of the filename.

The search I did on Mininova yielded this:

So I would be downloading any of the two items that I highlighted and will be guaranteed of a nicely ripped movie. The size varies because some people adds a sample avi but a size within the range of 685 - 715MB is ok. Just click on the download link and uTorrent will catch it.

Try it and stop being fooled with fake downloads. Oh yeah, downloading pirated movies is illegal. Hehehe.

Charice Pempengco wows Paul O' Grady

Our very own Charice Pempengco guested on the British comedy chat show, The Paul O' Grady Show, last April 8. This girl can really sing as she wows Paul O' Grady, his guests and the audience.



She performed the same songs she did on The Ellen Degeneres Show, "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going" and Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You". Got a kiss from McFly's Harry Judd as well.

She has great vocal strength as she belts out powerful notes one after the other. Her english is getting better compared when she was at Ellen and she's getting more confident doing TV guestings.

Next stop would be Oprah on her episode "World's Most Talented Kids" which will be aired next month. Alright!! Go Charice, make your country proud!

Why you shouldn't be excited switching to Windows Vista

It's more than two years since Windows Vista was launched to the public and you might be wondering if now is the right time to make the switch.

Overall, Vista is simply just like Windows XP but with nicer and richer interface (requires a good graphics card though). But that's just it and you still have to deal with driver issues and the UAC (User Account Control) annoyances not to mention hogging your resources. You just won't know if your old scanner or printer will be provide driver support for Vista.

Another sign to stay away from Vista is that Microsoft still continues to ship the more stable and resource friendly Windows XP. They originally planned to terminate licensing and retail sales of Windows XP last January 2007 (2 years after Vista release) but had to extend it for 5 more months. Hmmm, I guess people are not yet sold on Vista.

Not only that but Windows 7, the next major Windows release is slated to be available to the general public sometime in 2010. This release includes the newer and much better file management system (WinFS) that is supposed to be included in the Windows Vista release.

So if I were you, I wouldn't be too excited switching to Vista.

Great deal on Dell Vostro 1400 laptop

I found this great deal of a laptop from Dell. Too bad we just bought one last year coz if not I would be buying this in a heartbeat so instead I'll just share it with you.

Dell has a great deal on its Vostro 1400 lappy. For only $579 (that's less than Php25,000) you can get it with the following specs:

• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5270 - 1.4GHz/800Mhz FSB/2MB cache (not that powerful but hey, it's cheap)
• Genuine Windows® XP Home Edition, SP2 (Go Win XP!)
• 14.1 inch Wide Screen XGA LCD Anti-Glare Display
• 2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR22 SDRAM at 667MHz, 2 DIMM
• 160GB 5400RPM Hard Drive
• 8X DVD Burner w/ double-layer4 DVD+R write capability
• Dell Wireless 1395 802.11g Wi-Fi Internal Card (you can change it with a Dell Wireless 1505 Wireless-N Internal-card for only $25)
• Intel® Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
• 56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery (6-8 hours battery life here)

It's pretty cheap for a basic Core2Duo laptop and I have to admit that it doesn't look stylish enough. But you can have it skinned from Dell | Skinit for only about $30.00.

This offer is for limited time only so if you have plans on buying a laptop, I envy you for grabbing this deal.

Wii Fit, another reason to buy a Ninendo Wii

If you're still contemplating on whether to get a Nintendo Wii or not, here's another reason that might help you with your decision. If you or your family are having trouble exercising or keeping fit, the Wii Fit is a fun way to do it.



The Wii Fit comes with a wireless balance board that is similar to a step up board you see in fitness videos. This balance board will communicate with the console and can detect your balance as well as your BMI via pressure sensors. Neat huh?

The Wii Balance Board

There are various games and activities included in Wii Fit that will help you have fun and exercise at the same time. Yoga exercises, hula hooping, ski jumping and tightrope-walking to name a few.

The Wii Fit is not exactly new and has already been exhibited in various gaming conventions since mid last year. It's already out in Japan since December 2007 and has been a really big hit. It's coming to Europe on late April and will be out on North America on mid May with a price of around $75 to $80.

See? This is a good reason to convince your parents for a Wii. You have to compete with them though to use it. I heard there are plans for some fitness centers to incorporate the Wii Fit in their gym. Hehehe.

For more photos, click here.

Know when Googlebot last crawled your site

When Googlebot crawls your site almost daily, it means that you are on your way to having a successful site in terms of the number of visitors and Google will reward you with a high SERP (Search Engine Results Page).

To know when was the last time Googlebot crawled your site, you can visit the Googlebot last access page on mypagerank.net. Just type in your site's URL there and you will get a nice little dynamic image showing the last time Googlebot crawled your site. You can even put the code provided to your site to let your readers know Googlebot's last visit.

But you might ask, how do I get Googlebot to crawl my site more often? Here are some tips:

1. Submit a Sitemap. It will help Google crawl your site much better.
   
2. Try to update your site daily or at least regularly. If Google visits your site and finds out that there's nothing new, it will put you in a much lower priority for its next visit.
3. Exchange links with active bloggers. Active bloggers gets high priority with Googlebot. If it often finds the link to your site on other people's site, not only will Googlebot visit your site often but you will also be rewarded with a high pagerank.
4. If your site is new, submit your posts to news/articles repository sites such as www.filipinobloggers.com to showcase them to other people.
   

Just want to share to you something about tip #2. You see, I created this site last January but I didn't post anything till March. When I already started posting, I found out that Google still haven't indexed my site (search using this keyword "site:your site's URL").

After a week, I saw one of my post being indexed. Then a couple. Then a few more. This went on for a few more weeks till I started posting regularly and submitted a Sitemap. Now Googlebot was able to index my whole site and visits me at least twice a week. If I keep this up and gain more visitors, it will crawl my site daily just like my personal site.

Hope you find this post hopeful if you're planning to flaunt your site to the world. If you want more info, visit Google 101.

Know when a forwarded e-mail is a hoax

Don't you hate it when a close friend or a relative sends you an e-mail informing you to forward that e-mail so you could win something? Or maybe forward that e-mail to help a dying kid?

I got an e-mail from an aunt of mine recently stating that Ericcson is giving away free laptops just by forwarding that mail to 8 friends. Well, it was also forwarded to my family and tons of other people albeit with good intention. But I don't like it thinking that my aunt or friends would fall for that trick.

So if it's too good to be true, check the facts at www.snopes.com first, an Urban Legends Reference Site. I've been using this site since I was in college verifying junk mails being forwarded to me by friends. It is also a great site to waste your time reading interesting things like the organ thief stealing kidneys off coeds after drugging them.

So spread this link instead of spreading junk mails. You know you're better than that.

Samsung Instinct, the iPhone wannabe

There's another iPhone wannabe out there and it's from Sprint and Samsung. The Samsung Instinct or Samsung M800 is the first touchphone from Samsung and is only available for Sprint subscribers.

Too bad it still doesn't come close to beating iPhone. It doesn't have the orientation sensor that iPhone has and you can't pinch or squeeze your fingers to zoom in or out. It simply is a touch-screen based phone.

Although there are some features from it that iPhone is missing, overall I would still choose an iPhone which still looks sleeker.

Side by side comparison from www.gadgetsoutthere.com

Here's a list of some of its features:

• 240 x 432 screen resolution (iPhone boasts a bigger 320 x 480 screen)
  
• EV-DO Rev for faster surfing, download and upload (Sprint feature only and iPhone can only support EDGE)
• it supports MicroSD Expandable memory (iPhone has none)
• 2 MP camera
• GPS via Sprint Navigation (iPhone has none)
• No Wifi!!!
  
• Bluetooth

But I guess if it sells way cheaper than the iPhone people might actually buy this phone.

Privacy Policy

At www.pinoywebsurfer.com, the privacy of our visitors is of extreme importance. This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by Pinoy Web Surfer and how it is used.

Log Files

Like many other web sites, Pinoy Web Surfer makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol ( IP ) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider ( ISP ), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.

Cookies and Web Beacons

Pinoy Web Surfer does use cookies to store information about visitors preferences, record user-specific information on which pages the user access or visit, customize Web page content based on visitors browser type or other information that the visitor sends via their browser.

DoubleClick DART Cookie

• Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on your site.
• Google’s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to your users based on their visit to your sites and other sites on the Internet.
• Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy at the following URL - http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html

Some of our advertising partners may use cookies and web beacons on our site. Our advertising partners include ….
Google Adsense

These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to the advertisements and links that appear on www.pinoywebsurfer.com send directly to your browsers. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. Other technologies ( such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons ) may also be used by the third-party ad networks to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and / or to personalize the advertising content that you see.

Pinoy Web Surfer has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.

You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices. www.pinoywebsurfer.com’s privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites.

If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browsers’ respective websites.

If you require any more information or have any questions about our privacy policy, please feel free to contact us by email at calv_10@yahoo.com.

Protect your external disks from worms

If you often plug your external disks or flash drives in different machines, you may help spread those pesky worms around. Worms often spreads itself in a machine or an external disk when you double-click on a drive.

This is due to a hidden file called autorun.inf that is triggered when double-clicking a drive in Explorer. This file contains a batch process that usually copies itself and other files (.vbs, .dll, etc.) into the machine it's connected to.

To protect your disks from worms, a simple trick is to create your own autorun.inf and set it to read-only so that it cannot be modified by infected machines. Here's a short guide on how to create one.

1. In Explorer, go to the root directory of your external disk
2. You need to have an icon file (.ico) in that directory. If you don't know where to get one, InterfaceLift is a nice place to start.
   
3. Right-click > New > Text Document to create a text file
4. Type [autorun] then press Enter
5. Type icon=(filename of your icon, e.g. myicon.ico)
6. Save your file as autorun.inf
7. Right-Click > Properties
8. Check the Read-only box and click Ok

That's all there is to it. You can also choose to set the property of your files to hidden.

Now stop spreading those worms.