iOS 6.1 update enables LTE in the Philippines

Globe and Smart iPhone 5 users rejoice! LTE can now be enabled after updating to iOS 6.1. The ~100MB update also contain other improvements and bug fixes but the most significant thing for us here in the Philippines is we can now enjoy surfing at LTE speeds, given that you're in an LTE-enabled area.

After updating your iPhone 5 to 6.1, go to Settings > General > Cellular and see that you now have the much awaited "Enable LTE" option.

[Show Complete Press Release]

New Version Adds LTE Support For 36 Additional iPhone Carriers Worldwide

CUPERTINO, California-January 28, 2013-Apple® today updated iOS to version 6.1, adding LTE capabilities to 36 additional iPhone® carriers and 23 additional iPad® carriers around the world, so even more iPhone 5, iPad mini and iPad* with Retina® display users can experience ultrafast wireless performance** to browse, download and stream content at blazing fast speeds. To date, iOS users have uploaded over nine billion photos to Photo Stream, sent over 450 billion iMessages and received over four trillion notifications.

"iOS 6 is the world's most advanced mobile operating system, and with nearly 300 million iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices on iOS 6 in just five months, it may be the most popular new version of an OS in history," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "iOS 6.1 brings LTE support to more markets around the world, so even more users can enjoy ultrafast Safari browsing, FaceTime video calls, iCloud services, and iTunes and App Store downloads."

iOS 6 features include Siri®, which supports more languages, easy access to sports scores, restaurant recommendations and movie listings; Maps with Apple-designed cartography, turn-by-turn navigation and Flyover view; Facebook integration for Contacts and Calendar, with the ability to post directly from Notification Center, Siri and Facebook-enabled apps; Shared Photo Streams via iCloud®; and Passbook®, the simplest way to get all your passes in one place. Additional updates in iOS 6.1 include the ability to use Siri to purchase movie tickets in the US through Fandango, and iTunes Match℠ subscribers can download individual songs to their iOS devices from iCloud.

The revolutionary App Store℠ offers more than 800,000 apps to iPhone, iPad and iPod touch® users, with more than 300,000 native iPad apps. App Store customers have downloaded over 40 billion apps, and Apple has paid over seven billion dollars to its incredible developer community. Customers can choose from apps in 23 categories, including newspapers and magazines offered in Newsstand, games, business, news, sports, health & fitness and travel.

Availability
iOS 6.1 is available as a free software update today. iOS 6.1 is compatible with iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad (third and fourth generation), iPad mini, iPad 2 and iPod touch (fourth and fifth generation). Some features may not be available on all products. For more information please visit www.apple.com.

Kimstore 5,000 Off Promo

Kimstore is on sale! 5,000 Pesos off on available items with a minimum purchase of P20,000. The promo is up to January 31. [Update] Kimstore announced that the promo is only until January 24.

Mechanics

1. Check with Kimstore first if item is available [Important].
-You can probably contact her on her phone or Facebook chat or Twitter. See below for contact details.

2. At Kimstore Multiply Website, click BUY NOW button beside the item you want to buy.

3. Proceed with checkout and enter email address.

4. Enter the discount code PH-GADGET5KOFF

5. Select payment option and enter shipping address.

Notes

1. You may participate in the promo with or without Multiply ID.

2. Make sure you enter the proper discount code, capitalization and all.

3. For BDO and BPI bank deposits, provide 1 whole business day to verify payments. Credit card payments take 2-3 days.

4. Unit will be shipped via LBC.

5. Promo is valid only for shipping. Meetups are not part of the promo.

6. Promo is valid of items worth 20,000 Pesos and up.

Contact Details:
Kimstore
Mobile: 0905 320 1818 , 0922 885 9799 , 0908 886 9799
Facebook: http://facebook.com/kimstorePH

Give your complete name, order and contact number when you're contacting her.

iPad Meeting App - Anywhere Pad

iPad Meeting App

Anywhere Pad has a new design. User interface has been revamped to make it more user-friendly and boost usability. Visit the website for more information, and yes, I'm affiliated with the product. Just trying an SEO experiment.

What's not to like? I'll give Anywhere Pad a biased rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars.
- Manny

My First 3,000+ Visits in a Month

This entry is a marker for my statistics, similar to my April 2012 entry: "My First 1,000+ visits.."

In my last entry, I had 1,000+ visitors in a month. Upon checking again today, I had 3,266 visitors in the month of December for mvergel.com; a 200% increase in the rate of visits since my last post.

My yearly statistics also improved. In my previous post, I had a merely 4,000+ visitors for the year 2011. In 2012, I had 22,000+ visitors; a 400+% increase!

I also moved up in the Alexa rating. My Alexa Trend/Rank last April 2012 was 8,280,675th for 1 Month ranking, 9,118,259th. Now it is 1,192,962nd and 1,627,888th respectively. I'm nearing the 6 digits mark! Of course, Google.com is still number 1.

My programming blog still has the most number of visits, good to know it's helping other people's problem. Second is my personal blog. My niche blog, blog.pesobility.com has already surpassed my food blog in terms of the number of visitors and it has only been up for several months.

I have a lot of blogs! Blogger doesn't have categories like Wordpress so I create new blogs as a way to categorize my posts. I'm even trying to sub categorize Pesobility (the general investment blog) and Pesobility Stocks (Stocks related blog, since stock trading is a different world).

I'm glad to see an improvement in my traffic and I'm learning from this experience so I can apply it to my niche site pesobility.com

I think the following contributed to the increase in visitors:
1. Writing more content (duh) which are beneficial to other people and spark interest.
2. Improving search engine optimisation. I write more tags now, and I improved my meta tags in my page and also linked my Google plus account.
3. Improved the layout and theme. It's mobile friendly and simplistic.

Do Bananas Float in Seawater?

Warning this is a spoiler for the 2013 movie Life of Pi.

After watching Life of Pi, I'm not sure which one is the true story. The only giveaway was the banana "fact". In the first story, the Orangutan was on a pile of bananas that float. In the end, the Japanese representative said that bananas don't float. If that's true, then the first story (The one about the animals) may be false. He may have just been hallucinating or traumatized as a child.

After researching, bananas do not easily float.. in freshwater. However, almost anything can float in seawater because of its salinity and density affecting the buoyancy (Highschool all over again). Darn, I thought there was a give away, apparently the Japanese wasn't correct in saying that bananas do not float.

Anyway, I think the whole point of the story is faith. Would you believe in impossible things? :>

Btw, movie is worth watching in 3D. I give it 3.5/5 stars

Opo Pinoy Style with Amalayer and Mikey Bustos [Video]

It's not so bad. A parody of the popular Gangnam Style by Psy. It also features the Amalayer girl Paula Salvosa. As they say, there's no such thing as bad publicity. :)