Chris Natsuume, co-founder and creative director for Boomzap Entertainment (a leading developer of casual games), will be presenting in the game development track of the BPO Summit for both December 2 and 3.

Chris is best known for being the lead producer for Far Cry, one of the most successful FPS (First Person Shooter) games for the Windows PC. Far Cry has sold more than a million copies worldwide and has been translated into versions for various platforms (Nintendo Wii, XBox, Playstation, and arcade) as well as a movie.

Chris will be talking about his experiences in establishing Boomzap, and hopefully share lessons to others planning to set up their own game development company.

For more information, please visit http://www.bposummitphilippines.com and find out how you can participate in the BPO Summit and listen to Chris' presentations.

The Philippines is admittedly behind in a lot of things. Cell phone use is not one of them.

A Wikipedia entry notes: The Philippines sends on the average 400 million text messages a day or approximately 142 billion text messages sent a year, more than the annual average SMS volume of the countries in Europe, and even China and India. It is said that the Philippines is the texting capital of the world. Did you know that text messaging was originally developed for the hearing-impaired?

A visiting niece was surprised in talking to people her age to discover that Pinays actually feel disrespected if a new male acquaintance calls her on her cellphone. She would rather receive a text that a voice call. Said my stateside niece: “I would rather get a call than a text.” Texting has grown its own subculture in this country.

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PASIG City, Philippines -- The enhanced version of the Philippine-made mechanical anti-terrorist concept (MAC) bomb disposal robot will be designed for used in water, a Philippine Navy official told INQUIRER.net.

In an interview, Cdr. Rodrigo Jaca of the Philippine Navy of the Naval Sea Systems Command Cavite Unit, said that the Philippine Navy will benefit from the enhanced version of the bomb disposal robot developed by a team from the Mapua Institute of Technology.

MAC lead developer and engineer John Judilla said the enhanced MAC version will become a prototype for Philippine Navy's "Project Smart."

Development of the Navy's Project Smart will get a funding of P1.7 million.

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Linton Wells used to be one of the Pentagon geeks-in-chief -- a prime mover in the military's embrace of information technology. Now, he wants to encourage the Defense Deparment to network with relief agencies, civic organizations and the private sector in order to reboot disaster recovery. The goal of the tech-heavy effort is not only to avoid a Hurricane Katrina repeat. It's to get better at stabilizing failed states that could easily slip into radical hands. But first, the boys in uniform have to get over their traditional reluctance to cooperate with civilians.

Nation-building, perhaps by default, has become a core mission for the U.S. military. Last week, the Army unveiled its new stability operations manual. And this week, the Department of Defense is hosting a demonstration of some of the more innovative new tools for disaster relief and humanitarian assistance.

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LOS ANGELES, California – In the very near future, drawing blood may be obsolete. Instead, implants will be able to image your blood and monitor it constantly.

This is because scientists at Caltech have squeezed a microscope onto a computer chip not much larger than a dime. And that’s just the demo unit.

Shrinking a standard microscope to this size is practically impossible due to the layers of optics involved, but Caltech professor Changhuei Yang decided to skip the optics altogether and put microscopic samples almost directly onto a photo sensor chip — just like the one found in your cheap point-and-shoot.

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