When Smart relaunched its mobile payment platform and dubbed it as “bagong pambayad ng bayan,” I thought it’s the best time to have my old, beaten, and recently misplaced Smart Money card replaced.

I have been using Smart Money to pay (via mobile-to mobile transfer) for goods I buy on ebay and to sell cellphone load to my friends and officemates.

A friendly customer care representative at Shangri-La mall assisted me in placing my replacement request, and I received my new Smart Money card after around a week. The first thing I noticed was that it didn’t look like the one being advertised, and it had a MasterCard Electronic logo instead of MasterCard. The last two digits of my Smart Money account number also changed.

Makapalm’s mobile version is now powered by Carrington Mobile for WordPress. To add Admob advertisements on its mobile site, I edited three files under the carrington mobile theme folder:

• /posts/posts-default.php for ad on the homepage
• /single/single-default.php for ad on individual blog posts
• /pages/pages-default.php for ad on pages

Below is a press release from our group, TXTPower, issued on Saturday:

To solve “vanishing load” scam, NTC must lower rates, ban spam — TXTPower

The National Telecommunications Commission must “do more” than extend the expiry of prepaid load to decisively end the issue of “vanishing prepaid load” that is bedeviling the country’s more than 70 million mobile phone subscribers.

In a press conference, consumer advocacy group TXTPower.org Inc. (TXTPower) said that “the absurdly short expiry load, arguably the shortest in the whole world, is the least of consumers’ problems. To solve “vanishing load”, the NTC must exercise its powers to immediately lower rates for cellphone calls, text messaging and other mobile phone services. The NTC must also crack down on telcos and content providers that abuse their licenses by sending millions of spam messages,” said TXTPower president Anthony Ian Cruz.

I just learned from Migs Mobile and ABS-CBN News that Smart  is bringing HTC Magic, a Google Android-powered smart phone, to the Philippines.

HTC Philippines country manager Mark Sergio reportedly said that Smart will start shipping units of the HTC Magic to the local market by the end of June.

Update from YugaTech: Globe was able to sell HTC Magic starting last week, and will be able to do so until Smart’s exclusive contract with HTC takes effect.

New things eventually become old. Such is the case of web clipping service AvantGo.

After syncing my Palm Centro earlier this week, I was surprised and saddened to see this message: “Starting June 30, AvantGo will no longer offer mobile Web content.”

The linked announcement page further said: “Subscribers will not be able to sync their AvantGo accounts or update their channels.”