Posts

Terra Novae is Moving To Blog In Tech!

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We're finally moving. This sure is the most extraordinary time in our lives. Who would've thought that we'd live to see a global pandemic taking place. With everything in the news today, I hope that everyone stays safe, healthy, and at your homes. The first time I posted on this blog was a decade ago. At the time, it was just a school assignment about blogging, SEO, and the Internet. Then, after that, I realized that I am fond of writing, sort of. The posts were about everything at first, but as time goes, the focus narrows down to technology. In 2016, Technoverse was born. I am Indonesian, and I thought it wasn't appropriate for me to write content only in English, so I took an initiative to write a blog in Indonesian, using Wordpress. I stayed away from Blogger because Blogger seemed to have been losing more and more popularity. Also, Wordpress is much more superior to Blogger when it comes to technology and customization. There are tons of themes and plugin

Installing Precision Touchpad on Your Laptop

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Windows touchpads have been inferior to Macs for a long while. Anda berbicara Bahasa Indonesia? Baca artikel terjemahannya di sini ! If you've ever used Macbooks before, I'm sure you notice that their touchpads are (way) superior than most Windows notebooks. You're not alone, and the majority of people also say the same thing. Unfortunately, it's not always caused by inferior hardware. Sometimes, it's caused by the software. Not anymore on the software side, though. Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to develop their own touchpad driver called Precision. It has multi-finger gestures, and smooth scrolling and animations. Combined with better trackpad material, you can have (almost) the same experience as a Mac. You can compare them side by side with Synaptics or ELAN touchpads and you'll notice the difference immediately. The good news is, Precision drivers are being adopted by more and more PC manufacturers. The bad news, there are still

BBM Shutting Down - The End of An Era

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BBM Logo Anda berbicara Bahasa Indonesia? Baca terjemahannya di sini ! A month ago, a surprising (yet unsurprising) news arrived in my Google News: BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) is shutting down on May 31st, 2019. That brought me immediately into a nostalgic mood. BBM was the first mobile messenger I've ever tried, and it even brought me the first experience of using a smartphone, which then turns me into a technology enthusiast like today. So yes, I had a bit of history with BBM. Today, I think I'm going to pay a tribute to BBM by telling what I know about what used to be the only mobile messenger. What Made Me Use BlackBerry Messenger When I was in high school (probably around 2009), Indonesia was hit with BlackBerry fever. The brand suddenly skyrocketed and everybody had one. Even those who hadn't a single interest in the platform was forced to use it, because everybody used BBM at the time. Even until some time after Android and iOS have hit the market, many pe

Digital Lending Safety Measures

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Digital lending illustration Anda berbicara Bahasa Indonesia? Baca artikel terjemahannya di sini ! Technology and the Internet has really made our life easier. We can do everything, from controlling our appliances to ordering food. Recently, there's a new trend in town: You can borrow money, digitally. Yes, that's right. Since your financial records are available and stored digitally (your savings, transactions, and shopping history), lending companies can monitor them and help them decide whether you're eligible for a loan or not. Unfortunately, that doesn't come without consequences. At least in Indonesia, unregulated lending companies offer easy loan with unrealistic interest rates, data misuse, and even abuse. There have been reports and victims from these "digital loan sharks". One even committed suicide. That is exactly why I'm writing this article. To give you some tips on how to avoid these loan sharks, and if possible, make you ask you

Opinion - Why I No Longer Flash For Fun

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Flashing illustration Anda berbicara Bahasa Indonesia? Baca artikel terjemahannya di sini ! Android users have been treated with one strong benefit: choice. Imagine, you have lots of devices to choose, all with various specs and manufacturers. If you want, you can also change the phone's stock OS to community-made ones (dubbed flashing ). I've never seen any mobile OS did this before. To be fair, iOS users also have access to jailbreaking, but it's becoming less and less popular now, since it relies on the OS' security flaws, which Apple patches regularly. Believe it or not, I also used to enjoy flashing, but that was years ago. Android devices weren't as affordable as they are now, and the fragmentation was so bad that devices felt old very fast. My first Android device was the original Samsung Galaxy S. It was a big, reliable device that was dubbed "The iPhone Killer". I've kept it for almost 4-5 years, I think, even though it stays in the

Typing Hero Review - Do You Remember Autotext?

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Anda berbicara Bahasa Indonesia? Baca artikel terjemahannya di sini ! I have a question. Have you guys ever used BlackBerry before? Yes, that archaic (now extinct) business-oriented mobile device. Anyway, in BlackBerry, they used to have this neat feature called Autotext. It basically replaced certain phrases to anything you want. So, for example, you want to replace omw to on my way . Just type 'omw' and it will automatically replace the former with the latter. We used to use this for those complex emojis comprised of multiple characters. It was a thing, back then. Fast forward to 2019, mobile OSes have become much smarter, much more modern, and much more feature-rich. But, I haven't seen similar features like Blackberry's Autotext. A few while ago, however, a friend told me about his app, which provides the same functionality as the said feature. Enter Typing Hero. With the motto of type less, write more , let's see how it lives up to its motto, shall we?

Pocophone F1 Review - Affordable 845

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Pocophone F1 Official Shot Anda berbicara Bahasa Indonesia? Baca artikel terjemahannya di sini ! The Pocophone, without a doubt, is the most intriguing device of 2018. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of unique devices throughout 2018, such as the Vivo NEX, Oppo Find X, etc. However, The Pocophone F1, in my opinion, is the one which turned the most heads. It may not bring the most innovative design, but it brings the most interesting pricing. Luckily, I had the chance to try it out for about a month. My initial impression was that this phone could be the game changer in the ever-more-expensive smartphone market. Was it justified? Keep scrolling to find out! Design and Packaging Nice black and yellow box From the box alone, you're already told that Xiaomi is the one behind the Pocophone brand, which explains the aggresive pricing. Flip the box, and you'll see this phone offers a lot for the money. Don't worry, we'll get through them later. What