As you may have read in the news already, the Philippines has been hit by one of the strongest typhoons in over 40 years. Typhoon Ondoy (international name Ketsana) has displaced hundreds of thousands of families and left hundreds of people dead.

Floods are still everywhere and people are left with no electricity, food, water, and at the worst, no roof over their heads.

Splashpress Media is running a donation drive in aid of the victims of the flooding in Metro Manila. We are starting the donation drive with $1,000 from ourselves. For those who can make credit card payments, you may directly send donations to the Philippine National Red Cross which is one of the bigger organizations organizing and handling aid. However, for those who might prefer PayPal, The Philippine National Red Cross can also accept PayPal payments through this address: give@redcross.org.ph.

You may link to our campaign drive using some buttons we have created:

You can copy and paste the code below, so you can add a link to our donation page on your blog, website, or social networking profile.

<a href="http://www.splashpress.com/2009/typhoon-relief-manila"><img src="http://www.splashpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/ondoy-lifeline-125.jpg" title="Donate to Typhoon Victims in the Philippines" /></a><br />

<a href="http://www.splashpress.com/2009/typhoon-relief-manila"><img src="http://www.splashpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/ondoy-help-125.jpg" title="Donate to Typhoon Victims in the Philippines" /></a><br />

We will list the names and links of all donors here in this post (please email us after you have sent a payment to the Red Cross).

Any help or form of support will be appreciated!

You can expect to purchase netbooks running Moblin 2.0 soon, according to Liliputing.

Intel Open Source Technology Centre Imad Sousou says that vendors will begin announcing netbooks running Moblin 2.0 within the next week or two. The news came out of an interview with ZDNet UK, where Sousou discussed the current state of Moblin Linux. The operating system is optimized for use on netbooks, particularly those with low power processors like the Intel Atom, and small screens with resolutions of 1024 x 600 pixels or lower.

Intel was originally the driving force behind Moblin, and still kind of is. But management of the project has been handed over to the Linux Foundation. But the custom Linux distribution is designed to play well with netbooks by introducing power saving features, quick boot optimizations for Atom and other processors, and a custom user interface that makes it easy to treat a netbook almost more as a web-centric consumer electronics device than a computer.

Moblin Linux is one of my favorite distros so far and I’m pretty excited to see it available in a netbook in the future.

If this rumor is true, then this is going to be the ultimate portable notebook.

From Tech Ticker:

Dell Latitude Z was leaked in June and till date we maintain that it looks hot. Now the word comes from Forbes is that Latitude Z will get its official unveiling in the coming weeks along with an interesting feature.

The Latitude Z will support wireless charging. How it works is still a mystery but we can expect something on the lines of previous concepts like Wildcharge or Palm’s Touchstone.

I’m pretty sure that the charging will be kind of a hassle more than an advantage, but whatever will push us more towards full wireless charging for ultimate portability, I’m for it.

Okay, the video is in Greek, but still. This is the first look we’ll all get of the much-awaited Nokia Booklet 3G.

If you’re looking for another netbook-specific Linux OS that isn’t based on Ubuntu, look no further. Fedora Mini is being developed behind the scenes as I write.

The Fedora Mini SIG is a group of Fedora contributors that are interested in Fedora on small devices. Initially aimed at ensuring that the hardware used in devices such as Netbooks and Mobile Inter Devices (MIDs) work out of the box with Fedora. Eventually, we may also include and build a spin which is targeted at these devices through the use of another user interface experience. It could also be used to produce various spins for Gnome Mobile development, Intel’s Moblin project, Hildon etc

Currently, Fedora Mini currently supports most Intel Atom processors as well as Intel Celeron M (Dothan), Via C7-M, and AMD Geode LX processors. Unfortunately, while Intel GMA 900 and 950 graphics are supported, GMA 500 graphics are not. You can find a complete list of supported hardware including screen resolutions, wireless controllers, and Bluetooth modules at the wiki.