The MIT Media Laboratory expects to launch a prototype of its US$100 laptop in November. The lab expects to unveil a prototype of the $100 laptop at the World Summit on the Information Society on November17.
The 500 MHz laptop will run a “light” version of the open-source Linux operating system. It will have a two-mode screen, so it can be viewed in color and then by pushing a button or activating software switch to a black-and-white display, which can be viewed in bright sunlight at four times normal resolution.
The laptops will have four USB (Universal Serial Bus) ports, be WiFi-enabled with cellphone support and will come with 1GB of RAM. Yes, you read it right — 1GB or memory.
A sub Php6,000 laptop? This is really something. The government could now afford to equip elementary and high schools across the country with these.
I hope I could get my hands on one of those too. 
For weeks now, I’ve been on the lookout for a reasonably priced Apple iBook (preferably installment plan). The iBook was not on my Digital Wishlist last May but I’d keen on replacing the Mac Mini there with a 12″ iBook.
I checked my total AdSense earnings since I moved to WP last April and it was more than enough to get me an iBook. My dollar account which I opened up for AdSense is still intact and not a single dollar has been touched. It will end up to be “the iBook that AdSense bought“.
It’s a small thing yet but very much worth it.
Last time I checked the low-end iBook (12″, 512 MB RAM, 40GB HDD, 1.33GHz) still retails for about Php67,000 locally. I’m sure it will go lower than that by December. I wonder if there’s some deferred payment available for it (the one with zero interest)? I’ll use my HSBC card just in case (sayang ang Miles!).
We’ve finalized the October Meet-up schedule for the Pinoy.Tech.Blog team next week. We’ll have it at Cafe Figaro in Emerald Avenue, Ortigas (beside Starbucks) around 3PM on Saturday (8th of October). We’ll be doing or very first podcast during that session. Topics to be discussed are not yet out but this should be pretty exciting for all of us. Our last meet-up lasted more than 6 hours so we’re alloting a bit more this time.
Anyway, I’ve had several comments and emails after our last PTB meet-up from those who are interested to join us over coffee and discuss geeky (and, ehem… insider secrets) stuff. I believe our team is well-rounded enough to answer most (if not all) of your questions. It’s also an opportunity to meet and greet some of the well-known bloggers around (and for me to see the faces of my regular readers/commenters).
We might also be blogging live from the venue for the benefit of those out of the country.
So, leave a comment or shoot me an email. My mobile phone is just a click away.
Published by: yuga under: Wordpress.
posted:
September 29th, 2005
Everybody seems to be getting their WordPress Golden Ticket lately. The Golden ticket serves are your invite to get an account into the new blog hosting service of WordPress.com.
Got mine in the mail just this morning. I checked it out right away and didn’t find anything new except for a sleekier WP Dashboard.
Anyway, there are a lot of reviews about it out there that I don’t need to make another one of my own. Besides, it seems everyone else has an account already.
Leave a post if you want an invite though.
Update 2:
Hello Guys,
You can now get a WordPress.com account by going to www.wordpress.com and download the Flock browser.
Once you’ve installed and launched Flock, go to this URL: http://wordpress.com/flock/
Update:
Guys, let’s do a pay it forward for the Golden Ticket. I sent an invite to one of you. Once you signed up to WordPress, you also get an extra invite. Please use that to invite one more from those who posted a comment here.
And so on and so forth. That way, everyone will get their invite. Hope this idea helps. 
The 10th Webby Awards will now include not one but three (3) Blog Categories this year.
The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence in web design, creativity, usability and functionality. Established in 1996 during the web’s infancy, the Webbys are presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 500-member body of leading web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities.
It’s like the Oscars for the Internet and 3 blogs categories will be given awards as well – (1) Blog – Business, (2) Blog – Culture/Personal, (3) Blog – Political.
Well, it’s about time. Entry fee starts at $195 per category.
I hope the local counterpart (PWA) would do the same and segregate blogs from personal sites.
Published by: yuga under: AdSense.
posted:
September 28th, 2005
Exactly a week ago, I posted and entry about an experiment on AdSense for Search. It basically was a practical replacement to the built-in search for WordPress.
Today, after a 7-day trial, I think I have enough data to make some quick conclusions about this little experiment. I’ve outlined them below:
- Visitors are defintely using the search feature. I get quite a number of search views in my stats, though not really big numbers.
- AdSense for Search works! Visitors are using search and clicking on relevant search ads.
- CTR and eCPM are much much higher compared to AdSense for Content — in the multiples of 7 to 10 folds.
- Revenues aren’t that significant though. In the last 7 days, revenues from Search is only 5% of the total for the entire blog.
In my book, 5% is still 5% more than what I would get at the end of the month so it ain’t bad at all. I hope this little experiment will give you guys some insight in using AdSense for Search.
(via the New York Times)
The Microsoft Corporation will unveil today its own system for selling Web advertising as it struggles to compete with Google and Yahoo in the expanding Web search business. The system, to be used by MSN, is meant to improve on those of Microsoft’s rivals by allowing marketers to aim ads on Web search pages to users based on their sex, age or location.
I mentioned a little about this about a month ago on the YPN versus AdSense post. Microsoft calls it the MSN AdCenter.
It has started out in Singapore for a while now and then just recently, in France. Before this, ads served in MSN searches are sold by Yahoo.
Nothing very significant for us bloggers yet but this is one step closer to having something similar to AdSense or Yahoo Publishers Network (which is still not available outside of the US). We at least, independent publishers will have some pretty neat ad servings to choose from later on.
Not really.
But BlogMad is all about increasing traffic to your blogs. It’s still hush hush for now though. Conceptualized by the guys at Vault9, they promised something innovative for bloggers.
They were also the creators of probably one of the best WP themes out there, the Renovatio v9.
As usual, BlogMad is still in beta but they’re giving away free credits to the first 1,000 subscribers who send out referrals.
Hop on and sign up.
Btw, found it about it here.
A couple of days a go, I got a phone call and text message from a journalist from Iloilo who wanted to interview me for his research study on Guimaras. Apparently, he found my blog in his search and was intrigued by that little description I placed on the header image of my blog (”blogging his way from rags to riches“).
Ok, that was really meant to catch some attention and quite a few people have emailed me about it. It’s a double entrende and I’d like to clarify a few points about that. First, I am not rich (yet). Second, what I meant about blogging away from rags to riches was that (1) blogging could become a source of income for the regular Filipino (which is what I am preaching here in my blog) and (2) I practically started my entrepreneurial ventures thru blogging (see plogHost.com).
Anyway, I sent the journalist a short autobiography of sorts (way back when I was a kid growing up in Guimaras to my college days in Ateneo and my online ventures). I hope my story was interesting enough.
On a related topic, Marc of Macalua.com just published my long overdue inteview about my netrepreneurial escapades.
And then, there’s the great big theme redesign of PinoyTechBlog, which was tirelessly customized by Jolo.
Last week, I discussed about filtering blog-related ads from your AdSense account in order to Maximise Click Through Rate (CTR). I made the recommendation based on Shaolin Tiger’s post here.
Well, after implementing partial domain filtering on our accounts (Connie & I) over the past week, the average daily AdSense revenue seems to have decreased by at least 25%. Mine is less (or almost) negligible but Connie’s account showed a more significant depreciation.
The site which was highly affected by the filtering was PinoyBlog and Houseonahill.net, with the former almost loosing all its clicks.
I realized that filtering blog related ads for a site that’s all about blogs and blogging (PinoyBlog) is a big blunder. Since we are tracking the effect of ad filtering per channel, initial results showed that the focused blogs (those streamlined like PinoyTechBlog) are the ones that benefit the most with higher CTRs while the general blogs like Houseonahill lost a lot of low-paying clicks which could still have translated to several dollars of revenue per day.
One of the main drawbacks of having a fairly popular blog (that’s according to Google, not me) aside from getting comment spam is having troll spams. Troll spams are those who checks out your blog for high comment traffic then add self-serving comments promoting their own blogs, forums or website in the hope that traffic would precipitate down to their end.
Comments are good. In fact, I love comments. But if you leave a comment just to promote your blog or forum or website, expect that I will edit them or delete them. It’s my blog and I can do so whatever I wish of it.
Duncan of Blog Herald quoted Paul Short of BlogLogic about his Comment Policy:
“I’m a complete and utter bastard, this is my freakin blog and before you comment you agree that I have the right to zap anything I feel is inappropriate, because you do not have the right to take me down by posting illegal stuff, spam, or any other junk in my comments. Plus, if you’re a comment spammer and I ever meet you in person, I’ll bitch-slap you up side the head with a rubber surgical glove filled with dog poop until the inevitable happens.”
So, to those who’ve been trolling my blog, please don’t waste my bandwidth with yet another of your self-promoting comments. We don’t need them here. I’m sorry if my blog gets much more visitors or comment posts than your forum or website. I worked hard for it and I am not going to give you a free ride.
(via BBSpot) Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is set to ban the use of “www” in domain names as recent studies show that office productivity is affected by workers having to type “www” when surfing a website.
Requiring employees to type ‘WWW’ cost companies over $25 billion last year,” said ICANN representative Emil Scharnsdorf. “The average Internet surfer takes two seconds to type ‘www’ and visits 125 sites a day, add in typos like “qqq” and “ww,” then wave your hands over your head three times and you’re at $25 billion.
Funny.
The biggest beneficiaries of the change will be ordinary workers. Now an employee won’t have to type www.victoriassecret.com when doing research on the latest lingerie available, but can go straight to victoriassecret.com saving up to ten seconds for a slow typer.
Owners of site found not following the rules will face fines of $10,000 or confiscation of their sites by ICANN.
Whoah!
Complete story here.
Published by: yuga under: Freewares.
posted:
September 24th, 2005
Opera made the big bold move this week by offering their $29-dollar browser (version 8.5) for free. As of today, there are about 1.6 Million downloads already.
It was a bit of a surprise why Opera would take the free model, but it was high time I guess. There have been reports that Opera had made a deal with Google and other big sites (like Amazon I guess) for delivering ads which is set to replace their $30 Million revenue from selling the browsers. Yup, they do have buyers — 100,000 shelling out $30 annually. Not much but it’s still something.
This move could have been triggered by recent stats that FireFox is eating away Opera’s piece of the pie.
With this shift, Opera is expected (or hopes?) to earn more from what they get by selling the ad-free browser. If Mozilla can do it, why can’t they?
Published by: yuga under: Telecoms.
posted:
September 23rd, 2005
A couple of days ago, someone from PLDT called me up and inquired about my “incessant” issue of not getting any billing notices (not even the disconnection notice) for over six (6) months now. I stopped bugging them about this 3 months ago.
I confirmed to them that in the last 6 months or so, I never received a single notice. My landlord has been receiving all kinds of packages and letters on my behalf without falter so the cause of the problem is most probably from their end. The guy on the other end of the phone apologized and explained that according to their logs, no one was receiving my billings and even claimed that the neighborhood did not knew me as living in my address. (Stupid excuse if you asked me.)
Anyway, I blogged about this issue here and at Pinoy.Tech.Blog a month ago. I thought that if repeated calls to their CSR would not remedy my issue, blogging about it could very well be my last option.
Well, what do you know, I just got huge envelope today from PLDT delivered rush via Securities Express. They managed to send me all billing invoice from as far back as April.
Perhaps, my blogging about it did the trick.
Max of SunStar Cebu wrote a nice piece about blogging and how it influenced online readership in the Philippines (mainly due to the recent political crisis).
I was one of several bloggers he interviewed, along with Connie, Ka Edong, Manolo and Edwin Lacierda.
Max sent us an earlier copy of the article via email and posted an entry of the same in his blog. A copy of my complete answers to his interview can be found here.
The funny part was I wasn’t able to read the online version published here. I only saw the online article when Duncan of Blog Herald blogged about it. Then, a few minutes later, AnP left me a comment just a minute or two after that.
News spread real fast.
Published by: yuga under: Gooooogle.
posted:
September 22nd, 2005
From Balanced News Blog, a link to a complete list of how much Google stock has been sold by whom and at what price. I ignored the headline about Google Founders Dumping Google Stock? because it doesn’t ring a bell. (Who wouldn’t want to sell a highly (or overvalued?) valued stock these days?)
Anyway, I browsed thru the list and gasped at how much people from Google were raking in from their stock sales. I sorted the “regular” employee’s sales by volume and found one Roberta Eustace getting an estimated lump sum of $6,115,500 for her shares (highest so far in the list with a title of “Employee”). I am not sure though if that’s the highest number of shares a regular employee got when Google went into IPO. (Maybe it’s also based on the number of years of stay with Google — the seniority rule.)
Imagine that, hundreds of rank-in-file becoming instant millionaires?
Who wouldn’t want to be a Google employee? It’s like winning a lotto.
Published by: yuga under: AdSense.
posted:
September 21st, 2005
Ok, I just changed the built-in (default) WordPress search box to AdSense for Search for several reasons:
- The WordPress built-in search isn’t doing really good at searching related keywords. While the default results are filtered by date, there’s no filtering for relevance. So, If I search for an old entry that I wrote and the keyword I typed is often used in the blog, my search results would go bonkers. I have to scroll down and find the right one if it’s even listed. I’m not sure how or what’s the algorithm for the WP search but I guess it’s just plain old search index. Again, maybe I’m wrong.
- AdSense for Search uses Google’s style for searching content within a domain. This will give you a better result especially for multiple string queries. Besides, I’m used to Google Search all the time and it rarely failed me to finding what I am looking for. I guess it will do the same for my blog.
- AdSense for Search has relevant/contextual ads. If Google does not find the search query, it could still show some more relevant ads that could capture the attention of your blog readers. That’s a click already.
Been reading around that AdSense for Search doesn’t really earn quite well for bloggers. Most of the blogs i read mentioned a nil to 1% revenue from Search. In any case, 1% is still 1% right?
And oh, I already got $0.08 in the last two days since I moved over! hehehe…
It’s been over a month that I have not used my Canon Ixus 30 to my enjoyment. Thanks to my new-found subject(s), I’m again inspired to experiment.
The cute puppy’s name is Genious. The two young deers are Sunny and Sky, very apt by the colors of their fur. (Wait a sec, are they really deers? Hmmm, I’m not very sure anymore.)
Ok, ‘nuf of that. Move along to the Gallery.
Published by: yuga under: Freewares.
posted:
September 20th, 2005
There are a lot of other file upload service around like RapidShare but I find PutFile.com to be a more convenient alternative.
Putfile is a FREE dedicated digital media hosting service. Here you can upload videos and images to the internet for free. Your media will be hosted on our reliable servers offering zero downtime.
You are only allowed to upload media files though:
* Images: .jpg .gif .png – 2mb file limit
* Video: .wmv .avi .mpg .mov .asf .asx .mp4 .3g2 – 10mb file limit
* Audio: .mp3 .mid .wav .midi – 10mb file limit
* Flash: .swf – 10mb file limit
No hotlinking though. That’s it! Check it out!
[tags]free image hosting, upload service, putfile, photobucket, putfile.com[/tags]
I know there are a lot of paid-to-surf or paid-to-click programs around and most of them are either wasting your time for a few cents a day or just a complete hoax.
If anyone’s interested, you can go and checkout StormClix (affiliate) which is a new “pay to click on ads” program. If you’re already a member of member of StormPay, you’re automatially signed up and can start viewing ads and get paid for it.
Basically, advertisers set a price range for their ads to be listed on the StormClix program and interested members can click on an ad and earn between $0.01 to as much as $5.00 per click. The list of ads are categorized according to the set amount so you can check out the higher paying ads first. Earnings are then accrued and deposited to your StormPay account each day.
Since I’m already a StormPay member and been using it to pay some bills online, I tried the program and see what I can make of it. Clicked on several ads see how much one could really get after 15 minutes of ad clicking. I got $0.75 at the end of the day. Spare change, I know but if you got nothing to do around, you can go ahead and try it.
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