YugaTech | Philippines, Technology News & Reviews

Philippines, Technology News & Reviews


Archive for September, 2006

WordPress VIP Hosting

Wordpress.com formally announced it’s plan to get serious with the blog hosting business and is now offering VIP Hosting for premium bloggers/publishers.

Based on our experience with high-profile and high-traffic bloggers using WordPress, we’ve put together something we’re calling “VIP Hosting” which allows these folks to piggyback on our WordPress.com infrastructure, getting the benefits of what we’ve built without the limitations of a free WordPress.com account around theme editing and javascript.

Here’s how it works:

  • You create WordPress.com accounts, import your content, and point your DNS at us.
  • We load balance your site across our dozens of servers.
  • You can have your own domain name.
  • All of your administration will be over SSL, which means no one can sniff your password.
  • People logged in to WordPress.com will also be logged in on your domain, which makes it easier for them to comment and link you. (Also gives you free integration with our My Comments, Tag Surfer, and avatar features.)
  • Included Akismet spam protection.
  • Inclusion in our top lists, which can drive a great deal of traffic.
  • You will have the ability to edit your templates via Subversion (SVN).
  • You can run most plugins (that don’t modify DB tables).
  • There are no restrictions on ads, javascript, etc.

What do we ask in return?

  • A “Powered by WordPress.com” logo on your site.
  • A few standard hooks in your template for our centralized stats.
  • Your tags go into and point to our Tags community.
  • $500 to setup your site and $250 a month.

The $250 might be too much though but if you’re concerned about uptime (99.9999%), backups, scalability and multiple redundancy, then the cost is justifiable. That same amount can also get you a decent dedicated server with backups but that’s all. I guess that’s what you’d call premium real estate.

permalink

How did Milenyo affect your traffic?

Was doing rounds on all the blogs and websites I handle and noticed varying effects on site traffic due to the Luzon-wide blackout caused by the recent typhoon, Milenyo. Depending on where most of your visitors comes from, it could really kill your traffic like a swarm of locust in the middle of the night.

See some screenshots below:

The last one is for my blog here and looks like it’s down by 20% and feed readers by only 10%. Likewise, revenues are down by 40%.

ABS CBN reporter RG Cruz, texted me that only about 30% of power has been restored in Luzon and full restoration is expected by Sunday. That means we’re having some partial rest away from work ’til then. If only there’s running water around. *hay*

permalink

JNB Web Promotion Controversy on Isulong SEOPH

Just a quick link to Marc’s post about this open letter from John Bertrand of JNB Web Promotion, a local SEO outsourcing company which is was also a sponsor of the isulong seoph contest.

Read the complete story here.

Obviously a misguided concern, IMHO. Just look at the date of the open letter: Sep 26, 2006 8:55 PM.

Why, oh, why did it took Mr. Bertrand almost four (4) long months before composing and sending this email to everyone? He’s a member of the SEO Philippines YahooGroups too so there’s no reason he can’t reach his intended audience with the “message”.

I agree with Marc, just go ahead and remove the links and mentions about the sponsorship then let’s all move on.

permalink

PLDT WeRoam got cheaper?

Not sure about the timing but it seems that PLDT slashed a few hundred pesos off their WeRoam prepaid and post-paid subscription fees around the time Globe Innove commercially launched its competing product, Globe Visibility.

Just take a look at PLDT WeRoam’s current pricing scheme:

WeRoam Internet
Unlimited WiFi Internet(via AirborneAccess up to 2Mbps)
Unlimited GPRS/EDGE Internet (up to 140kbps)
Application Fee: Php 2,500
Monthly Recurring Fee: Php 1,200
Free Use of Mobile Data Card

WeRoam PLUS Internet
Unlimited WiFi Internet(via AirborneAccess up to 2Mbps)
Unlimited 3G/HSDPA Internet (up to 1.8Mbps)
Unlimited GPRS/EDGE Internet (up to 140Kbps)
Application Fee: Php 2,500
Monthly Recurring Fee: Php 1,700
Free Use of Mobile Data Card

Prepaid Subscriptions
Php 10,860 : Mobile Data Card + 3 months subscription
Php 14,220 : Mobile Data Card + 6 months subscription
Php 20,940 : Mobile Data Card + 12 months subscription

Once your subscription expires, you can buy prepaid e-loads via your Smart Mobile Phones:

Using a SMART phone with an active SMART Money account, text : , and send to 270.

* Example:<1day><0918918xxxx>

Reload rates ran from Php75 per day, Php405 per week or Php1,120 for 30 days.

Let’s see how Globe will respond to these price cuts. First, I gotta talk to them and get me a trial account. :D

permalink

Feedvertising goes mainstream?

This was supposed to be a 7-day closed private beta for publishers the other day but it looks like announcements have already been made publicly so I guess it’s ok to blog about it.

Hello, As an existing TLA publisher you are now invited to a special private, confidential beta for our newest product: Feedvertising.

Please respect our request to keep this program confidential until it’s public launch which will be in the next seven days. If you think you will be tempted to blog about it before our launch, please stop reading now :)

Feedvertising will allow you to have complete control over advertising on your RSS feed. Whether the ads come from us, your own in-house efforts, or your affiliate links, the choice is totally up to you!

- Patrick Gavin, President, Text Link Ads Inc.

So, I’m trying it out here on my blog first to see how it goes.

Feed RSS Ads

Now, I don’t know how they compute the rates but this one might have shot off the mark a bit — $90 for an RSS link ad?

permalink

Liberal Times Book Launch

Spent the whole evening last night at the Liberal Times (in the Philippines) Book Launch. As expected political figures from the LP (both factions) were there to celebrate the book launch and bid farewell to it’s author, Dr. Ronald Meinardus, the Philippine Representative of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.

Book Launch

The event was held at the Yuchengco Museum at RCBC Plaza. The place was huge and t’was my first time to see paintings by the great Amorsolo and Juan Luna on display.

Liberal Times in the Philippines

In the book was a page with a picture of me, Manolo and RM taken during one of our blogging workshops. That’s the next best thing to having published your own book — be in one. :D

permalink

AA Hotspots on Google Earth

Thanks to Airborneaccess, I was able to survive 48 hours without PLDT myDSL, Smart Bro and even Smart GPRS in our area here at Evangelista, Bangkal. Everyone lost theiur phone lines and there was an unconfirmed news that someone or some group looted PLDT’s boxes somewhere in the Pasong Tamo area which caused the entire block to go down without dial tones or DSL.

Anyway, went around looking for alternatives the other day and found out that AA has also added their hotspot map on Google Earth. All you need to do is download the KMZ file here, fire up Google Earth to see where are all the hotspots.

Wifi Hotspots

A really nice addition to their feature-set, esp. to people like me who are always out and about.

permalink

BlogCon Aftermath

BlogCon

Thanks to everyone who attended the BlogCon last night. I hope everyone had a blast (because I did)!

Though I wasn’t able to meet and greet everyone, that signature-campaign-ala-raffle allowed me to get to know a lot of bloggers even for a short while.

Thanks to Globe Innove for the opportunity to hold this big a gathering and hoping for more of this in the future.

Pictures will follow but you can get updates from people who blogged about it last night here.

I hope those who aren’t as active in blogging will renew their passion for their blogs after the event. :)

Updates from all over the blogosphere:

permalink

What are the odds of 3 DSL providers down?

Yup, all 3 of them are down.

1) PLDT myDSL is down — no conneciton since 10PM last night. NO dial tone on the phone lines as well.

2) Smart Bro is down — slower than a slug since last night. Only 3 out of 20 pings get a response. You’re lucky if you could load Google’s homepage.

3) Smart GPRS is down — cannot connect to the network daw.

Now, what are the odds of that?

All other phone lines in the area not working as well. Thanks to Airborne Access, I think I’ll be here at the Bluewave all day.

permalink

Pinoy Travel Blog on Manila Bulletin

Read today’s copy of Manila Bulletin’s Blog-o-Rama. Our group blog, PinoyTravelBlog, was featured there today. (Both onnline and print versions.)

Read it here.

permalink

Crazy Egg officially launched

Track, evaluate and improve your website. Get a clear picture of where your visitors are clicking and enhance your site’s results. With AJAX like click overlays, lists and heatmaps showing what on your site is popular and might need improvement. Crazy Egg is designed to help you continually test and improve your site.

CrazyEgg Crazy Egg Tracking

It has been on closed beta for several months now and Max was able to test it back in April. Now, the service is open for everyone to register.

The free account can track up to 5,000 per month with 4 pages you can track at once and 4 snapshots for archives. Upgrades available between $19 to $99 per month depending on the size of the site you are tracking.

Get on for yourself here.

permalink

Update your TLA Scripts

All TLA subscribes have been sent this email ealier this week so if you did not receive one, login to your account, download TLA version 2.0 and re-upload it in you WP plugins folder.

We have made an imporant update to our TLA publisher code. You will need to log in to the URL below and upgrade your code:

http://www.text-link-ads.com/my_account.php

Once you are logged in, choose “Install ad code” from the publisher section of the menu. Below is a list of all the sites that you need to update.

http://www.yugatech.com/blog/

Click on “get ad code” to the right of each of these sites. Walk through our ad wizard and replace your current code with the new code that is generated.

Note: This will not become common practice. Periodic code updates are not in the works, but this is something that we do need you to do this time.

We apologize for the extra work. After you complete this upgrade, you will be all set for the foreseeable future. Thanks again!

Patrick Gavin
President
http://www.Text-Link-Ads.com
pgavin@text-link-ads.com
(877) 480-9755 x715

It’s a quick and easy update.

permalink

Car AC Adaptor for Laptops

When I was preparing for my road trip to Vigan two months ago, I texted several people if there’s any adaptors for laptops to plug in the car. Since my laptop’s battery only lasts about 2 hours, I thought it would be wonderful to have a socket to plug it in while on the road and even charge it if while driving.

Been going to a lot of stores and car accessory shops for this thingamagig since then. T’was only last night that I finally found one.

Car AC Adaptor

This AC adaptor (also referred to as ring mininverter) plugs into the car lighter socket (doubles as a 12 volt DC power outlet) and outputs around 80watts at 220 volts. Regular laptops have around 60 to 90 watts. Mine’s at 60 watts (Look at the bottom part of your laptop — if wattage is not shown, just multiply the volt rating and amperage, e.g. 15V x 4A = 60 watts).

Here’s a list of commong gadget wattage:

1) Mobile phone charger (5-10 watts)
2) Camcorder charger (3-20 watts)
3) Video games console (39-100 watts)
4) Portable work light (8-60 watts)
5) Portable stereo system (10-40 watts)
6) Laptop computer (60-90 watts)
7) Palm top computer (56-70 watts)
8) Digital camera charger (3-19 watts)

The price — Php799.95.

permalink

Business World: Earning Money through Blogs

Just got word from Business World contributor Anne Nerissa Alina that the feature article about problogging is now out today and tomorrow (September 22-23 issue). The column can be found Section 3, page 2 of BW Weekender and entitled Earning Money through Blogs. The online version (downloadable PDF format) is exclusive to subscribers though.

In it were interviews with Filipina-Aussie b5media owner Shai Coggins, problogger Ruth Schaffer and some reference to Darren Rowse.

Grab a copy of Business World tomorrow. I’m got one free at Starbucks. :D Just a note though that this feature is just a primer on problogging so if you’ve already reading my blog here for a year, there’s not much to learn from it (except the one that Ruth revealed about pulling in Php30,000 for her problogging sideline).

permalink

Globe Visibility now available commercially.

Ahh yes, Globe Visibility, this is what I was talking to them guys many times — give PLDT WeRoam some competiton. This was just published at Inq7.net: Globe offers wireless 3G Internet service for mobile users.

With a monthly subscription fee of 2,000 pesos, the service includes a notebook PC card integrated with a subscriber identity module (SIM) also used for mobile phones.

The SIM itself can only access Internet and data, not voice as with SIMs of mobile phones.

The service taps into available 3G cell sites of Globe, particularly to cell sites enhanced with HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) to be able to connect to the Internet. It can provide bandwidth of up to 1.4 megabits per second (Mbps).

Yup, that’s 1.4Mbps via HSDPA which may only be available within Metro Manila. Their GPRS connection only tops at 50Kbps though.

So, I guess it’s time to talk to their Visibility group and maybe get some of us some trial account. :D

permalink

Complete List of Globe WiZ Hotspots

When the guys from Globe Innove gave me a free WiZ (Wireless Internet Zone) account, I retorted that they didn’t have any list of hotspots posted on their website (not even on that login page you see when you’re hooked up with one of them wifi access points).

They shot me an email with the complete list below. (This one hasn’t been updated since December 10, 2005!)
Continue reading ‘Complete List of Globe WiZ Hotspots’

permalink

What is blogworthy and what is decent content?

I though the two terms above are somewhat related to each other so I’d like to discuss them here. The Ca t asks what makes an issue, news or topic blogworthy? This was in response to her plea to help spread Pyro’s case. I’d like to take the stand of some anonymous blogger and venture an answer or two to The Cat’s question:

  • First, blogworthiness is a relative term. One topic might be blogworthy for me but it might not be blogworthy to others.
  • Topic relevance. If I have a blog about travel, it would be a little awkward to have a post similar to what I did here. If the topic was relevant to travelling, it would make sense to post about it on the travel blog. Otherwise, it’s not blogworthy at all.
  • Too personal. Yup, some subjects are just too personal to blog about.
  • Blogger Relationships. A lot of bloggers have now formed close relationships on top of just being fellow bloggers online. Others become true friends, ninongs or ninangs, maybe even as significant others. Still the general populace of the blogosphere is still a little diluted in terms of personal relationships that a request like this might not strike favorably and be deemed not worth a space in their blog.

Then, there’s this “what’s in it for me” mentality everyone has (including me).

So, we move forward to what makes decent content and who determines if it’s decent or not? I was just chatting with Mikey and told him that one of the bloggers in their upcoming content network had mistaken me as the organizer (the entry has since then been edited). I wanted to correct the blogger right away but I thought the organizers of Dash Media were either doing this in stealth mode until I found the link of their email here.

First, let me clarify that I was never a part of Dash Media (and never will be, although we host the site on one of our servers). Second, I have been brewing a Filipino blog network of my own for the longest time (say December 2005?). We haven’t launched it yet due to logistical problems. In as far as marking it as the first Filipino blog network, Shai Coggins has already taken that spot a long time ago with her About Weblogs (which was consequently merged with b5media).

The vision of Dash Media is to become the 9rules of the Philippine Blogosphere, which is why they are filtering the good blogs from the not-so-decent ones. It’s like PinoyBlog for those who can write decent and have a decent design as well. I wouldn’t call it an elitist network as some of the western bloggers would refer to 9Rules but I’d like to stretch the discussion on where to draw the line between a decent blog and a noisy blog (noisy, being not decently written). You will notice I am using the word decent as this was the same term used by Dash Media to draw the line between a blog that’s worthy to be added to your Bloglines account and a blog that’s just plain boring and uninteresting.

I believe the regular Filipino blog reader is intelligent enough to know which is good content and which is not. This is the reason why most of us have RSS Feed readers — it serves as our personal filter to weed out the noise from the ever growing blogosphere. My other worry is that this could cause some sort division as to who has the better content.

Ok, I’ll stop here before people thinks this is another “my network versus your network” thing, which isn’t because I don’t have one yet. :D

permalink

Are you a big fish?

While we’re on the topic of links and link baiting, let me share this other one I just found out: Are you a Big Fish?

Continue reading ‘Are you a big fish?’

permalink

Page 1 of 41234»


By N2H