YugaTech | Philippines, Technology News & Reviews » Site Updates

Thanks to YugaTech Sponsors!

yuga — Sun, 24 May 2009 03:55:21 +0000

I’d like to give a shout out to this month’s sponsors on YugaTech.

McDonald’s Online Delivery. Check out their new big-sized fries.

Samsung Philippines. Samsung is giving away a free UltraTouch if you join their contest and vote for the best style icon.

T9 Nav is a mobile search application that provides fast, easy access to features, applications content and data stored on your device, as well as to information and content available online.

Nokia. Check out the new 5 megapixel NSeries phone, Nokia N85.

Pfingo Bounce of StarHub, Singapore. Bounce is a new callback service from pfingo that converts your expensive outgoing calls into incoming calls.

Sony Cybershot.

Globe Business. Check out the new Globe Blackberry Personal Plans (now available with the Blackberry Storm).

IBM Project Light.

SEAir. With over Php100 Million in discounts, get as much as Php1,400 off per flight to any destinations of SEAir.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Thanks to YugaTech Sponsors It’s been a while since I’ve made a dedicated thank...
Holiday thanks to our Sponsors I’d like to extend another round of thanks to our...
Another round of thanks to our Sponsors! I’d like to give another shout-out to our advertisers. They’ve...

What to read at the PC Labs

yuga — Sat, 23 May 2009 05:04:10 +0000

Been trying out several processors and video cards for the last couple of weeks — running stress tests, benchmark tools and working on comparative charts.

Luckily, I haven’t busted a single PC yet in all these (but managed to overloaded a 1,000-va UPS in the process).

Here are some of the latest entries I’ve posted at the PC Labs:

Finally settled with PCMark Vantage and SiSoft Sandra along with the built-in stress tests of Counter Strike and Crysis as my regular set of tools.

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YugaTech PC Labs Section Thanks to recommendations by readers (hat tip to kzap), I’ve...

Giving Free Ad Spots to Charity

yuga — Mon, 11 May 2009 05:46:58 +0000

This has been a long time in the concept stage and I have also been doing privately for some time now. This blog is giving free premium ad spots to charitable foundations and non-profit causes. The ad spots will rotate along with the paid advertisers and will fill up all remnant inventory for the rest of the year.

I thought that if I’m expecting around 6 million page views this year, I might as well send the remaining traffic as some sort of donation to sites of charities and other non-profit institutions. Compared to a single blog post that gets buried, a banner ad will show up everyday for the entire year (more exposure).

The first recipient for this project is the World Vision Development Foundation, Inc., a relief and advocacy organization dedicated to working with children, families and communities worldwide.

If you’re a member of a charitable foundation or a non-profit organization and wants to get some exposure for the rest of the year, send me an email. Here are some basic requirements:

1) Preferably a registered non-profit organization with a base in the Philippines.

2) Must have a fully functioning website, blog or Twitter account.

3) Banner ads should be in GIF/JPG or SWF. Flash banners should support clickTag. Ad sizes should adhere to IAB standards (468×60, 300×250).

All remnant or unsold ad spaces on this blog will be allocated evenly to all free ad spots for the entire year. I cannot guarantee how much exposure that will be but based on my current stats and ad inventories, it could be somewhere between 1 million to 3 million ad impressions for the rest of 2009.

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YugaTech PC Labs Section

yuga — Mon, 04 May 2009 04:50:33 +0000

Thanks to recommendations by readers (hat tip to kzap), I’ve opened up a PC Labs section here at YugaTech. It’s basically a separate blog dedicated to all things hardware and PC. Still a work in progress but do check it out.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

What to read at the PC Labs Been trying out several processors and video cards for the...

Thanks to YugaTech Sponsors

yuga — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 08:42:40 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve made a dedicated thank you post to our advertisers and sponsors here at YugaTech. Please do check them out below and see what promos they’re offering to readers here.

Samsung Philippines is giving away an 8GB Samsung Omnia in their Make a Wish promo. See details of the contest here.

Smart Bro. Smart has cut down the price of it’s prepaid 3G kit to just Php1,995. Check out the details of this offer here.

T9 Nav is a mobile search application that provides fast, easy access to features, applications content and data stored on your device, as well as to information and content available online. Download it here.

Fly SEAir. With over Php100 Million in discounts, get as much as Php1,400 off per flight to any destinations of SEAir. Book online now.

McDo Online Delivery. Grab a quick bite with McDonald’s Online Delivery service.

Cisco. Protect your business with genuine Cisco Products. Check here for more benefits with Cisco.

Nokia’s new 5 megapixel NSeries phone is Nokia N85. See the complete features and specs here.

Globe Business for the launching of their TGN-IA, effectively doubling the Philippine’s bandwidth to the Internet.

Pfingo Bounce of StarHub, Singapore. Bounce is a new callback service from pfingo that converts your expensive outgoing calls into incoming calls.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Thanks to YugaTech Sponsors! I’d like to give a shout out to this month’s...
Another round of thanks to our Sponsors! I’d like to give another shout-out to our advertisers. They’ve...

The 2008 Blog Traffic Stats

yuga — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 02:37:03 +0000

It has been a great year on YugaTech and I saw steady growth in traffic, subscribers and advertisers on the blog for the whole of 2008. Here’s hoping I’d be able to do the same if not better effort this 2009.

For the whole year of 2008, the blog attracted close to 1.2 Million absolute unique visitors and generating 2.7 Million pageviews with an average time spent of 2:06 minutes on the blog. That’s a 200% growth in visitors and 214% in pageviews compared to 2007.

Of the lot, 21% of the visitors are returning and 79% are new ones with 62% of the readership from the Philippines. RSS subscribers hover around 4,900 and though I can’t remember what the number was 12 months ago, I’m pretty sure it was more than double. It could have been higher had I not lost about 1,200 subscribers when I migrated to Google from Feedburner.

(Updated) Since some of you asked, revenues from this blog has more than doubled from last year. Income from AdSense had a 12% increase despite a 45% drop in CTR. The lower CTR was due to additional banner ad placements. The biggest improvement is in direct ad sales — we booked over a dozen corporate sponsors which added 118% more from the AdSense revenues. That makes direct advertising on this blog as the main source of income.

My largest traffic referrers this year were from forums like PhilMug, TipidPC, EeePH and PinoyExchange. This is mostly due to my gadget coverage and reviews.

2008 was a great year for this blog and I have to partly thank my readers and sponsors for that. I hope 2009 will present itself as a much better year. Happy New Year to all!

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Holiday thanks to our Sponsors

yuga — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 14:50:35 +0000

I’d like to extend another round of thanks to our sponsors this holiday season. Support YugaTech by supporting our sponsors and checking out their offerings.

Check out the new Western Digital HDTV box, the 4TB Network Storage and the MyBook Studio External HDD at Axis Global.
TradePort partnered with Fully Booked to offer an online bookstore. Check out the latest collection in time for the Christmas season.
Red Mobile is the latest cell provider that offers Php0.50 per minute calls between RM to RM users. Red Mobile SIM card only costs Php39.
A long-time advertiser, Smart has been consistent in supporting us as they renew multiple ad-spots on this blog and a host of others. Check out and download a Smart Uzzap.

New advertisers for this month include:

Samsung Philippines and their 8MP Samsung Pixon. Join the game in their Facebook account and get to win your own Samsung Pixon.
Smart Gold Lite — lite plans starts at Php300 with call rates as low as Php2.00/minute between Smart-to-Smart/Talk ‘n Text users.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Thanks to YugaTech Sponsors! I’d like to give a shout out to this month’s...

Do you make local backups of your blog?

yuga — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:41:34 +0000

Just this evening, the server that this blog is on had a weird hardware failure. It just froze and the blog was inaccessible. The rest that followed was some sort of reality check and yet another lesson in making backups of backups.

I sent a request to the data center techs to do a hard reboot from their end. After the first reboot, the server would not respond as if it was hanging or something. A second hard reboot made it respond and I was able to login to SSH and restarted all services (Apache, mySQL, Bind).

However, the websites are still not running despite the fact that apache and mysql were fine. I was watching the processes and there were no instances of any HTTP which I initially thought was broken or the configurations went bonkers.

After an hour of checking, viewing config files and restarting services, the problem still remained. While looking at the list of accounts, I discovered some of the accounts had zero disk usage as though they don’t have anything stored in them. I realized several of the domain accounts were on the secondary drive and that drive is practically missing or was not loaded by the system.

I already expected the worst while praying for the best — the server could have suffered an irrecoverable hard drive failure. I immediately checked for the internal backups and found out that not all accounts had the latest copy. This blog specifically did not have a complete backup. Apparently, the huge account size (2.6GB) prevented the automated backup service to complete the daily backups. Same thing with the weekly backup.

I still have the monthly backups and I could start from there but that would mean that I’ll lose several weeks of entries or at most about a month.

I ran some tests and fixes on the missing drive. Luckily, another graceful reboot was all I needed for the system to detect the missing drive and load it. All that checking and diagnosis as well as coordinating with the DC engineers took me over 2 hours to finally resolve. This was fairly quick compared to other problems before where it’s usually taken some 4 to 6 hours (and there was a time about 48 hours due to a drive replacement and an OS reload).

It reminded me that despite the multiple automated backups, one should also consider regular local backups.

For WordPress blogs, this would mean downloading the Themes and Plugins folder, the Uploads inside WP-Content and a full DB backup (there’s a plugin for this one) and download. Doing this once every week-end should do as well as downloading your daily posts using feedreader clients such as FeedDemon might spare you some headache when the time comes your backups fail on you.

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Another round of thanks to our Sponsors!

yuga — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 14:05:47 +0000

I’d like to give another shout-out to our advertisers. They’ve been very supportive of me and this blog. Here’s hoping they’d continue to do so in the coming months and years.

A long-time advertiser, Smart has been consistent in supporting us as they renew multiple ad-spots on this blog and a host of others. Check out and download a Smart Uzzap, join in the Smart Bro Prepaid Promo.
Power Mac Center is running a promo on the Macbook Air and MasterCard. Each purchase of an MBA gets your a free lightweight printer (Pixma IP100 worth Php13,495).
Check out the new Western Digital HDTV box, the 4TB Network Storage and the MyBook Studio External HDD at Axis Global.
Sony Ericsson with their latest smartphone coming this November 28, the SE XPeria X1.
Check out the Apple Online Store in the Philippines. Get a commemorative T-Shirt, free engraving on iPods and free shipping on purchase of Php3,000 and above.
TradePort partnered with Fully Booked to offer an online bookstore. Check out the latest collection in time for the Christmas season.
Red Mobile is the latest cell provider that offers Php0.50 per minute calls between RM to RM users. Red Mobile SIM card only costs Php39.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Thanks to YugaTech Sponsors It’s been a while since I’ve made a dedicated thank...
Thanks to YugaTech Sponsors! I’d like to give a shout out to this month’s...

Thanks to Advertisers

yuga — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 07:45:40 +0000

I’d like to take this entry to thank our growing number of sponsors and advertisers here at YugaTech.

Smart Bro – get the chance to win an HP Mini-Note every time you clock in more usage of Smart Bro Mobile 3G.

Smart Uzzap – Download the app to your mobile phone or desktop now.

Smart GameStation – a mobile gaming competition with a prize pot of Php100,000.

Power Mac Center – they’re having a promo right now for the Macbook Air + free lightweight printer (Pixma IP100 worth Php13,495).

Axis Global/Blue Digital Systems – for offering the Deep Blue H1 UMPC at an affordable Php9,995 price.

Silie Nation – check out their list of iPod accessories and laptop bags on Multiply.

There were two ads that had just completed:

Sony Ericsson – SE is promoting the launching of the new XPeria X1. Pre-order yours here.

CEL Manila! – the consumer electronics show that happened last October 24-26.

Please support us by supporting our sponsors.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Another round of thanks to our Sponsors! I’d like to give another shout-out to our advertisers. They’ve...
Thanks to YugaTech Sponsors It’s been a while since I’ve made a dedicated thank...

Thanks to our YugaTech Sponsors

yuga — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 09:25:23 +0000

I’d like to take this space to give thanks to our sponsors that have been continuously supporting this blog. For the month of October, I’d like to welcome a few more advertisers on our roll.

First, to IBM Developer Works which advertised on the first 2 weeks of this month.

To Google Singapore for launching Google MapMaker for several countries in South-East Asia including the Philippines.

To Power Mac Center — they’re having a promo right now for the Macbook Air + free lightweight printer (Pixma IP100 worth Php13,495).

To Smart and their new web and mobile IM is called Uzzap. Download the app to your mobile phone or desktop now.

To Axis Global/Blue Digital Systems for offering the Deep Blue H1 UMPC at an affordable Php9,995 price.

To Auction.PH for continuously supporting us here thru contests and giveaways.

To Silie Nation as well — check out their list of iPod accessories and laptop bags on Multiply.

Do check out our sponsors and support YugaTech by supporting them.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Thanks to YugaTech Sponsors It’s been a while since I’ve made a dedicated thank...
Another round of thanks to our Sponsors! I’d like to give another shout-out to our advertisers. They’ve...

Thanks to YugaTech Sponsors

yuga — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 06:25:42 +0000

Another round of thanks to YugaTech sponsors. This month, we got a couple more advertisers on board and I’d like to make a shout-out to all of them before the campaign ends.

Smart Comm., for consistently being a sponsor for the last 6 months. Check out their new mobile IM app, Smart Uzzap. Still free to use until October.

Blue Digital Systems, makers of the Deep Blue H1 UMPC. Grab one of these cheap netbooks for only Php9,995.

Globe Telecom offers prepaid and post-paid mobile 3G with Globe Visibility. Get a prepaid kit for Php2,500.

Auction.PH for supporting this blog over two years now. Check out their university tours and the Auctionista campaign.

Silie Nation sells cellphone accessories, leather cases for netbooks and Macbooks as well as the X-Mini speakers. Check out the forums here and the online store here.

Nokia Philippines is promoting their new E-Series phones – the Nokia E66 and the E71.

Please support YugaTech by supporting our sponsors.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Thanks to YugaTech Sponsors It’s been a while since I’ve made a dedicated thank...
Thanks to YugaTech Sponsors! I’d like to give a shout out to this month’s...
Another round of thanks to our Sponsors! I’d like to give another shout-out to our advertisers. They’ve...

Shout out to our Sponsors!

yuga — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:10:29 +0000

I’d like to dedicate this post to our sponsors who have been supporting this blog. For this month of September, two more advertisers came on board as well as another one which will start in the middle of the month.

I’m glad to have them on board as advertisers (that means more budget to allocate for gadget reviews) and at the same time, drive some traffic and clicks their way.

Smart Uzzap offers mobile and PC instant messaging as well as SMS on bundled plans starting at Php25 a day.
SmartBro Prepaid has announced price cuts for its prepaid kits. Now down to Php3,800, the kit includes 5 hours of free 3G connection time (worth Php100). You can also check out the UAAP games at the Araneta using your Smart 3G phone. Just login to wap.smart.com.ph/uaap. Standard rates apply.
Auction.PH has once again extended its ad campaign which showcase the iHoopla promo — get the chance to own an iPhone 3G. Click here to join the contest which ends at midnight today (September 4).
Essays.PH is looking for part-time freelance writers. Starting pay is Php300 per assignment. Go and apply here.
Tradeport.com.ph continues to support us and they’ve locked in an order until the end of the year. They’re also giving away prizes to our readers here. Check out the contest here — ends on September 15.

New advertisers include:

Axis Global is an IT products distributor ranging from digital cameras, mobile phones, to servers and notebooks. They carry global brands such as Nokia, CoolerMaster, Fujitsu, Olympus, Corsair, Intel, Creative and ECS.
Globe Visibility is the mobile 3G service by Globe Telecom. Visibility offers prepaid and postpaid plans starting Php799 a month with 3g/HSDPA speeds up to 1.4Mbps.

Please support our sponsors by checking out their site or joining their contests.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Another round of thanks to our Sponsors! I’d like to give another shout-out to our advertisers. They’ve...
Thanks to YugaTech Sponsors It’s been a while since I’ve made a dedicated thank...

Thanks to Asia Century for the Free Ads

yuga — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:54:16 +0000

I completely forgot about this but I hope I’m not too late to publicly thank Asia Century for featuring YugaTech in their affiliate network.

I’ve personally met Anders of Asia Century a couple of times and he graciously offered me the free publicity in his network. Same goes to his team who did the extra effort of doing the banner ads. It sure did brought in tens of thousands of traffic.

I’ve been running their Affiliate Program for months now (I think I’m actually the first one to beta test it) and it’s been getting me some extra revenue. It’s not much compared to the other programs I’ve used but the few thousand bucks was worth the effort.

Asia Century offers country-specific affiliate programs so you can actually maximize your Philippine traffic. Here are some major points I’d like to focus on:

All affiliate programs are specific to the Philippines so you get better conversions because it’s targeted.
Most affiliate campaigns are in a form of a contest or giveaways. This is also a click-magnet and further increases conversion rate. Each conversion earns you only Php2.00 but because they have multiple campaigns (more than 10 at a time), you get multiple conversions per visitor. That means a single visitor in your website can potentially earn you Php20 or more.
No limitations on promoting the affiliate campaigns. While other programs such as AdSense prohibits you from promoting the ads, Asia Century allows you to pimp your ads as much as you can. Thus, you can tell your readers to join in the campaigns that offer prizes and stuff.
It’s platform agnostic. That means you can use their campaigns on any website or electronic medium — via email, forums, blogs, social networking sites, groups/lists, RSS, etc. As long as you can convert, you get to earn.
They offer pay-per-click campaigns too.

The best conversions I’m getting so far is running them thru my RSS feeds. If you’re interested to join them, just sign up here.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Giving Free Ad Spots to Charity This has been a long time in the concept stage...

Migrated Feedburner to Google: New Feed URL

yuga — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 03:27:19 +0000

Just got an email that my Feedburner account has been migrated over to a Google account. And thus, this blog will also have a new feed URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/yugatech.

The old Feedburner RSS will no longer work (the native WordPress RSS/ATom feeds do) but RSS to email subscribers will still get updates to their Inbox as usual. I’ve update the links and the rss meta to reflect this change.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

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Thanks to YugaTech Sponsors for August

yuga — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 04:27:00 +0000

This month, we’ve got quite a number of new sponsors as well as renewals for existing ones. I’d like to make a shout-out to all of them.

Please support our sponsors as they help keep this blog fresh and up-to-date:

Essays.ph is a freelancing/writing job site. Sign up here to get part-time writing jobs.
Smart Uzzap. Smart Comm’s new web and mobile IM is called Uzzap. Download and use for free as promo is extended until September.
Smart myTV. With the 2008 Beijing Olympics grand opening last August 8, Smart subscribers can watch the games on their phone via Smart myTV (via the Solar Sports channel). See more details here.
Auction.PH. Visit the official Auction.PH blog and get the latest updates and promos. Watch out for the invites for a bloggers party too.
TradePort. Don’t forget to join the Tradeport-YugaTech networking contest and get the chance to win Php10,000 in shopping money. Click here for more details.

A new advertiser, Globe Telecom, will also be up later this week so watch out for that one too.

Again, many thanks to all our new and existing advertisers. Please support them by visiting their websites and checking out their offers.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Thanks to YugaTech Sponsors It’s been a while since I’ve made a dedicated thank...
Another round of thanks to our Sponsors! I’d like to give another shout-out to our advertisers. They’ve...

Thank You to Sponsors!

yuga — Sun, 18 May 2008 20:42:32 +0000

Time for another obligatory post to thank our advertisers and sponsors. This month and last month saw a huge jump in our direct advertisers so I guess they need a bump in traffic-lovin’.

YugaTech readers are encouraged to check out the offerings of our display advertisers here. Feel free to visit their site and check out their ongoing promos.

Last month, Smart Broadband Inc. went out a tri-media campaign for the new Smart Bro Prepaid. Smart Bro Prepaid is a Php4,500 3G kit with a USB dongle and preloaded SIM card.
This month, we have Smart Buddy with several of their ongoing promos posted on their website.
Same goes to Auction.ph, check out their new promo on the Online Lottery and get to win 4,000 worth of e-Money credits. Just click on the side banners to see their ongoing events.
Our newest advertiser, TradePort.com.ph, will be up until end of the year. It’s an eCommerce site, classifieds and forum. They have an ongoing promo now that new members of the site can earn points and use them to get free stuff from the eMall — iPods, Shuffle, etc. Every 3 points is equivalent to Php1.00 and you get points by posting in the forum or putting up items for sale. Check them out and register now.

Likewise, props to our year-long advertisers — Ikobo, ePay and Adiusa.

Please do support our sponsors as they help keep this blog up and running. Almost all ad spots have been taken now but if you’re still interested, contact me so we can put you in reserve for upcoming months. YugaTech drives targetted traffic with above-industry CTR.

Follow YugaTech on Twitter: http://twitter.com/abeolandres

Thanks to YugaTech Sponsors It’s been a while since I’ve made a dedicated thank...
Another round of thanks to our Sponsors! I’d like to give another shout-out to our advertisers. They’ve...

YugaTech | Philippines, Technology News & Reviews » Site Updates

Thanks to YugaTech Sponsors!

What to read at the PC Labs

Giving Free Ad Spots to Charity

YugaTech PC Labs Section

Thanks to YugaTech Sponsors

The 2008 Blog Traffic Stats

Top Stories on YugaTech for 2008

Holiday thanks to our Sponsors

Do you make local backups of your blog?

Another round of thanks to our Sponsors!

Thanks to Advertisers

Thanks to our YugaTech Sponsors

Thanks to YugaTech Sponsors

Shout out to our Sponsors!

Thanks to Asia Century for the Free Ads

Migrated Feedburner to Google: New Feed URL

Thanks to YugaTech Sponsors for August

Thank You to Sponsors!