One of the greatest advantages the Philippines have in the world of BPO is that we got really cheap labor and we’re relatively very good in English. That’s why we’re one of the top suppliers in the call center industry. And it doesn’t stop there.
The Parliament of Iran is discussing a draft bill that criminalizes “establishing weblogs and sites promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy (abandonment of one’s religion).” This is on top of a long list of crimes punishable by death.
Cute, small and cheap laptops are in so every manufacturer wants to jump into the bandwagon. Here’s a collection of tech news links and Makati’s version of San Francisco’s free wifi city.
Some fresh news and old links for this 1st February Friday. And despite my being a fulltime blogger for over 2 years now, I still feel Friday’s are the best day of the week.
Just arrived here at Gummersbach, a rural town off Cologne, Germany. That’s after more than 22 hours on air and and on the road. It’s a chilly 8 degrees outside, raining. Blogging will be sparse in the next two weeks. Left my mobile phone at home so email is the best way to contact me.
Two of the most recent blog ideas pitched to me have become an almost instant hit in the local webosphere. When the authors of these blogs came up to me and pitched the proposal, I knew right then it would be a success. I’d like to share their stories here so to inspire others.
The TechCrunch blog was launched in June of 2005 and in just 2 years, they’re the world’s #4 blog (Technorati Popular) and maybe the 2nd most influential (after Engadget).
Will be in Davao for the 1st Mindanao Blogging Summit this week-end. Hope to catch up with people. It will be a busy sked as we have another business agenda the same week-end. Will probably hit Cagayan de Oro City next month too for another Business Blogging series.
More on that next week. Here are some more side stories: Continue Reading
I got asked this same question on three different occasions this week. Isn’t blogging already a form of journalism? I said, it could be but not all the time and not for all bloggers.
I know we’vetalked aboutthis topicbefore. What’s your take on this? As a blogger, do you consider yourself as a journalist? (If so, at what point did you feel you’re doing journalism already?)
Marc and I were shopping for some suit last week in anticipation of next month’s SEMCON 2007 and Aaron Wall’s wedding with his would-be Filipina wife. While discussing details of the conference, I told him that he should be blamed for locally popularizing loaded terms such as link juice, link love and link bait. He replied, “that’s why I don’t blog anymore!”, or something along those lines.
I’m off to Philippine Science High School in a couple of hours for the Future Summit entitled “Technology: Where are we taking it? Or is taking us?“. So, while I’m away for the larger half of the day, I’ll leave you with some interesting readings and snippets around the sphere.
They say that if you have a proven and tested way of solving things, get on with it and don’t deviate from the usual approach. But what if that doesn’t solve it? Well, think outside the box. Just don’t re-invent the wheel.
As some of you might have already read the breaking news lately, or even blogged about it, the real identity behind Fake Steve Jobs (FSJ) has been unmasked.
As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. All the fun, humor and mystery will cease to exist for readers of The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs now that he’s been outed.
Here’s a nice discussion that cropped up yesterday while doing that post on the iPhone. Jayvee suggests I should take down the post because my theory was incorrect. Take down the post means I should delete the entry or put it back in draft.
However, I believe that (just like my archives which are full of grammatical errors and typos) they should be left published for posterity sake. I don’t subscribe to the practice of taking down posts unless they pose a security threat to me or to someone else, the court of law orders me to do so, or if it violates privacy statutes.
I believe the best way is to update the post at the end and explain the revision. That way, readers will know the original story, the alpha and the beta version and then the final version. *heh*
So, what’s your take? Do you just update or you take down posts?
I’m back, sort of. Blog hopping, replying to emails and catching up on a lot of readings. I dozed off right after I arrived home yesterday and after an almost 72 hours of grueling, un-amazing trip.
We did a special episode of the BoBCast here at Punta Fuego. Will publish it when I’m done uploading the MP3 file.
One of our discussions there was “If you were just a blog reader, would you read your own blog?” While most of us would immediately shout out a resounding “yes!”, I’ve asked several other bloggers and surprisingly some of them replied they probably would not read their own blog. (This question is different from “do you read your own blog”. The question focuses more on the idea that if you were just a blog reader, would you regularly read your blog and subscribe thru its RSS feeds.)
So, why would some blogger not like to read their own blog if they were just a blog reader? Here are some thoughts:
Your blog is too personal. Unless the blogger is interesting or you know them personally, it’s hard to relate and follow their blog.
You like writing rants and raves BUT you don’t like reading them.
You primarily blog for the money. Some bloggers write about stuff not because they like the topic/niche, BUT because it’s a hot one that could bring in traffic.
Your blog is not exactly relevant to you but your intended audience. This is especially true for blogs used as a marketing tool — you like to sell but you don’t like to be the one buying what your selling.
There might be other reasons out there why a blogger does not automatically become his own blog reader.
We’ve already discussed before why Alexa isn’t credible in tracking the visitor reach though at one time I suggested that it could be used to check your blog growth. Still, I think there are some benefits to this, not only in the virtual world but in the real world as well.
The other day, I visited the office of Solar UIP after they invited me for a meeting for a possible partnership. Apparently, they’ve been scouting the web for top websites with demographics they think are within their target market. So, for their upcoming movie Transformers, we’re going to do some online marketing over at Motorcycle Philippines (bikes == transformers?).
When I asked why they wanted to do such campaign they replied that as the authorized Philippine theatrical distributor, traditional tri-media campaigns are a standard and saturating the new media is the next logical step.
While everyone’s busy discussing the recent event in the local blogosphere, let me direct you to the greater blogosphere and how things are going:
Is Technorati ready to sell? Andy Beal says Mark Evans noticed David Sifry’s apparent built-up of the blog search engine. Will Yahoo be the likely buyer?
Shoemoney explains why affiliate companies don’t have to worry about about Google’s Pay-Per-Action (or CPA) ad model.
If your a non-profit organization that needs some exposure, you can go get some Google Grants, Free Advertising for Open Source Non-profits.
Fool45 explains why awards shows are a scam. I also heard from someone that Anvil Awards are asking around Php5,000 per head for each representative of their company that will attend their awards ceremony. Now, that’s real scam!
A survey done over at Webmaster World indicates that 75% of all blogs in BlogSpot are spam.
According to this study the top 15 doorway domains consist of 14 domains, where the spam percentage is over 74%. This means that in four search results of current study, three sites turned out to be spam. The researchers scanned 1000 most searched queries: ‘phentermine’ on blogspot.com and the query ‘ringtone’ on hometown.aol.com. The WebmasterWorld experts easily identified more than a half of the search results as spam.
The following list shows the spam percentage on ‘top doorway domains’:
The list shows that some of these blogs are used exclusively, or almost exclusively, for spam. The main reason for such a torrent of splogs is the fact that these sites provide blog space for free, just to attract more traffic.
Over a year ago, I said that Adsense on Blogspot drive splogs. What I didn’t realize is that it had gotten this worse. Are we nearing the time when almost all of BlogSpot will be 100% spam? I guess that’s the price you get for being the most flexible and popular blog service around.
Tons of emails unanswered and text messages unreplied. Apologies. I spent the whole morning today rummaging thru last week’s email and responding to each one. I’m still not even halfway finished. The text messages from Sunday and yesterday will have to wait for later.
Here’s some updates on my end before we go to more interesting links:
Waiting at the Shangri-la EDSA for a lunch meeting with the people for GO (Genuine Opposition).
Next stop is the Smart Mobile TV dinner with executives at Serendra, Fort Bonifacio.
Palm Treo launching at The Embassy in the Fort later in the evening.
Tomorrow’s lunch with Sen. Kiko Pangilinan at QC for his Kabataan para sa Pagbabago campaign. Anobody who’s a supported of the senator can come. Email me for details.
Thursday is part 2 of Max’s Breakfast with Piolo.
Planning out of town trips to Bataan, Bohol and Davao (again).
Scheduling out-of-country trips to Malaysia, Pakistan, Turkey and Germany.
Anyway, let’s get into the more interesting links before this post becomes a Twitter blog.
As some of you might have already read the breaking news lately, or even blogged about it, the real identity behind 
