ICANN posted updates for it’s Proposed .BIZ, .INFO AND .ORG gTLD Registry Agreements. This update means that they could pursue variable domain pricing and that is determined by the current market value of the domain.
Fees Payable to ICANN. The proposed new .BIZ, .INFO and .ORG registry agreements provide for a sliding scale of transactional fees payable to ICANN per annual increment of a domain name, starting with $0.15 in 2007 and 2008, $0.20 in 2009 and 2010, and increasing to $0.25 in 2011 and 2012* (*the proposed new .ORG registry agreement has a fee schedule implementation date of July 2007, and will continue through June 2013). The per name transaction fees, however, are subject to adjustment depending on the average price of domain name registrations during each calendar quarter throughout the term of the agreement. Each of the proposed new agreements provide only for a transactional fee component payable to ICANN, with no fixed fee. This is a markedly different approach from the fixed fee established in the 2001 .BIZ and .INFO registry agreements, and 2003 .ORG registry agreement, and is intended to appropriately scale the fees payable by each registry to ICANN to the success or decline of the registry business.
If YOU happen to create a valueable business, its almost as though ICANN is fining you and your business for its success, as the success of your business may have (organically and quite rightly) improved value of your domain name.
Since ICANN may charge the market-value price for domain registration, rather than paying the $8 or $10 you’re used to, you might end up paying thousands of dollars.
This has tremoundously important implications for the business world, for large and small business alike.
Today was the last day to file an “e-opinion†regarding the proposed situation … time will tell if this sort of change will go through.
And if it does, you can bet your bottom dollar, it will finally be covered en masse by the other larger web2.0 news sites.
More explanation here , here and here.
It’s now becoming clear — Google is crawling into Microsoft’s domain in the office and productivity suite. Check out Google Apps for your Domain:
Now you can offer private-labeled email, IM and calendar tools to all of your users for free*, so they can share ideas and get things done more effectively. You can design and publish your organization’s website, too. It’s all hosted by Google, so there’s no hardware or software for you to install or maintain.
Gmail – Offer email to your members with 2 gigabytes of storage per account, search tools to help them find information fast, and instant messaging built right into the browser.
AdSense Google Talk – Your members can call or send instant messages to their contacts for free — anytime, anywhere in the world.
Analytics Google Calendar – Members can organize their schedules and share events, meetings and entire calendars with others.
Google Page Creator – Create and publish web pages for your domain quickly and easily with this what-you-see-is-what-you-get website design tool.
There’s Writely and Spreadsheet as well though they have not been integrated yet.
Will it eventually replace MS Office? Probably, though not in the near future. Still, this could spoil Microsoft’s plan to take their service into a web/subscription model.
More and more people are interested in doing some problogging gigs, even just as a sideline. Here are 3 of the best places to look for them.
1) BloggerJobs.biz – this blog is part of BlogMedia and has been posting blogging related jobs for as long as I can remember. Started July 2005.
2) Performancing Exchange – from the makers of the Performancing blog, the nifty blog stats and the FireFox blog extension, the Performacing Exchange is basically a free service where you can register and post blogging and blog-related projects which needs probloggers. You’ll see a lot of people posting ads here since it’s free and the site is moderated so you’re sure to get only the legit ones.
3) JobBoard – created by Aussie problogger Darren Rowse, the JobBoard lists job ads posted by blog networks and companies looking for professional bloggers. You can subscribe to their RSS feeds for easy reading and be sure to get high-quality ads since people are paying $100 to have these ads published.
As a note, going rates for these kind of jobs starts at around $225 a month for 5 posts/week to about $5/post for a max of 4 posts per day. Others offer profit-sharing and there might not be any immediate revenues yet. If the offer is lower, they may be undercutting you too much. Always ask for a contract.
While the Digg fanboys are fighting over the Cease and Desist order sent by Digg’s lawyers to the owner of DiggGames.com over some trademark concerns and a $100,000 fee in damages, I too got a letter from some law firm.
Aw, I thought it was nice of them to send me a letter threatening to sue me if I don’t do what they want me to do. Now, now, this isn’t the first time I get these kinds of threat but geez, they should do some more researching first before they ask me to bend over.
The Ca t and Connie dutifully helped me draft a reply letter (I’m really glad to have lots of blawger friends… hehehe).
Wait, does the 2000 e-Commerce law say anything about obligations and responsibilities of a (duly registered ) Philippine web hosting provider?
Malaysian AdSense Publishers are being offered payment options thru Western Union as reported in Ades blog here. Before this, payment options for publishers are limited to regular registered* mail which takes around 20 days, DHL** which is about 5 to 7 days but costs $24 or electronic fund transfers***.
Adding Western Union money transfer might be a good alternative especially for countries where bank wire transfers are not supported could be a better idea. Besides, they have over 250,000 Western Union Agent locations in over 200 countries and territories.
However, we’ll have to look into the fees with this option:
From $100 to $300 : $16 fee
For $500 : $32 fee
For $600 : $50 fee
For $750 : $56 fee
For $1,000 : $68 fee
Looking at the chart above, I guess the 2-day transfer thru Western Union might be good for Publishers earning from $100 to $300 a month. Upwards of $500, the fees are a bit more expensive that the 5-day DHL delivery of $24 would be a reasonable option.
*Standard Delivery checks are sent by regular mail and should arrive within 2-3 weeks of the mailing date.
**Secured Express Delivery checks are sent via courier and should arrive within 1 week.
*** Takes 4 to 10 days to clear with the bank with code ‘Google’ or ‘BFS’.
In the last 2 meetings that I went to, I realized I already ran out of business cards. The 200 pieces I got 18 months ago are all gone.
Now I need a new one, actually two, One for the business and another specific to my blogging profession. I need them before I leave for Taiwan in September.
Any suggestions for a good shop to print them? I think 250 for each card design would be enough.
If you know someplace around Makati who does them well and fast, please point me to the right direction.
In my college days back in Ateneo de Manila, we had an ACP held every year. The ACP or Alternative Class Program exposes the students to subjects beyond the normal college courses. It’s a whole week event where students sign up for tours, workshops, and seminars and get attendance credits for it in lieu of regular classes. I remember signing up for a tour on a Coca-cola bottling plant and another one at the Clark Expo (Expo Pilipino then) while others do spirit questing and trekking.
About a month back, Chris mentioned that he’s helping organize a similar alternative classes at Pisay (Philippine Science High School) and invited me to do the session on blogging.
I agreed then though made some reservations because I still don’t know the final date of my Taiwan trip. Unfortunately, it will be on the 7th and by that time I will still be out of the country. I would have loved to do this alternative class and thought it would also be nice to visit the campus that I have been wanting to attend back in my high school days (flunked the Math part on the 2nd entrance test).
So now, the least I could do to help is find me a replacement speaker.
Just got back from dinner at Dads/Saisaki on an invitation by BitStop’s top guy Wilson Chua. They were in Makati for a two day seminar so they called me up to have dinner with him, his wife and in-laws just to touch base and exchange stories. I was surprised to learn that BitStop was ran by the whole family — yeah, these guys are all tech-savvy.
They were a cool bunch and told me tons of stories on how they survived the ISP industry in the last decade (and Migs’ name always pop out in the conversations). Being in the local hosting industry myself, this opportunity to exchange ideas and collaborate on future projects was an enriching meet-up.
Topics abound and industry insider info were shared, though I can’t really blog about them (highly confidential). Ahh, and yes, that FarmOut spamming incident here and PTB too.
One of the projects we’re looking into was to collaborate and utilize all our IT resources in pushing advocacies like expanding awareness for the Guimaras Oil Spill on the internet and maybe helping pool donations or fund drives.
We all need some more helping hands around.
We just got an invitation from the PR Consultant of BidShot.com to attend and cover their launching of a new service for mobile shopping.
What : Mobile shopping launch of Bidshot.com
When : August 30, 2006 11:00 AM
Where : Shangri-la Premiere Cinema, 6th level, Shangri-La Plaza Mall, Mandaluyong City
There will have an interactive activity where they’ll bid out premium items such as an iPod Video, starting at a friendly media rate of P1.00. I hope it’s black. :D
If you happen to be invited as well, I’ll see you there.
I guess it’s time to have them PTB badges/IDs for events like these.
In the last two weeks, I saw two of our servers being pounded to death because of Boingboing and just early today, Digg (You guys know who you are. *hehe*). On a shared hosting environment, this could be disastrous.
What could happen?
- Your site would crawl due to massive number of visitors in a short span of time.
- If you’re running on a database driven-site/blog like WordPress, mySQL might max out and crash.
- You’d ran out of bandwidth and get suspended by your web host.
What you need to do to prepare for this?
- Inform your web host *before*, NOT during or after you got dugg or slashdot. Remember that in a shared hosting environment, all other sites hosted on the same server will suffer the same fate.
- If you have WordPress, you may want to install the wp-cache plugin. It can greatly reduce server load.
- If you can, convert the page to HTML or static page so mySQL won’t choke and Apache can take the extra load or user connections.
- If you have lots of images or downloadables, host them elsewhere temporarily, like Flickr or PutFile, to reduce bandwidth consumption and file requests.
Lastly, prepare for some huge bills from your webhost afterwards. People usually think being dugg or slashdot could translate to more earnings. What they forgot to take into account that the bandwidth consumed in that short duration could practically put a hole in their pockets.
Ok, just a few months after I bought my Rebel XT (350D), Canon threw in a little upgrade to the DSLR line with an XTi.
Not really a huge one but the EOS400D is now up to 10.1 megapixel and 2.5″ LCD, self-cleaning system.
The camera with the stock kit lens (18-55mm) costs about $899.
Aside from the nice price-point (the 350D kit went for $999 when it came out last Feb. 2005), there’s not much to drool over this one.
Got a text message from Connie earlier today saying “Nood kayo Media in Focus sa ANC mamaya. May napakaganda daw na guest.”
Now, that got me thinking? Will one of her daughter be on TV?
Then, just a while ago, I got a call from Dr. Meinardus asking me to meet him next week for our workshop preparation. He added that he was on the way to Che-Che Lazaro’s Media on Focus for a studio guesting along with John Nery and Connie. Ahhh, so there’s the catch!
I think they’ll cover blogging as part of new media.
John has more details on his blog and hopes this is not another blogs vs. media all over again.
I don’t have ANC on my cable but if you do, don’t miss this one.
This is one of the questions that’s open for debate and I’d like to solicit some inputs from everyone reading here.
What makes a blog Pinoy? What makes a start-up company proudly Filipino? What makes a service trully Filipino.
Here are some classic cases we sometimes see around:
1) A Blog Network owned by a group of Australians, Americans and Canadians hire Filipino writers to write for their blog. Is that blog a Pinoy blog?
2) A British guy heads to the Philippines, hires some kick-ass developers, goes to France to open his office and manages the team remotely to develop a kickass application. Would you refer to it as a Philippine start-up, British start-up or a French start-up?
3) A Filipino IT Manager went to India and sets up shop in there with an entire workforce of Indian developers. Is that a Filipino company?
4) A Chinese guy searches the web for Flash developers and finds a Filipino artist to do his website in Mandarin. Is the site a Pinoy site?
5) A Pixar animated film was developed by hundreds and hundreds of crew, among them a couple of Filipinos. Is the movie Filipino-made?
Some of the answers may be very obvious while others will be case to case. The reason I asked is because of my recent entry over at PTB which slightly deals with international perception of outsourcing.
DOST Clearance. Check! BID Clearance. Check! NBI Clearance. Check! Passport. Check! Taiwan Visa. Oops…
So ok, not everything is ready for my trip to Taipei this September but unless something goes wrong with the visa application at Taiwan R.O.C. Embassy, I’m all ready to go.
The CALD (Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats) with have its 4th Communications Workshop this September 3 to 9, 2006 in Taiwan and I was asked to join the team and prepare a presentation for the workshop. I will be joining RM and several people from the
Friedrich-Naumann-Foundation Philippine Office.
Though I’m not familiar with how this goes, a quick glance at the list of attendees from last year’s workshop should put things in perspective. Again, I will be covering blogging, podcasting and some related Web 2.0 stuff during the workshop.
Moving on…
I need a checklist. What to bring, what to prepare, and what to expect. Yeah, yeah, first time out of the country.
It’s been more than 2 weeks now since the Guimaras oil spill incident and it seems help is very slow down there.
My mom called me up the other day and gave me updates about the incident. A lot of people have been affected. A lot of our relatives (from my mom’s side) are living along the coastline of Nueva Valencia either fishing, trawling or managing beach resorts.
The picture above was taken last February when I visited Alubihod beach, the northern part of Nueva Valencia.
I was told the because the wind was blowing eastward, some of the beaches weren’t affected yet. Still, there’s a huge posibility that the oil slick could spread even wider with the tide until that tanker is removed from 600 meters down.
We live in the Poblacion so my parents were’nt affected much though my mom told me they were collecting empty water bottles to fill them up with potable drinking water and deliver them to affected areas. Most of the people living along the coastline rely on deepwells so there’s a danger that they could also be contaminated.
The Recruitment Supervisor of OSRP, LLC was brave enough to call me and ask a favor to help them look for SEO professionals and Managers. I usually get these kind of stuff via email but it was the first time I got a call.
Anyway, here are the positions available:
Marketing Manager
Key Responsibilities:
* Manage a team of 19 content product information reps
* Manage a consumer marketing team
– Heavy focus on Internet merchandising
– E-Mail marketing
* Manage an Internet marketing team
– Must have 2 years of experience with Search engine optimization
– Search engine marketing (keywords, etc.)
– Affiliate marketing
– Shopping comparison marketing.
Qualifications:
- The ideal candidate would have 3 to 5 years experience in Internet marketing and 3 to 5 years management experience.
- The candidate should have experience working for a Multinational company.
Search Engine Optimization Expert
Daily Job Duties
- Work directly with the marketing teams to help build our thriving search engine optimization and conversion business. Actual search “engines” are automated systems that employ mathematical methodologies to evaluate your site and include it in their indices. Search engines primarily look at title tags, headlines, body text, links that connect pages to other pages within the site, links that lead into the site from external sites, page filenames, URLs, ALT tags, and some even still pay attention to keyword tags, description and comment tags.
- Analyze campaigns and translate anecdotal or qualitative data into recommendations and plans for revising the campaign
- Keyword research and selection, link building strategy development and implementation, page coding, copywriting management, report generation and delivery.
- Makes suggestions on optimizing Websites for search engines: HTML, site structure, and page layout issues and work with SEO Engineer to implement and roll out.
- Research and resolve link architecture, html code, content and navigation issues
- Build quality link partners
- Identify and implement strategies for increasing traffic through organic search listings without creating the risk of sites being blacklisted
- Build on understanding of how search engines and their spiders work by researching and reporting key developments and news
- Create and maintain a development standards document/checklist to ensure efficient and accurate implementation of search optimization strategies
Skills
- At least two years experience in Search Engine Optimization
- Strong Internet and MS Office skills
- Excellent written and verbal English communication skills
- Has a self-starter approach towards work, with an eagerness to consistently meet and exceed objectives and take on more responsibility
- Excellent time management skills and works well independently and as part of a team
Qualified applicants can submit resumes via email, or visit our new corporate office:
E-mail address: docefilt@pcmall.com
OSRP, LLC (A subsidiary of PC Mall)
2nd Floor, Edsa Central Pavilion Bldg.
Edsa corner United St., Mandaluyong City
Trunk Line: 6673801 ext. 7380 or 09153186218 Fax No. 6870452
(and look for Loi Torio)
Websites:
www.pcmall.com
www.macmall.com
I didn’t know DMOZ Editors could get rich from under-the-table quick-fixes from those who want to get listed ASAP. This one editor got caught and was removed from DMOZ.
Check out how much he’s charging people to get their sites reviewed:
Although it is not something the ODP (dmoz) does on an open basis, it’s editors do. You won’t read about it anywhere and you can talk to dmoz’s “meta” editors about it – they will only tell you that they “dont condone such activity and that the culprit will be stripped of his dmoz editorship rights.” (Of course, that’s not what really happens). There are no prices
set in stone, it’s just whatever you feel it’s worth. The more you offer, the sooner it gets listed. I listed a chart below to give you a general idea about how much will get you what.
Within a year: $50.00
Within 6 Months: $75.00
Within 3 Months: $90.00
Within 1 Month: $125.00
Within 2 Weeks: $180.00
Within 1 Week: $225.00
Within 3 Days: $275.00
Within 24 hours: $300.00
ASAP: $350.00
Now that’s something. The guy’s been reported and was immediately remove from his post as a volunteer. Imagine how much the other erring volunteers must have made in the past?
Read more about it here.
Patrick Gavin of Text Link Ads sent in a newsletter promoting a new batch of TLA Affiliate Banners. The sample below shows the $100 Free Promotion ad:
According to him, these set of banners are high performing and have been converting very well. Will give this one a try and see how it goes.
In connection to this, I’d like to show my appreciation to several of my new TLA referrals with some link loving:
And there’s Christopher de Leon (not the actor I suppose) though I can’t find his blog or website. Thanks to y’all!
Those who have been PC enthusiasts at one time or another are likely to be a regular visitor at TipidPC.com. The site is undoubtedly the biggest online PC trading site in the Philippines. Only recently though, I have been informed that it has been having some rough times and went down for about a week due to alleged technical problems with the database.
There’s a rumor though of what really caused the extended downtime:
There’s allegedly been a squabble brewing lately between two giants on another site. This alleged fall out apparently precipitated during the last 48 hours.
The more technically gifted one, out of pressure from his partner, reportedly took the precious main database hostage ang fuxored the db schema of the backups. He has gone AWOL.
Under pressure from advertisers, the powers that be had a boardroom meeting last night. Last I heard, the assembly concensus was that if the hostage isn’t turned over soon enough, they might consider emptying what’s left of the damaged database and building it anew. Which means everything might just go back to scratch. {source}
It may have some truth in it. If it’s just some technical glitch, I don’t see why it would last that long.
This story reminds me about the history of Manila Tonight (MTC) and MyGimmick (MyG). There used to be MTC only, handled by partners one of which was the brains behind the forum while the other was the webmaster. After the site became popular and was getting some form of regular income, the two fought over money only to end with one creating a new and competing site (MyG).
A very common situation with lots of business partners, both offline and online.
A supposedly Philippine start-up company is secretly brewing a web IM service, much like Meebo. The IM is called Wablet and surprisingly got some attention from TechCrunch, though they obviously haven’t seen nor tried it yet.
Readers quickly filled them in providing clues from job sites and blogs of the in-house developers. Check out the sample Wablet IM on one of the Flash developer’s blog. His about page confirms it all:
Donald manages the entire division of Flash practitioners for a Philippine-based offshore outsourcing company… and primarily the lead Macromedia Flash Develoepr for FBM Software, a US based software development company with a development center in Manila, Philippines.
The company also posted some job ads for Web Developer and Linux Administrator back in late May at Jobvertise.
Pretty much similar to Friendster Mobs, only difference is that the latter uses Ajax while Wablet is implemented in Flash.
There goes the stealth mode. I suppose FBM Software doesn’t have any Company Blog Policy.
Markku, Jayvee, Rico and I went on a whole day photography and food trip to Tagaytay last Saturday.
Photography tips were shared in between cheesy love stories.
At the end of the day, I brought home Markku’s Sigma 18-125mm lens to add to my stable. It wasn’t cheap but I think it was worth it. I don’t have huge budgets for camera lenses like he does so I’ll settle with hand-me-downs. :)
View complete gallery here.
We aptly call it the “The Band of Bloggers” and we hope to do one every month. Next stop, Enchanted Kingdom.
I just rediscovered that the WP-UserOnline plugin has been upgraded and now compatible with WordPress 2.x. I quickly downloaded and re-installed the script to check it out and here’s what I am looking at now:
UserOnline Stats
There are a total of 45 Users online now: 4 Members, 23 Guests and 18 Bots.
Most users ever online were 56, on 21st August 2006, 03:12
This is pretty neat as you are able to see which registered members, guests and bot are viewing which pages on your blog. The default time-out is 5 minutes but you can adjust this to be longer or shorter in duration.
Go check out WP-UserOnline and the widget.
During our blogging and podcasting workshop last week I was surprised to learn that about a 3rd of those who attended the 2-day activity didn’t even have an email account. The hands-on session required them to create their own blogs on Blogger and signing up requires an email account for activation.
So, we had to have them signed up for an email account first. That made things a little different from my perspective. Here I am trying to teach these college kids the power of blogging only to find out they haven’t been using the Internet that much. To me, having an active email account is the rite to passage to the world wide web.
This reminds us that only a tiny fraction of Filipinos have access to the internet. I guess the bigger challenge is for all Philippine schools from primary to tertiary have regular access to the internet and encourage *every* students to be familiar with it and use it. Only then can we make them see the benefits of being online and help close the gap of the ever-growing digital divide.
This was forwarded to me by Jun the other night. It’s an email pretending to be a Philippine National Bank Secure Verification Process. See copy of the email below:
From: pnb @ pnb. com. ph
Date: Aug 18, 2006 7:55 PM
Subject: Philippine National Bank Secure Verification Process
Dear Philippine National Bank User,
As part of our continuing commitment to protect your account and to improve our services, we are undertaking a period review of our member accounts.
You are requested to visit our site by following the link given below
https://ibs.pnb.com.ph/default.asp
Please fill in the required information.
This is required for us to continue to offer you a safe and risk free environment to run your auctions, and maintain the Philippine National Bank Experience.
Thank you,
Accounts Management
As outlined in our User Agreement Philippine National Bank will periodically send you information about site changes and enhancements. Visit our Privacy Policy and User Agreement if you have any questions.
Though the URLs may seem to reflect that of PNB, they are linked to a site with IP 72.29.74.83. The URL is redirected to http://72.29.74.83/%7Eborderb/images/www.pnb.com.ph/default/default.htm which would look like a PNB Online Banking website.
PNB users should be warned from this and should report similar emails asap. The data center where the IP is assigned to is HostDime. I have already emailed their abuse department about this phishing scam and hopefull they would shut it down asap.
Spent some hour and a half updating the list on the Philippine Top 100 Blogs based on Technorati stats here. Been getting more inquiries lately about it and while I’m not yet done with the automatic rank updating, I checked out which blogs were the top gainers of the month.
We saw Lukaret.com and Bryanboy.com made it to the 1st and 2nd spots this month, dislodging About Weblogs which has took the spot for the longest time. Our top gainers thus far are the two blogs by Gail (kutitots.com and filipinowebdesigner.com) and Basang Panaginip who happens to be the current #1 blog at Pinoy Top Blogs for this month. These 3 blogs gained some 300 to 400 new blogs linking in within a month’s time as tracked by Technorati.
Beng Hafner (lukaret.com) and Gail de la Cruz (kutitots.com) are WordPress theme designers and most of the blogs linking back to them are thru their free WP themes. Michael of Basang Panaginip got dugged last week and it took him to the top spot of Pinoy Top Blogs along with 360+ new blogs linking in.
See the updated list of the Top 100 here.
Note: If you think your blog or someone’s blog should be on the list, please leave a comment and link. I manually update the list from a directory of Filipino blogs I have, so it’s likely that I may miss some blogs.
Bidshot Wireless Services, Inc. (BWS) is a leading provider of mobile applications deployed by operators for the most demanding of users, they who want to do everything via their mobile phones.