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Results for: short news philippines

November 17, 2011

Samsung Galaxy Note GT-N7000 Review

When Samsung first unveiled the Galaxy Note, I had mixed feelings with the device. It’s got the genes of an impressive smartphone but a form factor that’s inching towards the tablet category. After having over a week’s time with the Samsung Galaxy Note and I’d like to share my verdict. Check out the full review after the break.

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Mobile, Reviews
September 12, 2011

Asus Transformer TF101 Review

The Asus Eee PC Transformer TF101 is the first Android tablet of its kind. One one end, it’s a Honeycomb tablet and on the other, it’s an Android netbook. Its design and form factor gave it a bit of an edge that no other tablet can match. Read on and check out our full review of the Asus Transformer after the jump.

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Personal Computing, Reviews
June 09, 2010

HTC Desire: In the Flesh, First Impressions

I got a hold of the HTC Desire and played with it for some time, looking for some differences between the handset and its other twin, the Nexus One.

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Mobile
December 09, 2009

HTC Hero Review

The HTC Hero will be officially launched in the Philippines today (later this evening actually) and I got an early review for those of you who might be interested to grab a unit soon.

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Mobile
July 02, 2009

Sulit.com.ph Sold for Undisclosed Sum

Leading classified ads site Sulit.com.ph has reportedly been sold to a foreign company for an undisclosed sum with negotiations going on as early as first quarter of this year.

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The Internet
February 21, 2008

Mobile WiMax: So near yet so far.

A short news report today from Inquirer says that Mobile WiMax in the Philippines will be rolled out by the end of the year. Could this be the Globe Innove and Intel Philippines WiMax service I blogged about last October?

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Telecoms
March 08, 2007

Smart, MediaQuest give Philippine TV a “new face”

I’m posting the title and the full body of the Press Release sent to me by one of Smart’s PR people. Will be having lunch with them next week so if you have specific questions you’d like me to throw their way, just leave a comment.
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Telecoms
March 01, 2007

PEP.PH all geared up

PEPPEP.ph (Philippine Entertainment Portal) has formally launched last night together with the 7th anniversary of Yes! Magazine. The showbiz portal looks really promising and has the basic features (forums, gallery, commenting) engaging enough to keep avid fans glued on their monitors. The operator of the site, GMA New Media, is really proud of this site (based on what Ms. Malou Mangahas relayed to me) and though they were not able to snag pep.com.ph (by Philippines Equity Partners Inc.), I’m sure there won’t be any type-in problems there (I see they already got pep.net.ph too).

What is more interesting is that several big time showbiz bloggers have mentioned that PEP could pose as a huge competition in their market. It’s possible PEP could take away their readership in a short time. Talk about pageviews and unique hits huh?

IMO, it could go both ways. With PEP, they (showbiz bloggers) might have competition growing their reader community (thru forums) but they now have a more centralized source for entertainment news.

(To PEP: Nice work on the watermark, huh!? You know you can’t stop people from grabbing your images, but at least they got your brand along with them. ;)

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The Internet
January 12, 2007

Is 2007 the Year of the Filipino Blogger?

To continue with our earlier discussion, Joel Alarilla wrote a follow-up article in Inquirer.net – “The revolution will not be televised, but blogged“.

He asks the question and Will 2007 be the Year of the Filipino Blogger? and says “I believe so, because now we might see whole groups of Filipino bloggers achieving success here and abroad.”

I find myself agreeing with him and I’d like to elaborate on that as to why I think so. A lot large blog networks out there have at least one Filipino problogger in their roster — Know More Media, Creative Webbloging, b5media, Bloggy Network, WeblogsInc. etc.

See, when I took the position over at Blog Herald, there was quite a mix of ruckus and excitement. It was in the news (well, our news) and some people were asking me why there was so much excitement in our little part of the world about the development.

I explained that our generation (i.e. Filipinos) have become known around the globe as any of of these types of people — domestic helper, nurses, sea men, care-giver, or call center agents. In short, we’re looked down by most as cheap 3rd-world laborers. I have aunts that are working as nurses in the US for decades, uncles & cousins on a cargo ship at sea, relatives who are domestic helpers (OFW is the proper term) in Singapore & HK, older cousins who graduated as nurses but ended up as care-givers in UK and even more younger cousins who are now waiting for their Nursing Board exam results. So, a fellow Filipino taking over a top position in a pre-dominantly western niche is real news.

Several contacts I’ve talked to told me about the stigma that comes along with being from the Philippines. So no wonder that a lot of Filipino start-ups open up offices (or shell companies) in New York, San Francisco or the Silicon Valley to avoid being flagged as an Asian (or Filipino) BPO or outsourcing lest they’d be ignored and not get the credit or attention they duly deserve.

So yes, maybe the blogosphere is indeed a true equalizer where regionalistics bounds do not exist nor color of the skin or the height of the nose are excluded from the equation. Yes, we could do better in the blogging industry and hopefully we’ll show more of that this 2007.

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Blogosphere
April 01, 2006

Google changing lives in the Philippines

A recent article of USA Today’s Tech section entitled “Google’s hidden payroll” states that Google’s Adsense program has greater effects in 3rd world countries such as the Philippines.

Anyone with a site is eligible, and Web forums are awash in success stories of small online entrepreneurs placing ads on their sites, sitting back, and watching checks from Google roll in.

But it is Web entrepreneurs in the developing world who are reaping the greatest benefit from the program.

A lot of successful cases have been shared in the official Adsense Success Stories and hundreds of thousands more worldwide with a growing number of them from the Philippines. The article mentioned a couple of them:

Andrew de la Serna runs a small search engine in Davao City, Philippines, and derives about 40% of his monthly income from Adsense. “It’s great to do what you love to do and earn money from it at the same time,” he says.

His earnings have allowed him to purchase a cellphone, develop new websites, and build up his savings account.

Dr. Rodolfo Rafael, who owns a small medical clinic in San Fabian, Philippines, says the Adsense earnings from his medical website allow him to “dream big” and reinvest in his medical practice.

The Social Software Weblog adds:

Perhaps those of us trapped in English only, US-centric webspace only come across developing world sites with Adsense when one comes by email or blog comments to pick our fat pockets. (Of course there’s no shortage of people doing the same or worse in the US as well.) Meanwhile there’s a whole world full of people out there talking amongst themselves and doing their thing online – and apparently Adsense is kissing their babbies and rescuing their kittens from trees and stuff.

Anybody care to post links to their favorite localized sites supported by Adsense and containing compelling, original content?

Ok, so I searched for the names of the people mentioned in the story and these are their sites as far as I can tell:

* http://www.nibbleguru.com/
* http://www.alleba.com (Ouch, the company blog has 2 readers via Feedburner. Seems like a totally legit search engine for info related to the Phillipines though.)
* http://www.freeware-alternative.uni.cc/

For US Publishers, a thousand bucks ($$$$) may be too small for them but for us here in Asia, it could already be equivalent to a middle management level salary.

[tags]adsense philippines, making money online, internet advertising[/tags]

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AdSense
August 02, 2005

The Philippines According to Blogs

Blogging is slowly becoming a popular alternative to mainstream media. Even mainstream media has already recognized blogging as a tool for gathering news while others even use blog entries to quote interviews in their news articles. The social phenomenon that is blogging has already made a significant change on how information is disseminated thru the internet.

Before we begin to examine the usual signs how blogging has crept into the arena of mainstream media, we need to understand what blogging is and how it came about.

A blog is a condensed term for weblog, commonly used to describe web sites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. Blogs range from the personal, technical, informational to the political, and can focus on one specific subject matter or a whole range of subjects.
Many blogs focus on a particular topic, such as “web design”, “politics”, “sports”, or “mobile technology”. Some are more eclectic, presenting links to all nature of other sites. And others are more like personal journals, presenting someone’s daily life and thoughts which most of them started off first.
Blogs have been around almost as internet was introduced in the Philippines in the early parts of 1995. During those times, the early bloggers didn’t have a name for what they were doing besides calling it a personal website or an online journal.

Back then, if you want to have your own blog, you’d have to learn the basics of HTML and a little bit of the technical aspects like FTP (File Transfer Protocol). Besides that, when one has to publish or update their site, it was done manually – editing the pages, adding links and pictures and then uploading the affected files or webpages. It was a tedious and time-consuming effort, added to that the scarcity of internet connectivity, updating a website or blog takes a great deal of effort and patience. Thus, the frequency of updates was scarce and nowhere near with what we enjoy today. Now, there are blogging tools and services which allow almost anyone who has internet connection to create their own blog in a matter of minutes.

Blogging became so phenomenal because of its viral effect – linking other related blogs, pointing to online sources and digging deep into the issue with a personal touch. It has democratized people thru the internet and allowed regular folks to express their own thoughts and opinions without censor or editorial filters which all professional journalists have go to thru before getting published. In a way, blogging is instant news delivered with a touch of personal opinion.

Blogs will not depose mainstream media, rather it will add to it. News media, despite it’s inherent credibility is still more often than not, bland and too objective. What blogs offer is a taste of personalized news coupled with reader interaction – something which traditional media lack.

In the Philippines, blogging has just begun, yet we now have several prominent people who use blogging as a tool to reach their audience and to freely express themselves.

Comm. Dondi Mapa of the CICT could probably be the first high-ranking government official to put up a public blog (http://1mjobs.blogspot.com). His blog aims to reach the relevant sectors and the general public to the importance of CICT in in generating jobs. The blog allows direct interaction with the readers and Comm. Mapa likewise gets suggestions and comments direct from his readers and the general public.

There is also a blog entitled “Philippine Debt Management Issues” (http://lowerphildebt.blogspot.com) which was published by former Philippine Treasurer, Nina Lasala. Her blog was meant to server as an open forum for investors, fellow finance officers, and other interested parties to discuss the state of Philippine Debt Management.

One of the most popular Filipino blogs today is HouseonaHill.net (www.houseonahill.net) of Connie Veneracion, a retired lawyer now currently staying at home and working full time with her blogs. Her blog topics spread from photography to politics. She also runs a cooking blog at PinoyCook.net which has been popular with a lot of OFWs around the world.

Dean Francis Alfar, a seven time Carlos Palanca Awardee, also runs his own personal and literary blog called “Notes from the Peranut Gallery” (deanalfar.blogspot.com). Jim Paredes of the Apo Hiking Society has been blogging since November 2003. His blog is entitled “Writing on Air” (http://haringliwanag.pansitan.net/).

Former Inquirer columnist Dean Jorge Bacobo was the first Filipino journalist who started to blog (deanjorgebocobo.blogspot.com) though he has not been publishing anything on his blog for a while now. Joey Ararilla (http://babelmachine.blogspot.com/) of Inq7.net now holds that spot. Manuel L. Quezon III, also a columnist of Inquirer and curator of the Ayala Museum, also has a blog at www.quezon.ph/blog as well as technology columnist Chin Wong (hwww.info.com.ph/~chinwong/) of the Manila Standard (www.manilastandardonline.com).

Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) has also recently put up their very own blog at www.pcij.com/blog. For some months now, Inq7.net (www.inq7.net) has been maintaining a blog-hybrid on their news website, entitled “Talking Points”. They also ran a section featuring interviews with regular bloggers, YOU Blog Addict (http://you.inq7.net/gear/index.htm), and another one for HackenSlash (www.hackenslash.net/gameblog/), the game blog. Likewise, Manila Bulletin Online (www.mb.com.ph) also created a feature in their Technology section specifically for blogging and Filipino bloggers called “Blog-O-Rama”.

The blog portal “The Philippines According to Blogs” (www.pinoyblog.com) is a collaborative blog that aims to serve as a starting point for any Filipino blogger and even regular blog readers to explore the Philippine blogging scene. The PinoyBlog portal enables regular blog members to re-publish a short summary of their entries with links pointing back to their own blog site. Likewise, casual readers will only need to browse to one site, read the summaries and click on the entries which interest them. This blog aggregation service is what converges the bloggers and their readers in the portal which in turn creates the blog community.

Last May 7, 2005, the 1st Philippine Blog Summit (www.iblogph.org) was held at the NISMED Center of UP Diliman. Over 150 bloggers and blog enthusiasts attended the summit which was covered by news media GMA 7 and ABC 5. This event initiated the evangelization of blogging in all sectors of society. Prominent speakers and presentors at the summit included Comm. Dondi Mapa, Dean Alfar, the delegates from Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ).

Though blogging is still in it’s infancy in the Philippines, we may someday find more and more people, especially those from the government sector, to use weblogs as a tool to reach their constituents. Presidential candidates in the recent US elections have their own blogs that acts as a marketing tool and a portal to for their constituents during the election period. Who knows, maybe some time in the near future, the President of the Philippines will also have a blog of her own?

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