Rainy Day Friday Round-up

Been raining all week, floods all over and two out-of-town trips canceled. Still, if anyone is interested in some offline action, join us in our weekly badminton games at WestDrive Badminton at Brgy. Kapitolyo, Pasig. That’s every Thursday starting 9PM ’til midnight. Play-all-you-can for only Php75USD 1INR 108EUR 1CNY 9. Just tell the reception it’s under Bimbo’s name in the reservation list.

I’ve been meaning to write some more local stuff but ended up deleting 3 separate drafts. Will just point you to some of the brewing discussions elsewhere…

• WikiPilipinas will officially launch next week. Hopefully, I could attend the launching and meet the proponents of the project to get more details. Last month, Eugene said there’s no point in having one. I’m 50-50 on that issue but if the WikiPilipinas (formerly called WikiPiniana) fork can come up with its own set of content (not lifted from the mother Wiki), then it becomes a worthy endeavor. If it’s just a copy, it becomes redundant already.
• Mike Villar and Marco the Siteguy publishes a rather late but still interesting take on the goings-on in the local sphere. Check out the 3rd episode of the FOBCast. Just a trivia to Marco – one of the very first blogs were actually just linklogs. And yes, we make our own definition on what the blogosphere ought to be. However, the state of the entire sphere right now is not a product of what the earlier bloggers of the late 90’s envisioned it to be. Rather, it is a product of all the individual players taking action and the inter-action that ensues afterwards. As to the issue of “content is king” vs. “traffic is queen”, that can be best explained by Mike Villar as he works for an SEO company.
• Nick of Tingog.com is calling out everyone to take a stand against Malu Fernandez of Manila Standard Today and People Asia Magazine. Read more about it here. I don’t read either of the two publications so I can’t really boycott them as suggested.
• Jhay shared his concerns about testifying for an upcoming TV feature by The Probe. The story, which will air on Wednesday the 22nd of August (on ABS CBN, 11:00PM) will tackle the state of broadband connectivity in the Philippines. I was also interviewed by them that afternoon and my hesitations were more like “am I fairly representing the entire Smart Wifi subscribers when I share my opinion about the issues plaguing the entire broadband market in the country?”.
• Jaypee cites an example on the borderlines of blogging and the freedom of speech and how one freedom is curtailed while another is rightfully exercised.
• Ajay writes about “a publicists guide to dealing with bloggers“. Gail then asks if “we’re selling ourselves too cheaply“. What’s more unnerving than the post is the cartoon that came with it. But, the greatest lesson I learned from all these PR events is what Chin Wong explained on his blog — 7 deadly PR sins. Ahh, we’re all warm bodies.

I’m off for tonight. Very early talk in Ateneo tomorrow about blogging and new media as enabling tools. I sure hope I don’t mis/under-represent us all and be called out for it. :p