NBA Obsessed
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at March 28th, 2006
I always knew my brother Angelo was into basketball, particularly the NBA. But I didn’t know he was that obsessed with it.
Today, b5 launched a new blog entitled NBA Obsessed, a sports commentary blog on the intricacies of the NBA. As I was telling Aaron our channel editor, I wouldn’t have referred him if I knew he wasn’t obsessed with the sport.
He loves this game! Happy reading.
Desperate Housewives the Video Game
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at March 27th, 2006
Okay, hell just froze over. But you know what? I’m gonna play it!
In the game, players take on the role of a new Wisteria Lane housewife, who can uncover or create new scandals on the seemingly idyllic street where the show takes place.
Afterwards, I’ll prolly settle for a New Jersey Hair Transplant.
i used to write poetry
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at March 26th, 2006During my “Sunday alone time” I accidentally uncovered some of the poetry I used to write back in college. I’m not sure if I actually posted some of in my old blog so pardon my French if I indulge myself in a memory of what I used to do.
Like a Lover
If you sing to me
Like a lover in love,
If you bathe my tears with tears;
If you, like a lover, soften my blows
Against today’s winter
And kiss me like spring -
Be it a caress of feather
Or a sorrowful weather.
Dream with me in a slow dance of Time.
Love me forever, in one
Scarlet embrace, and kiss me, dear, with
An undressed heart,
And a wet teardrop
That finds way through a river’s face,
Like a lover in love.
- jayvee fernandez
I wrote this for someone I used to like in college. It never became us but we watched three movies together, had one dinner date and I remember calling her once when she moved to the States. And no, we never kissed. I remember we held hands once, but we were both pasmado. Hehe.
m|PH is sizzling this April (and the thing about boobs)
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at March 21st, 2006
This is perhaps the most “daring” cover we did for the magazine featuring Phoem Baranda with a swimsuit. There’s an ongoing discussion in the advertising and magazine industry (mostly in the latter) of how putting sexy women on the cover becomes an effective marketing tool to sell. This comes from the notion that the largest demographic of mag readers are male.
Apparently, this formula seems to work because some statistics show that putting women in the cover of magazines contribute to better sales. The formula goes:
Increase in women’s cleavage = Increase in sales
The general question therefore is does sex really sell?
Though it may be a sweeping generalization, there actually may be a direct relationship between putting a an outrightly sensual image of a woman on the front cover of a magazine. However, my boss did once say that if this were the case, then why are the top five magazines in the world not sexy mags? Though there may be some differences, here are the top five mags according to the Chicago Tribune:
1. WIRED
2. Real Simple
3. The Economist
4. Cook’s Illustrated
5. Esquire (perhaps the “sexiest” you can get among the 5)
Other magazines that made it to the “top 5″ survey include Wytch (a children’s mag), Reader’s Digest, TIME, and Men’s Health. Where is FHM? Where is Playboy?
But consider this point:
Outside creative director Hannah McCaughey says artistic inspiration rather than newsstand calculation is responsible for her magazine’s recent spate of scantily clad covers.
“We always meant to shoot [Carlson] with the garden variety rock climbing clothes on but … I was worried I’d come back with super bland film,” McCaughey says. “For whatever reason it just felt so pedestrian and not like a cover should feel. Then the photographer tried some things with just her shirt off and it instantly became something beautiful and pure, just her skin and the texture of the rock made such a gorgeous contrast–the dopey spandex clothing seemed to interrupt all that.”
The best way to describe “wrong context covers” is to take the Boobs in Your Face approach (this may not be a good example because it uses Esquire. But for purposes of illustration … let it be so!).
“As a woman I find it so much more appealing and tastefully done than the boobs-in-your-face-stuff Esquire’s always doing,” McCaughey says. “I love it and think it’s just a normal part of us delivering surprises and beautiful photography to our readers.”
So when is it okay to put a “sexy” lady on the front cover? The guideline we live by, at least here where I work, is that everything should be in context. Phoem is wearing a sexy (but elegant) swimsuit because it’s summer. She’s holding an Olympus mju series camera, known to be an all-weather resistant model. Hence, she took it out to the beach.
So how does this all stack up? Well, as I’m writing this, Elbert Cuenca of PhilMUG arrived for our meeting. I showed him the issue and told him, “so what do you think of our first sexy cover?” And Elbert looks at the cover, brings it closer to his face and exclaims, “Uy, Olympus!”
Sex sells. Yes. But so do other things.
I rest my case.
* “Top 5 Magazines” argument actually came from my boss during a media presentation. I think it was a Wednesday.
Philippine Best of Blogs
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at March 19th, 2006
Abe has started a new project about five days ago called Philippines Best of Blogs. This is an online blog directory where anyone is free to add his or her own blog to the list of categories. What are the criteria?
When I labeled it Philippines Best of Blogs, I mean no splogs, un-updated, non-sense blogs included and with the word “best” loosely used to reason out for rejected entries.
Unlike the other “competitive” programs started by Abe such as the Top 100 Filipino Blogs According to Technorati and the Pinoy Top 100, the Philippines Best of Blogs project allows just about anybody to submit a link to his own blog or to a friends’. And yes, you can even submit your personal “wala lang” blogs!
This is free advertising!
Bugging ‘Fight Pompe’
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at March 19th, 2006I’m not sure if you would agree with me but it seems that in today’s long list of links to our friends on our personal blogs, the longer the list gets the less personal it becomes. I’m here to start a small experiment of sorts where every now and then I do a spotlight on one blog that I link to.
The objective is really to give a face to each link, in the same way that this great book called the Cluetrain Manifesto sees the market as people and not a list of demographics.
In a way, this project is a sign of thanks to the many people who link back to me. I can’t promise that I’ll cover everyone immediately. This is because I want to post something more meaningful than “this guy’s blog is nice. I met him several months ago in a conference.” So please pardon the intro. I felt that I needed to explain this project in detail. Besides, it finally gives some direction as to why I call my blog ‘A Bugged Life.’
I would actually encourage bloggers to do this on their blogs. Though the Internet is the new social tool, blogrolls are like a stack of kiddie toys you line up on the stands – they all look the same. As a reader, the first thing I’d like to know when I read someone’s blog is who he or she reads and why.
Hoookay that was long. *whew* Up first is Fight Pompe, written by Juan “Dickoy” Magdaraog. You can find him listed as “Dickoy” in my blogroll.
Fight Pompe is an advocacy started by Dickoy to make people aware of the complication known as Pompe’s disease. I’ll allow Dickoy to say a little bit about himself from his blog
My name is Juan Magdaraog. I suffer from Pompe Disease, a rare metabolic disorder. This blog was made to chronicle my fight against Pompe’s Disease as well as to hopefully impart whatever I’ve learned going through this illness. Read more about me.
I have met Dickoy in many occassions. I used to work for his father in an HR consulting firm as an intern. Dicks and I also share the same affiliation to PhilMUG as well as other our love for technology and online publishing (blogging).
Dicks has touched my life in a way that no other person has, with his cheery disposition, sharp mind and humor which emanates from his chair and breathing apparatus. I’m glued to the guy when he talks about his aspirations and believing that anything is possible if you put your mind to it. You see, the guy has achieved so much in spite of the many odds working against him.
Fight Pompe is one of his latter projects that also serves as his personal blog. He talks about life as the “Chairman,” his encounters with young people like us who have Pompe’s, as well as promoting a fund-raising campaign. One of the fund raisers is a really cute shirt designed by his friend May Ann (art on left). You can read more about the shirt design here. Bili na!
Dickoy is the creative director for a web design company which he started with a bunch of friends and his brother. He is also a regular columnist for m|PH.
it is time for new blood
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at March 16th, 2006
Photo courtesy of Abe in his blog
A few days ago, I was invited by a friend to observe a workshop on blogging and podcasting on the subject of politics. This two day endeavor was sponsored by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNF) and had prominent internet personalities such as Manolo Quezon, Angelo Racoma and Abe Olandres give talks on the art of political blogging, podcasting, and the technical science behind blogging respectively.
The end-result of the workshop were actual podcasts and blogs set up by the participants from scratch. New blood. Fresh thoughts. From average joes like you and me, but know a little bit more about politics.
On a very personal level, I feel that local politics has been saturated with the SAME hulabahoo from the SAME people who have been in politics for the past 10 years or so. It is time for new blood. They used to say that Math is the great equalizer. Times have changed – it is the Internet that gives people opportunities to be heard by anyone around the world. Thank God for this. And thank God that not a lot of these politicians that say the same thing have online journals. Manolo says it better,
“All bloggers compete in the free market of ideas”
The workshop was facilitated by Dr. Ronald Meinardus, the resident representative from FNF. I was also shocked to hear (in a very good way) that FNF (liberal democrats are now sexy in my book!) buys mPH and made reference to the January-February ’06 issue because it had the collectible on ‘podcasting in 5 easy steps.’
You can view more pictures here.
let the GAME! begin
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at March 10th, 2006By the time you’ve read this, GAME! would have prolly already been placed on the racks.
There were many people involved with the creation of the second local gaming title (the first is Games Master) in the Philippines. But it is also important to note that this is the first all-Filipino gaming magazine. This means that content isn’t syndicated from abroad (unlike Games Master that syndicates some of its content from the West).
Going back to the people involved, there are many many many of them who labored hard, enduring sleepless nights to get this thing conceptualized, laid-out, flattened, CMYK-ed, and printed. There’s Mitch, Aiza, Adel, Poch, Topper, and Joey to name a few, as well as the writers – I apologize if I forget to name all – Karl, Kiven, Ryu, Raphy, Jones, Karen … there’s just so many, I’m overwhelmed at the amount of support you’ve all given.
Now for the juicy part.
For those who’ve been paying attention to the gaming industry, there was a rumor back then that an Inquirer sister company (hi there!) was going to bring in a local franchise of Electronic Gaming Monthly, one of, if not the best magazine gamers my age (I’m 25) have grown up with. This wasn’t a rumor. In fact, it was highly possible for something like this to happen since this sister company (hello again!) was already publishing the local franchise of PC Magazine Philippines, which, like EGM is also a Ziff Davis title. There was a lot of emotion involved in this decision making process, whether to pursue EGM or not.
In the end, the following points were raised:
First. EGM’s target market was very different from the market we intended to reach. I grew up reading EGM. I can remember that since the 1980′s, there was a magazine that featured the very best of the 8-bit era. So that era has come and gone, and the gamers that we were before .. well a lot of us evolved to the online scene. Some of us have moved on and stopped playing altogether. A few have gone totally hardcore. But, truth be told, the market has changed. The gamers now aren’t the gamers of before. My generation has a nostalgic excitement for EGM. But the youth of today don’t really care (it showed in several of our studies). They grew up with Wytch, Anime, the Internet …
Second. The gaming culture here is very different from the States. Though we are also a console-playing country, we get most of our games from bootleg sources (aka piracy). That’s why the gaming industry here in the Philippines takes the online gaming model where a series of checks and controls are implemented to make sure that pirating a game is impossible. Thus you have Ragnarok, Khan, RAN Online, PangYa, O2 Jam and many many more. That brings in the bucks.
Third. We decided that it is much better to invest in the Philippines. With all the things going on now in this country, we do need a pep talk. One thing about GAME! that a lot of you prolly don’t know is that we have on board with us Joey Alarilla, a fellow gamer, the guy behind hackenslash, the founder of the Asian Gaming Journalists Association (AGJA), and a bunch of other embarassing things he’d rather not disclose.
So there you have it. P80.00 for a full glossy gaming magazine. 100% Filipino. Made by the publishing group of the nation’s biggest broadsheet. Oh, nice poster inside too 
9:55 am,
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at March 9th, 2006Me: Excuse me, but are you Manolo Quezon?
Him: Yes I am.
Me: Hi. I’m Jayvee from m|PH. I read you blog. You’re speaking today right?
Manolo: Ah yes Jayvee. Kaw pala yung sa m|PH! Yes I am.
Me: Great. I hear Abe is coming too right?
Manolo: Yep. In fact, this is going to be the first time I’m ever going to meet him!
Me: Same here. The Internet is such a small place.
Digital Exchange in Greenbelt
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at March 8th, 2006I’m currently in Digital Exchange, Greenbelt waiting for our new graphics retainer. I’m hungry and sleepy. I’m leeching off the free WiFi at the palmOne Podcentral store. And after browsing through my iPhoto library for old pictures of my dog, I wish I had his problems.
He deserves the George Lindemann Jr. Award!
The Magic Three
Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at March 8th, 2006I’m predicting a record high for my blog this month. In terms of stats, I’ve had the following unique user pageviews:
January – 1541 users
February – 1189 users
March – 508 users (as of March 7 2006)
Wow, whatta way to go. So who’s driving traffic? Thanks to AW stats installed on my blog, I’ve got a fairly detailed account of who’s driving traffic to me. Well here they are, A Bugged Life’s Top Three Hits Sources:
Third place is goes to my high school and college friend Denise Albert. Though she doesn’t update as often as before, people still flock to her site. There, I found a picture where she looks like Jim Carey. Heehee.
Second place goes to the amazing Pam Pastor of 2Bu! and Super! She’s usually up till 3AM finishing her sections. I can relate. Pam blogs about .. well everything! She keeps a step by step account of what she did during the day. And here’s her most overused picture too. She owes me coffee.
First place goes to singer / model / artist Ala Paredes! Funny thing was, it took just one post for Ala to drive two quintillion jillion readers to my site. All she did was say we shot her for m|PH. Ala, you should reallly start charging people for links.
Note that there are several more people who’ve contributed significantly to traffic for the past three months. Let me name some: Jason de Villa, (the other) Cat Juan, Dickoy Magdaraog, Joey Alarilla (!!), Abe Olandres (Yuga), Fozzy, Dario.
Plus many more! All of you have contributed to bugging my life! Congratulations!
