The search for the open wireless hotspot

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at September 30th, 2006

Like most of you with a mobile computer, I’ve been searching the vicinity for an open wireless hotspot so that I could do work. We still don’t have electricity and water at home and we’ve been trying to chansaw the huge mango tree that fell into our garden (pictures to follow).

Luckily I found a wireless hotspot in Mocha Blends BF Paranaque powered by Airborne Access. For some reason, I didn’t have to log into the system anymore with the machine giving me a complimentary session.

Hopefully the power will come back tomorrow.

How to make a good elevator pitch

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at September 29th, 2006

I got this from Jeremy. The elevator pitch is similar to the drive by shooting of potential VC funding. Here’s a video to help equip you with that tool. Who knows, the next person you might be stuck in an elevator with could be your next venture capitalist.

BURN BABY BURN: Concert is Good to Go!

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at September 28th, 2006

UPDATE: Doh! Cancelled!

Despite the strong rain, we are pushing through with our concert tonight! Entrance is free! All you need to do is bring or buy a copy of BURN Magazine at the SM Mall of Asia Music Lounge. See you all there!

Text Link Ads introduces Feedvertising

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at September 28th, 2006

It’s finally out in the wild. Darren Rowse has a good explanation of TLA Feedvertising here but its really just common sense: a lotof people don’t visit blogs to read posts. They visit feeds. So might as well advertise on feeds then, right?

What I love about the new Feedvertising is the ability to post personal links on your RSS feed ads. For instance, I wanted to promote my company’s blog network so I inserted links to HIP Online as well as Mobile Philippines. It may take up to an hour for feeds to be repopulated with ads.

Back from BlogCon 2006

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at September 27th, 2006

Elber poses beside the BlogCon logo

Wow, what a trip! (as if it was really that far away)

Thanks to everyone who came and spread the link love. I hope everyone enjoyed the evening as well as the short presentations given by the guest speakers. Thank you Globe Innove for the sponsorship!

I want to apologize for two things though.

First, the “autograph signing” thing was actually supposed to be similar to the barnyard shoepile game where we have a list of all the blogs and people match the bloggers with their respective URLs.

Second, the podcast we recorded is corrupt. Something unknown to my geeky powers corrupted the audio file as it was being compressed in GarageBand. The file is lost forever! How tragic. How irresponsible. So so sorry about that.

There were some people I really wanted to talk to (especially the famous Jac Ting Lim!) but everyone was, as we all experienced, overwhelmed with the first meetup. I think we have plans of doing this every quarter so expect a Blogger Kris Kringle this Christmas.

I will be posting pictures soon (actually check out Rico’s blog because he downloaded all of my pictures into his computer…). In the meantime ….

BlogCon 2006 from the point of view of SOME of the attendees:

Teh BlogCon is the shizzle! – Sasha Manuel

Pinoy Bloggers Face to Face – Chris Lagman

What happened in BlogCon 2006? - Rico Mossesgeld

Live Blogging at the First Philippine Blogcon 2006 – Noemi

BlogCon 2006 was a blast – Gloria

To the BlogCon – Morofilm

After the BlogCon – Markku

BlogCon 2006 – Clair

PR Tips for the Philippine agencies

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at September 26th, 2006

I sideline as a PR connoseur. Hah!

In truth, I’ve attended about a hundred PR events, big and small since the year 2003. Here are some tips I offer PR agencies when organizing events for the press, especially for the tightly knit technology industry:

Lose the hard copy but never the soft copy
People in PR should understand that the press do not live in the dark ages, where a hard copy of a product press release goes into a drawing board to be cut apart and pasted to fit a magazine page. Though it may sound too basic to even mention, PR material should always have an accompanying digital format available.

Never hold an event before 11:00 AM
I’ve talked to several people in the publishing industry and they say that their typical day begins at around 11:00 AM. Journalists and print media people usually begin their day late because they have been up the previous night covering the breaking news.

For the rainy season, umbrellas are useful for giveaways. Do not give them out during summer.
This one is self explanatory.

Know what’s out there
If you have friends in the press or with other competing brands, ask around if they have product launches on that same day. By hierarcy, Apple product launches are usually top priority.

HP Officejet 4355 All-in-One Printer

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at September 24th, 2006

I’ve survived without a printer at home for almost two years. It may seem odd, since I belong to the publishing industry. If ever I needed to print something, there was always Station 168 right outside my village or I’d bug my neighbor. Of course, that would be really embarassing in the long run.

So last week I decided to buy a printer, but I went as far as buying a complete mini office suite. If you’re looking for an affordable All-in-One solution, I’d highly recommend the HP Officejet 4355 for the following reasons:

It is a complete All-in-One scanner, copier, printer, fax machine

It is dirt cheap at around P6,000.00

It is very compact, looking more fax-centric than printer-centric

It is very easy to use. I was able to work it without the manual and CD because the dealer forgot to include it (I’ll have to make time to go back to Accent Micro in SM Mall of Asia this week)

One of the downsides though is that I still won’t be able to photocopy my face since the copier uses a roll feed method. Darn. But for P6k, this is a good price. In terms of affordability, the next cheapest is about P4,000 but does not include a fax component. For two thousand more, why not?

BURN BABY BURN!

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at September 23rd, 2006

Our music magazine, BURN is hosting a really cool mag launch concert this September 28 2006. Everyone is invited! We recently launched the BURN website as part of the new corporate blog network of Hinge-Inquirer Publications.

Wow, a corporate blog network here in the Philippines? Interesting ain’t it? More on this in the next few days. In the meantime, click on the poster to see who’s playing! What I love about this magazine is that it takes a step back in the music scene and features all possible genres in the local scene, from jazz, to funk, rock, pop, to “indie” — if you may call that a genre. Burn is the “music mag for everyone!”

The BlogCon 2006 Podcast

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at September 21st, 2006

We’re doing a short program for the BlogCon 2006 event this coming Monday. If you are interested in attending, do sign up here. It is free and sure to be a fun event.

I’ll be bringing my studio quality microphone which I borrowed from HIT Studio’s Vic Icasas. I want to see how well the microphone picks up a room of more than 40 bloggers.

There will be a wireless connection available during the event so feel free to bring your WiFi also. There will also be a short program durng the event. More on this later.

Are you a Big Fish?

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at September 21st, 2006

I got this fun link from Yuga.

Okay okay I cheated. I brought in the big guns after seeing how badly this personal blog of mine did. After much deliberation, I’ve also added the Pinoy Top Blogs code to my cellphone blog.

Photo Project: Working with Frames

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at September 19th, 2006

Yesterday concluded the end of our six day workshop for Batch 25 of Photoworks! I learned a lot from Leo Castillo and my classmates. It is a class I am recommending to those who would want to learn how to develop an eye for photography with (relatively) not a lot of technical information.

To cap it off, I’d like to do a case study of one of my photo projects where I had to print something using emphasis with frames. I already had the initial shot in mind, to take my dog peeping through the spokes of our calesa in the garden. The problem was how to make him sit still whilst I focused.

Here’s what I did. I turned off auto focus and manually focused on the wheel with my 50mm prime lens. My dog doesn’t have a very long neck so I would assume that he would be on the same focal length as the wheel. I propped the 350D on the tripod and used an RC-1 remote control. What I did was to take the orange ball and put it in between the spokes so that Hondo (my Boston) would try to get it. I was on top of him at the time, firing the shutter every second.

I guess that this goes to show how hard it is to photograph pets. Not only do you need to get down to their level, but you also need to show some form of engagement and be able to freeze that action. I only had one good shot out of about 20.

I was shooting with an ISO of 100 which I realize now made the shot harder because it bumped my shutter speed to 1/20 which is hard for pet shots, especially when they move fast. Thank God he stayed still for once.

Click on the image to view.
ISO 100 f/1.8 1/20

You can view my EXIF data here.