One of those realities …
Posted in Philippines on 10/06/2008
So hit me in the head. Here’s the listing of countries for the iPhone launch. The top screen actually says June 11 2008. This is the list for “coming soon.” See anything we like?
Archives for Philippines
U Mobile (ümobile): Country’s 5th Telco is the Free, Advertising Based Service
Posted in Philippines, Tech on 20/05/2008
EDIT: Erratum on the free load and how it works
EDIT II: Apparently the referral system is now up. I’ll be referring people who want a umobile number. The application requires me to input your name, email and a current cellphone number so if you’re comfy with giving that out to me, send me an email. All info you provide will be held in strict confidence.
EDIT III: Short video walkthrough here
SMART Telecommunications, Globe Telecommunications, SUN Cellular, Bayan Telecommunications. And now there’s room for one more.
There’s a new number in town and that number is “+63999.” Word is out that a telco called CURE which was bought by SMART has been launched for the public, and their name is U Mobile or ümobile, the country’s first free advertising-driven telco. It’s sort of like Inquirer Libre which we get to pick up on the train station free of charge — because everything is subsidized by advertising.
ümobile is a brand owned by Connectivity Unlimited Resource Enterprise, Inc. CURE belongs to the family of the 2 leading telecommunication giantsPLDT and SMART. We maintain our independence as far as strategic business decisions and day-to-day operations are concerned. SMART supports us in our needs especially on network complement. [FAQ]
Is this the telco for the masses? Well no. Not really. Not yet. Currently, applications are by invite only and I heard that people who have been invited to the service (those who went to the launch party a few hours ago) will be able to refer friends who can join up and avail of the free service. I heard as well that there is an allocation of P350 worth of credit per month for users P100 a month for the first 6 months for free. The P350 is the maximum amount of load you can receive by participating in the ad program that is sent to your mobile. We were blown away and I really have so many questions to ask. But as of the moment, that’s all I know.
Commenting on the worldwide telecommunications scene, this is something Google wanted to do - buy their own spectrum and launch their own telco free of charge, driven entirely by advertising. The Philippines is the first in Asia to have an Ad Driven telco and yeah, this is huge. Freakin’ huge. The telco has been in operations for more than a year now undercover and have now launched officially with several partner establishments to deliver advertising directly to the mobile phone.
Ads are purely contextual and users will have to answer a thorough survey which is updated every year in case interests changes. So yes, “contextual” is dependent on the survey as far as I was informed.
Cool beans. Freakin’ cool beans. This is big.
P.S. I won an LG KU380 Phone from the raffle — well I think everyone went home with one! Marketing is surely aggressive. Open bar. Piss drunk. Wheeee!
Though I don’t actively pursue direct advertising on this blog, I’ve worked out an advertising deal with Nokia Philippines together with Ogilvy to make use of the 468 x 60 ad space prominent beside my blog’s logo. Nokia is promoting the new N82 Nseries phone.
In line with this, they are holding several advertising and PR campaigns through online advertising, projects and real world events. I talked a bit about the ambassador position I accepted last December to promote the Nokia N82. All I can say is that in the next few weeks, Nokia Philippines will be launching a series of projects to reintroduce the wireless lifestyle the company strongly believes in.
Stay tuned, dear friends!
The European Food Festival at Serendra. It was like a fashion show but we had trays of food parading the stage.
it seems like everybody is launching their own WiMax network. Abe mentioned Globe launching one in 2008, but assuming this is true, they are going to have a hard time justifying the price as HSDPA currently costs P3,000.00 a month. What more for a 4G WiMax dongle + service fees? You can’t just implement a WiMax network and expect peoples’ laptops to be compatible.
WiFi runs on a 2.4GHz frequency but WiMax runs on something completely different. Another dongle for us consumers to purchase then - or buy a new laptop in 2008 with Intel’s new certified WiMax doodie built in. Consumers who are currently paying P3,000.00 for Globe Visibility may want to rethink their options if Globe is really going to go WiMax in 2008.
Anyway.
Met with the Happy Internet marketing head, Marvin Cruz (he’s Microsoft PH engineer #001) over coffee. Happy Internet has been around for the past five years, albeit in a different form. Marvin and the rest of the 40 strong individuals of Happy Communications are supposedly here to make a difference. But yeah, we’ve heard that before. So let’s see what exactly Happy Internet has to offer.
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Putting things in perspective, I believe the issue about the Google PR numbers game is at most, a relative discourse. Yuga says that bloggers should not rely on Google PageRank and Riz exposes the idea that PageRank is a wonky statistic.
Let me give an analogy of how Google PageRank works in the light of print industry. In the beginning, a lot of media buyers would rely on ONE thing when it came to advertising on print. That THING would be the claimed circulation figures that a publishing sales team would present forward. Anybody could claim a readership of 10,000 copies nationwide but in reality the print run receipt would only amount to 1,500 copies. How bad! How evil! But why is this done? There would be such arbitrary things to consider such as pass on readership figures which were all transcribed from an in house formulae which nobody had any idea how it was calculated.
Magazine stand visibility was another thing. So many of the same mag issue adorned the wooden displays at bookstores. Did it mean that the magazine sold well? No. Not really. It could simply mean that the particular issue was overstocked. There was so much market visibility BECAUSE there was very little conversion to sales. And magazine stands wouldn’t care less anyway as they stock on consignment.
What’s my point? There are so many things going on when it comes to determining what really brings influence forward. A magazine may only have 1,000 readers but what if their ads are all targeted towards the market? Advertisers still don’t realize this because the truth is, they don’t want to, and don’t have the time to dwell on such things. That’s the broker’s job.
The Google PageRank issue is proof that the online publishing / advertising industry is still in its infancy. PageRank, Technorati links, actual traffic … these are but figures which are arbitrarily defined by the industry as measures for influence and reach. But there has to be a system somewhere - a system that’s easy to understand and Google has made that system a no brainer for advertisers to grasp, using a scale of 1 to 10. And hey, who can contradict the number 1 company in the world? That’s advertising made simple.
Publicado en Filipino Blogging, Geek, Ideas, Magazines, Philippines, Tech, blogging | 11 Comentarios »
Today is October 26 2007 in Philippine soil. In about a day’s time, Apple will make its biggest operating system announcement in the form of Leopard. The countdown on the Apple website current reads 17 hours to go. By that time I’ll be in Davao for the Mindanao Bloggers Summit, which means that I won’t be able to watch the keynote. I mean really, its not Leopard that I’m waiting for - great as the software is, this isn’t a scoop. It’s the anticipation of the new line of MacBook hardware that Steve Jobs MIGHT announce. I can hear him say it now:
“Mac OS X Leopard is available now for a retail price of $149.00. Oh and just one more thing … the new line of MacBooks will ship with Leopard starting today.”
But what about the local launch of Leopard? Well, I have the official date from the email invitation. Mac OS X Leopard will be launched on November 8 2007 in the Philippines.
November 8 2007.
November 8 2007.
November eight two thousand and seven. Venue and time to be announced.
See you MacHeads there! 
Oh my, I’ve never been this excited to unpack a point and shoot camera. Kodak recently launched their new line of V-series cameras. A little bit of history: the V-series leads the point and shoot camera industry by introducing new features that you wouldn’t usually find in point and shoot cameras. The V570 for instance had a dual lens that supported wide angles. The V610 introduced Bluetooth connectivity to casual cameras. And now, the V1253 HD camera introduces HD-quality photos and video recording. Yup, HD video recording on a point and shoot camera.
It’s been a while since we recorded something. In this podcast for the b5media technology channel, Mike Abundo and I talk about evangelizing the farmers as well as many other things for the Emerging Earth.
Not that I’m preempting a regular b5media tech podcast - I don’t want to promise anything. But I do hope I can keep this up and open the invitation to the other b5media tech channel bloggers.
Miss Jane introduced me to wanting to do yoga. So one day I decided to become one with the cosmos. Yoga every Wednesday. Leave a comment if you’re interested and we can do the Sun Salutation together.
Abuggedlifedotcommmmmmmmm…….mmmmm……
