Year: 2007

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Mostly Everything

Band of Bloggers Podcast Episode 1

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I had an idea. So did Yuga (it rhymes!). We had the same idea. And when you’re stuck in Davao for 3 days, weird stuff can happen. Like a podcast project. This is something that should have been done long ago, but with my lack of resources (my old iBook’s mic was shot — having it repaired proved unsatisfactory as GarageBand kept hanging when trying to record really long stuff with things in the background) the project never pulled through. This podcast was created using Garage Band and the built in microphone of my MacBook. Everything was recorded in the hotel room.

BoBCast, Episode 1: Breakfast with Piolo
Hosted by: Jayvee & Yuga
Guest: Aileen Apolo
Time: 20 minutes

Summary:
Davao Blog Party
Casa Leticia
Costa Marina Beach
Wifi in Davao
Bayan Telecommunications
Smart Mobile TV
Palm Treo Launching
Max’s Power Breakfast
Blog Awards

We’re thinking of starting a completely new site it as an entirely different project from our own personal ones. The niche of the PH Band of Bloggers is to talk about the online efforts in the Philippines including new media, internet marketing and the people behind it.

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Mostly Everything

The BuggedCast Episode 0

Show Notes:

  • Welcome to Puerto Galera
  • Yuga gets introduced
  • Marc Macalua and Sharms get introduced. They’re getting … married??!
  • Rico gets introduced.
  • Sasha’s b5media jacket is waterproof
  • Battery dies (deus ex machina)

Okay, this needs an explanation. I had always wanted my own podcast project. Unlike blogging though, podcasting needs a stronger push to implement so I decided to do a pilot recording of Episode 0 at the beach with a few friends.

To those listening from abroad, I apologize for the lack of coherence if you do not understand what we talked about. Listening to this now, I realize that we were really greased with social lubricant.

Thanks to Choy and Brian of Creativoices for lending me their portable Olympus recorder. Sad that it ran out of battery in the middle of everything.

Categories
Mostly Everything

Tech Bloggers Wanted: Palm Treo 750 Launch at The Fort

Yesterday, Amor Maclang of Geiser-Maclang PR asked me rather nicely if I could bring some blogger friends to the Palm Treo 750 launch at The Embassy, The Fort.

Geiser-Maclang is one of the few PR agencies in the Philippines that has been rather active in taking bloggers seriously. Of course, this is a loaded statement, as it still is not obvious how “serious” they have been. But nonetheless, Amor is taking baby steps in getting to know the Philippine blogosphere (she is a blogger too). Parteh anyone? I only have limited slots (I can’t acommodate the entire blogosphere … hindi kaya ng powers ko yan)

If you are interested to come (preferred: if your blog’s niche has to do with technology), please leave a comment with your name and blog title and I will forward your names to her. The cool guys and gals from MaPalad (Philippine Palm OS Users Group), the Pinoy Windows Mobile friends and the Microwarehouse peeps will also be there.

The Treo 750 is the Palm-manufactured device that runs on Windows Mobile. Some say this spells the death of Palm, but in a world where you can boot Windows on an Intel Mac, there’s no saying where technology will go today. From the first impressions of the 750, the word is that Plam did a very good integration of the Windows Mobile 5 OS onto the Palm hardware.

The said event will be at Embassy, The Fort at around 8:00 to 10:00 PM on Tuesday. March 20 2007. In return, please blog about the event. 🙂

Categories
Mostly Everything

Bayan Telecommunications: RELOADED!

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Today I witnessed the press launch for the new and improved Bayan Telecommunications. Yep, they’re back! With a vengeance. Bayan Telecommunications released a consumer satisfaction survey on telcos and they have seen that:

  • 90% of landline, 85% of Internet and 92% of cellphone users have experienced frustrations with their service.
  • Billing problems, slow connections and poor customer care were among those cited as reasons for their frustrations.
  • 25.7% of respondents stated that they are “steaming mad” with communications technology.
  • 45% of Internet, 23% of landline and 32% of mobile phone users in the country have “moderate or higher levels of distrust” for communications service providers.
  • 1 out of 4 Filipinos feel that telecommunications companies in the country have not been able to deliver on their promises.

Get this. The new and improved Bayan Telecommunications will offer rebates on downed services and have invested a sizeable amount just for this:

With a 50-million peso rebate program to back this quick-repair promise, the company assures subscribers that it does not just talk the talk, but also walk the walk. Mr. Fafunwa explains that in their program, if a phone or DSL connection remains un-repaired for more than 24 hours, “a 1-day refund (equivalent to 100 pesos) will be given for every four hours the problem stays unsolved”. If a subscriber’s connection is out for more than 72 hours on the other hand, his or her service fee for the month will be waived. [Quoted from PRESS RELEASE]

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In addition to this, Bayan Telecommunications also launched their SPAN service which is basically the “mobile landline” product, allowing you to bring about your landline and do unlimited calls. This is the Zen between mobility and fixed lines.

So Filipinos, what do you think? Will this PHP 50,000,000.00 rebate program of the new and improved Bayan Telecommunications (note that they have done a name overhaul also from “Bayantel”) prove to be the competency that will push them ahead of the other competitors? Or is it a bit sketchy?

Leave a comment 🙂

Categories
Mostly Everything

Bad Grammar Comment Points Back to (Hidden) Filipino?

Today I was browsing through Alister Cameron’s blog (love his content) and was curious about his post on the Filipino link builder who can’t write.

I went over to that blog to check it out (something I will usually do if you leave me a comment), and something was immediately obvious to me: this is a caucasian male who clearly has a good command of the English language, and (from the Contact page) lives in Ontario, Canada. So it seemed immediately strange to me that his comment on my blog post was written in broken, second-rate English.

What you can’t see from the front-end of my blog is what my admin page tells me: that the IP address of this commenter is 58.69.208.247. I do an RDNS lookup, a traceroute, a geo-ip lookup and all that jazz and come up with the confident fact that the commenter is in the Philippines! What the?!

What the?! indeed! This makes me reflect back to an old post as to why Filipinos would make good bloggers. And there was a lot of pride in my words when I did mention that we have a good command of English as it is a national language in this Asian country, apart from our local Filipino.

But what’s peculiar was the RDNS thing. I’m clueless and would rather leave this up to the experts who can explain why something like this can happen.