Tag: Travel

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43rd Anvil Awards Afterthoughts: Experience Philippines

Happy Slip

I am lucky to have been a involved as a juror for the 43th Anvil Awards. As one of the judges of the Interactive Media category I was able to have a rare glimpse into the current state of Philippine public relations and marketing campaigns, specifically in the Online Tools of PR division.

This is the first of several afterthoughts on winning noteworthy marketing campaigns worth sharing with everyone.

Experience Philippines: Department of Tourism

What it is:
The Department of Tourism issues 250 free round trip tickets to the Philippines for 3rd and 4th generation Filipinos in the USA. The objective is to get them to explore, enjoy, fly home, and come back dragging more friends to see the many wonders this country has to offer.

Why it is notable:
It is quite a feat to have a government arm thinking of something quite of the box. Amidst the many government controversies we’re hearing, the DOT is doing amazing “non-dinosaur” things that directly promotes the country’s tourism. For bloggers, the most notable event was when the DOT shipped Christine “HappySlip” Gambito for a meet and greet and had her serve as an ambassador for the Experience Philippines campaign.

FInal thoughts:
Although the website obviously needs some work, I’d still say that it isn’t about how you do it, but more about the results. The Experience Philippines campaign is still a good example of how we can think of out of the box ways to promote our sexy country. Special thanks to Yehey! for doing a lot of the legwork to make this a reality.

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Angkor Wat, Cambodia Take Two! (Vietnam Included in set!)

angkor wat sunrise

Last year I posted something (wait let me find it …. here it is!) about wanting to go to Cambodia with friends who could make time out for a few days to see Angkor Wat, shoot it, and go home. Despite my being out of Manila for several times last year, I wasn’t able to do this with friends.

So it’s take two this year! We’re leaving on the 26th of February and will be gone for around a week. Destinations include Vietnam and Cambodia for finally – a vacation trip I’l be going with Phoebe’s family and two other friends.

This is our first time to these places and Lonely Planet advises to not stray away too far or else encounter active land mines. The objective really is to … eat! We’ve been checking out some Vietnam food blogs with some good suggestions but we’re most likely to stay in the Ho Chi Minh area.

Angkor Wat

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated — and by the time we get back, I hope to take down that stock photo of Angkor and post something more personal. Photos updated and uploaded. Shooting Angkor Wat is now a dream realized! Second photo is c/o Phoebe.

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Science is Fun!

Peeping and excited!

When I was a lot smaller, I held a close fascination to theme parks, science projects and anything that had to do with planets. If all it took to become an astronaut was a face, I’d probably be in the moon right now. So when Anton invited to celebrate Our Awesome Planet’s anniversary, I really could not resist to go because the kiddie party included a tour inside the SM Science and Discovery Center. There I am peeping through the blinds like a little boy (And yes, those are Crocs).

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Fiddling with G.ho.st — now your OS is online!

G.ho.st UI

If you own an ASUS eee, or even if you don’t — you may want to check out G.ho.st, a full web based operating system. Truth be told, this is the direction office tools are going with the prevalence of wireless connectivity all over the place. Well, take away the fact that the whole thing is accessible via a web browser and you’re left with an OS that slightly resembles the Windows Vista UI. But that’s not the point. Exciting development – we have a free operating system that can be accessed from any computer with Internet. There are some weird concepts too like a G.ho.st web Browser — why run a browser within another browser? But those are minor quandaries best reserved for another time.

Still, the Operating System is still in its Alpha stage but this is definitely a breakthrough as there is a proof of concept that a fully functioning operating system can be developed for online use FOR FREE. If you own an ASUS eee, this may be a great solution to your storage problems as the OS gives you 3GB worth of hard disk space. In the future, this OS can be a model for schools and other institutions that do not have a budget to purchase hundreds of licenses for Windows.

Oh wait, I just described Linux.

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Mostly Everything

EDIT: P16,000 for the ASUS eee

ASUS eee

* There has been a price drop in the ASUS eee. It now costs P16,000.00.

Hello ASUS eee. You’re finally here in the Philippines. Your proud owner allowed me to fiddle around with your real estate for the better part of the evening and here are some of the notes I took down:

  • P17,000.00 flat for the mini laptop. The eee runs on a 533MHz processor with 4GB of hard disk space and 512MB of RAM. If you add P1,200.00, you get the RAM bumped up to 1GB
  • Available colors are in white, black, pink and light blue
  • Mouse buttons are a bit hard to press and the mouse pad is a little small
  • Ultra light and ultra small

The best thing about the eee is that it doesn’t feel cheap for P17,000.00. The elegant exterior reminds me of my black MacBook and it comes packed with everything that makes a laptop a great blogging machine. For less than P20,000.00 you get a portable computer with a mic, webcam (with recording capability), WiFi, three USB ports and a SD/MMC card reader. It comes built in with Google Docs, Open Office, Mozilla Firefox 2 and a bunch of other open source applications like the game Mr. Potato Head.

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