Stellify

Seoul

ia — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:55:23 +0000

Seoul was hot and rainy like the Philippines, but that’s where the similarities end. You will feel the the modernity and the affluence of a first world country. You will wonder how its residents keep their skin so white despite the scorching sun and having no qualms about walking up, down, everywhere. You will wish you understood Korean (thank goodness for calculators and electronic dictionaries).

Technological conveniences are abundant, which are my biggest envy of course.

GPS is in every car, taxi, bus, and probably cellphone.
CCTVs are everywhere.
LCD screens are also everywhere.
Paying for stuff electronically using T-money is the norm, and works everywhere from public transportation to convenience stores, even while inside wallets.
Lotteria (the local fastfood chain, run by Lotte) have wireless devices that light up and beep when it’s time to claim your food. (They also have automated sanitary wipe dispensers.)
Those high-tech Japanese toilets are ubiquitous enough.
Airport Wi-Fi speed is at 9 Mbps.

Food was hit-or-miss, but always had large portions and came with kimchi. It’s a shame most restaurants didn’t let you share meals. Weirdest dish I had was cold noodles, which literally had ice in the soup. Tastiest were the sauce for breaded pork and the seaweed-based one for a certain fish. I wish I knew what their names were!

I didn’t go to the COEX mall, but Dongdaemun, Namdaemun, and Myeongdong were exhausting enough. Some of the stores are open 18 hours a day. Skin care stores like The Face Shop, Innisfree, Etude House, Missha, and Olive Young are more ubiquitous than McDonald’s. My only regrets were not being able to check out Uniqlo and find a certain Elle Korea issue from 2009.

Oh, and not going during the spring, when cherry blossoms bloom—that’s on the same bucket list as those white tigers—which better be the case if I go to Japan. ~~Get kimono. Wear kimono. Fly.~~ I promise to study Japanese again.

As always, enjoy the pictures. Lumix ZS7 is love.

Fictional visual information

ia — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 11:33:19 +0000

Infographics is the new black these days. I keep saying that images are still the most portable means of sharing information on the web, and visualizations fall into this behavior. Memes too, of course, with The Oatmeal straddling both sides.

And then there’s Nonsensical Infographics, which throws the purpose of infographics out of the window.

The science of infographics is an interesting beast. Infographics’ level of success is always based on how much and how well they communicate their data—the classic form follows function. In this series, I reversed these roles—form is king and dictates what the infographic communicates. Welcome to the world of fictional visual information.

Chad Hagen

Discovered via 20×200, a site that sells art pieces for $20. I want a local site like that.

Mainstream media website? Use a WordPress theme

ia — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:00:29 +0000

Update (07/26/10): gov.ph now runs WordPress, but per technogra.ph, it returns a lot of missing pages and database error messages.

Here’s a thought: news sites should take a page out of the Philippines Free Press and use WordPress themes instead.

I’m not entirely serious here, because it’s yet another example of how pathetic Philippine websites are, from the highest office in government to mainstream media.

PFP takes the cake: who takes a site live with a default About page, an Uncategorized category, and blank featured images? Apparently its proud “modifier”, Skaizer.com. I wonder if they even thought of with scalability with running WordPress on a supposedly high-profile, high-traffic site.

However, its theme, Bueno by WooThemes, displays content that is far more readable and well-designed that most news sites I’ve seen, so why not? Using a theme with little to no modification won’t help your brand, but neither will a shoddy, bland, “I’m a new site therefore I must appear as neutral as possible” design.

A basic email marketing guide I didn’t think was necessary

ia — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 08:46:17 +0000

There’s something I noticed with the Philippine online marketing industry that’s ticking me off more and more (see, I give it a few strikes before I go on a full-blown rant now): a lot of them know diddly-squat about the basics of sending emails, and commit the following crimes:

Does not conceal the list of recipients’ email addresses. Not even bothering with BCC, which is built right into email clients! Please try to retain some shred of professionalism and use a mailing list system. There are free ones out there.
Does not explain why they’re sending the email or how they got your email address. People are busy and they enter email addresses everywhere, but it’s arrogant and insensitive to not put a disclaimer in the email. You can’t establish a trusting relationship with a potential customer if you can’t even be upfront about this. Be gracious. Be human.

Here’s an example from the WordPress mailing list:

At some point you signed up for the WordPress.org announcement list.

If that was an indiscretion you’d rather forget, click below.

This is TeamAsia’s:

Advisory: Privileged and confidential information may be contained in this message. If you have received this message by error, you should delete this message and notify TeamAsia immediately. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, you may not copy or forward this message to anyone. You may not disclose the contents of this message to any entity. All opinions and other information expressed in this message that do not relate directly to TeamAsia’s business are that of the sender’s and are not necessarily endorsed by TeamAsia

You can be straightforward and casual or verbose and formal; just add a disclaimer.
Does not include an Unsubscribe link. Everybody deserves to opt-out of whatever they get themselves into. Give them that opportunity or your email gets marked as Spam as a last resort. Again, it’s about trust.

These and several other guidelines have been passed as the United States CAN-SPAM Act and in Singapore there’s the mandatory tag, but the closest thing implemented in the Philippines applies only to text messages.

Perhaps if they venture into email, things will only turn nasty as talks of a regulated internet may grow stronger.

Since we’re on the subject of noobs, here’s recommended reading for the other side of the fence, courtesy of Seth Godin.

Things that kill blogging & things that inspire it

ia — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 07:28:21 +0000

…the key to understanding a blog is to realize that it’s a broadcast, not a publication. If it stops moving, it dies. If it stops paddling, it sinks.

Why I Blog by Andrew Sullivan

I’ve been meaning to post this, but as usual I kept it saved as a draft. Then I read that quote.

You’ve read the proclamations of why “blogging is dead”, whether it’s because of social media, SEO, spam, hacks. Or because people didn’t have enough invested in it.

I was reluctant from the start. I told someone once that I didn’t like to get into blogging if I were to eventually miss updating it for long periods at a time. Andew Sullivan nailed it.

I also tend to enjoy the act of crafting an entry more than publishing it. HTML, cut, paste, share, ponder, tweak, save draft, preview; rinse, repeat. Sometimes you write to be heard; other times you write to let things out. How many draft posts do you have?

It’s another reason art direction/magazine-style web design is exciting; a whole new layout each article changes the game:

But what. to. write. Wisdump alone sucks the life out of me twice a week. I’d much rather link-blog like Tina Roth Eisenberg, Jason Kottke, or Cory Doctorow than try to bleed out a bunch of paragraphs, which usually happens when I rant. I’m less ranty now.

Never let small things bother you.

Learn to say no to things you don’t want to do.

Cut negative people out of your life.

Cut people out of your life who only contact you when they want you to do something for them.

deephair’s comment on Reddit, what are your best lifehacks?

Complaining is silly. Act or forget.

Stefan Sagmeister

But I can also link-dump elsewhere on ~~Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr~~ (Plurk, actually), construct a lifestream (another web construct I like), and produce content without spending so much effort on the SEO, spam, hacks.

The last two are the most frustrating; even when you let a site gather dust, it can still get hit by malware and you have to fix it. Makes me even wonder if database-less or hosted publishing systems would be more satisfying.

In any case, you know ~~where~~ how to stalk me.

P.S. Happy CSS Naked Day!

Form Function & Class Mini Web Design Conference on November 14

ia — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:07:26 +0000

Update (01/05/10): Slides are up.

Year 2, here we go!

The

function & class mini web design conference season is back in full swing and the first one is happening on Saturday, November 14, in Rm. 409, Benilde Building, De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB) from 1:00-4:00 pm. Brought to you by the Philippine Web Designers Organization and the Association of Information Management of DLS-CSB.

For the uninitiated: Unlike the annual conference, The FFC Mini Web Design Conferences are small, informal gatherings held every other month, where anybody can talk and learn about web design. For free.

Why go local: Para Sa Tabi, May Pasok Ba?, and Facebuko

ia — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 06:03:17 +0000

There’s really not much profit (monetary or otherwise) to be had in making local “copies” of the most popular sites today; you’ll probably just be called unimaginative and lame (read: jologs). But these sites are fun little ideas that stir up the chunks in our cultural halo-halo and remind us that quirky is interesting and copying is okay, as long as we make it our own.

(But first, sites that didn’t make the cut:

akomismo.com
akalamo.com
mysandbox.com
twinoy.com

Go figure.) Now, onto the honorable mentions:

Para Sa Tabi

Google Maps may have reached Philippine shores—and that is an achievement in itself, actually—but getting directions to navigate the metro requires local knowledge. Para Sa Tabi lets you enter an origin and destination then returns a list of routes and commute options for getting there.

See also its analog counterparts, the PEx Commuters’ Guide thread and the ph-commute blog.

May Pasok Ba?

(Happy Ninoy Aquino Day by the way.)

In the tradition of single serving sites like Is Obama President (yes!) and Is Today Friday (hell yes!), and probably a DIY solution to how pathetic class suspension announcements are handled in this country especially during typhoon season, May Pasok Ba tells you if there are classes tomorrow (meron) or not (wala). With footnotes for notable exceptions.

The site runs on WordPress (gasp!), which means feedback (crowdsource it, baby) and syndication (subscribe to it, baby) are built in.

Facebuko

Parody, like rice, is not exclusive to the Philippines, but it’s our staple nonetheless. And there’s something about the Facebook news feed, whose status updates and app notifications are just begging to be used as allegories for the daily cirques of showbiz, politics, and even ancient history. Enter Facebuko. Another highly customized WordPress install here; a deconstruction of its code must be in order.

Web 2.0 who?

What I love about these sites is they’re not of the “let’s build a web 2.0 product even if we don’t know what that means” mindset. Instead they exhibit one of the better characteristics of web 2.0: paying attention to what people need, not dictating what detached honchos think people need.

Yuppies need commute guides in this crazy U-turn-infested, footbridge-ridden concrete jungle (and no, Mr. MMDA Chairman, a Flash game will not help). Students need reliable updates on class suspensions (I’m looking at you, DepEd, CHED, and PAGASA). And the Filipino people need art imitating real life in a language and setting that’s more appealing, less intimidating.

Lastly, they’re innovative not because they’re telling everyone else they are, but because they listened and responded.

Lessons from the 1st Form Function & Class Philippine Web Design Conference

ia — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:59:58 +0000

An unapologetic, uncensored list of lessons learned from the function() & class Philippine Web Design Conference last July 10 at the Asian Institute of Management, Makati—because if we have to figure out how we can improve next time, we might as well start with ourselves.

Registration went surprisingly well.

It was a bit rocky at first, but thankfully our long list of volunteers from UST ISyS, UST TomWeb, iAcademy, UP ACM, and UP CURSOR handled the queues well.

My only regret was not being able to streamline the process further, but something tells me computer-based data entry would only slow things down.

Some speakers were late.

Mae, our speaker relations officer (SRO for short!), was on the verge of multiple breakdowns when she couldn’t contact several of our speakers who were running late.

Of course we couldn’t blame anyone since every single one of us was up against Murphy’s Law then, but next time there has to be extra extra leeway for the most important component of the conference.

Food wasn’t great.

It was a bit naive of us to spend so little on it, and consequently got what we paid for. Of course the reason was simple: a glaring lack of funds before the day of the event. We weren’t exactly confident about spending anything big. We were lucky to get into a partnership with AIM so that we wouldn’t have to worry about 50% downpayments on the big-ticket items.

At least now we have funds we can work with. Next time we’ll have to make the food count. It’s a whole-day affair, after all.

Wi-Fi was intermittent.

Perhaps this wasn’t a big deal for the majority because that’s not what they came for, but it was a web conference; and the experience could’ve been improved.

We were pretty geeky, but apparently not geeky enough.

I’m particularly proud of the conference IDs—the web browser motif varied depending on your affiliation. Attendees had Firefox. Media and sponsors had Internet Explorer. Speakers had Safari. PWDO had Chrome. Volunteers had Opera.

Live tweeting and plurking went well; the liveblogging not so much. I’d blame it on the wonky internet, but it was also because everybody had something to attend to.

I guess you shouldn’t promise something you can’t deliver. And why liveblog when you can microblog, the very definition of the real-time web today? Maybe someday we’d have snazzier systems in place—when we get to “Apple Keynote status” or something.

Lastly, the projector screens looked small, washed out, and too far away from the back. I’m not sure if the bigger replacement screen installed after lunch was any better. Next time, it’s either we set strict requirements for the speakers slides (high contrast, minimal text, exaggerated proportions) or we find better screens. I’d say the former is more doable.

Don’t stress out.

I almost couldn’t be at the conference that day because when the AIM security guard scanned my forehead, the temperature read 37.7 degrees. After five minutes of rest it rose to 38. I got kicked out of the building.

Don’t ask me how I got back in (I’d have to kill you), but I can assure you that despite my hypochondria for the rest of the day, I had no other swine flu/A(H1N1) symptoms. I’m still fine!

I still can’t explain why I had a fever that morning; I wasn’t even feeling remotely ill. Regnard says it might have been an adrenaline rush.

This is just the beginning.

It’s been only 10 months since this little wish finally got fulfilled, but it’s been a long, expensive, debate-filled, sleep-robbing ride. And it’s really just the beginning. The real test is in keeping all of this up.

You think we can do this? With your help, most definitely. Stay tuned for the upcoming mini web design conferences, and see you at the second big one next year!

The easy way out

ia — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:27:43 +0000

Someone deleted this comment because it was supposedly irrelevant to the discussion:

Meh. I prefer Japan, it’s got the mothaf*cken lifesize Gundam.

Of course someone who can’t see how Lapu-Lapu, Andres Bonifacio, Jose Rizal, and Jose Abad Santos are worthy of being called heroes of this country would have even more difficulty parsing said sarcasm.

You can’t see how people who sacrificed themselves contributed to the country’s well-being; it’s easier to just accuse them of being sensationalist, petty, and disruptive. You can’t see how the Philippines can crawl out of this deep hole of poverty, corruption, and illiteracy; it’s easier to just run off to some some country where the climate, economy, and telenovelas are better.

But if it were me giving up and running off, I’d pick Japan. It’s got the mothaf*cken lifesize Gundam.

Of course, it’s just you.

Happy birthday, Jose Protacio Mercado Rizal Alonzo y Realonda. Here’s to not dying in vain.

Seriously, what kind of person worships a country because they’ve got awesome telenovelas? What kind of person closes his comment form and takes back his words after repeatedly defending them just because he can’t stand the heat.

Seriously, I want to go see that Gundam.

Today in the Philippine Twittersphere: fighting the Book Blockade

ia — Thu, 14 May 2009 11:06:53 +0000

Update (05/25/09): The Philippine Star reports that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has lifted the book tax imposed by the Department of Finance / Bureau of Customs. Also, a postscript from Robin Hemley, the first to write about the whole thing.

The Great Book Blockade of 2009 has been buzzing for a few weeks now, but not as loudly as one would have wanted. It’s about the taxation of books and the pathetic notion by Philippine customs that books are not educational. It seems a lot of things are more newsworthy than this.

Like how American Idol finalist David Archuleta appeared on Philippine noontime show Eat Bulaga and suddenly Pinoy twitterers were gushing about him so much that it hit Twitter’s most popular keywords. Unfortunately Filipinos seem to care more about singing sensations than this pressing issue (even Neil Gaiman tweeted about it before most), but some of us realized we could piggyback on the existing buzz. (To be sure, we posted on Plurk too.)

After a couple of hours of tweeting and retweeting, #bookblockade finally made it to the trending topics on Twitter’s sidebar. There’s also a nod to it on The Blog Herald.

It’s exhilarating to realize that in a short span of time you can make a difference. While our efforts haven’t eradicated the taxation of imported books or fired the officials who can’t see how novels are educational or hit the headlines as of yet, it’s still progress. This is the kind of influence that people dabbling in social media—whether personally or professionally—should focus on.

Now go read the timeline so far on the Book Blockade. And keep up the good tweets.

Stellify

Seoul

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Lessons from the 1st Form Function & Class Philippine Web Design Conference

Registration went surprisingly well.

Some speakers were late.

Food wasn’t great.

Wi-Fi was intermittent.

We were pretty geeky, but apparently not geeky enough.

Don’t stress out.

This is just the beginning.

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