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The Perils of Problogging

April 12, 2007 · 25 comments

There seems to be a rift between personal blogging and professional blogging (aka problogging). In Shari’s recent post, where she compares blogging in the past and present, commenters seem to imply that running advertisements on their blogs as well as people who start blogs for the sole purpose of blogging is a miserable example of how desperate people are to earn money. Worse, at least one commenter believes blogging is not hard work, and that if you don’t exert (physical?) effort (hindi pinagpaguran) into a job, then the money isn’t well-earned.

I don’t think problogging is evil, nor the antithesis of personal blogging. Placing ads on blogs to write off the maintenance costs of (yearly) domain registration and hosting fees is one good use of problogging-earned money; any type of blog can benefit from that.

Let me just stress that making your money work for you with little to no marginal effort is not a bad thing either. The most successful people on Earth work smarter, not just harder. If people can invest in stocks and franchises, why not in blogs?

Also, “effort” is relative. Good, successful blogs require dedication (to satisfy the thirst of your readers), skill (to communicate clearly to your readers), and a fair amount of goodness (more about this later). Without these, professional blogs turn sour. Here are the most common reasons:

Missing the Foolish and Naked Days of April

April 10, 2007 · 6 comments

So, it’s the tenth day into April already. Just a day after Araw ng Kagitingan, two days after Easter Sunday, and the aftermath of the Christian calendar’s holiest week. It’s also been a while since two other notable days in the online world. Here they are, going backwards:

I Won an Adobe Creative Suite 3!

April 3, 2007 · 14 comments

The best part of the Philippine Blog Awards 2007 was not the event itself, but what happened afterwards. And I’m not talking about the after-party.

Adobe Creative License

The Adobe User Group Philippines (AUGPhil) had a local launch of the much-awaited Creative Suite 3 after the awards. It was also this month’s meetup for its members. The highlight of the meeting, though, was the raffling off of a CS3 bundle itself, worth $1,199.

Now I wasn’t planning on attending the meeting because even though I had been lurking in the mailing list for a while now, I knew I hadn’t signed up as a member of AUGPhil. Imagine my surprise when Regnard, the president, asked me to join the meeting and told me that I was actually a member. I forgot that I was a member—no, really, to this moment I can’t find anything in my brain nor in my inbox that could prove I was. But he told me he knew I was on the members list and that I should join them anyway.

Pisay, the Movie

March 28, 2007 · 57 comments

Just learned that Auraeus Solito, director of Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros and Tuli, has created a movie about Philippine Science High School aptly called Pisay. (That’s the official nickname of PSHS, and nothing else.)

Even better is that the film is a finalist in the 2007 Cinemalaya Film Festival. According to a Pisay blogger, the full-length movie finalist won the best script and hence received funding from Cinemalaya. A measly sum of five hundred thousand pesos, to be exact. Not enough? You bet.

9 Coolest Opera Widgets!

March 21, 2007 · 18 comments

In my quest to get to know Opera a little bit better—even if I have used it way before Mozilla became popular—I’ve snooped around the most delightful Opera Widgets I could find.

The great thing about Opera Widgets is that they load right after downloading them (unlike Firefox where an add-on or a theme will only take effect upon restart). Also, because they are widgets and not browser extensions, they are free-floating and can interact with things other than your web browser. Example: a ruler widget can measure other objects on your screen and not just websites. Third and probably most appealing of all is that they’ve got an awesome community. Opera’s got a slew of competitions that encourage widgetmakers to do their very best.

The down side is that they only work with the browser running (disappointed? get Yahoo! Widgets, successor to the legendary Konfabulator and Windows equivalent to OS X Dashboard Widgets). But with widgets this cool and a browser this slick (memory leak-free and fast), what’s keeping you from using Opera?

Disclaimer: I’ve skipped the usual stuff you’d expect to be widgetized (even if these binary clocks tickled my brains a bit). The widgets below caught my eye since they’re brilliant creations. They’re mostly geeky, too.

March 24 is World Shutdown Day. Can You?

March 20, 2007 · 12 comments

It’s very simple. Proponents of World Shutdown Day are challenging all of us to shut down the computer for a whole day on Saturday, March 24. (And I’m sure putting your computer on hibernate or sleep mode does not count.)

If you think you can do it, visit the site and click the “I can” button. If not, visit the site all the same, but choose “I cannot”.

You are also encouraged to contribute anything you can to this challenge-slash-campaign, such as videos, podcasts, tips, or comments. I’d also suggest translating the page into Filipino (or Ilocano, Cebuano, etc.), but it might be too late.

Can I do it? Since it’s on a Saturday, I can afford to. I most probably will. You should, too!

COMELEC Posts Voter Info Online, Invades Privacy

March 15, 2007 · 18 comments

I agree with Markku Seguerra. This is too important to pass up:

The Commission on Elections (COMELEC) has just committed a complete privacy blunder. Remember how people used to complain about voter registration and their precinct assignments and all that? They devised a not-so-brilliant solution: prepare a list of registered voters and post it online. Complete names, birthdates, and addresses included.

You can browse a partial list of voters in the Metro Manila area here. Each link opens a PDF file. I know it won’t help to spread the link around through blogging, but I trust you guys won’t take advantage of the information contained in it. Link removed. (Oddly enough, I’m not on the list, even if I had registered last December.)

I wouldn’t mind the COMELEC website getting a Denial of Service (DoS) or some other attack just so that page goes down.

Update (03/16/07 10:42 PM): It seems there’s another fork in the road on this issue. The voter list was also posted on the website ComelecNCR.com, a joined effort between San Miguel Corporation and the election body “in pursuit of transparency to the end that the stakeholders in our election will trust the COMELEC more.” (Via Red Kinoko)

Update (03/18/07 10:03 AM): ISAW (Internet Security and Warfare) wrote about the issue after I linked to them: “A turkish hacker volunteered to lead the attack on www.comelecncr.com ;)”

2007 Philippine Elections: Will Online Campaigns Work?

March 10, 2007 · 11 comments

Will online election campaign tools win an election? The answer to his own question was no. Regnard Raquedan protests.

Here’s my take (on the topic bloggers will most likely analyze for the rest of the 2007 Philippine local and legislative election campaign season because it’s good linkbait and shows just how much they love the Internet, and are therefore supposedly knowledgeable about it).

While I disagree with the elitism mentioned in the blog post, I have a good idea where the cynicism against online campaigning came from.

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