I have a long name. Three first names Three-syllable middle name Three-syllable surname It is exactly the reason I have a very short nickname, Ia. Though some people have difficulty pronouncing or spelling it. In elementary school, I grew up writing “A. Sophia Marie” as shorthand for my first names so it would be quicker. Plus I knew at least two classmates who also had three first names: Cathy Mae […]
Yesterday I learned Philippine television giant ABS-CBN has signed an advertising deal with social networking site Multiply. The official press release writes: The partnership allows Multiply to monetize a significant portion of its traffic while still retaining a primary focus on product development and global customer acquisition. Unlike MySpace or Facebook but like Friendster, Multiply has become very popular in this country (39% of its site traffic and 5th largest […]
I’ve known November to be National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, for the longest time now—way before blogging became this popular. It’s quite a catchy idea (the nickname helps, too) but I was never really attracted to the idea of scrambling to write 50,000 words within thirty days. What would I do with a crammed novel, anyway? (Am I contradicting myself about the beauty of cramming?) Though it might just […]
Tagged the mobile phone made exclusively for Filipinos, the MC1 is essentially any ordinary cellphone with one additional feature: you can make missed calls on purpose. To understand the true value of a missed call, or in local vernacular, miskol, it is necessary to look into the essence of what happens to be the 2007 Sawikaan Salita ng Taon (Word of the Year). In this event, the miskol, entered by […]
I am. And I’m pretty excited to find a Taga-Q.C. as a blog so specific yet so close to home. The content’s surprisingly good. I would love to see more posts like the Timbooktu bookstore, or even Ateneo’s real world rendition of Frank Warren’s Post Secret, one great filterblog. You’ll notice the posts I mentioned are a bit Katipunan-centric. Maybe I’m waxing nostalgic over Gayuma or craving for Banapple that […]
An upgrade to the once funkily-working Gravatars was promptly released a few months after. I may have failed to write a follow-up post on it, but I did mention in the comments that the idea ought to be acquired by some big company like the big G. Gravatar wasn’t scooped up by Google (Jaiku was, though), but by Automattic, the guys behind WordPress. Like the way Google acquired Feedburner and […]
My mom chuckled when she saw me amused over an article about fonts in the local newspaper. She never really saw what was so interesting about “fonts”—which she’d probably refer to the ones she’d choose from a drop-down menu in Microsoft Word—much less the abomination that is Comic Sans MS. (Okay, I’ll admit this once and for all: I did use said font when I knew no better. It was […]
…does more psychological damage than one would expect. People who spend their lifetime learning to communicate through written and spoken word have encountered another obstacle to deal with. It could be the vocabulary (txtspeak, l33t, or LOLcat). It could be the software (how do you communicate with a computer?). It could be the hardware (ergonomics, specs, physics, economics). Sometimes it’s the novice in us that’s in the way; most of […]
This story begins with a debt. And then a book launch: Lawrence Weschler’s Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences. And then a contest to celebrate that launch: A Convergence of Convergences. And among the finalists for the contest—too many to mention—I got a surprise. The Antipodes by Chris Zic asserts that the United Kingdom and the Philippines look alike.
Design × Code × Words for a better Web,
made in the Philippines by Sophia Lucero.