I’m trying to decide which digital camera to buy. I went to the Sony store and checked out the Cyber-shot DSC-H2. Price tag: Php33,900.

Sony Cybershot DSC H2
6.00 Mpixel Resolution
12X Optical Zoom

There was no way for me to read the whole list of features this camera has because it was sitting behind a glass display and once I got a hold of it it was attached to a locked cable. It was like this store didn’t want to sell me anything. But the camera looked absolutely beautiful. I didn’t mind the bulkiness because it just added to the ‘professional’ feel of it. If I wanted to be taken seriously I’d at least try to look like the real thing right? Hehe. Everyone’s buying those smallish toys that claim to be cameras. I beg to differ. I’d rather go for the brawny bunch. Without bothering to go obsessive on the specs I simply decided to dig up reviews later on the Internet for a more reliable opinion.

Right across the Sony store was the Canon store. A slew of SLR-type cameras was on display but most of them were definitely not within my budget. There was however one that was: the Canon Powershot S2. It wasn’t exactly the kind I was aiming for. It came in chrome and screamed “consumer electronic”. It didn’t look as ‘pro’ as the Cyber-Shot, but it basically had the same features. Price tag: Php29,000.

Canon Powershot S2 IS
5.00 Mpixel Resolution
12X Optical Zoom

While I was researching some more, I learned Canon came out with a meaner model, the Powershot S3. Price tag: ~P35,000.

Canon Powershot S3 IS
6.00 Mpixel Resolution
12X Optical Zoom

My main purpose of buying a camera is to learn photography and take great pictures. And in the process, maybe make it an alternative career path. I’ve always been interested in this craft since I took it up at Pratt in New York. It was sad though because my professor didn’t appreciate the stuff I came up with. He said my subjects were too random and lacked focus. Hmm. To add fuel to the flame one of my classmates stole my Nikon camera. Two police officers showed up in school but they did nothing but asked me to file a report. But I digress. I’ll blog about my final purchase tomorrow. If you guys have had experience with the cameras I mentioned, please fill me in!

Cute. I rarely use that word, but this is what I uttered to myself when I discovered Mojizu, an awesome online community where artists create, share and critique whimsical characters. If you’re an artist who’s into comical art, I think this is a great way to be noticed.

Cool downloads include desktop wallpapers, ‘mojicons’ and avatars you can use for message boards and Internet messengers.

Visit Mojisu

Frienster again wrote me informing that “some statistical information” of my first free ad was lost. To make up for it, I get a hefty P1,000 coupon (or E-pin), allowing me to make a new ad that will show up 30,000 times over a 7-day period. How’s that?

Clearly Friendster’s advertising platform is still in the testing stage. It looks promising — perhaps even better than their other type of advertising that I found too distracting and invasive. Text advertising is the way to go these days. It’s easier to look at, faster to load and not as cumbersome as traditional banner ads. Friendster Ads takes on a similar form as Google Adsense’s Adlinks, wherein a user is taken to a page of relevant ads instead of directing them to an advertiser’s website. I particularly dislike Adlinks because I found them ineffective. But the main difference is that Friendster Ads presents a whole page ad that’s composed by the advertiser, which is a lot better. I do wish that they can make their ads contextual based on the user’s hobbies and interests rather than displaying random ads that’ll just go to waste. They should also let advertisers choose which demographic their ads would cater to.

Friendster Ads looks like a promising revenue stream in the offing. With a 5 million-strong Filipino user base, I think many will find this a convenient and very cheap way of promotion.

Yet again, I’ll report on how my second ad does.

I got an invitation to try Friendster Ads (FAds) Beta (clap3x) with a credit of P50, or equivalent to 625 views. Not bad for a freebie, but I’ll have to see first if it’s an effective form of advertising. P50 is really very cheap (less than a US$ buck), so anyone can basically advertise anything under the sun.

Setting up the ad was quite easy. It took only 3 steps in about 5 minutes. I’ll report on the results soon.

I transferred my Wordpress plugin to my Isulong Seoph website at http://www.isulongseoph.ws/

All updates to the plugin shalll be posted there. Thanks.

I thought it would be cool to create a plugin just for the Isulong Seoph contest.

So I did. Look at the lower right side and you’ll see the fruits of my work or my Isulong Seoph entry for a more updated demo.

That list is pretty much in real time, which makes it a cool widget to add to your own Isulong blog that’s on Wordpress.

Update: Plugin now works in Wordpress 1.5 and 2.0.

Plugin Name: Isulong Seoph
Description: Displays top 10 Google results and site rank for the keywords ‘isulong seoph’ in connection to the first ever Philippine SEO contest. Configurable to display results for a different set of keywords for other SEO competitions.
Version: 0.1d
Author: Andrew dela Serna

Click here to download the plugin.

Installation:
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A simple, straightforward Wordpress plugin that lets you or your visitors submit your blog posts to Digg.com.

This is my first attempt at creating plugins for Wordpress, so please bear with me.
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I’m not a big coffee drinker, so I go for iced tea to keep me awake and alert all day. Could be the sugar or caffeine that does it, I don’t care.

C2 is my favorite iced tea drink. It’s cool & clean (thus the name), but what I really like about it is that it’s light and doesn’t have a strong tea-ish aftertaste. Off-the-back description of the product:

C2 is delicately brewed from natural green tea leaves of Camellis Sinensis. It is non-carbonated and ready-to-drink, with a cool clean taste that goes down light and easy. A healthy way to refresh yourself!

Real, natural tea, like Camellia Sinensis, contains antioxidants, called “Catechins”. These antioxidants, together with proper diet, are known to prevent certain diseases and cancers.

If you’re wondering what Camellia Sinensis is, here’s a Wikipedia snippet:

Camellia sinensis is the tea plant, the plant species whose leaves and leaf buds are used to produce tea. White tea, Green, oolong and black tea are all harvested from this species, but are processed to attain different levels of oxidation.

C2 comes in 4 flavors: Lemon, Apple, Peach and awful Regular flavor (that tastes like grass).

It also has a ‘lite’ version. If you like cough syrup, you’ll love C2 lite.

I’ve gotten emails from people griping that my previous post about making a guestbook for their Wordpress blogs does not work for them. I’m making up for that lame post right now!

Ok, I am writing this post under the assumption that:

• You have FTP access to your web server containing your Wordpress installation.
• You have admin access to the blog you’re making a guestbook for.
• You know basic HTML editing.
• You can tell the difference between regular text, HTML and PHP variables.

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Isulongseophil.com takes the lead from Isulongseoph.net apparently because of the latter’s inability to put his site back in order. I don’t think the phrase “Quit While You’re Ahead” applies in this case.

While looking at the latest Wordpress 2.0 Theme Contest entries, I decided it was high time that my blog got a major facelift. I bumped into Most Creative Design winner Derek Punsalan’s site, 5ThirtyOne.com to check out his themes. Here it is folks, what you’re seeing is Derek’s “5ThirtyOne v2″ theme at work. I’m still testing it if it’s what I really want for this blog. I noticed a little sluggishness in the page loading. But definitely it’s a far improvement from the previous design.

Congrats to Gail Dela Cruz for winning 2nd place for her “Kurtina” entry in the latest Wordpress 2.0 Theme Competition. Gail’s ‘Dapithapon’ theme also won for Best Use of Colors. Here’s the whole rundown of winners.

I dunno. I got bored last night. Picked up my trusty notebook and pen, sat on my bed and scribbled anagrams of “Isulong Seoph”.

Here’s what I came up with:

Sloping Houses
Glue His Spoon
Ghouls Opines

But here’s the clincher:

Us Losing Hope

Not so encouraging is it? Is it a sign of things to come? An omen?

I checked out the latest search results standings for our SEO contest. Isulongseoph.net is still sitting neatly on top, but when I clicked on the link, this is what I got:

Site Temporarily Unavailable
We apologize for the inconvenience. Please contact the webmaster/ tech support immediately to have them rectify this.

error id: “bad_httpd_conf”

I checked Dreamhost’s wiki for a description of the error:

bad_httpd_conf errors in general mean that something interfered with the generation of your site’s entry in our Apache web server configuration file. You can sometimes work around this yourself by editing your domain from the web panel, ’submitting’ it (even with no changes), and waiting a bit. This forces it to be re-generated, which may work. Obviously the error shouldn’t happen in the first place, but if you want to get the site up ASAP this can sometimes help.”

It appears that Isulongseoph.net is hosted on Dreamhost.com. I’ve had my fair share of Dreamhost nightmares and still having them!! Hopefully the owner of this domain gets his act together before all his efforts go to waste. Curious to see how all this pans out.

The word ‘isulong’ literally means to ‘push forward’. That is the exact philosophy that my group, SEO Philippines, is adopting — to make the Philippines one of the foremost SEO hubs in Asia.

I’m very proud of the effort my fellow SEO’s are putting into this competition. As of last check, there are now 32,000 search results related to ‘isulong seoph’. To think that this only began 5 days ago! Whoooot!

If you’re one of those addicted to this contest, well, you’re not alone. Count me in! I have registered a related domain myself. I am joining but won’t be an official competitor. I just want to see if I’m any good at this game.

My experience with SEO is still quite elementary. But I have had a lot of success with sites that I’ve made by sticking to these basic SEO principles:
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