Echoing AJ’s intriguing new blog project, I’d like to do something similar for my blog’s first ever online contest.

To join, read the clues below and blog your answer. You can only make one guess and your guess must reveal the blogger’s name and blog URL. The blog post MUST link to this post. That’s all I ask. When done, leave a comment containing your contest entry’s URL. The first person to guess correctly will win $25 payable through Paypal. I will base the “firstness” on the order of comments posted here and not on the date or time you wrote your blog post.

Here are the clues:

This blogger is Yahoo’s new Online Community Manager for the Philippines. Similar to what Aileen is doing for Google, she/he will be Yahoo’s “eyes and ears” for the Philippines and will be actively marketing Yahoo’s products. But for now, he/she will be based in Singapore (major clue there already). She/he experienced a life-altering event last month (another major clue). His/her job starts on May 1st, which is today!

This blogger organizes events more than he/she attends them. He/she doesn’t blog very often. Her/his blog is hosted on Blogger. I met her/him once in Davao City and once here in Manila during a certain food tour. On both occassions, he/she was wearing black (lol). He/she is the “quiet” type of person, although her/his former job entailed a lot of talking in front of many people.

Who is this Yahoo?!? Contest ends on May 8, 2008. Per DTI DCO Permit #101514119.

Lovd By Less is a new open source application lovingly written on Ruby that allows you to start your own social network. Checking the demo, I reckon the company, smartly named “Less Everything“, put a lot of (or less?) thought into this. Definitely not just one of those run-of-the-mill php scripts we uninstall everyday. Any Ruby programmers out there willing to give it a test? (If only I was one)

I got an invitation from Leah Plaxton, Marketing Manager for a new online collaboration app called Projjex, to try out their service. In a nutshell, this is what Projjex is:

Projjex is a web-based collaborative task manager that helps small teams share their work. Teams can share tasks, documents, notes, meetings and time. It’s easy to use, runs completely in a browser, and has a fully functional free version.

I signed up at their site and it does look promising. Check it out!

Two months ago, I was playing around with the idea of adding Alexa data to Ratified.org’s ranking system. That idea, however, was met with great opposition, so I abandoned it. A few days ago though, Alexa announced their new ranking system, which to me is more reliable and credible because it is based on more traffic sources rather than just the Alexa toolbar. As a result, my own Alexa rankings are at their all time lows, but at least now I can say, with some caution (explanation below), that Alexa is making sense this time.

Including Alexa’s data was a tricky one for me because it could not correctly rank blogs hosted on Blogger, Wordpress, i.ph, Multiply and Blogsome. Their “improvement” apparently did not involve solving their long standing problem in identifying blogs on subdomains. I’m working on how to resolve it, so please bear with me. The algo is a little rough on the edges too and that calls for a string of adjustments in the next few days.

The last update shows major movements in the rankings, as evidenced here and here. You can also see the top 25 blogs based on Alexa rankings. If you have questions, comments or suggestions please leave a comment below. Thanks.

Yep, you read it right! 88DB.com is throwing big bloggers party and you (yes, you — as long as you’re a blogger) are cordially invited!

Here are the details:

What: 88DB.com Bloggers’ Night
When: April 26, 2008 @ 7pm
Who: Bloggers of any Pagerank, Alexa Rank, Ratified Rank or whatever
How: Just leave a comment below with your Full Name and URL.
Why: Booze, Music, Prizes and 88DB.com
Where: Katips Bar in Katipunan Avenue, Quezon City (close to my alma mater yey!)

A PSP is up for grabs too! Just “come as your blog” and who knows, you might come home with this nifty gadget. Tip: Print out a screenshot of your blog on t-shirt transfer paper and iron it on a shirt. :p

Wanna join us? Leave a comment below with your full name and URL. Props to Ate Aileen.

See ya!

PS - Here is the list of attendees so far

Calling OpenDNS! What’s going on?! I don’t live in China you know!

UPDATE 1: OpenDNS blocks Yahoo and Twitter too!

UPDATE 2: I removed OpenDNS, entered PLDT’s DNS settings and restarted both my Linksys wireless router and modem. That seemed to have solved the problem. It looks like OpenDNS is misinterpreting my IP address as that of someone who lives in China a communist country.

If you’re wondering what PLDT’s DNS are, you can try out these:

58.69.254.71
58.69.254.133
58.69.254.3
58.69.254.8
58.69.254.138

Here goes another survey! This one is a bit longer than my past surveys. Hope you could spare a few minutes to help me out.

I’d like to know what your Internet usage habits are. Are you emailing most of the time? Stalking people on Friendster? Chatting till the wee hours? Playing Dota? Yeah, I wanna know!

1. Please break down your habits by percentage. (ex. email 50%, Friendster 10%, chat 20%, reading blogs/sites 10%, downloading 5%, online gaming 5%)

2. Out of all your Internet activities above, name the one that you cannot live without.

3. For you, what is the hottest Internet trend nowadays?

4. If there is one thing that has not been done on the Internet that you would like to see, what would it be?

5. Do you consider yourself Internet savvy? What qualities would make a person deserving of that adjective?

To participate in the survey, please place your answers in the comments section. Thanks for your time! I’ll publish the results soon.