Wordcamp Philippines is now open for registration! Yes, now you can be part of the most anticipated blogging event of the year. Best of all, it’s free (and you get to meet Matt Mullenweg in the flesh).

Wordcamp will be held on September 6, 2008 at the College of St. Benilde, Taft Avenue, Manila. It is organized by Mindanao Bloggers Oliver Robillo, Maria Jose, Migs Hipolito, Winston Almendras and me

To register, click here. A blog post about Wordcamp Philippines and some link love to our sponsors will get you an electronic ticket to the event.

Shoutout to the sponsors!

• i.PH: the Domain for Individuals
• Free Online Flash Games
• Wazzup Manila Philippines
• Real Estate CRM
• Real Estate Website Designers
• Orange County Real Estate
• Auto Insurance Quotes

Another round of PR updates rocked the Ratified.org system today, with 181 blogs gaining Pagerank and only 43 (whew) shaving off some green brownie points.

Congrats to the 8 blogs who broke out today:

Kubiertos
Bakla Ako, May Reklamo?
Market Manila
Photojunkie
Sasha Says…
Mapiles.com
Lightchasers Photography
keyboard monologues

A few notable bloggers inching towards the 100 mark:

Coy (#122), Brian (#134), Bloggista (#145) and Technogra.ph (#153).

If you have not been ratified, use this contact form. May take a while though. Also, I’d like to remind ratified bloggers to manage their feeds with Feedburner and activate the Awareness API so that our system can pick up your subscriber numbers.

Thanks!!

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

Can’t access PRC, Inquirer.net and other blogs posting nursing board exam results?

Here’s another site you can start crashing: PRC Nursing Board Exam Results for December 2007

Good luck!

I’m thinking about adding Alexa data as another factor in the Ratified.org rankings. It would seem to be a weird move on my part, after labeling Alexa as downright inaccurate and useless. What do you guys think? I might be playing around with the API’s of Bloglines and Del.icio.us too. Well, let’s see how that goes.

Oh by the way, Ratified.org now has an official blog! Nothing fancy so far though. If you have any ideas on what to feature in the blog, please do share it with me!

This is to let you guys know that I am receiving your submissions for Ratified.org and it may take a while before I can get to your request/s.

Once again I’m going to be away from my computer for more than a week. When I get back I will work hard to ratify new sites everyday. Sorry about that.

I finished off the year 2007 mostly away from home this time. It was difficult not being on the Internet for a while, since I could not recall any day of the past year when I wasn’t. This separation anxiety made me reflect a bit about how much I have accomplished and if I’m ready to take on the challenge of doing more in 2008.

I think the major obstacle that I face which I also faced last year was my lack of focus. I tried too hard in everything. Blogging, programming, graphic design, community management, SEO, even baking. You name it, I’ve done it all. Ok, maybe except e-commerce, which I’m taking up very soon. But the thing is with me is I’m always up for learning new things at the expense of not concentrating on the stuff that I’m good at. So, I’m making 2008 the year where I’m putting all my chops into one or two projects, and build on those. I have a few small “partnership” sites in development that I’m equally excited about as well.
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Karlo Licudine is one of the most talented bloggers and illustrators that I know. While chatting over IM we were thinking of a “project” in which we can collaborate. Naturally, Karlo pitched the idea of creating a site that will showcase his comic strips, which the Filipino blogosphere has grown to love. And so, a few months later and a dozen visits to the Internet Cafe (for Karlo at least), BlogComics.net is born! Karlo is the main talent here, while I serve as technical backup.

Kudos to Karlo! I hope you guys will visit BlogComics.net often, you won’t regret it! ;p

My site, DotA Strategy, hit the 100,000-member mark this afternoon. Too bad I wasn’t able to catch who the 100,000th member was.

Another round of PR updates took place at Ratified.org.

From my last post, there were 58 blogs that lost PR and 14 blogs were gainers.

Today’s quite a far cry: 149 blogs have lost PR and 130 blogs were gainers. Interesting to see all those zeroes turn into actual numbers! Eleven blogs broke out today, a sign that there was significant movement in the rankings. Jayvee’s Cellphone9.com came out of nowhere to rank #13 and Karlo’s Pinoy Blogero is now at #51. Congrats to all the other rank winners!

Are you a developer based in Manila? Well, here’s your chance to pick the minds of Google engineers! Limited slots available. This is organized by country consultant Aileen Apolo, who announced it here.

What: TechTalk with Google Engineers (from Mountain View, California)

Topics: Google Gadgets, Google Open Social & other developer products

When: November 19, 2007, Monday, 7:00 p.m.

Where: ACCEED Conference Center (beside AIM, in front of Greenbelt)

How to join: Sign-up your name and your programming language by leaving a comment below. You can check if you’ve been registered by checking out the guest list.

UPDATE: Registration closed.

I’m proudly one of The Usual Suspects who are organizing Mindanao’s first Blog Summit! The Summit will be held on October 27, 2007 at the NCCC Mall in Davao City. I’m very, very excited to meet the 80+ bloggers from around Mindanao who have registered. If you’re a blogger who happens to be in the area, it’s not too late to register! You don’t have to be from Mindanao to participate, just as long as you have a blog.

The tentative Program of MBS1 is as follows:

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Wordpress released version 2.3 of their blogging software yesterday, nicknamed “Dexter”. Definitely a major release just by looking at all the work they put into it. But Abe warns against upgrading too soon because not all plugins are supported. At best, those intending to put up new blogs will be the ones benefiting from Dexter the most. But then again, their choice of plugins will be a bit limited.

Before you jump the gun, Aaron lists 10 things you need to know about the release. And he says, just like I would after each major release, that it’s best to wait it out. One suggestion I can give is for you to install 2.3 on your desktop (via Xampp) and import your existing database and plugins to see if anything goes awry. At least in that situation, you can troubleshoot without having to worry about breaking your live blog.