I’m going way off-topic on this one. My friend Janette tagged me on what issues are most important to me in the 2010 Presidential elections. Constantly watching the coverage of the US Presidential nominations has certainly opened my eyes to what types of things people look for in a President. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about the Philippines. Here, whoever has the biggest dole-outs (aka bribes) or have the most appearances in movies have the highest chances of winning the presidency. Hello Garci, have we not had enough already?

My main issues are:
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The Optical Media Board (OMB) slapped CD-R King with a P1.5 million penalty for failing to produce permits for some of its optical media disc importations.

CD-R King is a registered company allowed by the OMB to import blank, rewritable optical discs. Valenzuela (of OMB) said that the OMB is also seeking the cancellation of the license of CD-R King to sell optical media in the country.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, they were even found using pirated softwares in their business operations. Tsk tsk.

Coincidentally, OMB has recently conducted its “validation inspection” to verify a tip it received that the same company was using unlicensed software in its operations in the country.

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Conan O’Brien had a segment on his show called “Conan Hates My Homeland” where he goes through names of countries alphabetically and insults them one by one. I admit, Conan O’Brien, no matter how crass and senseless he is, is my favorite late night talk show host. Anyway, you might be curious what he had to say about the Philippines.
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I read an interesting post by Bob Martin in his Live in the Philippines blog. In the article titled “I know better than they do!“, Bob recounts his experience with a fellow American who was planning on living in the Philippines. As they were driving around town (General Santos City), his friend quipped that he was gonna teach “these people” (Filipinos) how to grow tomatoes. He reasoned that most tomatoes sold in the market are green, and if they were sold riper, they would be able to sell more. Bob quickly rebuffed him by saying that Pinoys actually preferred green tomatoes. If they were too ripe, nobody would buy them! Bob couldn’t have concluded it more aptly:
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It’s not too late for our local online newspapers to discover the beauty of RSS implementation. For the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI), the nation’s most popular website, the saying “It’s lonely at the top” couldn’t be more fitting, because, out of all the major newspapers, it is the only one that offers a full range of RSS feeds. From Breaking News and Infotech to Exam Results and Podcasts, an avid feed subscriber can choose only the specific topics he’s interested in.

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I’ve been given a hard time practically all my adult life for sleeping late at night. Thanks mostly to my forward-thinking relatives who believe that waking early is the key to success in life and staying up late is the root of all evil. I think that’s just absurd.
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I’m not a practicing Catholic. I don’t go to church except when I’m forced to or when it’s Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. So really, there’s no place for me to give a righteous reaction to the current media/Internet circus surrounding Bryanboy. He’s getting exactly what he craves for: attention. And boy did he get it, albeit unexpectedly.

Honestly, everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Bryanboy gave his opinion when he decided to post those controversial pictures of his European friend posing beside a statue of Jesus Christ, whom he considers “his fucking homeboy”. Some name-calling ensued, touting him the next Anti-Christ, one starting an online petition that, unsurprisingly, didn’t flourish. If you ask me, I couldn’t care less. I didn’t find anything offensive about those pictures, which take note, Bryanboy isn’t in. He did say he loved Jesus, right? “Fucking homeboy”, although quite crass, was vaguely well-intended. If you browse his site long enough, this guy isn’t supposed to be taken seriously. He’s a miles away from even a fraction of newsworthiness. It’s simple. If you don’t like him, stop going to his site! By the way, how and why did Kenneth Ocampo end up there in the first place?
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Marc Macalua recently wrote about Google Setting Up Shop in the Philippines. Like everyone else, I’m excited! This is major. I actually know about this already, thanks to Marc and a certain telling post at the SEO Philippines discussion group (hehe).
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It’s limited, but hey, it’s a start.

Looks like J. Angelo’s PayPal for the Philippines movement is seeing fruition. Filipinos can now purchase wares on the Internet via PayPal but is limited to only $100 unless a credit card is verified. However, receiving funds is still impossible which most of us are really after. But I don’t see that happening until the appropriate legislation is passed that will get us off the list of money laundering countries.

But still, I’m happy of this development. Will start shopping tomorrow and see how it goes. Good job, Angelo!

Back at Techcrunch, Michael Arrington confirms that Google has acquired YouTube.

My thoughts:

There was word that although YouTube has dominated the online video sharing market, its founders Chad Hurley and Steven Chen aren’t making serious money out of it and are actually living on credit. YouTube’s only future is to be bought out by something bigger, in this case Google, who beat out Yahoo! at the very last moments of the deal.

Google’s been aggressive in pursuing video as part of their advertising business that makes up most of their revenue. But what’s odd is that with their recent $1 billion agreement with MySpace who has their own video sharing space, it’s interesting to see if Google will be allowed to display video ads alongside MySpace’s. Looks like a conflict of interest in the horizon. The numbers tell it all. About 70% of Youtube’s traffic comes from MySpace. If Google decides to insert advertising in all of YouTube’s videos shown on MySpace, they get instant free advertising, right? MySpace appeared to be surprised by the whole buyout event, so it’s safe to say they’re already pondering the same thing.

So far, YouTube captures about 34 million users a month, while MySpace’s own tube gets 17 million but they’re catching up very fast. If and when MySpace decides to get rid of all YouTube videos from their site, that will spell trouble for Google. And honestly, online video buffs will be put off when they begin to see advertising in YouTube videos. Hey, that’s the one major reason they watch stuff on the Internet. No ads!

On the bright side, Chad and Steve are now about $200-$300 million richer. I can practically see them swimming in a sea of liquefied gold in this video they made post-Google:
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I don’t want to make a bigger fuss out of it than it already is.

But yes, John Bertrand, you suck. You are SEO’s version of George Bush. You’re old, you’re stupid and no one gives a shit about what you have to say.

More: JNB Web Promotion is a Freeloader

Google Adsense emailed its publishers with a ton of cool improvements to its service.

Most notably:

AdSense for search results on your site
Search results are now served on your site via IFRAME. This means your visitors don’t have to veer away from your page every time they search.
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I caught wind of a page on Multiply.com called Sundry Online that sells a plethora of products from cosmetics, bags, household items and sexual enhancers. It was the typical amateurish merchant website you would see on Multiply — sparkly logo, badly lighted pictures, words in ALL CAPS followed by exclamation marks (!!!) But what caught my attention was their headline:

Want to have a 4-DIGIT VANITY NUMBER to advertise your products? Only PHP5,600/yr!!!

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A few days ago, September 22, 2006, I attended Janette Toral’s event “One Internet Day” held here in the city. I was about an hour late and had to leave while speaker Chris Cubos (of Fwendz.com) was doing his presentation. Shame that I wasn’t able to mingle with Janette and the others. I was particularly interested in YESpayments‘ discussion on their credit card processing services and that of InfoWeapons and their IPv6-ready products. Overall, it was a nice gathering of all those interested in the Philippine IT sector.

Pic after the jump.
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I recently went on a buying spree on previously owned domains and found some with decent pageranks and backlinks. I’m *not* about to divulge these domains just yet! What’s funny is that one of the domains I bought used to be owned by someone pretty well-known on the Internet. I only found about it *after* the purchase. Now I feel kinda silly. Well, technically it’s mine now. I’m thinking of converting it to a political blog but with a more global scope. We’ll see.
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