Simple Wish for Christmas, 2009

Image Credit: Steve Kayser

Too many Facebook wall posts? Too many updates, likes and tags?

So we go back to the usual refrain. And what have we done?

View Steve Kayser's post for 2009. Simple Wish for Christmas. Happy Christmas to all friends and family alike!

OLPC and eKindling Philippines Rural Deployment

Image credit: Ryan Letada

This is a first in the Philippines. So much to do, but NOT necessarily so little time, if you believe in the power of collaboration.

After all, it takes a village to raise a child, right?

Read more about OLPC and eKindling in the Philippines.

AUDRN tag cloud on wordle.net

Asian University Digital Resourse Network

This would normally fall under microblogging as a matter of status updates. Anyway, we are currently working on the website of the Asian University Digital Resource Network (AUDRN). It's a network which aims to promote sharing of digital tools and practices around local knowledge among digital librarians and information scientists.

This ground-breaking initiative is supported by the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia (UBCHEA) and is hosted in Miriam College through the L.E.A.D. Center.

Listen to the quick introduction about AUDRN.

TEDxManila

To all who heeded the call of innovation, passion and inspiration, thanks for making it a great experience. Our gratitude also go out to our sponsors especially to G2iX.com for their support and kind words for TEDxManila.

Indeed, we can only hope this inspires more people to take ideas worth sharing to the next level. Read more about Alain Yap's "Five Best Things about TEDxManila."

A true hero is measured ...

... not by the size of his strength but by the strength of his heart ...

The power of collaboration around giving

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Blog Action Day Yesterday

Missed the deadline but not the "aftermath" of the deadline. Still, I consider myself a part of this.

Here's an update from blogactionday.org's Robin Beck:

"Yesterday you and bloggers in 155 countries across six continents wrote about a single issue that impacts us all, and turned Blog Action Day 2009 into one of the largest social change events ever held on the web.

Your participation helped change the conversation and showed the power of the web to connect people across the world who despite their varied backgrounds have one shared desire: to make a difference. According to blogpulse, we increased the number of posts about climate change on a given day by 500%, and CNN wrote a great article covering the excitement and diversity of today's event across the web and around the world.

A full recap is up on our blog, and here are some highlights:

We hit 31,000 total trackable blog posts, and our current estimate is that together we reached at least 17.9 million people yesterday. We just exceeded 13,000 registered bloggers on the site and are working to get all of you who posted but haven't yet registered into the final count.

We had at least three major world governments as active participants in this year's event. United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon Brown posted the first Blog Action Day entry in Britain at the stroke of midnight on the 15th, which was followed by Foreign Minister David Milliband and many others from the UK stationed around the world. The PSOE governing party of Spain hosted a bloggers event focused on climate change and transformed their website for the day to promote Blog Action Day. And late in the day, President Barack Obama's White House blog joined in become part of the global movement of bloggers shaking the web.

Of course, well-known bloggers were a big presence yesterday as well:

• The Official Google Blog gave a green tour of the company's campus;
• Mashable asked what you're doing to reverse climate change;
• The Unofficial Apple Weblog suggested "Five apps to help save the world";
• Treehugger gave us two simple things that could, by themselves, stop climate change;
• Global Voices posted a roundup of bloggers from around the world writing in many languages;
• Gadling spent the whole day posting about green travel;
• BlogHer covered the road to the next international climate negotations in Copehagen.

There are many more, and we encourage you to check out the Featured Posts on the blogactionday.org homepage for a longer list of some of the world's largest blogs.

Many of our nonprofit partners, leading organizations from around the world, were also actively involved in making the event a success:

• TckTckTck released a beautiful and touching new video;
• Greenpeace bloggers from around the world joined in;
• World Wildlife Fund featured Blog Action Day on their international climate blog;
• Oxfam helped emphasize the human side of the climate crisis;
• 1Sky wrote about the front lines of political activism in the US;
• The Nature Conservancy helped us understand the science of climate change;
• NRDC's Switchboard bloggers wrote informative posts all day;
• Consequence wrote a whole series of posts on youth climate leadership.

You should all feel proud of this remarkable collective effort. And it doesn't have to end today. For many, we hope this serves as an entry point into the broader movement to address the issue of climate change. There are a number of ways and some amazing organizations through which you can continue to remain involved, and we encourage you to check out our Take Action section to learn more. "

Eee PC just gave me a platform to talk about it

Image credits: newopps.blogsome.com

Where else but via its myeeepcmylife blog site.

I know I've just about abandoned blogging -- thanks to the growing popularity of presence tools (Read: micro-blogging). So you would pretty much "see" me often on Twitter and/or Facebook.

And yes, I've just been woken up from blogging slumber. Want to know why? Read more at my Eee PC blog.

Educator.com: Equalizing education

This should particularly appeal to students who want to get up to speed in learning online with highly qualified professors.

Educator.com styles itself as a pioneering E-Learning startup looking to equalize education. Its Twitter profile says it specializes in Algebra, Biology, Calculus, Chemistry, Java, Statistics.

I did a quick look at its main website and for Mathematics alone, it currently has 34 course offerings in Mathematics.

The Educator.com experience seems designed to recreate the live tutoring experience on to the internet. For example, a middle interface video lets the readers know exactly what's being explained while keeping an eye on the lecturer. If users need help in any of the scholastic subjects they offer, Educator.com sounds like a blessing to them. The site is currently still in expanding mode as the people behind it are getting more professors to fill in the subject such as physics, trigonometry, and more advanced topics like calculus.

Educator thus looks like it should be a must for those looking for the best scholastic content on the Web.

Here are a couple of samples:

First up, learn chemistry will take you to Advanced Placement Chemistry which is being run under Dr. Harold Goldwhite.

His background and the scope of the course follow:

"University of Cambridge educated (Ph.D and B.A.) Dr. Harold Goldwhite guides you through Educator's Chemistry course. Professor Goldwhite has taught all over the world, from 46 years in Los Angeles, to several years in England, and visiting professorships in France, Mexico, and Venezuela. His experience on the History Channel and vast knowledge of chemistry transform his lectures into an informative and fascinating journey with a comprehensive syllabus that covers standard and accelerated one year courses. Topics range from Atomic Theory, Chemical Reactions, Bonds, Kinetics, Acids and Bases, Thermodynamics, Electrochemistry, to Radioactivity. Each lecture is accompanied by multiple examples for each new idea and detailed notes of things to remember."

Next up, learn calculus leads you to the online class of Professor Murray. More below:

UC Berkeley (Ph.D) and Georgetown (B.S.) educated Dr. William Murray instructs Educator's Calculus II course covering from Advanced Integration Techniques and Applications of Integrals to Sequences/Series. Professor Murray demonstrates his extensive teaching experience by clarifying complicated topics with a wide array of examples, helpful tips, and time-saving tricks. Will's course is essential to those struggling with Calculus who would benefit from clear explanations and examples of common problems. Each video lecture is accompanied by several worked-out video examples and important notes to prepare for any examination.

There's a whole lot more but you may wish to quickly search the site for quality learning wherever, whenever.

Social network + online store = Sandbox

Don't know about you but after I've joined tons of Social Network Sites in the last 6 years, I realize that I go through the cycle of technology adoption from trigger to peak of inflated expectations all the way to plateau of productivity. In between, I also tend to sink into some sort of SNS fatigue. So when a new site turns up -- usually every six months, I routinely create an account, based on each one's relative novelty.

Most usually come within my online attention radar. This time, I came across Sandbox via a huge billboard among a bunch of others along the stretch of Highway 54 in Makati, EDSA to the younger generation.

Ok so I ask myself what else is new? You've seen one with a lot of videos. And another with a lot of pictures, and yet another one with loads of music. What else could be different with Sandbox? Perhaps, the following?

To the younger set it could be a provider of services like friendster but with online store.

To the more mature and sophisticated netizens, it could very well be a source of services like facebook but with online store.

Then again, probably the best thing that makes Sandbox different from other websites, is:

It's an online store that allows you to download music, games and movie-themed content to your mobile.

Hold on, give me time to create a new account and go through the cycle again. And good thing there are open APIs. You don't have to really abandon your other SNS so long as the accounts could cross-connect.

[Edit] - After creating an account and doing the usual validation steps, (Note: They are rather particularly stringent about the usrn@me + p@ssword specs.), I was taken to the site. One thing that caught my attention, the right-hand side application icons that move like those of the Mac during Mouse hover. Will give myself more time to explore its digisoria section. Looks interesting.

It's ok here

Or that's how the site AyosDito.ph would translate to English. Site's title tells us it has something to do with buying and selling in the Philippines. A comprehensive nationwide buy-and-sell website is something that I've actually been looking for in the last 4 weeks for posting an advertising for a school to no avail. So I had to go via the usual route of newspapers for national reach plus the plain old community approach of handing out flyers. Turns out I missed this vehicle by two weeks. Still it might be worth mentioning in this blog post.

You might be interested to find out that AyosDito covers the entire archipelago of 7,100 islands. And that means you can even browse regions from CAR to ARMM. Check out NCR to see some used items. Now if for some reason you'd want to buy or sell a bicycle, you may wish to click on bike.

Currently, the site is on very active mode, to wit:

Post an Ad for FREE and WIN Big Prizes!

Weekly prizes: HP Mini-note, Sony Digicam, and iPod Touch

Check out the amazing prizes that we are giving away and find out if you are one of the lucky winners of AyosDito.ph Post and Win Contest!

For those following posts on Ad Astra

... seems like they'd have to do that on twitter for the most part.

Blogging could perhaps give way to micro-blogging for now.

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Kairos has patiently waited on me

Image credits: http://www.masternewmedia.org/

Sometime in 2007, I discovered Yahoo Pipes. It's a service that allows one to "program" mash-ups using feeds and other inputs to generate custom feeds. True to form, I started toying with some sample Pipes, e.g. pulling word-of-the-day inputs from freedictionary.com and producing "interesting" photo-collections.

In 2008, I came across a protomnema-inspired vocabulary-building educational framework, and after vaguely mashing the two ideas simply gave them short shrift.

Then for some reason, I suddenly felt a need for Yahoo Pipes. So I picked the 2-year old mash-up and tinkered with it again. Click on the Word-to-Flickr Image Aggregator.

Get RSS results here.

For a moment there, it all seemed like a result of random collaboration.

Immersive gaming: Where is your reality?

Image credits:http://buffetoblog.files.wordpress.com

David Needle reporting on the Web 2.0 Expo says that according to Will Wright, the gaming industry legend perhaps best known as the creator of SimCity and Spore: "The richness of Web-based environments is starting to blur the distinction between games and reality."

Among other things, Wright talks about the possibilities for the concept "immersive". Here's his take on Nintendo's Wii: "Most of the entertainment around the Wii is watching your friend act like a doofus, swinging the thing (Wiimote) around."

More of the serious stuff here.

Nowhere to go but up?

Better yet, what happened to the American Dream?

This is part of Slate's Shoot the Recession Project.

Just so I can catch up ...

Image credits: http://huffingtonpost.com/

... on my blogging, I'll just piggyback, for now, on Michael de Percy's post about "New Media and the Future."

Not by any stretch?

Don't know about you, but I think it takes more than posters to draw parallels between the two.

Vectorizing in glass

... or at least that's how I call it. This high school student is creative. [understatement]

Got cars, no buyers.

Photo credits: Christopher Furlong/Getty

So where will all those cars go?

"Japanese carmakers slash production by up to 50%. Thus reports the Guardian. This seems like a smart strategy (for now).

Am told that Toyota even had to rent a ship to store 2,500 cars off the Swedish port of Malmö.

See more photos of growing stocks of unsold cars worldwide here.

Headway School for Giftedness and 21st Century Learning

Image credits: www.ictlic.eq.edu.au/

Just parking a work-in-progress. HSG's website will undergo a major revamp. Will keep you posted. Meanwhile, you may be interested to read this article about 21st Century Learning.

Toying with Wordle and recurrent themes

These words were harvested from my recent blog posts.

Google Linux on your PC

Image credits: http://www.theimagecap.com/

Wow! Yes, that's what Jack Wallen's article seems to be trying to elicit from his readers. More here. I wonder who's running scared.

Do you sometimes get the feeling that you are OCD?

Please tell me I am not.

How does Google return a search about kids and Philippines?

Image credits: http://www.flashdaweb.com/

aka SEO basics.

Technically, the link kids Philippines should be able to show us the results.

Now if someone were to promote say, kidsahoy.net, then perhaps this post could make a little difference. Will check back in about 2 days to see how things play out. Meanwhile, remind me not to duplicate this post. I am told that Google, "penalizes websites that have different URLs pointing to the same page."

Plagiarism or Reference?

Image credits via boingboing.net

Don't know about you but I'm aware that even just hotlinking an image is largely frowned upon. Read the larger context here.

New Media > Old Media?

Image credits: wikimedia.org

Case in point. Gary Granada vs. GMA Kapuso. You be the judge. More here.

Call her $erena

Williams sets female athlete mark: $23 million, a record for career prize money by a female athlete. Not bad for someone who collected her first check of $240 from a tennis event in Canada in 1995. More here.

Just a side note: I'm tempted to think that $23 million pales in comparison with Manny Pacquiao's boxing prize money in his last bout. That said, I think it's unfair to call him ₱acquiao.

Is it the coffee or the ambience?

Image credits: reallynatural.com

Don't know about you but I'd like to believe that coffee should not be expensive. Now if I'm not mistaken then perhaps that partly explains why "Starbucks will close 300 more stores, and lay off 6,700 workers". Or is it solely because of worldwide recession? So who is your coffee?

Is this a promise or a threat?

Image credits: mangee

Kevin Merritt, the CEO and founder of blist, a Web-based list manager and spreadsheet that was used on Change.gov, the Obama Administration's transition Website writes about how Obama will be using Social Media to create an open and participatory channel to his constituents.

Could be a "good" model for other politicians? Read more here.

What happens when you cross Skype and Firefox?

... you get a winning-lotto-number-that-you-can-dial fail!

Go to failblog for more FAILS.

Didn't know I was a business innovator ...

Image credits: npr.org

... until I stumbled upon "We Are Smarter than Me".

The wiki-driven book, by Barry Libert (also co-author of Barack, Inc.) and John Spector, says:

"[It] is itself the product of an extraordinary collaboration of Wharton, MIT and thousands of business innovators, worldwide. Drawing on their collective "in the trenches" experience, the wearesmarter.org community reveals what works, and what doesn't, when you are building community into your decision making and business processes."

Indeed, the power of discovery, disclosure, connection and co-creation.

One reason to look beyond email

Image credits: Weboma

There's a better way to act on urgent requests for help.

Picture this:

"Hello, How are you doing? i had sent you an email earlier today,please i need your urgent assistance, I had traveled to Nigeria for a conference , Unfortunately for me all my money and other items were stolen at the hotel where i lodged and i cannot call anyone because i lost my phone where phone numbers were kept also there is no money on me to make calls, nobody even know where i am now, I am so confused right now, I don't know what to do or where to go,I have access to only emails, No phone Please kindly loan me 1500 Dollars and also send it by western union to me with the below details NAME: address: 2 isiba street itire lagos Nigeria 23401 Write me immediately so i can have the western union details to use to collect the money sent , scan and send me the western union money transfer receipt or just write out the details on the receipt and send to me . Please keep this to your self only please Please come to my rescue Best regards,"

Perhaps this should have been titled "How to spot a Nigerian Scam."

More about scams here.

Cheney says no one saw financial crisis coming

... or so it appeared on the link provided by Yahoo News. But wait there's less! Just follow the link to see what I mean. I hope they change the title to "Cheney says no one saw the CIA operatives get involved harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists."

I think the younger generation readers would call this Rick roll'd? Or is it bait and switch?