Photobucket Works For Me!

For the past couple of weeks, I noticed that a lot of my image links to my Multiply has been screwing up. A friend of mine brought it up one time she checked out one of my earlier blog entries- and pointed out to me that all the spaces where the pics should have been were just that- empty spaces.

Empty spaces with the Multiply logo on em. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I've decided to put all my photos instead on Photobucket. Yes, I registered for a new account, and now all my new pics and vids are posted right there.

So far, so good- I like the interface, and the way you could create folders within folders, thereby making it easier to arrange photos. Haven't found a way to browse through all the folders without having to click on each one though. I foresee a time when I'll probably have way too many pictures- I'm having enough trouble keeping track of things as it is.

Nevertheless, Multiply will still be up and running- I still like the whole interactivity of it. But all my pics and vids (to think I just tried vlogging recently) go to Photobucket.

Cheers, everyone!

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Got Plans For The Holy Week?

I'm the kind of guy who'd like to take the opportunity to do some reflecting for The Holy Week- not just about spiritual stuff, but to really have a good look at where I am right now, what kind of direction I'm headed and what my more immediate action plans are.

Incidentally, Holy Week this year is just a mere 3 weeks away, with Maundy Thursday falling on March 20 and Good Friday on the 21st. Easter Sunday happens on the 23rd.

See, in the Philippines, Holy Week is a time when the city streets look like its something straight out of I Am Legend- the whole place is deserted as everyone has either left town or gone book themselves up in a hotel for several nights.

Me, I'm not a huge fan of going out of town when everybody else is cramming their cars into the North or South Expressways. Staying home is OK, but I'd really rather make some plans if I can.

So this year, I plan to stay in a hotel. Only because I'd like to take my laptop with me, maybe a couple of good books, and use all that time to get some writing done- let all the thoughts flow, you know? And get them all down on Notepad, then publish it online.

I've decided that I might check out Legend Hotels this year. Sure there are lots of value hotels in the Philippines, but I've checked out their website- www.legendhotels.com.ph, and the place looks alright. They even have this special promo: The Legend Villas' Family Weekend Package, which seems reasonably priced for a small family or group of friends.

The rates are currently pegged at php2970 net/night, inclusive of buffet breakfast for two, a 20% Discount at the Lola Maria Coffee Shop, business center and laundry services, as well as in-room coffee and tea. The promo is valid until 31 December 2008. I'm sure they have other things going on, so it's probably best to visit the website, give them a call, or drop by for a visit.

Sounds great- coz it means I don't have to spend hours in Holy Week out-of-town traffic but still have my quiet time for reflecting and stuff. I can take a dip in the pool if I feel like it, or just chill with some good reading and some easy listening, then just let the thoughts flow into my laptop.

Cheers, everyone!

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Delifrance Bloggers' Night: My First Vlogging Effort

Okay, here's my first attempt at vlogging.

Several bloggers were invited to check out Delifrance's new line of Spiked Coffees. I'll be blogging more about that later on. In the meantime, check out this vid I put together. And, yep, I suppose this makes for my first official vlogging effort.

Naturally, I'll have to look into the whole vlogging scene in the Philippines. I have to admit, there are a lot of people who have inspired me to do the same, and it's always fun to tinker around with a cam and PC and see what happens, you know?

BTW, watch the vid to find out how you can score on some free coffee- and be one of the first to check out Delifrance's naughty new line of coffee treats!

Cheers everyone!

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Here's What I Figured Out...

For the past few weeks, I've been helping out several friends set up their own blogs. More than anything, I've realized that the needs of every blog and blogger indeed differ from case to case.

Just among my friends, I've noticed that some 70-80% are still personal blogs- no particular niche in mind, really- just an online compilation of pics and notes and links and other things they find interesting.

20-30% would have business in mind setting up a blog: some would want to showcase their authority on a given topic, or promote a particular brand, product, service, event or idea. These require a lot more work- as you now bring SEO into play, as well as traffic generation, RSS, social networking and link-building.

I'd say a third of those I've talked to have decided to make their blogs a money-making effort. Something I'd discourage at least until your blog reaches critical mass, or at least a solid amount of content. The problem is that, there are way too many people who put money-making in the forefront more than creating a positive user experience. Then again, it's just me.

If anything, the experience for the past couple weeks has inspired me to put together a curriculum of sorts- a way to organize the content in this particular blog to help out any blogger given his/her needs.

So for the next several weeks, I'll be working on just that. As always, I'll be more than happy to accommodate requests to help along the lines of blog-building. At least, as much as I know- I'm still learning a lot of this stuff as I go along.

Cheers, everyone!

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Just a Quick Update, Really...

Hello everyone.

Just to keep you posted on what's going on: I've been working on a few other blog projects, some for work and some for my own personal interests.

More notably, I've been putting more work on five other personal blogs:

1. The Life & Times of The Renzie Man. This particular blog toys around with the Wordpress publishing system. Not as user-friendly as Blogspot/Blogger, but it does have its charms. It's actually the closest thing I have to an actual online diary- the way blogs were supposed to be to begin with.

2. Renzie's Rants and Raves. Mostly about my recommendations on having fun, taking it easy, and other random things. It's all about reviews- more like a consumer-point-of-view take on dining out, spas, music, books, internet stuff, etc.

3. My Thoughts In Stereo! I figured I had to capitalize on my knowledge and expertise on all things music and radio- the site aims to have everything from music videos + lyrics, artist trivia, and even some insider info on the radio, recording and advertising industries.

4. Too Much TV! A lot of people tend to ask me if I know about when the latest Heroes episode is coming out, or what song was used on which episode of Gossip Girl, or who's that new chick playing Sarah Connor- so I decided to put this blog together and do a public service of sorts.

5. Renzie On Gaming. I gotta admit, a lot of my spare time is still spent playing PC games. Or probably more like, I make an effort to make more spare time to get my gaming fix. I feel that people need to get a Nintendo DS Lite rather than a PSP Slim. I still have to get my hands on an Xbox 360. In the meantime, I keep playing my World of Warcraft.

There are other blogs in the works. But these five are probably what's eating most of my time at the moment. They're all in varying stages of completion- I still have to lay in the codes to bookmark individual entries for del.icio.us/technorati/digg, etc. plug in the adsense, add a few more widgets, etc.

Which means there's still a lot of work to do. But you'll still be seeing me around here. More about that on my next post. Until then, keep on blogging!

Cheers, everyone!

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iBlog4: The 4th Philippine Blogging Summit!

Janette Toral of DigitalFilipino.com shared this with us on Facebook.

iBlog4: the 4th Philippine Blogging Summit will be held at Malcolm Theater, College of Law, in UP Diliman, Quezon City this April 26, 2008. This event is organized by the University of the Philippines - Internet Society Program.

We would like to thank Alfox Computer Center for being our name badge sponsor. Parties interested to support this event can e-mail me at digitalfilipino@gmail.com

Registration, which will reserve your seats, stuff and schwag, and get you into our announcements mailing list, is now open.

Of course iBlog 4 is still FREE in the beer sense, as long as we can help it, free in the speech sense.

The program as follows:

9:00 - 9:20 Flag Ceremony, Welcome Remarks, Keynote
9:20 - 9:45 How to Blog (from a non-problogger point-of-view) - Charo Nuguid

You want to start a blog. You ask your problogger friend for help. The problem is he starts talking about keywords, SEO, and a few other things that you have totally no clue about. Google Ad-what? "I just want to start a blog!" If you're just looking for a way to post your thoughts on the web for posterity (and give your readers a few kicks every now and then) without the business talk, click here! (Or just walk through the door, sit down and listen!)

9:45 - 10:00 Sponsor Talk
10:00 - 10:30 Break
10:30 - 11:00 Student Blogging - Juan Karlo Licudine (http://www.pinoyblogero.com) A perspective and experience sharing from a student / blogger.

11:00 - 11: 30 Photoblogging - Juned Sonido (http://www.baratillo.net)

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. And there have been instances that it really has. A couple kissing. Soldiers hoisting a flag in a battlefield. A child fleeing a village bombed with Napalm. Or even a man skipping a puddle.
All are powerful images. As humans we have this drive to show pictures whether it be a holiday, a dinner, friends and family. And as such it comes to no surprise that a lot of people have been posting things on line from Facebook to Flickr. And then there are the photoblogs.
What are photoblogs? Are they the same photo galleries? Do you really need a digital camera to set up a photoblog? How does one set-up a photoblog? Will it cost much? What are the basics? Well this discussion will try to answer that and more.

11:30 - 12:00 Blog to Print - Jonas Diego (http://www.jonasdiego.com)
Bringing your blog content to the printed page. Updates on what happened so far with Jonas initiative on blog comics.

12:00 - 1:00 Lunch

1:00 - 1:40 Vlog and Podcasting Prospects in the Philippines (Aileen Apolo - http://www.yougottech.com and Coy Caballes - http://www.thisiscoy.net)

1:45 - 2;45 Blogging and 2010 Elections Panel
(Janette Toral - http://philippineselection.blogspot.com)
- also invited Manuel L. Quezon III and Luz Rimban - to be confirmed

2:40 - 3:00 Sponsor Talk
3:00 - 3:30 Break
3:30 - 3:50 Blogging for Advocacy - Noemi Lardizabal Dado - http://www.filipinaimages.com

3:50 - 4:30 Blogging from the Countryside
Blogging case studies outside of Metro Manila

4:30 - 5:00 Closing Remarks / Group Picture / Raffle

At the very least, it gives me a chance to meet up with fellow bloggers, swap stories with old acquaintances, and meet new blogger buds. It's all about sharin' some linkage love!

Also, it's a great time to hang out in UP again- I think it's been at least 5 or 6 years since I last visited UP Diliman. They got great food places to check out- and that's another bunch of things to blog about.

Anyway, I just signed up for the event- I hope to see you guys there too!

Cheers!

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Join the WikiPilipinas Filipina Writing Contest!

Noemi Dado, a good friend of ours, gave us a heads-up on the special event via Facebook:

In line with the principle of honoring the diverse, beautiful, and powerful image of a Filipina, WikiPilipinas will launch a special portal, Encyclopedia of Philippine Women, inside the site which will compile and detail the achievements and triumphs of Filipinas everywhere.

Its sister site, Filipiniana.net, will also have a Philippine Women Microsite containing documents discussing Filipino women, as well as selected texts from the oeuvres of Filipina writers. Through a combined effort for advocacy, WikiPilipinas partnered with Filipina Images to help promote a more empowering image of the Filipina. By having an online platform to showcase Filipina intelligence and talent, the goal of developing more empowered Filipinas becomes achievable.

Many participants, through this project, will discover that they can help bridge the digital divide and promote gender mainstreaming and gender equality.

To promulgate the advocacy, WikiPilipinas.org and FilipinaImages.Com websites will launch “Filipina Stories", a writing contest with the mission of uplifting the image of the Filipina.

Here's your chance to put together an essay and share your thoughts, and win some prizes and props for doing so! Noemi adds:

I hope you join this contest. This contest also aims to raise awareness of the WikiPilipinas.org so that bloggers can eventually add content to the Wiki. For the contest, the WikiPilipinas staff will take charge of uploading your entry to the Wiki. After this contest, there will be a Phase 2 Workshop which is meant to teach us how to use the Wiki.

Be part in uplifting the image of the Filipina, the Knowledge base of the WikiPilipinas and meeting up with other bloggers on March 12, 2008. Remember you are not only writing about Filipino women. You will help uplift the reputation…remove the prejudice, not just against Filipino women achievers but against your mothers, sisters, daughters. Against You.

It's a worthy and noble cause- something definitely deserving of your attention, time and effort. Not only do you have a chance to win prizes, recognition and bragging rights, you also have (more importantly) an opportunity to interact with fellow bloggers and people who share a similar passion for writing, blogging and advocacy. So it should be a lot of fun- check it out now, funk soul brother!

You can find the contest mechanics, critera and prizes at stake, as well as more information and contact details there.

Cheers all!

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You Gotta Multiply!

Every blogger has to have a social networking service that allows storage of media files. The more notable of these sites are Photobucket, Picturetrail, Shutterfly and Flickr. But personally, I go for Multiply.

Just like many other social networking sites, Multiply allows you to post videos, photos and blog entries and share them with your friends (assuming they're in your network of course). It allows you to form groups and communities with other people who share your interests. And if you know a thing or two about CSS, you can go ahead and customize your Multiply page however you like. If not, there are a lot of templates you could use for your site, anyway.

But one of the coolest things about Multiply is that it provides cross-posting of blog entries. Which means your posts from Blogger/Blogspot, TypePad or LiveJournal can automatically get posted to Multiply (after a while), or the other way around.

Me, the most useful function of Multiply for me is that it acts as a repository of all images I might need for my blogs. There is virtually no limit to uploading photos- not that I need to upload so much. I just find it convenient to store all my pics in one site- organize em, share em, put notes and tags and all that.

There are a lot of other useful built-in modules as well, but I really haven't had the chance to make good use of them. Still, while I think I'm more of a no-frills kind of guy, it's nice to have the option of having the modules around in the event that I might feel like exploring that space sometime.

So go ahead and get Multiply. It's not only great for storing your media online- pics, vids and blog entries- it's also great for sharing and fulfilling all your community needs. Feel free to add me up when you've checked it out.

Cheers!

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