Cyberbaguioboy

Read the rest of the story at INQUIRER.net.

Have you ever imagined watching the stories from New York Times or Wired on YouTube? Well, you don’t have to, anyway because both publications have their own channels on YouTube, and they have very interesting stories to tell in multimedia.

Check out this episode from Frugal Traveler from New York Times. (New York Times has decided to disable embedding of video clips, shoot).

Or this interesting feature on “Playing the Building” by David Byrne

Okay, I’m “addicted” to plurk, twitter and whatnot. No, they’re not cartoon characters in the latest Japanese anime flick. They’re services that allow people to micro-blog (I believe this will soon land in Oxford as a noun or a verb). As I was browsing through some stories, I found interesting tidbits about micro-blogging.

Why do we do it?

First off, how different is blogging from micro-blogging? The latter involves burst of short messages — 140 characters to be precise. Imagine how many words you can fit into that? For having 20,000+ followers, Techcrunch is perhaps the best example of an effective Twitter.

Micro-blogging is not a fad. It has emerged as a natural way to reach out to people. By that I mean interaction, sometimes in real-time. For instance, have you ever read a real-time blog about travel on Twitter? Well, we have one local example and currently, I’m following it. Tales of the Nomad (run by INQUIRER.net which is a company I work for) provides an example of the power of micro-blogging.

Perhaps you’ve heard about Plurk. It’s just like Twitter but with a twist. Instead of the usual chronological interface where the latest Tweets go on top, Plurk follows a timeline. All updates are posted in a public timeline for the whole universe to see. Look at this example, my plurk account. Plurk takes some getting used to. But it becomes really addictive once you start. One plurker (yes, another new noun to land soon on Oxford haha) says that Plurk is the new YM, short for Yahoo! Messenger. I think this explains it a lot. We love to chat with people. Micro-blogging is one way we can connect or even re-connect with people. For media, it’s another way of getting immediate feedback or even ideas from readers. This is perhaps the most direct medium by which you can give your two cents’ worth on certain issues, vice cersa.

So why do we do it? Well, why not? It’s there. People are there. And we want to be a part of it, this social world of micro-blogging. If you don’t get it, then you’re missing out on the fun.

How will they vote in Maguindanao this August? Comelec shows how.

I just want to share this piece of news from our editor Leo Magno who gave a snapshot of what happened in the coverage of the Pacquiao vs. Diaz fight. It’s an interesting lesson in the transformation of media in the Philippines.

Excerpt:

MANILA Philippines — While boxing icon Manny Pacquiao was making history by becoming the first Filipino to hold four championships in as many weight divisions, media was also making history with new ways of delivering news.

Read the rest of the story here.

You might be wondering about Dell’s local business. Apparently, more Dell computers are selling now, according to execs.

Excerpt from INQUIRER.net

Computer maker Dell has finally made headway into the local consumer market, executives said here.

Traditionally a strong player in the corporate segment, Dell executives said the company has seen its notebook unit sales grow by about 95 percent year-on-year during the first quarter of the fiscal year, which started April 2008, according to Paul-Henri Ferrand, president of Dell for Asia Pacific and South Asia which includes countries in Asia Pacific excluding Australia, Japan, South Korea, and China.

He is South Korean Sungha Jung who plays wonderful guitar at such a young age. I discovered him in Metacafe then later on Youtube playing Beatle’s Come Together. We can only wish to play this good at a young age. Good job Jung!

Sungha Jung

He also plays Freddie Aguilar’s Anak! O di ba.

Blizzard, the developers of this RTS, has whetted gamers’ appetite when it announced the coming of Diablo III.

Here’s a sample of the actual gameplay:

Nice!

If you read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, you will not certainly miss this book titled  A Game As Old as Empire, which by the way, devotes one chapter on the Philippines’ Race to the Bottom.

The book is an anthology of stories told by former economic hitmen who were involved in a web of global corruption. It exposes how dirty money ends up in offshore accounts, how countries are drowned in debt to promote dependency on empires, and other revelations about global conspiracy to push Third World countries to a corner while a few political elites in cahoots with international institutions “benefit” from these activities.

A Game As Old as Empire, as the title implies, reveals how powerful countries and the elite have used the oldest tricks in the book to maintain their vast empires using divide and conquer principles, among others.

As freelance writer Adrian Zupp puts it: “This is an important book that should be read by anyone who wants to know how the world is run to the advantage of the wealthy few and the malicious disadvantage of the many poor.”

You can download excerpts here.

Hot off the press, Pacquiao Files– Pacquiao wins in 9th, KO!

Catch the tale of the fight here.

Excerpt from INQUIRER.net:

INQUIRER.net, Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 11:37:00 06/29/2008

MANILA, Philippines — Philippine boxing icon Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao made history, knocking out WBC lightweight champion David Diaz in the 9th round Sunday (Saturday in Las Vegas) to become the first Asian to hold four different titles at different weights and the first Filipino to hold the crown.