Technobiography

The “Ka Edong” Brand

This is one lesson I learned from Anton while delivering our seminar “The Abundant World of Blogging” at PSI.

It is important to brand yourself and your blog.

This encourages stickiness of your audience with an assurance that the blogger will consistently deliver a unique “value” to the readers.

I won’t try to define “brand” here. But I do know how it works. Let me share a few experiences that tell me that I have to manage my brand better.

• I was interviewed in 2005 by an expat working for an international organization. He mentioned that there’s this guy who writes extensively about m-commerce, comparing Smart Money and G-Cash. That’s me, Ka Edong of Technobiography.

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The Abundant World of Blogging

I gave a blogging seminar entitled “The Abundant World of Blogging”. Together with Anton Diaz of Our Awesome Planet, we delivered the seminar for PSI (People Synergistically Involved) as part of its continuing education series.

We had more than 20 people in our audience. They had a wide spread of skills and knowledge level. Some were on the verge of starting their blog already. Yet others have not mastered the use of the mouse or keyboard – but knew first-hand that blogging can be very influential.

After Anton and I consulted our draft agenda with a test audience, we decided to go by a very simple format for the 3 hour seminar. It was a sharing of experiences from the point of view of two bloggers. Like a “He said; he said.” 

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Free Cellphone Charging at NAIA

Found this machine at the NAIA. At least nadagdagan ng amenity ang ating Ninoy Aquino International Airport. Mabuti naman! That airport is the gateway pa naman where almost all foreigners arrive and depart from the Philippines.

Free Cellphone Charging at NAIA

The machine
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Posted in Gadgets | 2 Comments »

WordCamp Philippines

I was at the Wordcamp two weekends ago (almost stale news in the fast paced world of blogging).

I had some work in the morning thus missed the breakout sessions. I got to the venue in the afternoon and caught some plenary presentations.

Wordcamp Philippines 2008 Class Picture (by Randy Nivales)

The highlight of the afternoon was
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Coin Counter Machine

I spotted this machine a Jewel Osco shop in Chicago. It’s a coin counter. And if I remember correctly, it allowed the user to convert loose change to either cash or pre-paid cards or gift cheques.

Coin Counter Machine

I remember seeing a Philippine version of a coin counter. It was an invention

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Accenture interactive touchscreen news board

While waiting at the Chicago O’hare airport for one of our flights, we found this huge flatscreen TV. There were kids and teens playing with the screen, “clicking” the screen with their fingers.

Accenture Interactive touchscreen

There were two
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Google Chrome sa Filipino

Google Chrome

Natuwa naman ako nung makita ko ang link sa Google Chrome naka-sulat sa Filipino. Nung una, akala ko yung mga pahina lang papunta sa installer ng Google Chrome ang naka-salin sa Filipino. 

Pero hindi lang iyon. Pati ang mga FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) ng Google Chrome website ay naka-salin sa Filipino. 

Ngayong ginagamit ko na ang Google Chrome, ikinatutuwa ko na mayroon ding pag-salin sa luob ng
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5 dollar paintings at eBay

We visited a relative in Seattle. Dee had a beautiful lakehouse! The porch was newly painted brick red.

But what caught my attention were the many elegant paintings she had in the den. Pretty!

The painter was a Filipina! And yes, our friend Dee got the paintings for an unbelievable price of around 5 dollars apiece (base price of the paintings).

I couldn’t believe my ears (and eyes)! This beautiful painting selling for just 5 dollars!? That’s just 250 pesosI like! Where can I get some for myself?

At first I was thinking it might be the type of painting that’s mass produced.

(By the way, I had some neighbors who were doing exactly that! They had artbooks in their hands and two to four canvasses where they were replicating paintings of famous Filipino painters.)

But Dee continued to explain that there was a 30dollar shipping charge. Dee received the paintings rolled up in a tube. Dee took care of putting it in a frame.

Still, it was unbelievably cheap! Dee even showed us the certification at the back of one of the paintings. It bore the photo of the Filipina painter (sayang, I couldn’t remember her name na) and a seal of the art curator selling the paintings via eBay. Update (sept 14): Her name is Joie Delgado, find her on eBay.

5 dollars? ‘Di ba siya lugi sa materyales nun? Ah, my turn to get something like that …

Here’s a link to TrendArts selling very low-priced paintings (starting a $0.99!).

ka edong
art curator

Posted in TechTips | 3 Comments »

How to Record Skype Calls on Computer

I’m preparing to listen to an open forum with Jack Canfield. It’s called “Ask Jack Canfield” Tele-Class.

I’m going to dial-in using Skype. Because of timezone differences, I’ll be up at 1am to listen. I want to record the call for future listening, while driving for example.

Thus began my search for ways to record a Skype call.

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Posted in TechTips, VoIP | 2 Comments »

VendoRoll - Vendo Tissue Paper

I first saw this vending machine at Siesta - the Victory Liner stop over at Tarlac. I in fact inquired about it, was interested in becoming a dealer. Vendo machines are a good source of passive income

This particular machine
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Nuffnang has arrived in the Philippines

Nuffnang - “Asia’s first Blog Advertising Community”. It’s the newest advertising network in the Philippines. It’s a well established ad network in Malaysia and Singapore. I’m glad to be one of the first few to learn about Nuffnang and use it.

Some of the things I like about Nuffnang:
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Posted in Blogging | 6 Comments »

Microfinance Photography Contest

In 2005, I conducted a study on m-commerce for microfinance as part of my action consultancy at the Asian Institute of Management.

In my meetings with microfinance members, I brought along a … 1.5Megapixel Kodak camera to take snapshots of our activities.

I’m glad to hear from my friend John that there is a Microfinance Photography Contest by
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Posted in Photography, m-Commerce | No Comments »

Blog catch up

I’ve been trying to figure out how to catch up with my blogging backlog.

What’s the problem?

Basically, I have quite a number of blog stories I had always planned to write. I have photos capturing some technology moments, but haven’t written about them. In fact I have a folder on my photo gallery where I upload some technology photos.

Apart from photos, I also have lots of flyers that I hang on to planning to write about them at a later time.

But they remain flyers lying around at my desk or in my bag.

So, how do I improve my blogging output?

Let me count the ways.

1.) blog

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Lessons from my Beijing Olympics SEO experiment

Me and Dexter of TechAtHand.net had the same thing in mind when we each wrote an article entitled “Palarong Olimpiko 2008 sa Beijing”. We both wanted to get traffic from the Philippine homepage of Google search. The Google doodle (the image above the Google searchbar) was hyperlinked to search results for “Palarong Olimpiko 2008 sa Beijing” .

It was such a unique set of keywords and sure enough there weren’t many results with the exact phrase. Dexter’s article was the top result when I saw the keywords on
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Get 15% rebate from G-Cash

Globe G-Cash

Globe is raising the incentive to use G-Cash. They’ve made it more attractive for subscribers to use G-Cash to buy load.

I have friends who are earning quite a good profit by loading airtime through G-Cash. They get themselves some G-Cash and use it to buy load for their friends/family/customers.

When they send P100 worth of load, their G-Cash is deducted only P90. They get P10 rebate. That’s hefty.

But there’s a new promo now…
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Posted in m-Commerce | 1 Comment »

Go online, tour LA with style

I’ve always found online travel guides useful before going on a trip, especially when its my first time in another country. A nice guided tour around the new place gives you the “basics” of a place, making sure you don’t miss out on any of the important places a tourist *must* go to. It gives you a good idea of the layout of a place, and lets you go into more details if you want at a later time.

When I went to the US last year, my uncle treated me to a grand tour of Los Angeles. It was an interesting way to get to know the city. And I got to meet some interesting folks down there while on the tour. Putting me on the tour was a good way to make sure that I got a good taste of LA, and in style!

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BDO credit card payment glitch charged dollars instead of pesos

BDO

There was a glitch in some credit card transactions using BPI (and Citibank, HSBC) credit cards on BDO credit card terminals between August 16-18.

The BDO credit card terminals debitted dollar amounts by mistake instead of the peso amount.

BDO and BPI were quick to make the correction.

Today, I received the email below describing
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Posted in e-commerce | 3 Comments »

Bote, Dyaryo, Kompyuter!

Here’s something that might interest Jhay (i think!) with his interest in green technology (environmentally friendly technology): Re-using hardware.

Bote Dyaryo Kompyuter

I know it works, the huge monitor. It’s no longer way cool. And the folks using the stuff have long moved on. It’s time for
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Posted in Tech World | 2 Comments »

Got my hidden wealth at PayPal! Yipee!

PayPal

I described my PayPal dilemma last April. I got things resolved tonight! Wahoo! I expect to get my money via Paypal in the next 24-48 hours. Yey!

So let me describe what my scenario.

I have two Paypal Accounts.

Account A: Based in Canada, created in 2003. Cannot verify the account because
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Plugin saved me from insanity

There’s an awesome wordpres plugin which has saved me so much trouble and sleepless nights. I was felt so appreciative for something that was given out “free”. And I felt it was all fair to put in a few bucks as a donation to the great value this plugin has created.

The plugin is called
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