Year: 2008

Categories
Mostly Everything

IMOVIO iKIT challenges netbooks, makes a “smartphone”

So what do you think? Wrote about this earlier today:

This is what happens when you challenge the netbook line and come up with something much smaller – you end up with well, a smartphone that can’t make calls. I actually don’t know what to call it. I also don’t know if this will really replace anything that you already have. It’s not a cellphone because you can’t make calls, but you can surf via WiFi and 3G through your cellphone. It’s not something you can really show to present to clients. So what is it, really? What’s the value proposition of this $175.00 device? It sure is cool to have, but it lurks too much into the realm of the mobile phone to be 100% efficient.

Well, it does make calls, but you need to connect it to a mobile phone to do data. More of like, a modem of sorts. We’re back to the Palm Pilot ladies and gents.

Categories
Mostly Everything

Plurkfiesta at Bona Coffee

Met up with good friends Peter and Jen (Peter took this photo, which I’m grabbing), old friend JM (@Shrubber) from the PhilMUG days and his lovely wife Beverly. Not in the photo is Eugene who was all ninja’ed up outside, we didn’t even know he was there till he told me on Plurk.

Highlight topic for the night was conversation with JM on how online forums have a certain lifespan for quality content from a great community before they’re overrun with just anybody. I think being “elitist” (a word that needs to be further defined, but you prolly know what I mean) isn’t necessarily a bad thing in a number of cases.

Sorry you couldn’t make it, Manolo.

Proven: Not everyone is entitled to their own opinion

There are some shocking studies that you’ve always held to be true at the back of your mind, but were afraid to express because you’d be accused of generalizing things. Well, as it is, a new study shows that not everyone is entitled to an opinion.

“On topics from evolution to the environment to gay marriage to immigration reform, we found that many of the opinions expressed were so off-base and ill-informed that they actually hurt society by being voiced,” said chief researcher Professor Mark Fultz, who based the findings on hundreds of telephone, office, and dinner-party conversations compiled over a three-year period. “While people have long asserted that it takes all kinds, our research shows that American society currently has a drastic oversupply of the kinds who don’t have any good or worthwhile thoughts whatsoever. We could actually do just fine without them.”

Well, that’s Fultz’s opinion anyhoo, and he probably counts as one of the 62% whose opinion counts. Does it mean anything as well if my source is taken from The Onion? The study shows that 38% of people in the US have opinions “that actually don’t matter.”

I wonder how much can be quantified locally with people talking about things they seem to not have a full grasp on? When we write, do we write with authority?

There are no innuendos to my posting this – it’s just something worth looking into. But then again, that’s just my opinion 🙂

New industry magazine buzzing next month

The most interesting ones are the industry magazines, because that’s where all the behind the scenes stuff’s at. So Geoff and Tiff invited a few of us (Internet community + college marketing orgs) to a contributor’s night meet and greet for a new industry magazine (photos here and here). You’ve probably seen it on Plurk and a few blogs – Hive Pub Magazine. In my initial chat with Geoff I asked if this was similar to Adobo Magazine, the official industry mag for the local advertising, PR and below the line industry, and I was right on the dot.

They’d be doing an initial print run of 10k copies, and the magazine will not be for sale. Geoff told me that Inkwell will be printing the glossy, which is cool as well (they used to print my high school paper as well as internal magazines for UA&P).

This is long been waiting to happen. I remember about a year ago another publishing company wanted to do a magazine on the blogosphere, but it never pushed through. You might think it ironic that Hive is taking something that was born online, bringing it offline – and that maybe it might not work. I think this is a good move, as the target market isn’t really the online space, because we’d just be preaching to the choir. I think the vision (Geoff, let’s do an interview) is a reach outward to combine the talents of the blogging, SEO and the “new media” community with the capacities of the local ad industry. That alone is formidable.

Issue one is out this November 2008.

This Week in Philippine Spam

Have you been receiving a lot of spam lately in your comments? A certain “Keren Pascual” (not confirmed to be the real one, obviously) has been spamming comments in ALL of my blogs using the URLs of the Philippine Star and reposting articles from the lifestyle sections of our top broadsheets. Not only is that spam, it also might have copyright issues because everything sources back to the Star’s website despite some articles belonging to the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

I’ve also been receiving comment invites to the Consumer Expo 2008 by T3 Magazine and Summit. I have nothing against them (I know Vince and Ed personally) but I really think they should take a second look at whoever they hired to do the event’s Internet marketing. I know it’s not just in my blog – I saw the same invite in other bloggers’ comments section.

That’s what my email contact form is for — these sort of invites. Please, Internet marketer, don’t spam the comments section and give T3 a bad reputation. If they had emailed me, I’d have written about it anyway. It isn’t tasteful when it comes spammed several times into your comments section, especially for such a kick ass event!