NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, have taken the digital art world by storm. However, the rapid rise of NFTs has also brought forth a dark side – toxicity within the community. Many individuals, known as “degens,” have become obsessed with buying and selling NFTs, often engaging in aggressive and competitive behavior that can be harmful to others.
Author: Jayvee Fernandez
Jayvee Fernandez is a tech enthusiast, EAN certified SCUBA Diver and underwater photographer based in Metro Manila, Philippines. His photos and videos have appeared in various international and local publications including Random House Germany, Discovery Channel Canada, and CNN.
Ever since Brotzeit opened at Alabang West Parade, the place has gone bonkers with foot traffic. I’ve been frequenting the strip mall as a bike stopover for the better part of the pandemic and it served more as a halfway respite for riders (Hugo Bikes used to be there but closed after a couple of months) and pocket meetings that didn’t want the crowds of Molito.
Lo and behold, in one of my rides I found the canvas to a new restaurant concept revealed — huzzah! Brotzeit was finally coming to the south. I was telling Spanky that this was the anchor establishment that West Parade needed and I was correct — days after it opened, it was almost impossible to find parking after 8PM (usually the mall is relatively empty at night).
I’m reposting a piece I wrote together with Eva Gubat from 2006. This was a time when the blue & black Linksys routers were a status symbol at home because the “next frontier” was being able to add WiFi to your home. It was the age of Apple’s iBooks and PowerBooks — of being able to flex working from a coffee shop. I remember browsing PinoyExchange or MaPalad and the forums would have a list of “friendly” establishments that had free WiFi and allowed you to plug your laptop.
Many phones didn’t have WiFi back then so getting online on a portable device meant having to use a PocketPC or something that ran Palm OS. These were the final days of Symbian S60 and Nokia, which Steve Jobs would then deliver the final blow with the launch of the first iPhone a few months later.
This piece was part of an ongoing series that featured such friendly establishments offering free WiFi. Tech magazines at the time didn’t cross into lifestyle, but publishers soon realized that it was the lifestyle sections that attracted the budgets, so we had to be fashionably geek. Oh how times have changed.
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What marketers can learn from GoTyme Kiosks
If you’ve been to a Robinson’s in the past few weeks you may have noticed an ATM-like kiosk with the “GoTyme” branding. For the unfamiliar, GoTyme is one of the newer digital banks in the Philippines forged as a partnership between the Gokongwei Group (hence Robinson’s) and Tyme.
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The Alabang Creek Canal Bike Trail
There’s a bike route I’ve been following more often. And the irony is the trail is within a mall.
The Festival Mall canals are really something else. In a way it reminds me of the huge ponds of the former QUAD (now Greenbelt) in the 1980’s and Virra Mall but on a larger scale. Festival Mall’s humongous expansion extends the mall towards Asian Hospital with new outdoor areas around a forum that follows the freshwater Alabang Creek as it makes its way out into Laguna de Bay. The creek itself isn’t a sight to behold, and to be honest I have doubts of how “safe” that water is as I’ve seen freshwater fish floating dead in some of the more stagnant waters. But easily accessible bodies of water are a rarity in the urban sprawl, and in this case — it IS the urban sprawl.
Read on to see the photo gallery.