Category: Technology

Youtube Video Awards

Youtube recently held this Youtube Video Awards 2006, and they have announced the winners already.

2006 was a pioneering year for online video, user-created content and the YouTube community. You let us into your bedrooms, created new forms of entertainment, and radicalized popular culture. Now it’s time to reflect on what a tremendous year it was and recognize the best of the best during the first YouTube Video Awards.

These are actually for original videos by individuals. Awards were given to six videos in six categories. Obviously, ithey’re in youtube. So for the benefit of the readers whose only access to the internet is their office where youtube is blocked, I’ve included a short review of the winning videos below:

Most Creative

Entitled “Here it Goes Again,” a video of four people dancing to the beat of the song that I think is also entitled “Here it Goes Again”. What made this video so unique is that they were dancing to the flow of 8 tread mills running at like 5 kilometers per hour (?). You’ll be amazed by their movements, it must have took them quite some time to practice!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv5zWaTEVkI]

Best Comedy

Smosh Short 2: Stranded – is a story of young man stranded in an island together with two of his friends, where they had nothing to eat, until they decided to just eat each other.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCd_i7wW87Q]

Best Commentary

Hotness Prevails – Well, just listen to this half-naked guy and what he can say and be entertained.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-rcjaBWvx0]

Best Series

Ask a Ninja – In this series, the ninja explains podcasting to people over the age of 12.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEmss2lg-ug]

Best Music Video

Say It’s Possble – It’s that girl with a guitar playing in front of a camera. It’s cool! She rockz!!!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARHyRI9_NB4]

Most Inspirational

Free Hug Campaign – The video claims to be a true story. He spread the free hug around, maybe for peace or something, I’m not exactly sure.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4]

Most Adorable

Kiwi! – is an animated video of a…well… Kiwi, just like that one you find in a brand of shoe polish…..whatever….the video can actually rival that of walt disney…:)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdUUx5FdySs]

These are actually the winners in their category. But you can still find the runner-ups just as amazing and entertaining. Head over to the Awards Home for more videos. For me, though, I think I’ll dig deeper into the Most Creative category because I discovered a lot more great videos in there just like the one below:

Hyperactive

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9698TqtY4A]

Yahoo! Mail Will Integrate YM

Beginning Monday, some Yahoo Mail users will be able to chat in real time through their e-mail program. Yahoo said in November that it would embed instant-messaging technology directly into its Yahoo Mail program so that users wouldn’t have to open up–or even install–Yahoo Messenger or another IM ,service to chat with each other online.

From CNET

It appears that Yahoo! is ready to compete head to head against the mighty Google, huh! (with the latter’s Gmail chat). I wonder if it can function well against the firewall here in the office. I’m looking forward to trying this new feature though, and I’m excited on how it will look like within Yahoo! Mail.

Yet, this news will “never” alter my preference of using Gmail over Yahoo! Mail. And the reason is up in my next posts!

4GB Pocket Flash Drive

pic_pocket.jpgJust got myself a new Imation USB2.0 Pocket Flash Drive, a 4GB one, as a replacement for my old 256mb generic flash drive I bought 2 years ago from CD-R King in Glorieta, Makati.

The old flash drive malfunctioned after I pulled it off the usb port while my notebook was busy writing/reading it (another lesson learned!). I grew impatient and pulled it off without following the safety removal process of the hardware.

Anyway, this new one (Imation), with its 4gb capacity, I can use to hold my Uniserver, as well as tons and tons of my documents. Yet, it’s compact and lightweight.

But what I liked most about this pocket flash drive is the password protection and drive partitioning software provided within the product. Unlike truecrypt, it doesn’t require an administrator privilege anymore to access the secured partition of the drive.

Searching Conrado Valix

Yeah, sounds like a movie (Searching Bobby Fischer). I should have changed the title to “Googling Conrado Valix”. Nah, nevermind.

bookI was wondering of late why there were just too many people who maybe were lost in the cyberspace and found their way to my entry regarding the Financial Accounting I, 2006 Edition by Atty. Conrado Valix and Jose Peralta. These visitors are mostly students from schools in different parts of the country (Philippines), who are (maybe) fanatics of Atty. Valix (okay, I am a fan myself). My blog was even mistaken for a fan site or something like that.

Then, I tried googling for the keyword “Conrado Valix” and guess what I discovererd:

  • Google – No. 1 in the search result page.
  • Yahoo! – No. 1 in the search result page.
  • MSN – No. 3 in the search result page.

Refining the search query yielded in a more interesting result. For a keyword “Financial Accounting by Conrado Valix”, my site ranked simply number one in all the big three search engine sites! (Note that these results change over time)

So that explains it, huh!

That should surely explain The J Spot’s entry on “Why Celebrities Should Blog“. He also cited another reason here.

Conrado Valix, being a public figure especially to accountants from college students to professionals, should start blogging. By this manner, it will pave the way at which students and professionals alike can contact him. It can be a ground where he can solicit feedbacks from readers of is “renowned” books on accounting.

Nonetheless, it’s even more ironic to note that CPAR (CPA Review School of the Philippines), being an established institution in the world of Filipino Accountants where Atty. Valix is one of the founders and the current director, doesn’t have a website (I think I’ve already said before). It’s one of the review centers that has produced and is still producing the best accountants in the country (or maybe even in the whole world), and yet it doesn’t yet have a space in the world wide web. (Or maybe it has, but it was not just optimized for search engines, I don’t know. If that’s the case, time to hire an SEO professional.) Imagine just how many students are maybe searching for its site everyday. Thus, maybe lost reviewees (and revenue).

Access to internet nowadays are becoming more widespread and cheaper. One should really reevaluate its marketing strategy.

(What do you think Domeng? –if you read this post)

Gmail for Mobile App

Just another reason why I prefer google mail over yahoo mail. Gmail now comes (new!) with an application for your mobile for fast email access and use.

gmailmobile
The application requires a java-enabled phone and a data plan. You can check for the capability of your phone but it definitely worked in my Nokia N71 (ngek! LOL). Other mobile devices can still access gmail though through the browser by pointing their wap browser to m.gmail.com.

The interface was much alike what you see when you access gmail via internet in your computer. You can’t send attachments though.

To download the application, point your wap browser to gmail.com/app and simply follow the instructions. In my experience, the installation was a breeze. With this application, accessing and using your email can even be cheaper (I suppose, as this will download the message alone, and i.e., if your mobile network charges you based on the download size. As for those that charge per minute or per 30 minutes like Smart, I really can’t tell).

P.S. Well, we’re talking about wap access or wap connection here, I might just want to plug this as well: deuts.net can also be accessed in your mobile phone by pointing your browser to wap.deuts.net. Try it! It’s cool!

New Theme

With the employment of this new theme (Tech-o-Crunch), I’m really worried whether my challenge plugin will work fine.

I’m encouraging everyone to do drop me a line in the comments (after answering the math quiz, of course) so I can better test the functionality of the challenge plugin, and whether it is effective in capturing preventing spam comments.

Please, I need your help. My blog is flooded with spams!

A Math Challenge Plugin

Spam comments has always been a problem in the blogosphere. Akismet and Spam Karma 2 are two of the most common spam protection plugins for wordpress blogs. What these plugins do, however, is simply catch spam comments and put them in queue for the administrator’s moderation.

Spam in blogs (also called simply blog spam or comment spam) is a form of spamdexing. It is done by automatically posting random comments, promoting commercial services, to blogs, wikis, guestbooks, or other publicly-accessible online discussion boards. Any web application that accepts and displays hyperlinks submitted by visitors may be a target.

Adding links that point to the spammer’s web site artificially increases the site’s search engine ranking. An increased ranking often results in the spammer’s commercial site being listed ahead of other sites for certain searches, increasing the number of potential visitors and paying customers.

Source: wikipedia

Spam comments are usually done through a program and/or machines. They are normally automatic once they’ve bookmarked your site. Now, although Akismet and Spam Karma 2 catch those spams and prevent them from being posted directly to your comments, they do not prevent them from reaching your comments (worse, they don’t cook them for breakfast! hehe). They help keep spam from being published, but not from reaching your comments.

As a result, you’ll need to check your admin panel regularly and browse through the captured spam comments for any erroneous catch. This is surely irritating, especially if you’re encountering an average of 10 to 20 spams per day (much worse is the case for other more popular sites).

Continue reading A Math Challenge Plugin

Free Hosting

I was really mesmerized when I happened to bump into this website, iGB.net and read that they were offering webhostings for free…..! What? Who in the world could offering something for free? There’s got to be a catch! There must be something the webmasters/authors should receive in return.

I was finding it hard at finding about how this is gonna work. I was looking for that catch. Reading through their sub-pages, if you may call it, like About, Services, Support, the footer, sidebar, etc., but I couldn’t find one!

In the services page though, there is a price, 50, 250, and 1,000 posts for each respective plans. Eventually, I realized I think that you need to have these numbers of posts in the site’s forum in order for you to avail of the free hosting. Oh I see… Now maybe somehow it makes sense.