I Am Blogie

OLX Free Classifieds is the first such online service that has successfully merged “Web 2.0″ functionality with user-friendliness and simplicity. Think of it as Craigslist in the new era of the World Wide Web. What’s more, it’s now strongly established in the Philippines. Once registered — a very quick and painless procedure, by the way — [...]Copyright © 2009, Oliver Robillo.
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I had wanted to post something to contribute to Blog Action Day 2009, but after reading Marocharim’s entry, I decided to link to his post instead. What he has published is what I believe in as well, through and through. I am against Con-Ass. I oppose Charter Change. Not because I am an oppositionist, [...]

The landing on the moon took place forty years ago yesterday, on 20 July 1969. Here are some interesting facts and figures about the Earth’s satellite. The Astronauts had to back up their computer-guided navigation system by making star sightings with a sextant, much like Captain Cook and other 18th-century mariners before them. A present day household [...]Copyright © 2009, Oliver Robillo.
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[Media Release]

July 21, 2009, Manila, Philippines — Forty years ago today, on July 20, 1969, the world watched as the crew of Apollo 11 took the first human steps on the surface of the Moon. In celebration of this historic occasion, Google is launching Moon in Google Earth, an interactive 3D atlas of the Moon, viewable with Google Earth 5.0.

With Moon in Google Earth, users can explore a virtual Moonscape, follow guided tours from astronauts Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11) and Jack Schmitt (Apollo 17), see the latest rover concepts by teams competing in the Google Lunar X-PRIZE, view high-resolution ‘Street View’ style panoramic photos, watch previously unreleased video footage captured from the lunar surface, and much more. Moon in Google Earth will also incorporate a complete lunar terrain data-set by Kaguya LALT, produced by JAXA/NAOJ, which will serve as the atlas’ base-map. Whether they are rediscovering the iconic moments in the history of Moon exploration or learning about them for the first time, Moon in Google Earth enables users to better understand the Moon, and our relationship to it, with an immersive, 3D experience.

“Forty years ago, two human beings walked on the Moon. Starting today, with Moon in Google Earth, it’s now possible for anyone to follow in their footsteps,” said Google Earth Product Manager Michael Weiss-Malik. “We’re giving hundreds of millions of people around the world unprecedented access to an interactive 3D presentation of the Apollo missions.”

The most recent tool to have been developed as a result of the Space Act Agreement between Google and NASA, Moon in Google Earth enables information about the Moon to be accessible to anyone in a unique three-dimensional context.

“Today’s announcement builds on the ongoing relationship with Google that Ames Research Center initiated in November 2006 when we signed a Space Act Agreement to foster collaboration with our Silicon Valley neighbor,” said S. Pete Worden, Director of NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. “We’re excited to be a part of this latest chapter in Google’s efforts to bring virtual exploration of the Moon to anyone with a computer.”

In addition to satellite imagery and terrain, the following layers can be explored with Moon in Google Earth:

• Featured Satellite Imagery – Explore overlaid satellite imagery and detailed descriptions of selected areas on the Moon from Arizona State University’s ‘Lunar Image of the Week’;
• Spacecraft Imagery – View selected imagery captured by the Apollo Metric Camera, Clementine, and the Lunar Orbiter;
• Apollo Missions – Travel back to the Apollo era and discover the landing sites of Apollo missions 11-17. Explore ‘Street View’-style panoramic images, watch previously unreleased footage from Spacecraft films, and read about the places astronauts saw on their trips to the Moon;
• Guided Tours – Take a narrated tour of the Moon from Apollo astronauts Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11) and Jack Schmitt (Apollo 17);
• Historic Maps – Discover Apollo-era geologic and topographic maps of the Moon that were used in mission control for trips to the Moon;
• Human Artifacts – Learn about the various types of exploratory equipment that humans have left on the Moon and where those objects can be found today. Artifacts from the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the EU, Japan, and India are included, some of them as 3D models.

To experience Moon in Google Earth, open Google Earth 5.0 and switch modes from ‘Earth’ to ‘Moon’ on the top toolbar. Google Earth 5.0 can be downloaded at http://earth.google.com/moon.

For more information, have a look at our blog posts on the Official Google Blog and the Google Lat Long Blog.

Several Davao bloggers and I had the privilege to meet in person the U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, Kristie Kenney, this morning at the Ateneo de Davao University college library. At one point, we were talking about traveling across Mindanao, so I mentioned to her about Matt’s visit to Davao in September 2008. Me: “Matt Mullenweg [...]Copyright © 2009, Oliver Robillo.
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The U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, Kristie Kenney, is often in Mindanao, attending to the various projects and commitments that her government has in the Philippine South. But this time, she made a special stop while in Davao just to meet and get to know some of the bloggers here.

Last year, I had a chance to meet the U.S. embassy’s press attaché and spokesperson, Rebecca Thompson, in Tagaytay for the Media Nation conference. Then a couple of weeks ago, her office contacted me to get a group of bloggers together for a meet-up with Amb. Kenney during her brief stay in Davao City. I thought it would be good to have a diverse collection of bloggers, and I came up with this seven: Jaime Haw (Apple® fanboy); Migs Hipolito (mobile technologies); Ria Jose (politics, lifestyle); Rhodilee Jean Dolor (family, business); Sarah Matalam (community work, motherhood); Lyle Santos (nursing, Internet); and Brendel Balaga (nursing studies).

During the very informal — in fact, very up close and personal — get-together with the ambassador today, we came to know a personable and gregarious woman. Far from what all of us were expecting, this charming lady appeared very down-to-earth, and loves basketball; she can even keep up with any sports fan on the latest in PBA stuff. (She was practically gushing when she told us that she was going to do the meet-and-greet for Kobe Bryant, who’s scheduled to come to the Philippines soon.) By the way, she also got herself certified in scuba diving here in the Philippines.

She also blogs herself: check it out. While her blog is her own, she said it’s started to take the shape of an information portal for the embassy’s activities. For her own personal use, she’s on Facebook. Isn’t it quite refreshing to know that someone in her stature keeps abreast of Internet trends? So we couldn’t resist telling her about Plurk and how Filipino bloggers are engrossed in it. She does know about Twitter, but she said she prefers Facebook.

We had the opportunity to tell the ambassador about our blogs and about the Mindanao Bloggers community, in which she seems to be genuinely interested. The U.S. government and ours, in efforts to establish long-lasting peace in Mindanao, collaborate on development projects in the areas of education, agriculture, environment, health, prosperity, human rights. I suppose Kenney was keen on knowing how our community was contributing to the upliftment of Mindanao’s image through our various blogs.

Meeting Kristie Kenney, who has gone to more parts of Mindanao than I have, has inspired me to forge on and try to achieve my goal this year: to visit as many places on the island as I can. I asked her what places in Mindanao fascinated her, and she related how she was amazed by the tuna port of General Santos, as well as by the beauty of Tawi-Tawi and Marawi. How I wish I could go deeper south and see more bloggers’ communities in those areas get organized!

This was the first time that the head of a diplomatic mission to the Philippines has gone out of their way to talk to bloggers. And I hope it won’t be the last. We’ve invited Amb. Kenney to be our guest of honor at the Mindanao Bloggers Summit in Cagayan de Oro this October, and she has accepted in principle. It’s not certain yet what follow-up activities might happen between the MB community and the American embassy in the future, but I do expect a continued exchange of information at the very least.

After about 3 years in existence, and after all the activities that have given exposure to the MB community, this has to be the most fulfilling one for us yet. In behalf of the bloggers of Mindanao, I’d like to thank Ambassador Kristie and her staff for the wonderful morning today! Hopefully, this October again!

Copyright © 2009, Oliver Robillo.
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If you set your blog’s timezone in WordPress (e.g., GMT +8) before WP2.8.1, make sure to go back to your dashboard’s general options and update this setting. I don’t know why, but WP has now junked GMT in favor of UTC. When I checked, my blogs’ timezone setting had become UTC +8 (which does not output the same timezone at all). On the Web, resources say that there’s very little difference between Greenwich Mean Time and Coordinated Universal Time. However, I noticed that, after upgrading to WP2.8.1, my blog was saying a post time of 8 hours earlier!

Anyway, now you can specify either your timezone by UTC value, or by the nearest city to you (organized by continent: Manila is under Asia). I’m not nitpicking, but this furtive change caused some problems with scheduled posting. Honestly, what was wrong with GMT??

In continuing my advocacy for the adoption of the world’s #1 blogging sofware & CMS across Mindanao, I’ll be conducting an advanced training seminar on the deployment, utilization & management of WordPress this 25th of July (Saturday) at Cagayan de Oro City.

Specifically, the following are the topics to be covered:

• WP installation & maintenance
• Web hosting fundamentals for proper WP deployment
• Understanding WP theme templates
• Choosing & managing useful WP plugins
• Managing content on WP
  • Recommended usage of categories & tags
  • Publishing best practices
  • Fundamental SEO techniques
• Monetizing your blog with Google AdSense (for confirmation)

Cagayan de Oro is a wired city, with lots of free-wifi hotspots all over the place, and a growing number of bloggers and online content writers — the perfect setting for promoting the use of the most flexible content management engine there is. Moreover, the city is the appointed host of the 3rd Mindanao Bloggers Summit, which will be happening on 24 October 2009.

The WP training seminar will be held at Coffee Works, from 1:30 PM to 5:00 PM. (Please bookmark this post for updates.)

Registration fee is ₱500 per person (to be collected at the door on the seminar date). Please click here to sign up!

I look forward to meeting with the CDO Bloggers very soon!

Sponsored By: 1st Mindanao Bloggers Summit - 27 Oct 2007, Davao City

I got a comment yesterday from one of my Japanese-blog readers, and I translate: “I’m waiting for your next article!” And my last post before today was dated 25 January 2008. So, to inspire myself to go back to updating 真ん丸空間, I changed WordPress themes, as I am wont to do.

Since Maru’s Space is a personal blog, much like this one, I decided on using the same theme as Blogie Blog, but with a slightly different color scheme. It’s all in Japanese, though, so if you don’t know Nihongo, just try to appreciate the look and feel.

Sponsored By: DVO Bloggers Network - the Davao blogosphere

This is especially useful for corporate or community websites that make use of WordPress as a content management system: a custom login / registration page for your WordPress-powered site. For websites with multiple authors or subscribers who log in to the dashboard a lot, don’t you think the default login screen below is rather bland?

If you agree with me, then it’s time to skin that screen, and get something like this:

Think “branding” and “user experience”.

For some of my WordPress deployments, I now use the plugin called, aptly enough, Theme My Login. What it does is, it replaces the default WP login page with your active theme’s page template, where it embeds the login or registration interface. The new look and feel of your site’s login screen will surely build more loyalty and promote a feel good experience among your subscribers.

The plugin’s compatible with WP2.8, and lets you define the messages that appear on the customized page. I just wish that the plugin author would add more options in succeeding updates. For sure, the ability to apply layout settings and stuff, without having to do code, will be most welcome to plenty of end users.

Still, this plugin is much better than Register Plus, a similar plugin that I’d written about before. It even generates a widget for you to put a login box on your sidebar. When logged in, the widget can show your Gravatar and links to the dashboard, etc.

Have fun with your login pages!