MY article “Who are the people in your online neighborhood?” came out today in Sunday Inquirer Magazine.

Here’s an excerpt:

MANILA, Philippines–Melissa Petri, who crunches numbers for a big Japanese company in Frankfurt, Germany, knows quite well how it feels to be homesick.

“When I first moved here, I remember longing for the familiar and looking for people who could make me feel like I belong,” she recounts. “And when I couldn’t find them locally, I sought and found solace in the World Wide Web. Not only did the Internet make it easier to keep in touch with the people I’ve left behind, it also gave me the company I sought and needed. I found people who could empathize and sympathize with me, fellow homesick Filipino expatriates.”

The words are from the first editorial of PINOYexpats (www.pinoyexpats.org), an e-zine for Filipino expatriates, of which Petri is founder and editor.

PINOYexpats attests to the impact of the Internet revolution on the daily lives of a growing number of Filipinos. In this Age of the Internet, your neighbors are no longer necessarily the people who physically live near you. They could well be Internet users from halfway across the globe who share the same interests as you.

AS you might expect in the Age of Mashups, the “Don’t Tase Me, Bro” incident has given birth to a slew of user-generated web content — and heck, even games.

Here are some of them.

This one is “Can’t Tase This” from bradlee92.

Here’s “Don’t Tase Me Bro! Britney Spears Version,” which spoofs Britney’s new “Gimme Gimme More” single, from dragondonkey0070.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

JAYVEE FERNANDEZ describes it as an attempt to bring back the Philippine radio drama.

Check out the latest BuggedCast episode, “Ang Buhay ni Boy.”

What do you think of the podcast? And come to think of it, what’s your favorite radio drama?

Mine would have to be “Gabi ng Lagim.” I still remember as a kid dreading having to go up after watching TV alone downstairs because I’d hear “Gabi ng Lagim” playing on the radio, heh

WE know that USB is pretty cool and all sorts of devices have come out making use of this technology. But this one takes the cake. It’s the USB Humping Dog which does nothing but… well, it’s pretty obvious what it does, right, heh

This thing is actually for sale at Digital World Tokyo. They come in three breeds — Beagle, Dalmatian and Chocolate Labrador.

The USB Humping Dog doesn’t contain any flash memory, OK — these dogs are made for humping, and that’s what they’ll do.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

UPDATE: Added another clip.

I’M still shocked by this incident, and as the Wired blog Threat Level reports, “‘Don’t Tase Me, Bro!’ has become the newest cultural touchstone of our pop-cultural lexicon.”

Here’s the video for those who haven’t seen it yet.

University of Florida student Andrew Meyer was hit with a taser while asking the visiting Senator John Kerry questions.

Here’s another video that was the no. 6 most viewed on YouTube this week.

[Read the rest of this entry »]