THE NETVISION webcast was unfortunately cancelled, but you can get your steady fix of all news articles about the People’s Champion by visiting The Pacquiao Files.

The Pacquiao Files is one of the many INQUIRER.net Special Sites. It’s online all the time, constantly updated with every story on Pacquiao all year round.

Of course, the site gets tweaked whenever Manny has a fight, and our Tech people have done a great job of really jazzing it up for Pacman’s rematch with Marco Antonio Barrera on Sunday, October 7. Catch it on Solar Sports (yeah, like we Filipinos really need to be told to go watch Manny fight, heh; it’s like a national holiday whenever he has a bout).

BINTAN, Indonesia–We just arrived here at the Nirwana Gardens resort for the Kickstart Asia 2007 information technology forum on July 26 to 27.

I’m covering the event together with INQUIRER.net/hackenslash reporter Alex Villafania, David Dizon of ABS-CBN Interactive, Jenalyn Rubio of ComputerWorld Philippines, Billy Allardo of PC World Philippines, Michael David Tan of Enterprise, and John Nieves of Gadgets. Photo shows us at the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport yesterday. From left to right, that’s Jenalyn, me, John, David and Billy. Alex took the pic.

We’re looking forward to the different sessions, with topics ranging from Web 2.0; the Internet; CIO issues; fixed and wireless communications; and enterprise/network security.

On Friday night, we’ll also attend the MediaConnect Asia Technology Journalist Awards sponsored by Vignette. INQUIRER.net is a finalist in four categories.

More updates soon, as we’ll be blogging this event apart from writing articles and taking video clips for iVDO, our online video channel in partnership with Yahoo!

SINGAPORE–As usual, being in Singapore has reminded me how unfortunate we Filipinos are when it comes to our information technology infrastructure.

Frankly, I don’t know how our telcos do it. I don’t how, year after year, they can get away with providing us with lousy service while still raking in money. While the availability and affordability of broadband has, to be fair, improved over the years, it doesn’t change the fact that what passes for broadband in the Philippines is laughable by the standards of other countries, such as Singapore. And forget quality of service — if all the horror stories we hear about the quality of broadband in certain areas are anything to go by, even when we part with our hard-earned money, we’re never really sure just what kind of service we’ll get, depending on which area we happen to reside.

So why do telcos get away with providing broadband services that are sometimes much slower than dial-up connections? Why are we consumers expected to grin and bear it if the service in our area is horrible due to some technical problem or lack of adequate coverage?

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IF you were given the opportunity to run a print newspaper, what changes would you make? Say you suddenly become the head honcho of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippine Star or Manila Bulletin, or, um, one of the other papers that I hear are still out there (just kidding, heh), how would you revamp the newspaper?

How would you make the print newspaper more relevant to the needs of readers?

Why am I proposing this thought experiment? Well, mainly because as I’ve said time and again, print is dying. And sure, I’ve been convinced of that for some time, but it’s also good to hear the experts supporting what you believe, heh. So let’s say it again, loud and clear: “Wake up and smell the coffee, Dead Tree People.”

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IT was a great experience watching the Manny Pacquiao-Jorge Solis fight via Smart 3G and doing the INQUIRER.net Running Account of this bout (this is my first sports Running Account, as opposed to the Estrada impeachment trial, People Power 2 and other political Running Accounts I did before).

Manny kayoed his Mexican opponent, and server traffic actually also kayoed our Running Account, heh — it was erratic, so the account was unavailable to some readers  if they were accessing the servers that went down – though our homepage is still standing and we’ve broken Pacquiao’s 8th round knockout victory as our headline. 

I have to admit I’m impressed with how well the Smart 3G feed held up — we were all keeping our fingers crossed. The biggest scare we got was when the feed got disconnected as Pacquiao and Solis were being introduced, but fortunately I was able to reconnect after a few minutes.

By the way, “congressman” chants from Pacquiao supporters broke out after his postfight interview. Hmm…