AS promised, here’s the HappySlip video interview

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GOD, I love the Internet!

If you still doubt how much the Web has changed the way we live, and how it brings together people from all over the world, consider this: back in 2006, I was a fan watching HappySlip’s videos on YouTube. And now, here she is in Manila — and we’re covering the press conference that formally introduced her as the Department of Tourism’s ambassadress for North America.

And yup, Filipino-American Christine Gambito a.k.a. HappySlip, is also amazed that the video blogs she started for fun have led to her actually being invited to visit the Philippines for a two-week tour of different travel destinations. She’ll be video blogging her Philippine tour, allowing thousands of users to share the experience with her and get to know the Philippines a little better. How cool is that?

Here’s a photo of me and HappySlip after the video interview we conducted for INQUIRER.net VDO.

It’s also interesting to note what Tourism Secretary Joseph “Ace” Durano said in his presentation on why the government agency is tapping the Internet in promoting Philippine tourist destinations to the North American market: “Traditional media doesn’t work as much as it used to.”

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YUP, the YouTube sensation will now be promoting Philippine tourist destinations as an endorser for the Department of Tourism Team North America. Filipino-American Christine Gambito, better known to thousands of fans of her video blogs as HappySlip, will be in town for a two-week tour of our country’s travel destinations.

HappySlip will be video blogging her Philippine trip, and the vlogs will be posted on both the HappySlip and Experience Philippines sites.

Here’s HappySlip’s video announcement about her Philippine trip.

We’ll get to meet her in a press briefing which will be held this Thursday, where HappySlip and Tourism Secretary Joseph “Ace” Durano will be on hand to answer questions. So stay tuned for more updates on HappySlip’s Philippine odyssey.

HAVE you already tried Wikia Search, the new search engine from the people behind Wikipedia? This project has been one year in the making, but the alpha version is now open to the public. (By the way, as I previously blogged, Google interestingly enough has announced a Wikipedia-like service called Knol.)

I’m trying it out but as you can expect at this early stage, there’s no way I’d choose this over Google. Wikia Search is pretty up front about the quality of its search results at this stage:

Wikia is working to develop and popularize a freely licensed (open source) search engine. What you see here is our first alpha release.

We are aware that the quality of the search results is low..

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SAP Philippines managing director Krishnendu Datta talks about the company’s performance in 2007 and the evolution of enterprise resource planning solutions in Episode 3 of Technobabble, our technology podcast, which I co-host with INQUIRER.net executive editor Leo Magno.

Here’s a video of the podcast recording session taken by INQUIRER.net reporter Lawrence Casiraya.

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