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.

CHECK out Coffeespark, a new digg-influenced Filipino site that encourages people to air their views and share their problems, in the hope that they can help each other out.

In true Internet fashion, the person who set up the site is someone I’ve yet to meet in real life heh but whom I’ve corresponded with a few times over the years via e-mail and through blogging after I interviewed him for a gamer’s profile for hackenslash.

Anyway, Jobert, who seems to be as addicted to coffee as he is to World of Warcraft, said via e-mail, “Our premise for Coffeespark is a site that serves as a medium for people to air their problems, situations, or feelings. Either for sharing, advice, discussion or just to vent. It could be a family problem, a technical computer problem, a cheating boyfriend, work issues, girlfriend issues, or just maybe about life in general.”

The other half of the Coffeespark dynamic duo is Antonette. Jobert is the owner and slave driver, while Antonette is the web developer and head mocker.