PHILIPPINE Daily Inquirer entertainment columnist Ruben Nepales is now also blogging for INQUIRER.net, with the launch of The Nepales Report.
Nepales, who is our man in Hollywood, offers interesting glimpses into the life of Filipinos in the US, as these entries on “award-itis” and “closet Filipinos” show.
Here’s what Nepales wrote in his “award-itis” entry:
SPIDER-MAN 3 is coming, and we’ll have a head start over the rest of the world as it’s launching on May 1 here in the Philippines.
I’m a huge Spidey fan, and if you also want your Spider-Man fix, you could check out the Spider-Man 3 Official Movie Blog.
Want Spider-Man-themed blog templates? Then head on over to this site from Sony Pictures.
BLOGGERS have become an important source of stories in breaking stories like this tragedy in Virginia Tech, where scores of students were killed by a shooter.
As this CNET story shows:
When a blogger known as icantread01 posted his girlfriend’s tale of being shot and wounded during the Virginia Tech massacre Monday, it set off a flurry of journalists trying to get ahold of him.
Reporters from several news organizations, including CBC Newsworld, NPR and MTV News, all posted in the comments section of icantread01’s LiveJournal page, hopefully asking to contact him and talk about his experience talking to his girlfriend, Kate, who he said had called him from the hospital after being shot in the hand.
OK, so what should be the rules for diplomats who blog?
Ian Proud, a 38-year-old British diplomat in Bangkok, caused a furor with his blog that shared what he thought were “harmless” stories about his life in Thailand.
Here’s an excerpt from the BBC News story:
A FEW minutes after Filipino boxer and political candidate Manny Pacquiao knocked out his Mexican challenger Jorge Solis in Round 8, the blogosphere was abuzz. The reactions varied. Some just reported what happened. Others shared their opinions. All in all, the discussions were honest and interesting.
Blogger Akomismo (a.k.a. Sir Martiz Perez) did not mince words, though, as he called shameless the waving of a Philippine flag with the words “Vote Manny” and the chants of “Congressman” toward the end of the fight.
Another blogger has found video clips of the fight.
THE COMMISSION on Elections has already said no to divulging the list of party-list nominees, but now Akbayan is taking the battle to the blogosphere.
Here’s an excerpt from INQUIRER.net reporter Erwin Oliva’s story:
MANILA, Philippines–Party list group Akbayan has invited the public to help them reveal the names of party list nominees in a newly launched blog, the group said Friday.
MEET our Blog Addicts of the Week, Pen (girl in photo) and AJ of the joint blog The SilPur Life.
Could you tell us something about yourself? How old are you and what are you currently doing? When and why did you start blogging and who got you hooked?
Pen: I’m 28, currently a postgraduate in Sydney, Australia. I started blogging in February 2003. Journal writing has always been my thing ["I write for me!"], and blogging became a natural extension to that. I started blogging on my own volition.
IT’S been, what, nine days since I subscribed to Twitter, a relatively new twist in the so-called micro-blogging and social networking. Think of this: how much can you say in 140 characters? That sounds like a writing exercise in my creative writing class. But that’s how Twitter is. Because it requires you to blog in one-liners. It’s short and sweet. The most interesting (well for most users and fans) aspect of this new service is it can be done via SMS, and not just through the Web. Yes, folks, SMS. But you have to be ready to pay for extra SMS charges when sending an entry from your phone into your Twitter account.
Twitter can also be updated via popular instant messaging clients. In my case, I’m using Google Talk. And since this is also a social networking tool, Twitter will allow you to connect to friends (including virtual ones) and discover what they are doing at a certain moment in a given day. But that’s just one of the benefits you could derive from this innovation.
Now, if you’re ready to let the world know what you’re eating for breakfast, lunch and dinner, then go Twitter. But I caution you, never ever blog anything you won’t disclose in person.
SEE what happens when someone ghost writes your blog entries for you?
CBS anchor Katie Couric is reportedly shocked by an entry that appeared on the Katie Couric’s Notebook portion of the official Couric & Co. blog on CBS. Couric has admitted that she does not pen some of the entries on her blog.
In this case, the blog entry, a video and text essay, was reportedly penned by one of the producers, who has been fired after it turned out that the blog post plagiarized a Jeffrey Zaslow column piece on The Wall Street Journal.
