HERE’S an excerpt from a story from Ephraim Aguilar of the Inquirer Southern Luzon Bureau:

MASBATE CITY–Four youths here have found blogging a chance to tell the world not only about the beauty of the seas surrounding this island province but also about the threats that could doom their rich marine ecosystems.

Representing the country at the international forum “Fishes Feed Us,” Ralph Cedie Fabon, 13, Kristine Yentyl Esber, 14, Soccii Nenotchka Tuason, 15, and Philip Joseph Alarcon, 15, all from Masbate, joined the exchange of ideas with youths from India, Malaysia, Philippines, and the United States on the global fish crisis.

The Fishes Feed Us blog was a project of the Arts and Science Collaborations Inc., a nongovernment organization based in New York City devoted to exploring the intersections of arts and science.

I HAVE recently experienced a phenomenon over at my personal blog, where I had casually invited a few photographer friends to a cosplay shoot with Jerry Polence over at the Intramuros Golf Club on a Sunday afternoon. Where I had estimated that about five or six people would come (we were around that number at 1:45 p.m.), we ended up with a total of over forty five photographers from different photo organizations.

For a few minutes I was greatly overwhelmed and panicked over the situation but then, after gaining some composure, realized that this is a proof of concept of how viral marketing works in the Philippines: from blog post to forum thread to an SMS campaign. At least for this case.

I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out how such a thing could happen. Either (1) the post was made at the right time when no other photo events were occuring (2) nobody ever shot cosplay before so this was something different. Then I started to analyze the posting patterns.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

ONE of the things that struck me most while covering the Philippine Blog Awards Saturday night was the invocation of Fr. Stephen Cuyos, who is himself a blogger and podcast host.

At times as humorous as it was heartfelt, the good priest’s prayer was a timely reminder of our need to be responsible bloggers. Sure, we blog for different reasons, and as I’ve said many times, including in this blog post for CNET Asia, bloggers are not journalists, and journalists, even though we may blog, are journalists first, with different standards, different values, than bloggers.

This does not mean, however, that we cannot celebrate our differences, and learn from each other. Frankly, the danger I see now in everyone’s  mad rush to become bloggers, and of companies, politicians and other groups to court the favor of bloggers, is that people may no longer see the need for objectivity, or learn to distinguish press releases from real stories.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

HERE’S an excerpt from the AFP wire story that came out in INQUIRER.net Infotech:

CAIRO–The Egyptian judge, who chairs the court that is to hear a blogger’s appeal against a four-year jail sentence that drew criticism from around the world, is seeking to gag 21 websites, a judicial source told AFP Sunday.

The chairman of the appeals court in the second city of Alexandria, Abdel Fattah Murad, has taken the unusual step of applying to the administrative court for an injunction to close down the websites for allegedly harming the reputation of President Hosni Mubarak, the sources said.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

WHOA. That looks like a serious topic there. But I think this is past overdue. The title is inspired by Mong Palatino who is “27 years old, addicted to activism, aspiring educator, son of migrant workers, president of kabataan partylist” and contributor to Global Voices, a global network of bloggers. (Now I wonder what I was doing when I was 27).

In a post sometime in December 2006, he made interesting observations about the power of blogging, albeit admitting it is still mostly seen as an “elitist activity.” He picked some ideas from the Global Voices yearly conference, which he attended last year. His ideas remain relevant, so I’m highlighting some of them for all you bloggers out there. I hope this inspires you to blog and make a difference.

[Read the rest of this entry »]