BLOG Action Day, a global mass action among online diary sites or weblogs, has gathered more than 15,000 blogs and millions of readers, organizers said Monday.

Established to encourage people to blog about a chosen topic for a day, Blog Action Day is a form of “people power” in action that was conceptualized for the Internet, they said.

Choosing the environment as this year’s topic, Blog Action day organizers say they hope they can make a difference by steering the “global conversation” towards important issues.

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REMEMBER, Oct. 15 is Blog Action Day. Join thousands of bloggers around the world in uniting for the environment.

Here’s a video clip courtesy of ReVampTV.com.

And read Erwin Oliva’s previous blog post.

FILIPINO blog Tingog.com, which previously called for the resignation of Filipino lifestyle columnist Malu Fernandez, has renewed calls to boycott the newspaper she writes for.

“Here it is, our stand, because Manila Standard Today has chosen to hide behind their term ‘protocol’ and issue a pardon to their most beloved columnist for all The Filipinos to see. This is a call to boycott, for the irresponsible behavior of Manila Standard Today, they have chosen to pass up the option of doing the right thing, and essentially show their true colors and the standards they are upholding,” the blog said.

INQUIRER.net called the Manila Standard Today for a reaction to the boycott call but was told the paper was not issuing any statement.

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BLOGGERS around the world have been invited to join a mass blog effort for one day about one topic, starting with the environment.

“On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind — the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their way and relating to their own topic. Our aim is to get everyone talking towards a better future,” the organizers behind the Blog Action Day announced on their blog.

As of this writing, the call has already attracted 1,358 blogs, the organizers said. A-list bloggers have already signed up first for this call to action, including Lifehack, Copyblogger, Get Rick Slowly, The Simple Dollar, and Zen Habits, among others.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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