OUR community evangelist Alex Villafania is in Singapore now, covering the Yahoo! Southeast Asia Advertising Summit.

Yahoo! had interesting things to say about user behavior in Asia, particularly the shift from traditional media to rich media, and here’s an excerpt from Alex’s story:

Citing figures from a survey conducted last year by research firm Synovate, a Yahoo! executive said a growing number of Asians are spending more time using the Internet than any other medium. Singapore and Taiwan are currently leading the pack, followed by Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand. Television remains the main information source for Filipinos but the Internet has outranked newspapers, magazines and radio.

Though traditional advertisers dictate that marketing budgets go to traditional media, such as TV, radio and print, the gap is closing for online advertising, particularly with the rise of new content such as online video.

“Rich media will become premium content,” said Yahoo! Southeast Asia managing director Ken Mandel in his opening remarks at the Yahoo! Southeast Asia Advertising Summit here.

Here’s a video Alex took for INQUIRER.net VDO, as Mandel emphasized that “consumers want more than search.”

OUR technology reporter Lawrence Casiraya is in Shanghai, China covering the Intel Developer Forum. Apart from writing articles for Infotech, he’s also been sending videos for INQUIRER.net VDO. Who says you can’t multitask?

Check out these two clips he sent.

This video clip shown at IDF gives you a taste of the functions of the Aigo mobile Internet device.

This one is a preview of several new notebook designs, including two “Netbook” models from Lenovo and Founder. The Netbook is a low-cost, low-power laptop designed primarily for Internet connectivity and targeted at emerging markets. Intel said these laptops will arrive in June.

By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net

YES, this plan has been in the works for the past years, according to its Southeast Asian executives.

Now that Yahoo! has seen the growth in the number of Internet users here, and the potential for business and advertising (they say 85 percent of users here avail of a Yahoo! service), then it’s but logical for them to bet their money on the country.

So while everyone’s — well, almost everyone, including the taxi drivers — attention is focused on the Senate investigation on the controversial national broadband network project, it’s business as usual in the high-tech industry.

According to its executives in Yahoo! Southeast Asia, the Internet giant wants to be the “starting point” for local users. The Internet company is also pushing its “unified advertising” strategy in the Philippines.

So after the bid from Microsoft, Yahoo! has already realized how much it is worth — perhaps more than what the Redmond-based software company has offered so far.

The next step, of course, is to expand in emerging markets like the Philippines.

By Lawrence Casiraya
INQUIRER.net

WHERE to find free wifi always sparks animated conversations among us journalists — not to mention debates on whether it’s really free or not.

Anybody been to Burger King lately? If there ever was a thing as a fastfood makeover, BK is where it’s at — nice-looking red and yellow chairs, wide-screen TVs that beam movies every afternoon and soft, yellow lights instead of the characteristic white light that hurt your eyes. Best of all, the free wifi, of course.

And the coffee? Not too bad, considering it’s P55 and comes with packets of Equal and liquid creamer (not Coffeemate packets). You can either have it regular or “turbo-charged.”

I wouldn’t exactly call the connection speed turbocharged as well, but so far the signal strength says “very good.”

By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net

FINALLY, Google has made Group chat available on Gmail.

You can now start chatting with multiple contacts while you’re checking your e-mail. To start a group chat, choose a contact, then click “Options” in the chat window to invite more people to the group chat. More details can be found here.

New emoticons are also available. Here’s a list of what you can now do with Gmail’s chat service.

Start inviting friends to a group chat today.