By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net

IT started as a joke. But just over the weekend some Filipino activists have started uploading a new mobile phone ring tone as an act of protest against the controversial $329-million national broadband network project.

The ring tone, which is based on a satirical video clip posted on YouTube, pokes fun at some personalities linked to the controversial project, now known as the “ZTE deal.”

Jose De Venecia III, the proponent of losing bidder Amsterdam Holdings Inc. (AHI), has accused Commission on Elections chairman Benjamin Abalos of allegedly trying to bribe him to get out of the deal. De Venecia, son of current House Speaker Jose De Venecia Jr., also alleged during a Senate hearing that First Gentleman Mike Arroyo also told him to “back off” from the deal.

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IPTV firm DAVE Networks and Hewlett-Packard have joined forces to launch a new service called NEXT.TV.

The service will initially be launched in October on HP Pavilion and Compaq Presario consumer notebooks. A version of the service, however, will also be available for download shortly after the launch to the general public. You can already sign up for that private beta by going to the NEXT.TV site.

NEXT.TV is supposed to bridge the gap between the computer and TV, as NEXT.TV users will be able to watch the channels on their TVs by hooking up their HP laptops. This new online service will offer more than 50 channels, and everything will be free because the content will be ad-supported.

By Associated Press

CLAREMONT, California–Here’s a dream-come-true for Web addicts: college credit for watching YouTube.

Pitzer College this fall began offering what may be the first course about the video-sharing site. About 35 students meet in a classroom but work mostly online, where they view YouTube content and post their comments.

Class lessons also are posted and students are encouraged to post videos. One class member, for instance, posted a 1:36-minute video of himself juggling.

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CHECK out this video clip that INQUIRER.net Erwin Oliva took for iVDO.

Terence Pua, co-founder and CEO of Filipino software startup Xackup, demonstrates a homegrown, Web-based backup service for iTunes users called Bandwagon that his company developed.

You could also check out Erwin’s INQUIRER.net Infotech article.

By Lawrence Casiraya
INQUIRER.net

WATCH out, Google. Yahoo! is out to conquer the world one country at a time.

Yahoo! is localizing its services in its goal of building communities that consequently, produce tons of local content. Flickr recently announced multilingual versions. And isn’t it just timely that co-founder Jerry Yang is taking over again as CEO? Yahoo! is more aggressive this side of the world than rival Google, I think.

During the recent launch of Yahoo! Pinoy Connect, I asked Tom Sipple, Yahoo! managing director for Southeast Asia, about this “go local” (I coined that term myself) strategy.

Here’s what he had to say.