On Slideshare.net

Here are some of the interesting presentations available at slideshare.net:

Social Media

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: networking network)

Social network websites: best practices from leading services

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: web2.0 socialplatform)

Improving Interface Design

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: interface design)

Sphere: Related Content

your map. your world.

"Product marketing manager of Google Asia-Pacific Jason Chuck explains to INQUIRER.net production specialist Janie Christine Octia how the Google Map Maker application works. The application is moderated and modified by the users who are allowed to input their local knowledge, data and information of the area, and or establishments. In this video, Chuck also shows how users can operate the application."

According to Google, this "allows you to contribute, share and edit map information for certain regions around the world. Once you understand the basics, you can locate, draw, label, describe and moderate local map features, including:

Borders and regions (states/provinces, districts/administrative regions, cities, neighborhoods, etc.)
Roads
Points of interest

And many more map features like railways, waterways, events and reviews. With Google Map Maker, you can become a citizen cartographer and help improve the quality of maps and local information in your region.

You are invited to map the world with us!"

This will definitely open new opportunities not just for learning new places, but also for entrepreneurs to promote and market better their products and services globally.

It will also be useful for us as we feature experts in different places here in the Philippines. Not just presenting their experiences and insights, but also for us to show where they can be reached.

source: http://www.inquirer.net/, http://www.google.com/mapmaker

Sphere: Related Content

disruptive innovations

Last October 26, 2007, Forbes.com had this article on "A Decade of Disruption" and it's really interesting because of the the impact of these innovations in our lives in the last 10 years.

The latest post can now be found in our social media, by clicking on the gallery above.

Also, as part of our "disruption", we will transition our blog into a social media for the Filipino innovation community.

This is also in response to (UP Vice Chancellor for Research and Development) Dr. Luis Sison's advice to open our initiative to more technology groups, competitions and projects that will cater not just one sector, but for us to encourage more who are into the fields of research, inventions, collaborations, technology and innovations.

In turn, we believe that this niche will be able to reach out to more Filipinos worldwide with the convergence of new ideas and collaborations of various initiatives with the participation of more sectors in our social media.

It's also very encouraging to note that more are responding to our invitation for interviews from the different sectors such as the government agencies, academe, etc.

More on this "disruptive development" in the coming weeks...

Sphere: Related Content

More about the great Guy!

In a recent event, SAS Premiere Business Leadership conference, held at the Trident Hotel in India, INQUIRER.net multimedia reporter Lawrence Casiraya was able to interview one of the most popular Silicon Valley VCs and is also a well-known technology author - Mr. Guy Kawasaki.

source: http://www.inquirer.net/

Sphere: Related Content

Our Country's S&T Today

In a recent interview by Inquirer.net with our two key personalities in the field of Science and Technology, I found it interesting to note that despite of our country's limitation to become at par with the rest of our neighboring countries, the Department of Science and Technology is still doing its best to produce the experts which our country really need.


As indicated by DOST Sec. Estrella Alabastro, our national government is in need of more support for our various S&T programs to flourish.

On the other hand...


On the state of Physics in the country, just imagine that we only have around 70-80 physicists out of almost 90 million Filipinos right now.

I myself dreamt of being one in my childhood days, but at least, seeing my sister Rubilyn Diane finished her Physics Major with a scholarship provided by the DOST and is now teaching this knowledge in a government secondary school in Quezon City, is already an accomplishment for my family. Also, Michael Andrew, a brother of mine, is presently a DOST scholar taking up his computer engineering at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.

As for its 5B budget...

I've noticed in a TV news that the DOST is in need of roughly 5.4 billion to support and finance its programs. I agree with some of our lawmakers that this is not enough and for me, we can possibly increase their finances through allocation from the E-VAT revenue.

Let's continue to support our DOST and our country's scientists and engineers!


source: www.inquirer.net

Sphere: Related Content

Solar in Nueva Ecija

It was just around 2 weeks ago when I first noticed the solar initiative by the Nueva Ecija Provincial Government. From the poster that I saw, this was made possible by both Gov. Aurelio Umali and his wife, Cong. Cherry Umali.

It's indeed an example of good governance in terms of providing basic services while helping our environment.

This interview was conducted by Inquirer.net multimedia reporter Izah Morales and video was taken by production specialist Edzelle Pena.

Is there any other province in the Philippines who have already made the same initiative?

source: inquirer.net

Sphere: Related Content

A Great Loss to the Filipino IT Community

This came as a surprise to me when I just received this afternoon an email from Sir Paco Sandejas of the Brain Gain Network about the demise of one of the most successful Filipino IT entrepreneur, Mr. Peter Valdes.

In behalf of my family, we are in prayers with the family of Mr. Valdes.

source: http://www.bgn.org/

Sphere: Related Content

Digital Rights, anyone?

In a recent post by Erick Schonfeld of Techcrunch.com, it is interesting to note that despite the pervasiveness of online lifestyle that we enjoy now, there are concerns which we need to look deeper at, such as...

"The Right to Use and Reuse Content: Consumers know that digital copies of songs, words, and videos are qualitatively different than physical copies, yet copyright law treats them the same way. When the economics of scarcity no longer apply, consumers start to behave differently. They copy and reuse content in unforeseen ways. The pendulum has swung so far that normal consumer behavior has now been criminalized. The concept of fair use needs to be updated and clarified, while still balancing the fundamental right of copyright holders to profit from their creations.

The Right To Control Digital Property On Your Own Device: Possession may be nine tenths of the law, but digital devices don’t follow that rule. When it comes to digital property, who owns what is ill-defined. This can become especially complicated when content is tied to a specific device. If I download a digital book to my Kindle or an app to my iPhone, Amazon or Apple (to pick on them again) have the ability to pull any content from my device without notice or permission. Even if I’ve paid for the content in question. Copyright law and DRM technologies are so intertwined and confused that both consumers and companies could benefit from clearer rules of the road.

The Right To The Free Flow Of Information: Internet service providers, especially those who benefit from public rights of way, should not be allowed to discriminate against information by data type. Debates about Net Neutrality can get bogged down in discussions about content filtering, packet prioritization, and backbone peering rules. But the issue here is basic access to the Internet and all the data that it contains. Data is information and artificial limits on what kinds of data can flow through the Internet’s pipes can amount to a form of censorship.

The Right To (Some) Privacy: For the most part, the expectation of privacy is dead on the Web. But the privacy of certain types of information (health, financial) will always need to be protected. Federal guidelines for how to protect consumer data is preferable to a hodgepodge of industry and state regulations that are currently failing us. (Who wants to book a room at the Best Western?) Privacy laws are also inconsistent in the physical and digital worlds. The Bork law, for instance, makes it illegal for physical video stores to share my rental records, but iTunes or Amazon could sell my digital video or music purchases without running afoul of the law.

The Right to Control Your Digital Identity: And what happens when the “content” in question is your own digital identity. Who owns that? The answer should be that you do. Congress is certainly interested in this issue, and wants to make sure that online advertising networks don’t abuse their possession of your identity data to bombard you with ads. In fact, Google and Yahoo, have been making preemptive moves in an attempt to stave off regulation. But politicians may want to take a closer look at the EU’s privacy directive, which has been in effect for more than decade. Citizens should be able certify that the digital identity associated with their name in a given database is in fact theirs and to revoke access to that identity information on a case-by-case basis."

Will this be possible in the Philippines? If our legislation was able to make E-Commerce Bill into a law, why not something like this. Of course, with the proliferation of the many so-called "scandals" I believe that this will be helpful to provide more protection to our online life.

Sphere: Related Content

Big Leap in our Elections

According to the Commission on Elections recent announcement and I quote,

"As of August 12, sixty percent (60%) of 5170 precincts in the entire Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) has already transmitted results of the elections.

For Maguindanao, 95.2% of the total number of precincts has already transmitted poll results. It was followed by Shariff Kabunsuan with 91.01% and Basilan, 69.53%. The other provinces have slower transmission namely Lanao del Sur (52.67%), Tawi-Tawi, (39%) and Sulu with 27.07%.

Vince Dizon, Spokesperson of Smartmatic-Sahi added that we are almost complete with the transmission of the elections results from Maguindanao. Transmission in 17 municipalities has already been 100% completed while the rest have already reached the 95% level. The speed has accelerated significantly after a few hours after the closing of the polls.

Definitely, there are still many areas where we can improve the automated system as we prepare for the 2010 elections."

This, despite the on-going conflict in nearby areas in Mindanao, we can now look forward that the 2010 elections will have a major improvement than our previous elections. That instead of waiting for the result for months, we can hopefully expect the results much faster.

Whether the cha-cha will push through or not, I believe that the computerization will help us to lessen the frauds and other malpractices.

More importantly, like all Filipinos, we need to be vigilant as this 2010 election will be critical if any form of our government will be successful or not.

reference: http://www.comelec.gov.ph/

Sphere: Related Content

On Online Ads

Last August 19, 2008, Josh Chasin of comScore.com, amplified the impact of online advertising these days and I quote:

"Online display advertising works. At my company, we have done hundreds of studies demonstrating the ROI of different kinds of online advertising. In one case study recently presented, we found that, among consumers exposed to a campaign, click-through accounted for only 10% of subsequent site visits and 14% of incremental dollar sales volume; view-through — consumers exposed to the campaign but who did not click on the ads — accounted for 90% of eventual site visits and 86% of incremental dollar sales. In other words, gauging the effectiveness of this campaign based solely on clicks would have missed 90% of the sales impact.

Online advertising drives offline sales. Sometimes people forget that the Internet is not a self-contained ecosystem. We can’t ignore the extent to which online advertising can drive offline sales, something else that can’t be counted with clicks. Using our panel and our ability to link it to offline databases, we have been able, time and again, to quantify the impact of online advertising on offline sales. Even for search advertising, wherein one might be tempted to believe the majority of effectiveness accrues in-session and via click, we have observed that 83% of the advertising impact on sales is either latent (sales on subsequent user sessions; 20%) or offline (63%.)

Search and display work better together. Another thing we’ve found is that when an advertiser runs a search and a display campaign simultaneously, the impact (as measured by lift versus a control group) of exposure to both search and display is greater than the impact of search alone or of display alone; in fact, impact of search and display together exceeds the sum of the effects of search and display impact individually. In other words, there is a synergistic effect; add two and two and you get five. And not surprisingly, much of the incremental sales generated by the combined exposure group occurs offline.

Display ads online are at least as valuable as display ads offline. Television still commands a significantly greater share of ad dollars than the Internet, at higher CPMs. In my last column, I noted that online ads that can be empirically tied to conversion tend to have greater perceived value than ads whose primary impact is measured by awareness, recall and other brand-building metrics. So let me make this point: the impression generated by one consumer watching a given spot presented within long form online video, in full screen mode, is at least as valuable as an impression delivering the same spot to the same consumer on traditional TV. (I would argue that the online impression is probably more valuable because it is likely to also reach the kind of younger, more tech-savvy and harder-to-reach consumer that is increasingly difficult for traditional TV to deliver.)

As we develop new ways to dedicate on-screen real estate to delivering captivating, engaging ads, whether via banner, rich media or emerging formats, I fully expect online display advertising to become an increasingly important component of the media mix. We don’t require a click-through from a magazine ad or a TV ad or a newspaper ad or a radio ad, and all these impressions are valued by advertisers. Impressions online should have at least the same value, wholly independent of the direct linkage to a click. The opportunity to generate that action online is a profound value-add, but let’s make sure that we properly value the ad before we overlay the value-add. Advertising can have immediate effect, but it can also have quantifiable mid-term effect, and profoundly valuable long-term branding effect. And that is as true for online advertising as for any other medium."

Though as indicated by yugatech.com in his recent post, online ads here in the Philippines is still in its infancy and only the biggest names such as inquirer.net got the biggest chunks of this revenue.

I just hope that as more and more bloggers come to mature and gain prominence, our local companies will look into this as a medium to reach more tech-savvy customers.

Sphere: Related Content

Innovation According to Sir Kawasaki

This is a very interesting topic about innovation, according to Sir Guy Kawasaki who is a VC based in California and has the following ventures: Nononina and Garage Technology Ventures.

Just take note that this is almost an hour presentation, but is a worthwhile topic!

Please check out on his site, http://www.guykawasaki.com/, and definitely, you will learn a lot from the Guy!

Sphere: Related Content

Square Watermelon, Anyone?

In a recent blog by Dave Knox, "Lessons of the Square Watermelon", it is quite interesting to learn that sometimes we can still think out-of-the-box to improve on something which we normally considered as normal or something that we take for granted already.

Like in the case of the watermelon which some people in Japan were able to make this into square shape. And that's really great!

I'd also like to share the following which Dave noted in his blog and I quote:

There are a five lessons that you can take away from this story which will help you in all parts of your life. Here are a few of them:

1. Don’t Assume: The major problem was that most people had always seen round watermelons so they automatically assumed that square watermelons were impossible before even thinking about the question. Things that you have been doing a certain way your entire life have taken on the aura of the round watermelon and you likely don’t even take the time to consider if there is another way to do it. Breaking yourself from assuming this way can greatly improve your overall life as you are constantly looking for new and better ways to do things.
2. Question Habits: The best way to tackle these assumptions is to question your habits. If you can make an effort to question the way you do things on a consistent basis, you will find that you can continually improve the way that you live your life. Forming habits when they have been well thought out is usually a positive thing, but most of us have adopted our habits from various people and places without even thinking about them.
3. Be Creative: When faced with a problem, be creative in looking for a solution. This often requires thinking outside the box. Most people who viewed this question likely thought they were being asked how they could genetically alter water melons to grow square which would be a much more difficult process to accomplish. By looking at the question from an alternative perspective, however, the solution was quite simple. Being creative and looking at things in different ways in all portions of your live will help you find solutions to many problems where others can’t see them.
4. Look for a Better Way: The square watermelon question was simply seeking a better and more convenient way to do something. The stores had flagged a problem they were having and asked if a solution was possible. It’s impossible to find a better way if you are never asking the question in the first place. Always ask if there is a better way of doing the things that you do and constantly write down the things you wish you could do (but currently can’t) since these are usually hints about steps you need to change. Get into the habit of asking yourself, “Is there a better way I could be doing this?” and you will find there often is.
5. Impossibilities Often Aren’t: If you begin with the notion that something is impossible, then it obviously will be for you. If, on the other hand, you decide to see if something is possible or not, you will find out through trial and error.

I hope this will inspire all of us!

Sphere: Related Content

Childhood Inspiration

Now that Bill Gates had officially transferred all his functions to his successors in Microsoft recently, it is indeed a new chapter in his life with focus more on philanthropy and a new vision to change the world.

I then realize that his success story was such an inspiration to me. How he lived his geek life at an early age, how he started with his pals Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer, and how they were able to change our world through software.

I remember...

I was 13 when I first dreamed to have my own computer. In that year, my father bought us a Casio computer which you have to connect to a television (as your monitor) and can program using BASIC language. I did some basic programs such as password and simple graphics. Also, you need to connect it to a cassette player to save and retrieve the program.

At 15, I studied COBOL programming (the youngest in that class).

At 16, my father bought us a PC-AT 286 with 5' 1/4" disk drive, a small harddisk and a colored monitor. This helped me learn more about this technology and the opportunities it can give to someone like me.

At 17, I took up Information Technology course in a state university and dreamed of having my own software company. During college, I was given the opportunity to compete in a graphics competition and was invited to lecture this technology to a graduating class.

At night, I had a teaching job in a computer school in Manila, where some of my students were already twice my age.

In my early 20s, I became involved in computer training, in putting up a technology events startup, in putting up a computer service business, and now into technology blogging.

I may never became someone like Bill, at the very least, I am still involved in something where my passion leads me.

Like Bill, it was my choice to pursue a little different path than most of my peers.

Like him, I will never stop dreaming.

Sphere: Related Content

From Cagayan Valley to Silicon Valley

His World-Class Recognition

For the past few years, he has been consistently in Forbes’ Midas List and has been praised for having “developed advanced chip designs that helped put Silicon Valley on the map.”

In 1997, he received the prestigious Master Entrepreneur of the Year (in the US) award from Ernst & Young.

His Entrepreneurial Achievements

He is the managing partner and founder of Tallwood Venture Capital, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley with $500M+ under management. With his past experiences as an entrepreneur, he provides Tallwood with a unique perspective in technology investments. Tallwood invests in unique and hard-to-do semiconductor technology solutions for computing, communication, and consumer platforms.

Prior to forming Tallwood, he was a venture partner at the Mayfield Fund. He co-founded three technology startups: S3 (SBLU), Chips & Technologies (INTC) and Mostron. He also held positions in engineering and general management at National Semiconductor, Seeq Technologies, Intersil and Commodore International. He pioneered the PC chip set and graphics acceleration architecture that continue to be two of the foundation technologies in every PC today. As an engineer, he is credited with developing several key semiconductor technologies and is regarded as a Silicon Valley visionary.

He serves as Chairman of SiRF Technology (SIRF), InPhi Corporation, Quintic Corporation, Peleton, and Sequoia Communications and is on the boards of directors of Alphion Corporation, Redfern Integrated Optics, and T-RAM Semiconductor. He also served as Chairman and led investments in Marvell Technology Group (MRVL); Acclaim Communications, acquired by Level One (INTC); Newport Communications, acquired by Broadcom (BRCM); Cyras Systems, acquired by Ciena (CIEN); and Stream Machine, acquired by Cirrus Logic (CRUS).

He holds a B.S.E.E., cum laude, from the Mapua Institute of Technology in the Philippines and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

His Early Days

He was born May 23, 1946 in Bo. Malabbac, Iguig, Cagayan and is popularly known by his nickname Dado. His hometown is about an eight-hour drive from Manila. His late father was a small rice farmer and was a humble family. The whole town was a farming community and so simple.

He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Mapua Institute of Technology in the Philippines and a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Stanford University.

First of the Firsts

He spearheaded on the following technologies:

• First single-chip, 16-bit microprocessor-based calculator (while at Commodore in 1976)
• First 10-Mbit Ethernet CMOS with silicon coupler data-link control and transreceiver chip; got 3Com into the Ethernet PC add-in card business (while at Seeq in early 1980s)
• First system logic chip set for the PC-XT and the PC-AT (while at Mostron in 1984 and Chips and Technologies in 1985)
• First enhanced graphics adapter chip set (while at Chips and Technologies in 1985)
  Pioneered local bus concept for PC (while at S3 in 1989)
• First Windows accelerator chip (while at S3 in 1990)
  Chips and Technologies - initially acquired by Intel, now an Asilent Telechnologies brand

His Insight for the Philippines

"For the Philippines to advance economically, the country should be capable of creating a lot of technologies and globally competitive products. The Philippines has to go back to basics, make sure kids are being educated well in sciences and engineering. We cannot keep on blaming others. We Filipinos should change our educational emphasis, our cultural outlook."

He is...

Diosdado "Dado" Banato - considered as the "Bill Gates of the Philippines" and it was Ayala CEO Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala who had said that "Dado has a tremendous mind."

Truly, he is an inspiring story for all Filipinos!

sources: ey.com, tallwoodvc.com, wikipedia.org, newsflash.org

Sphere: Related Content

"Fresh New Ideas"

"I get a lot of fresh ideas and these are very enriching."

This is one of the best things that I have learned from my recent interview with Mr. Federico "Dickie" Gonzales. As one of the leading personalities in the area of technopreneurship and innovation in the country, Dickie is someone who:

• * is very active in leading the annual Philippine Emerging Start-ups Open (PESO Challenge) as President/CEO,
• * is providing consultancy on the design of technopreneurship training programs, workshops and business plan competitions,
• * is a prolific mentor and advisor to technology start-ups,
• * is also active in the cultivation of entrepeneurship in the country as the Executive Director of the Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship

He took up Mechanical Engineering at the De La Salle College and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology through a grant by the Ayala Foundation. His 2-year MIT background gave Dickie the engineering and technology foundations for his current passion in technopreneurship.

Upon his return in 1972, he became founding chair of the IE Department, Dean of the Graduate School of Business and as EVP of the Professional Schools, all within the DLSU community.

Some of his recent collaborations and activities are:

• * Morphlabs' Morph Code - this is to help Filipino entrepreneurs and technologists bring their innovative Web 2.0 ideas to life,
• * Ayala Tech BootCamp - to address society's problems and opportunities by developing new and innovative technologies,
• * BusinessWorld - has a column called "Jumping the Curve"

With his love for sharing ideas, he is now involved with the following institutions:

• * DLSU - College of Computer Studies (on Technopreneurship)
• * UP - College of Computer Studies (on Technopreneurship)
• * Asian Institute of Management (on Innovation Management)

For Dickie, his contributions is to "excite people to bring out upfront their ideas." Like he wants to see the winners of the PESO Challenge to make it big in their respective markets and also assists those who are in need of mentoring.

Indeed, his experience and passion of bringing technopreneurship in our country to the next level is very valuable. Especially for those who aspire of making it big.

additional information: http://www.morphlabs.com/, http://www.ayalatbi.org/

Sphere: Related Content

SocNets 2 B Connected!

The last few days generated more excitement for the social networking world. MySpace and Facebook recently announced their respective tools to become more open and connected to other social networking sites. Others such as Friendster, Orkut and Bebo are expected to follow this development.

And now comes Google Friend Connect - a service that helps website owners grow traffic by enabling any site on the web to easily provide social features for its visitors.

In their preview release this May 12, "Google Friend Connect has been developed to lower two barriers to the spread of social features across the web. First, many website owners want to add features that enable their visitors to do things with their friends, but the technology and resource hurdles have been too high. Second, people are tiring of needing to create new logins and profiles and recreate their friends lists wherever they go on the web. Google Friend Connect offers a solution to both these issues."

Here's a diagram of what Friend Connect wants to achieve:

So instead of doing so much legwork from the many available sites, this will greatly benefit the millions of social users and also those developers and companies doing business in this space. This will also lessen the need to re-create your profiles should you become interested in other social networking sites.

More on this in the coming posts...

Sphere: Related Content

Doing More Online

With so many productivity tools now available online such as email, it is worth your while if you will have your PC-based documents become online too.

Not just long ago, the Big G launched its own online productivity tools - the Google Docs. It has wordprocessing and spreadsheet, somewhat similar to MS Office and OpenOffice.

And just this May 6, there's a new kid on the block which can help one doing more online these days.

The Google Docs Presentation

Aside from preparing presentations similar to having it on a computer, this is somewhat unique because this can be embedded in a blog or in a website.

Here's a snapshot of how to include your presentation using this tool:

Another interesting feature which you may consider is that "Google Docs enables multiple users in different locations to collaborate simultaneously on the same project."

I guess is that anytime soon, the Big G will also launch industry-specific online tools such as accounting, human-resource, manufacturing, etc.

Sphere: Related Content

It's a Numbers Game!

Now that Microsoft had walked away with its almost 4-month old $ 47.5 billion acquisition bid on Yahoo, its stocks had risen today (10:27AM ET) by almost a dollar (or $ 29.88) while Yahoo had stumbled to $ 24.24 compared from $ 28.67 last Friday.

And the real winner for this acquisition game is the Big G (Google), wherein, its stocks rose from $ 581.29 last Friday to $ 593.75 today. Though the Big G was not part of the negotiation, but they were the real reason and target of Microsoft.

For one to understand more of the developments beyond the noise, here's an interesting numbers game which is the based on a 10-year comparative stock market value between the three tech giants:

The highest value that Microsoft (MSFT) got was $ 58.72 in December 24, 1999. It took them almost 21 years to reach this since they were founded in 1978.

The highest value that Yahoo (YHOO) got was $101 in January 7, 2000. It took them almost 6 years to reach this since they were founded in 1994.

The highest value that Google (GOOG) got was $ 715 last December 7, 2007. It took them almost 9 years to reach this since they were founded in 1998.

From another perspective, I'd like to share the most recent ranking which the 3 giants got from Alexa.com now and as follows:
* Yahoo.com - 1
* Google.com - 2
* Microsoft.com - 14

Interestingly, Google.com was # 4 the last time I checked it, while Yahoo.com was # 1, Youtube.com (of Google) was # 2, Live.com (of Microsoft) was #3.

Now, my best guess is that Google can replace Yahoo as the number 1 website in the world anytime soon - in terms of traffic rank, pageviews and market reach.

More on this in our succeeding posts.

Sphere: Related Content

The Next Stage

After having the popularity of blogging and social networks, there are new things happening in the Web 2.0. A lot more experience, more visual and making us more connected to our colleagues, friends and families.

Some of these are now what we are testing which we can eventually build upon and integrate in our blog. We believe that these will help us provide more exciting functionalities and features for our readers and eventually, as our community members.

Recently, we have added newsreel, slide.com and twitter.com to add spice in the blog. Another major improvement was changing the layout to a 3-column format.

As for our feature stories and profile of tech personalities, I know that more of our technopreneurs, researchers, inventors, innovators, etc. will have an impact to all Filipinos through the blog.

More features and integration will be soon announced. So hopefully, you too will be interested to be part of our community and portal.

Indeed, this is an exciting year for Convergex Asia!

Sphere: Related Content

Mobile Ads: The Next Frontier

Among the latest developments in the tech sector today which got my interest is from Ben Kunz of BusinessWeek.com entitled "The Real Threat to Google".

From his article, I would like to emphasize one main point - that Google's biggest threat may not be Microsoft or Yahoo, but may be Apple!

As the on-going takeover bid by Microsoft on Yahoo seems to be taking forever, Google is doing everything to further dominate the web advertising and making its OpenSocial as a standard platform for social networking sites.

Aside from this, the Big G "wants a say in what fits on that tiny screen" when it launched Android late last year. Many thought that Big G is preparing to launch its own mobile phone, somewhat similar to the iPhone of Apple.

Now it's much clearer that the next frontier for web advertising will come from mobile devices. As Ben pointed out and I quote,

"It was Apple (AAPL), a frequent Google collaborator, that tipped the trend. Consumer use of mobile Internet in the U.S. has longed trailed Asia and Europe, where standardized cell networks made it easier for handset makers to produce gadgets that tap the Web at blazingly fast speeds. But in the summer of 2007, Apple rocked America by launching the iPhone. The computer maker wasn't the first to put the Web on phones, but for many consumers, the iPhone made the experience more robust.

Almost two-thirds of Americans have had some experience with mobile Internet use, and the adoption trend is most pronounced among teens and young adults, according to Pew Research Center. About 60% of adults 18 to 29 use text messaging every day, compared with only 14% of their parents. Nearly one-third of young adults use mobile Internet. This is the future, because people take their media habits with them as they age."

It may really be the next thing about the Internet. That more and more devices will have more of the Web - news, email, chat, social network and even web apps. And definitely, mobile ads will also be there!

Sphere: Related Content