Here ye, here ye! A *major* update for the Daily Top 10 Posts plugin for Wordpress! Since version 2.5 I’ve received reports that the plugin breaks the admin panel, amongst several other compatibility issues. I addressed all of these in the newest version. Here’s a rundown of new features:

1. Compatible with the latest version of Wordpress (2.61)
2. Widgets-ready!
3. Bug that distorts the admin panel corrected
4. Added a widget in “Right Now” that tells you the most popular blog post so far
5. Added a dashboard widget that lets you keep track of the 10 most popular blog posts
6. Updated some code in the instructions to prevent blog from breaking should the plugin be deactivated

Click here to go to the plugin page.

Let me know if you’re having problems! Thanks and enjoy!

Words cannot express how much I love this commercial. Being a Discovery channel nerd, I sometimes would leave my TV on the same channel so I can watch the commercial over and over again. Of course the need for that stopped when people began posting it on Youtube. Read Full Entry

I have resigned to the fact that I never win anything. I mean like the type of “win” where my name is picked out from a hundred or a thousand other names. To my surprise, lady luck stopped playing hard-to-get on me at the Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs for 2008 awards night! To think, I wasn’t even there! I’d like to thank Janette Toral for all the hard work she’s put into helping our local blogosphere get the recognition that it deserves. I know that I haven’t been the best of bloggers, but it does feel great to be part of such a vibrant community. I also want to congratulate my good friend Aileen for You Got Tech’s win last night, as well as Fritz, Blogie, AJ and the young people behind Manila Foodistas.

I’d like to take this opportunity to plug another blogging event, Wordcamp Philippines, which I’m helping organize. Wordcamp will be held on September 6, 2008 at the College of St. Benilde on Taft Avenue. Registration is closed, but let me remind the ones who signed up that you have to blog about the event and include the links to the sponsors to be able to join. The t-shirts are already being produced. Thanks to those who preordered. They’re gonna be awesome!

Lastly, I thank random.org for helping me beat the odds! They’re the main reason why I’m $100 richer. Monies, I haz you!

Yes folks, a “mini” Wordcamp will be held in Davao City, Philippines before the official event on September 6, 2008. That means bloggers from the South who can’t quite make it to Manila can still meet Matt Mullenweg in the flesh in Davao City! Cool eh?

Wordcamp Davao will held on Thursday, September 4, 2008, 6-10pm. We have yet to thresh out the details regarding the venue and program. Watch out for that soon. So what are you waiting for? Rub elbows with the Southern Blogosphere’s finest, free food and drinks in tow! Register now!

After much careful perusal of the Internet, here are my nominees for Janette Toral’s Top Ten Emerging Influential Blogs of 2008:

You Got Tech - The tech blog for non-techies.

Bloggers Da Who - The blind item blog that I hope I’ll never be featured on.

Rarely Ordered - Food blog about overlooked menu items. Very interesting concept by a group of startup bloggers.

Fritzified - Because he’s Fritz.

Manila Foodistas - Great pictures and impeccable writing about food. A must-read.

Pass the Sauce - Phoebe talks about food and her experiences as a culinary student.

Chefie’s World - Ok, another one about food. This time by acclaimed Chef Junjun de Guzman. Learn from his cooking adventures here and abroad.

Work With Ria - The blog of my cousin Ria, jill of all trades.

Migs Mobile - My good friend Migs Hipolito’s blog on everything mobile.

Digital Puto - Winston Almendras’ photo blog. Pretty good shots but pale in comparison to mine. Haha.

EDIT: I didn’t notice I listed eleven blogs. I will sacrifice my photo blog then. -_-

Davao Photo - My photo blog.

Wordcamp Philippines is now open for registration! Yes, now you can be part of the most anticipated blogging event of the year. Best of all, it’s free (and you get to meet Matt Mullenweg in the flesh).

Wordcamp will be held on September 6, 2008 at the College of St. Benilde, Taft Avenue, Manila. It is organized by Mindanao Bloggers Oliver Robillo, Maria Jose, Migs Hipolito, Winston Almendras and me

To register, click here. A blog post about Wordcamp Philippines and some link love to our sponsors will get you an electronic ticket to the event.

Shoutout to the sponsors!

• i.PH: the Domain for Individuals
• Free Online Flash Games
• Wazzup Manila Philippines
• Real Estate CRM
• Real Estate Website Designers
• Orange County Real Estate
• Auto Insurance Quotes
• Lane Systems Inc.
• RedMedia

Get Firefox 3 from here and here if you can’t get it from here.

My corner of the Twitterverse is waging an online revolt against, well, Twitter itself. Twitter has been the most inaccessible, inconsistent, downtrodden Web 2.0 application on the face of the Internet, and yet we put up with it. Why? Because old habits are difficult to break. Yes, if that weirds you out, try my other friends on Twitter.

As I opened my browser this morning, I was pleasantly greeted with Happy Birthday to you’s and Haba Birdie’s and talks of Twitter folks planning a mass exodus to Plurk. No wait, what? Yes, Plurk. Apparently, everyone’s gotten sick of Twitter and finally found a worthy place to tell the world what silly little things we’re up to. Pownce and Jaiku tried but failed — despite the Internet heavyweights backing them up. What makes Plurk special? It’s cute, quirky and different. The timeline interface is nice and makes it easy for me to browse through updates without clicking to another page. Replying to updates is even easier. I simply click on an update and type away. Replies are grouped together exactly like a forum thread. Sweet!

I’m in a state of cautious enthusiasm about Plurk. Cautious because Plurk is a new service and the real test is whether it could hold enough interest into it and withstand hundreds of thousands of ‘plurkers’ plurking at the same time. I would also love to see a SMS aspect attached to it and a developer API. I’m cutting them some slack because they’re new, but the people behind Plurk should leverage on the attention it’s getting now or suffer the same fate as all the other Twitter wannabes.

Plurk has a mobile version here. I’d like to see a browser extension done first so I can get rid of Twitterfox asap. Be sure to check out their blog for new developments. They’re looking for someone to help out with a Filipino/Tagalog interface too.

Two days ago when PLDT MyDSL conked out on virtually all of us, I was having my own problems with my Bayantel DSL here in my office. I couldn’t access most sites I go to such as Google and Twitter. I thought maybe OpenDNS can solve that problem. True enough, it did!

Yesterday though, while I was trying to access my site, DotaStrategy.com, the OpenDNS page of death appeared in my browser:

It says: If you experience this problem, we do not have any solution to this problem. We’ll fix this as soon as possible.

I say: How the heck are you going to fix it if you say you don’t have a solution??

Once again, I say goodbye to OpenDNS and hello normalized Internet!

My sources say Yahoo Philippines is ‘quietly’ setting up its local office at the Net One Center Net Cube Center building at the Fort in Taguig City. This confirms rumors that their office will be completed before the year ends. Jojo Anonuevo, Yahoo’s senior director for business development, is also said to be in the country. Anonuevo was the President of game publisher Mobius until June last year when he joined Yahoo. Interestingly enough, Mobius is housed in the same building.

Update: Jojo Anonuevo’s new role is General Manager for Philippine Operations and apparently has relocated back to the Philippines. It also appears that Aileen Apolo’s counterpart will not be Jonas delos Santos as I have speculated, but someone named Chris Concepcion. Watch the video below to get to know the two and what their plans are for the Philippine market. Note that Chris calls himself “the Yahoo representative here in the Philippines”. Jojo is the one on the left and Chris on the right.

Update 2: Yahoo has job openings for Partner Account Manager, Communications Specialist and a Search Editor & Analyst. Exact address of the office is 14th Floor Net Cube Center, 3rd Avenue corner 30th Street, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City.

It’s the third time I forgot to bring my mouse over here at the office. I’m not the touchpad type of user so I usually don’t get any work done without a real mouse. Instead of stocking up on Gingko Biloba to increase circulation to my brain (thus improve memory, thus won’t forget the mouse), I ran down to the nearest PC store (which is equivalent to heaven, if there is one lol) to look for, well, a mouse.
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Could this be the future of air travel? Yves Rossy definitely thinks so. Rossy, a former fighter pilot, took five years to perfect his flying contraption. All his hard work pays off during his maiden flight on May 15, 2008. He zooms and spins in the sky and over the Swiss-effin-alps like there’s no tomorrow. *Kinda* reminds me of a certain character in Toy Story, but to hell with that. He’s way cooler. What I would give to be in his shoes, or wings, right now.

Video after the jump.

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Powerset enters the search engine realm with an offering of tools for users to search Wikipedia more effectively. Instead of keywords, Powerset’s technology harnesses the power of human conversation that serves as the backbone of their engine’s algorithm. That removes the need for users to always know the exact terms related to what they’re searching. Powerset does all the dirty work for you. The search results can be a bit daunting to digest if you’re used to Google. But for hardcore researchers, it’s easy to tell that Powerset leaves no stone unturned.

Apart from Wikipedia, Powerset plans to partner with other wiki-like sites to expand their database. Already, it is showing what the future of web search might be. A Google killer? Who knows? I’d dare say Microsoft would be better off buying them rather than play hide-and-seek with Yahoo. My bet is Powerset is already on Wikimedia’s Christmas shopping list by now.

One of the downsides of blogging is not knowing whether or not your readers are “getting it”.

Sure, you know what Gas tungsten arc welding is, but for us mere mortals, that sounds like a bad lab experiment back in college that we’d rather forget about. If you’re familiar with Snap Shots (see sample), Apture should feel right at home except that it gives you full control over your “info bubbles” and you have the power to assign bubbles only to the content that you choose right on your blog (unlike the arbitrary way that Snap does it). One great example we can use is Christine Gambito. Remember who she is? If not, click on her name (now na hahaha). I added Wikipedia, images and video to the info bubble to help jog your memory. Ok, done? You can add info bubbles to any text on your blog to give your users a rich multimedia experience, if not a lesson in history. The service is currently in beta and is accepting registrations.

Some bugs still need to be worked out, such as conflicts with flash objects and the inability to detect the same content on the main page and post page (meaning if you add bubbles from the main page, you’d have to do it again on the blog post).