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Sunday, May 21, 2006
minti: online parenting
with so many web 2.0 sites popping up, it's not surprising that there are also many web 2.0 directories created. openBC has one, eConsultant has another one and listible has one also.
nothwithstanding the hula over what web 2.0 really is, these lists might just add confusion to the users. following kaye's post about thinkfree, i think it would be best to feature and review some sites that has value and let this be a jumpstart to learning portal on web 2.0 and web 2.0 apps.
here's a site that might be useful to parents and would-be parents out there.
MINTI.Minti is a virtual place where parents can visit anytime to share and gain valuable advice on parenting. The content is created by members in the form of articles. The articles are tagged, rated and commented on by the community to encourage the integrity and relevancy of the information created. Topics range from pre-pregnancy, pregnancy, babies, early childhood, schooling, tweens, teenage years and beyond. Consider Minti as your global parent support group and expect lots of new features to be constantly added to the site so we can all be better at the most important job in the world: parenting.
interestingly, one of Minti's co-founder is half-filipina, rachel cook. mom to toddler codi and passionate about parenting , rachel conceptualized Minti early 2005, foreseeing the benefits of wikipedia and the need for online parent-to-parent advice-opedia.
members can share their experiences in raising children and give and/or seek advice and. each advice are rated by the members with the best sounding advice getting the highest rate. with the complexities of parenthood, minti has sorted out its advices or posts through folksonomy.
over-all, i'd say this is one web 2.0 app that deserves hi-5 for integrating and utilizing relevant web 2.0 features and content.
check out some cool minti products as well. :)
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Tuesday, April 25, 2006
my first podcast
i just had my first podcast with janette this morning... and i was so nervous... no i cant wait for it to be uploaded!
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
When the Forces of the Universe Conspire
To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation.
- The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho
Someone told me year 2006 is a pivotal year for me.
A month ago, I wouldn’t have believed in it. But working with Pandora Squared, i’d say it indeed is.
So where the heck do I fit in with these bunch of passionate geeks who knows what they’re doing and what they know in life?
And how is Pandora Squared
affecting my life? I am a single mom with three children. I was a high
school scholar and got in in one of the toughest courses in the state university.
Irresponsibility, however, and maybe a little of naivety as well, got
me pregnant. And the usual thing happened, stopped going to school, got
married, had children and got separated. I decided not to finish my
studies anymore because I realized it really wasn’t my passion.
Computers and internet were. But raising three small children didn’t
provide me the luxury of choosing a job that I love. My career
objectives were set aside and I lived my life one day at a time.
Then
came web 2.0. As the internet evolved into a functional platform that
everybody can use, web 2.0 and its applications also changed my life
and rekindled my passion for the internet.
And meeting pandorasquared opened the box and presented the last thing that was left in the box.
HOPE.
And that hope gave me the will to decide to go where my heart is and follow my destiny.
One of my first assignment for the company was to organize a training.
And that training was a milestone for me and for the company as well.
Working together as a team has provided us a glimpse of our inner self
and has shown us the path to our destiny.
I want to touch lives the way technology or web 2.0 did mine.
I want to touch lives the way Pandora Squared touched mine.
And this personal vision is the same vision that Pandora Squared believes in passionately.
ENABLING, EMPOWERING AND ENRICHING LIVES.
Empowerment through training and education.
Enriching lives through Humanity 2.0.
Guided through the sea of digital information by the Navigator.
If
you are passionate about your work, you will be determined to succeed
in it. Skills or the lack of it does not matter. Skills are enhanced by
one’s passion. And this is a continuous learning process for me.
Sometimes my passion makes me impulsive. And I get the flak. But as they say, you learn your lessons from your mistakes.
And as long as you never forget that to realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
$1.4 BILLION Invested in India
Firms Invest $1.4B in India
First-quarter investments by VC and private equity firms more than triple from last year.
April 10, 2006
Private equity and venture capital firms invested about $1.4 billion in 69 Indian companies during the quarter ended March 2006, according to a study released Monday.
every time i see news like this, it just gets under my skin. i don't know what it is but i think i am on my way to taking this on a personal level. okay. i admit. india has good, if not brilliant developers. i quit my previous job, which pays higher than what i am getting right now (well since i just started) primarily because this is what i love doing - and to have encountered this opportunity the second time would be like throwing my dreams away...
underneath my personal motive is i believe and i am in love in what my new company is doing. and my passion for our work is fueled by this drive to encourage and provide opportunities to our IT people and companies (i think i am giving up on the government institution in charge of IT development) because i see their or rather our IT sector's potential in taking the lead away from india.
do not get me wrong here. i am not being discriminating or something but we have brains, for santa's sake, we learn fast, we adapt easily, in fact we have proven that with our call center industry.
guys, come on! but i am happy to see that we are moving forward, albeit a little slow (or maybe because i just entered the industry recently). during one of our nightouts with my girlfriends in makati last week (or the other week) i met this indian who owns a bpo company here. and guess what company is that? call center!!! and i was like this close to swearing! what is happening??? do we just let indians come here and set up business for their spillovers? since according to him they have lots of clients they cannot handle it there anymore. he is also in fact hiring some developers. how would you feel about that? papayag na lang ba tayo na tapunan ng tira tira???
exhale.....
i m sorry... i just couldn't stop myself... we have all the capabilities... if its resources we lack, let's pool our resources and move ahead towards our goal as one... which is to develop and enhance our ICT/IT industry...
why are we just waiting for extras to be thrown our way? why do we wait until a technology becomes profitable then we follow and do the same?
WHY CANT WE MOVE FORWARD ON OUR OWN AND GO WITH OUR GUT INSTINCT? we are planning a national event for this... ill keep you guys posted...
it's time we take back what our government has thrown away before - we were the tiger economy back then, remember? - and show the world our resilience...
Sunday, April 9, 2006
Social Networks, Blogs and Beer
I was dumped with this list of links to read and browse my weekend away with. And it’s Sunday, 5 o’clock in the morning and my head is just bursting with information and data that are interrelated somehow and I just have to write it down and try to make sense out of it. Here goes:
David Hornik believes that the online communities we have now are Social Networks 3.0.
According to him, the foundations of social networks were started in the late 1990s with the likes of eGroups/Online, ICQ, Evite and many more. These networks weren’t explicitly described as such back then but they were the underpinnings of these communications platforms. In early 2000, as developers and entrepreneurs began to comprehend the nature of these networks and the power it could generate by fully and clearly defining or formulating its structure, Friendster, Tribe, Orkut, LinkedIn, Spoke emerged and thus began the era of Social Networks 2.0. These services allowed users to organize their recreational and business networks. The primary focus of these services then as they were first built was to enable the creation, growth and management of an explicit social network. As the excitement and energy around pure play social networks began to wane, it became clear that the building and management of a social network was not, in and of itself, a compelling consumer experience. Even Dana Boyd wondered whether MySpace is just a fad as Friendster has lost its steam. This now posed another challenge to entrepreneurs as they came to recognize that users and their interests or desires are significant and important considerations in building social networks.
The power of the individual user has never been magnified with yet another tool, blogs. The phenomenal surge in the number of bloggers has taken the internet by storm. Blogherald’s count as of July 2005 was at least 70 million blogs. Worldwide. And nothing is more powerful and effective than word of mouth and blogs has now become a voice and a force to reckon with as proven during the last US Presidential elections.
Stephen Baker and Heather Green of Business Week Magazine had the right idea when they said Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up...or catch you later… No wonder everybody’s scrambling to jump on the bandwagon.
Glenn Reynolds has made an interesting analogy between journalism and making beer to demonstrate the power of blogging and how it has shaken the mainstream media. Even without formal training and using cheap equipment, almost anyone can make beer. The quality may be variable, but the best home-brews are tastier than the stuff you see advertised during the Super Bowl. This is because big brewers, particularly in America, have long aimed to reach the largest market by pushing bland brands that offend no one. The rise of home-brewing, however, has forced them to create “micro-brews” that actually taste of something.
And in every region in the world, home-brewed beers are the ones that get the largest slice of the cake. Here in Manila, Heineken, Budweiser and other brands have tried to get their own slice of the cake too but they just couldn’t compete with our San Miguel and sister brand Red Horse. So is the case in China. In Germany. Or anywhere for that matter. The thing is, home-brewed beer has the inherent and distinctive taste that is and will always be preferred by any local community.
I think I have to sample different kinds of beer to discover the compelling reason behind a community’s loyalty to their own beer. And see if the same can be applied to online communities. San Miguel anyone?
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