The new top-level domain, that is: .ME, which is now open for registration to the whole world. GoDaddy sells it for $19.99 per year (minimum of 2 years).

As with my other "nameplate" domains, I have yet to figure out what to do with blogie.me, so I’ll just keep it as a forwarder to my favorite blog.

When this new TLD came out, it dawned on me that this time we’re living in is the "ME" age. Not exactly the most perfect of convictions, but on the flip side, it does point to the benefits and beauty of individualism.

The general idea is to get bloggers to write about domestic (or even international) destinations where Cebu Pacific has regular flights. Aside from promoting the airline, one of the main objectives of this contest, to be called the Cebu Pacific Blogging Challenge, is to increase awareness of the various tourist and business destinations in the country.

Cebu Pacific flies to many destinations in Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao. So, there will be lots of cities and islands to blog about for this contest! The prizes are roundtrip airfare to and from major destinations in the Philippines.

This contest will be open to all bloggers residing in the Philippines. More details and the contest mechanics will be announced soon via the official WordCamp Philippines blog. To keep abreast of developments, bookmark that site, or better yet, subscribe to the blog feed.

It’s less than a month to WordCamp! I’m so excited already!

Matt Mullenweg, the founder of Automattic, will be in Manila and in Davao to join us for the two WordCamps.

The Davao leg of this highly-anticipated event will be on 4 September 2008 (Thursday), from 6:00 to around 10:00 PM. We’re still negotiating with sponsors for the venue — to keep tabs, I’ll announce it on the official site as soon as we have a final arrangement. Venue: Bryan’s Grill & Café in Palm Village (beside Bo. Obrero).

WordCamp Davao hopes to gather WordPressers — as well as other bloggers who would like to know more about the power of WordPress — PHP coders or developers, and computer graphics designers. This event will admittedly not be as comprehensive as the one in Manila, but we will try to make it as informative and fun as possible.

For one, it’s our chance to hear the words of the creator of WordPress himself!

Registration for WordCamp Davao is mandatory. Only those who are registered will be allowed to participate — free to join! So what are you waiting for? Head on over to the online sign-up form now!

The WordCamp Philippines 2008 T-shirt comes in 2 colors: royal blue and maroon. They’re selling for P400 each for small, medium and large; P450 for extra-large.

Sizes come in two types, too: for men and for women.

These shirts are tailored (custom-made) so they fit snugly and hang nicely. Cotton, of course, and made of high-grade cloth. The front design is by Andrew dela Serna.

Discounts will be made available for bulk purchases. To go to the order form, click here.

Sponsored By: 1st Mindanao Bloggers Summit - 27 Oct 2007, Davao City

This is because WordPress has taken huge steps forward in terms of becoming a serious content management system (and not just a blogging engine). For example, 2.6 features post versioning — WP saves older versions of your post in your admin area, and you can compare various versions and even revert to older copies of your post.

WP 2.6 comes equipped with Google’s Gears. What this means basically is, once you’ve activated Gears, parts of your WordPress install will be cached on your local computer, thereby making your blog load faster when you access it for editing, maintenance, etc. Gears will make more features available to WordPress in the near future, and this might include offline editing of your blog.

Some minor improvements include the ability to insert captions to images, word count for your posts, drag-and-drop reordering of galleries, etc.

Here’s a 3-and-a-half-minute video for your reference:

To download the latest version of WordPress, click here. For first-time installation, see this guide. For upgrading your old WordPress to the latest, follow these instructions. Don’t worry, they’re painless.

Sponsored By: DVO Bloggers Network - the Davao blogosphere

For those who do intend to attend WordCamp, please take note that, while it’s free to join, there is a required blog post. The instructions for that will be presented to you right after you register successfully.

See you in Manila this September!!!

We’re grateful for the support of the following 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
• Orange County Business Lawyer
• Cebu Pacific Air
• Buddy Gancenia Reality TV
• SmartBro Wireless Broadband
• SPOT.ph
• Make Money with Performancing Ads

A growing number of people are discovering a whole new range of virtual professions: you could be a virtual assistant, a telemarketing merchant, or any kind of entrepreneur for as long as the service can be delivered via the Internet.

One such ‘technopreneur’ is my friend and colleague, Althea Cunanan. She works as a virtual assistant and has clients in the US, while enjoying the lifestyle she’s grown up with in Davao. There is the problem of the Greenwich Mean Time… but that is a minor hurdle vis-à-vis the benefits she reaps from her virtual employment.

Althea offers services ranging from secretarial work to marketing to being a travel merchant for her clients. She says that it’s come to a point where she can’t take on extra work anymore, so she’s looking for fresh VAs that she can train.

I know of other VAs in Davao and Metro Manila, and all of them agree on one thing: the savings in public transportation fare are indeed considerable. What’s more, you don’t even have to get all dolled up to talk to your virtual boss!

What does it take to be a virtual assistant?

Most essential requirement: English proficiency. Since the work will involve much telephone conversations (via VoIP, of course), you must be comfortable in the English language through and through. Otherwise, I doubt if you’ll be able to retain your clients.

Corollary to this, a virtual assistant should be able to write well. VAs are expected to read and write reports, transcribe data, create abstracts, etc. If you can write well and manage to meet deadlines without effort, you’d do well as a VA.

A reliable Internet connection that can accommodate voice and video at decent speeds is also a must. If possible, and because it would really be a plus, get a backup Internet connection. Unfortunately, not one of our ISPs in Davao is 100% reliable.

Computers are very cheap now, and VAs don’t really need to have the latest or the most powerful setup in order to work. So, an investment of around 15 thousand pesos for a good PC would do nicely.

How do VAs get paid?

Western Union is one option for receiving payments from US-based clients (or from Europe, for that matter). It’s the quickest, but it will involve charges at the transmitting end. Some clients might not want to absorb the transmission charges (although I doubt if they are prohibitive at all).

Another option is PayPal. Many Philippine banks are now “interconnected” with this online payment service, with UnionBank leading the pack. The enrollment process is a tad involved, but in my opinion, it’s worth the effort. Via PayPal, you can receive and send funds, while maintaining a Web-based bank account – it doesn’t earn interest, though.

Of course, if you have a dollar account, you could ask your clients to remit the funds to your bank (just make sure you provide your bank’s SWIFT code). This, however, is the most cumbersome on the part of your client. In terms of ease of use, PayPal is still the most convenient.

Now, how does one go about getting clients?

There are, in fact, tons of information on that available via Google (or Yahoo!, if you prefer). Just do a search for “virtual assistants wanted” and you’ll get thousands of hits.

In order to make yourself more visible online as a potential VA, here are a few suggestions. First, create user accounts on LinkedIn.com and Elance.com. Simply put, these are portals (or something like clearinghouses) where job seekers and providers converge. Make sure you fill out all the information requested by the user profile wizards, so that people looking at your LinkedIn page or Elance profile will get to know about you and your services right away.

There are many other Internet sites dedicated to bringing employment opportunities to freelancers. It wouldn’t hurt to sign up in as many of these sites as you can, but don’t neglect LinkedIn.com – it’s one of the most respectable business networking sites around.

Being a virtual assistant — or any other similar profession, such as being a third party processor — is not for everyone. It requires patience and perseverance, and an internalization of the business culture of American and European clients, who would be your virtual bosses.

With our country in near-crisis mode, however, it’s good to know that there are work alternatives available to those who would persist in bettering their lives in these trying times.

Of course, Ted is more than willing to impart his expertise in Adobe products, particularly Acrobat, PhotoShop, InDesign, and others. For my part, I have volunteered to contribute my meager knowledge in WordPress and CSS.

Dennis Agulo is also on board. He’s a PHP developer who’s certified in Zend, so you can expect what he’ll be bringing to the table. Dennis has also promised to treat us to beer!

The beer will be for the planning session this Friday (11 July 2008) at Fwendz Diner in Metro Avenue, at the back of Gaisano Mall. For those who’d like to contribute to this effort, see you there at 8pm!

Anyone who’d like to help plan the seminar series and/or contribute his or her know-how is welcome to join us this Friday.

Since I was the last speaker during that day, a big part of the original audience had already left before I even started. Still, I’m glad that I was able to tell more people about my favorite blogging platform & CMS, and about upcoming bloggers’ activities in Mindanao.

Only a few of the audience raised their hands when I asked who among them were bloggers, so I’m happy that at least I was able to give them an idea of what blogging is all about. Hopefully they’ll sign up for blogging seminars that we’ll be conducting in Davao in the near future.

An interesting encounter was with a college student, who told me she was going to do a thesis on blogging as a career. Good luck to you!

Sponsored By: 1st Mindanao Bloggers Summit - 27 Oct 2007, Davao City

It was Manny Pacquiao’s fight against Diaz, and it had been raining, but the Cebu-based bloggers (some turned out to be originally from Zamboanga, Iligan, Dumaguete…) made time for the get-together. Max and the others said it was the first time that bloggers were in one place at one time.

Reminiscent of the first few times that Davao bloggers came together socially, our Cebu counterparts had their ice-breaker yesterday, and it was quite heartening. I’m certain everyone shares the hope that it will spark more such gatherings.

I’m glad to have finally met Kevin and Mark, with whom I’ve already been corresponding via blog comments and email.

The bloggers’ afternoon socials was attended by a mixed group: bloggers of varying themes and concerns, people of different backgrounds. And this is good, because variety adds spice, which drives away boredom!

The bloggers present, aside from the guys I’ve already mentioned above: Paul, Wilhelmina, Aileen, Xerxes, Aldrin, Rodelio, Rio, Francis.

Beyond the getting-to-know aspect, seeds of future bloggers activities were also sown. In fact, they have pretty neat ideas! But I’ll let them announce their own plans. What I can say, though, is that the VisayasBloggers.com feeds aggregator site will definitely get off the ground, starting with the blogs of those present yesterday. But the more important thing is, there’s now been a very encouraging start.

Kudos to Cebu’s bloggers!!!

Sponsored By: DVO Bloggers Network - the Davao blogosphere