Regurgitation is very common online. That’s the why we see the following advice on blogging from so many sources:

Regularity. Building and sustaining an audience requires at least one post a day. Gizmodo promises 60 posts for every weekday, but that’s a bit too much.

Passion. I can tell you that it’s much much easier to blog about something you’re really interested in. The post ideas seem to come from nowhere.

Brevity. People would rather read a series of five short posts than one long article.

Comprehensibility. Make sure your text is easy to follow. Use simple wording, list out your points. Blogging is not literature.

Ironically, here I am jumping on the bandwagon! But there’s a reason why so many bloggers, including yours truly, are toeing the same line. The advice actually works.

On a nearly unrelated but very important note: if you think you can blog about the Philippines, in an entertaining, comprehensible, and regular way, then you’re the kind of people we’re looking for. Feel free to contact us.

We’d like to thank the owners of Kape Isla and Gang Badoy of RockEd. Now we finally have a venue for the bloggers meet-and-greet originally proposed by b5media’s Shai Coggins.

The first 50 guests will be treated to unlimited coffee and dessert, the centerpiece of which will be a free-flowing chocolate fondue fountain. If you haven’t confirmed your attendance over at the Facebook event page (sign-up required), feel free to leave a comment here. Be seeing you!

Details:

Blogger Meetup
7:00-11:00 pm, November 30
Kape Isla, Serendra (across Market-Market)

PS: Feel free to use the banner above on your website or blog. Download it here.

Sophie of Kikay Kits gets the job done, using her kid sister to prove the benefits of mineral makeup.

But there’s more to this made up 14-year-old. She’s the young blogger we featured a while back, also blogs at juniorproblogger.com, obviously knows how to snap up good domains, and even knows how to tweak Wordpress themes. Check Junior Problogger’s new theme. Congrats on your grade school graduation Sarabeth, and here’s to your productive use of sem break!

Eugene of Vista Pinas shares his own personal experience of claiming AdSense payments through Western Union. Our hero shared the AdSense-Western Union stories of others, then decided to try things out for himself. “Receiving the payment is actually as easy as others have said it would be—it just took me about five minutes—but finding an open Western Union outlet is another story altogether.”

The intrepid blogger, the man behind Lakbayan, finally found salvation at a local hotel, taking advantage of the fact that remittance centers there stay open longer to service foreign guests. He then realized that it was better to receive his payments in dollars, then look for a nearby forex, as “Western Union’s peso-dollar exchange rate seems to be always lower than the market value.” Here’s to your entertaining—and realistic—assessment of the procedure Eugene!

Shai Coggins is, in her own words, “one of the co-owners and Vice President (Community) of a global new media network, b5media.” She also happens to be a Filipina who grew up in the Philippines and ended up settling down in Australia.

Mrs. Coggins will be returning to the motherland soon, and she’s eager to meet up with the local blogging scene, as well as finally see people she’s only known online. So, any bloggers currently or based in the Philippines, clear your calendars for November 30 if you’ll be in Metro Manila. We’re still working on a venue, but updates will come as soon as possible.

Be seeing you!

Abe is currently enjoying Davao City, participating in the 2007 Mindanao Bloggers Summit. Check out his snapshots.

A special hello goes to Mindanao Bob, the foreigner-convert behind Live in the Philippines.

Find out more about Davao City and its landmarks through Vista Pinas.

Yesterday morning, the producers of Desperate Housewives released an official apology for Teri Hatcher’s infamous line:

“The producers of the show and ABC studios offer our sincere apology for any offence caused by the brief reference in the season premier,” ANC quoted the statement as saying.

“There was no intent to disparage the integrity of any aspect of the medical community in the Philippines,” it said.

Read the rest of this entry »

Butch Dalisay recently wrote about Filipino-ness in Writing:

When I write a story, I worry about plot and character—not about how that story will be labeled by somebody else. Writing a story that people will want to read again is difficult enough. Ultimately, the only nation that will matter to the writer is the one whose passport consists of the published book. As his student Allan Aquino remembers NVM Gonzalez saying, “Writers create their own nation, even if they’ve never set foot on it.”

I’ve highlighted the Filipino nature of The Bayanihan Blog Network numerous times, whenever I discussed our objectives, how the member blogs relate topics to the Philippines, or how they cover Philippine topics. But we don’t believe that it’s enough to be Filipino. As Butch Dalisay wrote, it ultimately doesn’t matter what the nationality of the writer, or a blogger for that matter, is.

In many ways, this blog network is about creating its own nation: a Philippines that has a lot to offer to the offline and online world. We try to go beyond the casual negativity that many Filipinos are guilty of, and focus on things we can be proud of. But we’re more than just that.

The Bayanihan Blog Network is more than just a Filipino blog network. That much is obvious from the way we write and what we write about, as Butch Dalisay writes. Yet what really matters is the quality content and unique perspectives we offer on a regular basis. Only through this can we hope to stand out from the millions of online publications out there.

So I welcome you to check out the different member blogs of our network, and let us know what you think.

The SPICe (Stop Philippine Internet Censorship) Campaign is a new blog BBN Partner Abe recently told me about through his personal blog. It promises to “shed light and make everyone aware of the bane that is Internet censorship.” Writer WyLd X asks that you “Join me in this fight to keep the Internet an open medium and not be pigeon-holed by traditional bureaucratic garbage.”

Whether or not the recent Boy Bastos controversy served as an inspiration (SPICe only cites the EFF), it will be interesting to see what dirt The SPICe Campaign digs up. WyLd has already featured an apparently raunchy site undergoing some scrutiny, talking about demographics and sharing his own experiences as a web publisher.

Here’s another survey to participate in. But this time, it’s open to bloggers of any kind, not just Filipino. Click here to check it out. Here’s a message from Joel, the surveyor:

Hi! I’m a student of Don Bosco Technical College in Manila. I am currently working on a software for my pre-thesis work and would like to ask for your help in participating this survey that I made. This survey will take you just 10-15 minutes of your precious time. Please answer all the questions as much as possible in order to get the most relevant and accurate survey reports. All respondent’s information and responses will be kept in total confidentiality. Let’s get it rollin’.

Joel is currently working on some desktop client blogging software, which will apparently let you write posts while you’re offline and post them on your blogs once you get some connectivity. He told me that he’s planning to release the final product as donation ware (freely available, with an encouragement to donate to the maker).

Again, with Joel’s permission, the results of this survey will be available on this blog as soon as they’re ready.