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.
The Philippines is a paradox in many ways. Slum towns flank modern business districts. There are hundreds of local dialects, but most Filipinos have at least basic proficiency in English. We like to think that some members of the Philippine senate don’t have a good grasp of the online world. Yet their website makes full use of RSS and PDFs.
That’s right: So long as any politically-motivated blogger subscribes to the Philippine Senate RSS feed, they’ll be notified of new Philippine Senate press releases. The senate website also has a searchable database of bills, resolutions, acts, and government partnerships, all in PDF format.
Never was discussing, supporting, or criticizing our elected officials’s policies so easy! It was Loren Legarda’s Boy Bastos press release that clued me in to Mark Verzo’s legal problems.
My original post on boy bastos being shut down is just part of the interesting discussion over the whole issue.
The Warrior Lawyer has been earning links for his post on freedom of expression balanced with the anti-porn section of the revised penal code of the Philippines. It condemns
“the authors of obscene literature, published with their knowledge in any form; the editors publishing such literature; and the owners/operators of the establishment selling the same.”
Who sets the standards of obscenity and immorality? An American judge saying “I know it when I see it”? What about magazines like FHM and even Men’s Health, which, no matter how you look at it, contains content that many people would find offensive. Why do they escape scrutiny, or at the very least continue to operate unchecked? Is it because they stay just a hair below explicitness?
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A few days ago, Senator Loren Legarda issued a press release asking authorities “to find ways to shut off boybastos.com.” The user-driven porn site responded with a dare, and eventually apologized for “taking a break“, blaming traffic overload. Yesterday, National Bureau of Investigation (the local version of the FBI) served Mark Verzo, apparently the owner of the domain boybastos.com, with a search warrant. They went through his house and confiscated equipment, while a rep was at hand to provide some soundbites for the TV viewing public:
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The whole purpose of search engine optimization is to increase the amount and quality of visitors coming from search engines, by tweaking a website’s presentation and structure, and ensuring its content can be easily cataloged by search engines. Good SEO isn’t all about attracting more visitors to a website, but also those who are interested in the website’s topic as well.
It’s not unreasonable to think that bloggers could use of SEO to create a more realistic impression of their own country.
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If you’re blogging at home somewhere in the Philippines, you’ve probably signed up for a residential DSL plan. Of course, your service provider usually doesn’t offer any guarantees that you’ll always be enjoying a certain amount of bandwidth—such promises are reserved for business broadband plans. But if you’re paying for something on a regular basis, it’s reasonable to expect a consistent level of performance.
Which is why Speedtest.net is a great tool to see if local telcos are answering the call for connectivity. Just visit the website, and you’ll be treated to a stylized Flash interface that tests your connection’s download and upload speeds. And you can even share the results for everyone to see. As you can see from the picture above, I recently enjoyed 214kbps download and 108kbps upload speeds. Pretty reasonable for my house’s 256kbps DSL plan.
So, how does your connection measure up? Does it meet your expectations?
Thanks to Blooey Singson for inviting the BBN partners to the WikiPilipinas Bloggers Dinner, which will be held later at the Marina Seafood Restaurant, right across the World Trade Center. Eugene of Vista Pinas, who “introduced” us to Blooey, is also sure to be there.
For those who don’t know, WikiPilipinas is the rebranded Wikipiniana. The new site features better presentation and stronger branding. As well as future versions in different Philippine dialects. I hope I get to meet the WikiPilipinas team and talk to them about the site. I’m especially interested in what their long-term plans are.
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Metro Manila is the capital of the Philippines, and is also the country’s economic, and political center. That’s why a common mistake we Manileños make—including yours truly—is to practically ignore the rest of the country. At least we partially address this shortcoming through Style Cebu. But that still leaves out the southern region of Mindanao.
Which we shouldn’t. Because the bloggers in Mindanao are quite an active and passionate bunch. In fact, you should watch out for the 2007 Mindanao Blog Awards, which will be the cornerstone event of the 1st Mindanao Bloggers Summit. We should follow the example of Andrew dela Serna, the man behind Ratified.org. He’s shared his creative talents to come up with the logo you see above, featuring the distinctively Mindanaoan icon known as the vinta.
A shout out goes to the people behind Davao Blogspace and Mindanao Bloggers, two websites that show that there’s more to the Philippines than just Metro Manila. Here’s to making sure all the bases are covered, and for providing a new challenge for us: giving all Filipino voices their due consideration, wherever they be based.
For all the Philippines economic and supposed stability problems, a significant number of expats have made this country their home. You’ve got Mong Palatino writing about the South Korean invasion, and the Martins’ Live in the Philippines! blog.
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The problem was identified over a month ago, the solution has been found, and redefined. The BBN was one of the first participants in the project to redefine Filipina online, and our own Jonas Diego applied his creativity years before this network was formed.
The word Filipina should mean more than what the linking tells us. I mean, there are Filipina mail-order brides, porn stars, prostitutes, sensual pen pals. But they make up a small percentage. It would be a bit idiotic to ignore websites like the Filipina’s Women Network, the intelligent women we have on this blog network alone (You Had Me at Hello, My Filipino Wedding, Style Manila, Kikay Kits, and the recently launched Style Cebu), and the articulate people over at the Pinoy Mom’s Network.
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