My family recently had the chance to pack-up and run away to Mindoro. There’s really something about communing with nature. It’s invigorating, refreshing and it cleanses the soul (whatever that means).

My high’s

1. Nothing beats going on a vacation with my Tarty (lovely wife) and Tiana (lovely daughter).

2. Riding a sea vessel. No matter how physics would explain buoyancy, it fascinates me that a gigantrous piece of metal (I’m referring to the ship) can float. Same fascination goes with airplanes as well.

3. Fresh food. Fresh fruits. Fresh coconut water. Fresh air. Did I mention it’s refreshing?

4. Most relaxing sleep ever. I found myself a tiny island when the waters receded during low tide. The sea surrounded me. I laid down in the hole I dug filled with sea water. Staring at an ever bright moon and stars. Hearing nothing else but waves.

5. Carried all the memories back home in a bunch of photos. More of them here.


nature, vacation, mindoro, photos

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Five more days for the first annual SEO World Championship to come to an end and things are looking good for my friend, Benj Arriola. By the looks of it he’s winning by a mile, enjoying a 9 and 12 point lead from the 2nd and 3rd placers.

Doing a search query for “GlobalWarming Awareness2007,” Benj’s official entry, www.goglobalwarmingawareness2007.com is at #2 in Google, #3 in Yahoo, and #3 in MSN.

I was chatting with him the other day and he gave me a glimpse on one of his uncanny strategies which I cannot mention until the end of the contest on May 1. For now all I can say is it’s a brilliant way of sparking conversations and attention to his blog. On the final stretch I can sense that he, as well as the rest of the contestants, will unleash more tricks up their sleeves. It will be fierce!

If all goes well, Benj will be taking home the rally car Citroen C2. A big leap from his ‘94 Paseo. Right Benj? But I wonder how earth-friendly is it?

But more importantly, considering that this is the first SEO World Championship, it will be a great honor for the the Philippines to claim its stake on the International SEO scene. One big hooray and congratulations to you, Benj!

seo world championship, globalwarming awareness2007

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You’ve heard about them. One car runs on air while other runs on water. Go ahead and watch them run.
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*Blue Ocean Strategy is about creating an uncontested market place making the competition irrelevant.

Remarkable, this guy is. At age 21, Erik Mongrain broke out of the mold of struggling musicians with his guitar-lap-tapping madness.

It’s a smart move that took him from performing on the sidewalks to touring cities in US and Europe.

I can’t get enough watching him play since it always inspires me to be creative.

–

blue ocean strategy, erik mongrain, guitar tap

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I love Flash sites! There I said it. Maybe the source of my bias is that I create websites and do a lot of animation in Flash prior to learning SEO and Internet Marketing.

But allow me to qualify that. I hate Flash sites that animates for the sake of animating, bulky (loads forever), has irritating sound loops and all the mindless crapness that screams “Hey, I’m a super flashy coooool site!” I love Flash sites that use motion design to captivate, communicate and engage audience without being obtrusive.

However, in the SEO/Internet Marketing world, ‘Flash sites’ often get frowned upon. The main reason being that they go against the grain of being ‘search engine friendly‘ which is the whole point of SEO.

I’m all for SEO, clean code, web standards and the good news is Flash can be SE friendly.

But let’s set aside those points of view for the time being. Because every once in a while some flash sites stand out from the crowd of W3C compliant websites

These exceptionally designed flash websites can hit the nail harder on its head than any other website. It captures the senses and deliver the message which is another way of saying “conversion.”

While it’s true that “you cannot manage what you can’t measure,” flash event tracking is already supported by Google Analytics.

So for all us Flash lovers out there. Keep the flame!

Finally, let me leave everyone with an entertaining animation (done in Flash!) via YouTube’s video player (also done in Flash! - hehe I’m just teasing).

I call this “Animator vs. Animation.” Watch who wins.

It was unfortunate I missed the second day of iBlog3 (April 14) when the meaty and juicy blogging topics were discussed. But I had to attend to a more important commitment.

Nevertheless, I was able to meet new people and new bloggers on the first day and the topics were not bad, not bad at all. Mostly dealt with blog tips for newbies but still I got useful insights and inspirations nonetheless.

Plus I got my official iBlog3 ID

Topic favorites were personal blogging success tips by Noemi, business blogging by Arelle, comic blogging by Jonas, and of course literary blogging by Dean. Pic below.

I hope the The organizers could have compiled the sessions into podcasts and PDFs. A lot of bloggers who weren’t able to attend, especially in the provinces would be happy with this. I am :).

Anyway, here are a lot of iBlog3 pictures that I googled taken by Chris Haravata. It occured to me just now that I also missed his talk. Tsk!

iBlog3, Philippine Blogging Summit

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I recently watched An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore. A global warning documentary on effects of global warming on our global climate. That’s a mouthful. It’s gripping. If all the scientific evidence that were presented are accurate, we have only less than 10 years to stop major catastrophes caused by weather around the world. Hurricane Katrina, the costliest and deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States, was only a sampler.

But as always, the other camp (energy club) has allied (funded) with “friendly scientists”, to suggest there are 2 sides to the story. They try to dispute the scientific data that global warming is caused by man-made C02. Scientific data gathered by 2000 scientist in 100 countries. The most unprecedented collaboration around the world.

So who’s side am I on? It’s obvious by my remarks on the latter. One doesn’t need to deeply understand and weigh all the contradicting data. Just look at the motives of the 2 parties. One simply values and wants to conserve the environment while the other wants to conserve profits.

Who’s side are you on? While you ponder. Here’s a related comic relief from my favorite comedian.