The current global economic crisis is a chain of events, primarily blamed on man’s dependency on foreign oil and the manufacturing companies’ dependency on petroleum for food production. Couple it with the mismanagement of creditors to lend money to people and businesses living beyond their means, which leads to more debts and not making enough money to pay the debts. In the end, all these contribute to foreclosures, bankruptcies, unemployment, high oil prices, high food prices, world wide inflation, and global crash or recession not necessarily in that order.

The United States regarded as a superpower based on its ability to influence the world in all respects, is the most hurt among nations. We wake up with the realization that there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow…

This sense of hopelessness and fear isn’t only felt domestically. What it means for the rest of the world is that they will most likely be in an even deeper mess if a superpower like America can in fact suffer the way it has. For most anti-US countries, it is a cause for rejoicing but whether other nations favor the United States or not, sooner or later what is happening to the US will have a domino effect to the rest of the world. It is only a matter of time.

Already, in a surprising twist of event, Iceland- a highly-developed country in Western Europe has announced national bankruptcy. How can that be? People declare bankruptcy, companies file for bankruptcy but a country? an entire country?!

For those who think China is the new superpower, think again. They are a Socialist Republic run by communists. They have strong censorship dictating people what they can and can’t read or know. No freedom of expression at all. They even ban certain websites from being accessed. Can you imagine that if you live in China, you can’t even access Youtube or Wikipedia?! They practically control how people live there.  Despite its huge economy, it’s not as strong as some might believe. They are as vulnerable as the next country especially when part of their economy is based on US manufacturing companies, outsourcing jobs in their country. These US companies have declining funds and they are shutting down plants abroad and closing stores domestically. China workers are suffering.

For the Philippines who rely hugely on overseas remittances, what is happening to the world around it most especially to the United States is utterly disconcerting. Last year, the 11 million strong overseas workers (that’s about 11% of the Philippine population!) sent $14 billion to pump the economy. There are 4 million expatriates from the US alone and about 2 million from the Middle East sending remittances, buying properties and creating businesses (=jobs) in the Philippines. This year while it is expected to remain the same, it is already forecasting a decline in 2009. Who knows how many of these 11 million overseas workers will be sent back home or will lose their jobs in the coming months?

While the US dependency on foreign oil is believed to be the major culprit of its economic fall, the Philippines’ major dependency on its biggest export- its human resources doesn’t seem to be a cause for concern at all for the government. In fact they even brag to the whole world that the overseas Filipino workers (OFW) are the lifeblood of the economy pumping those dollars to support the country’s stability and economy.

In short, thanking the overseas workers for NOT having have to lift a hand, for NOT having have to do their own laundry or wash their own dishes, for NOT getting their hands dirty, for NOT having have to sweat blood and tears because the overseas workers are doing it for them! They can be lazy on their jobs because they are getting huge financial support from overseas workers. They can continue with graft and corruption, the things they do best!

Oh as a consolation, they get to call us “modern-day heroes.” Did you hear about Pres. Gloria’s recent announcement that “From now on, call them Expats not OFWs!” She says further that “we should begin to call our overseas Filipinos expatriates because the nature of their job is increasingly more on skilled professions, and they should be called expatriates because expatriates usually get higher pay.” Huh, say that again Madam president?! Are you high?! OFW, Overseas workers, expatriates, slaves, servants- just semantics.

Seriously, that is not something to be proud about! It is a shame to say that your own countrymen are leaving the country of birth for greener pastures and opportunity. That is blatantly admitting that you the government, failed to protect your own people from poverty and unemployment and lack of better paying jobs! I would go back to the Philippines in a heart beat if I know I could survive there and live comfortably the way I can! The Philippines for all its inadequacy and destitution is a paradise to live in.

Does the government actually think we’re here abroad to enjoy the Grand Canyon or Disneyland or just enjoy the view at the Petronas towers where we can relish in the beaches of Boracay or Palawan or explore the rest of the 7,001 islands? We would not have to go to other nations and suffer if you the government can offer more decent jobs for us “expatriates.” This article shows how delusional President Arroyo is!

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By now all Friendster bloggers must have gotten the memo sent out by the Friendster team, of the sudden migration from Friendster Typepad to Friendster Wordpress in early September. I wrote about it first on September 3rd, in shock that no word was said about the transition.

I didn’t stop there. When I re-visited the Friendster Official blog site on September 9 looking for answers I still didn’t find it so I left an exacting comment (#31) on their most recent post at that time, dated August 12th to express my frustration! Yay, I heard back from them and Ross of Friendster commented back on my Friendster blog the following:

“We’re sorry about the confusion and lack of information. We’ve focused our communication to our most-active bloggers. Unfortunately for you, that meant you were not emailed. We plan to make a general announcement in the coming week or so.”

Hmp! I’m hurt not being considered their ‘most-active’ blogger just because I have not blogged in Friendster for a year! LOL. I don’t know about that lousy excuse because two days after my comment on their blog, they finally announced the new format and sent out the same information to all members of Friendster who owns a blog via email! How much effort did they exert creating that simple post and email? I bet it didn’t take 5 minutes to create! So why they waited for over a week to transmit the announcement to non-active bloggers boggles the mind! In the first place, what’s the difference? Active or not active, when you get the announcement, it’s up for the user to react or not. Why hold the information to non-active bloggers?! Isn’t it as simple as hitting the SEND ALL button?!

Enough said on that.

P.S. Friendster Typepad didn’t have “tagging,” a key feature in Wordpress! So now all my old posts have no tags and I am too lazy to put any!!! Grrrr!

P.S.P.S. Would Friendster add more Wordpress themes please???

If you’re a blogger, you are probably using one or the other or in my case- both: Copyscape and Creative Commons. I have decided to tackle the subjects after receiving an anonymous comment on my previous post about the two (I am inimical to anonymous comments!! You have a name, for crying out loud use it!). It was an irrelevant note, from (I assume) a blogger with a Philippine IP address who just sort of ‘ordered’ me:

“You can not use copyscape and Creative Commons at the same time. Copyscape goes against sharing which is what Creative Commons is all about. search Free Culture Movement, open source, GPL, linux, IBM, Creative Commons are all part of the movement, copyscape is not because it is against it.”

Aaah, yeah… Nevermind the syntax! Earth calling nameless person! Aside from the fact that your comment was totally unrelated to my post, you have no idea what you’re blabbering about. Your comment is an absolute farce and the arguments totally neither here nor there. But thanks to you, I now have a blog post!

Copyscape is against sharing? You seriously need to have someone translate what you have been reading because your interpretation of the concept is out of this world! You are insinuating that Copyscape is THE bad guy because it doesn’t allow COPYING, STEALING or your term to put it subtlety, sharing. Your comment rather reads that you are talking “sharing” to actually mean copying or stealing as one and the same! By saying that, you are suggesting that Creative Commons is part of the movement that tolerates stealing or copying! Do you seriously believe that?

For the benefit of the lost confused nameless person, let me share what I know on the subject. To quote Bob Edwards, “a little learning is a dangerous thing but a lot of ignorance is just as bad.” I beg your indulgence as this post could get lengthy but I sure hope you will learn something from it.

Clearly I claim to be no expert on this but reading with understanding on Copyright, Copyscape and Creative Commons can go far. This is not rocket science! Some people just don’t “get it” (pun intended!) and that’s all right. I don’t get most things. However, there is more, much more to just copying and pasting the Copyscape and Creative Commons buttons to place on our blogs.

See most bloggers find the buttons, thinks it’s cool, copies the code and then that’s that. That’s not how it works! I know why I placed these banners on my website! There’s no excuse why one doesn’t know the purpose of it on their websites.

WHAT IS COPYSCAPE?

Copyscape is a TOOL.

It is not some kind of law or rule. It is not an agenda or part of any “movement”. It is just like any other BUSINESS website promoting something, in this case it is promoting a service to find duplicates of your content to protect you against online plagiarism and theft. Plain and simple. There have been contentions about its usage, purpose and usefulness because it is only afterall dependent on Google’s API- meaning it’s just the same as typing in keywords in Google as Copyscape uses the same database, therefore you get the same results!!

On the Copyscape website you are greeted with a search bar just like Google’s that says: “Search for copies of your page on the Web.” Half of the time, you get useless results because it does find ALL duplicates regardless if it’s just snippets of your own submission to MyBloglog, BlogCatalog, Technorati and other networking sites or quotes and references you made from other sites. It couldn’t tell the difference on what’s plagiarized or not- just duplicates of anything.

Since it is dependent on Google’s algorithms, it only shows you the latest popular and most recent duplicates it could find. What happens if the ones plagiarized are your posts from a year before that is not too popular? You’re doomed. Of course I wouldn’t know what happens when you get the premium service, how reliable the results will be extending your searches to limitless as opposed to just 10 free. I have no interest in paying $0.05 per search (Premium service) to find out if other people stole any of my articles or not. There are other ways to know for FREE.
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The much anticipated Journey 3-disc CD/DVD full album debuted at number 5 in the Billboard 100 and as of June 21, 2008- “Revelation” is currently number 6 and steady. It’s Single “After All These Years” is at number 21 at the Top Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks. *Listen to some of the tracks at the end of this article!

This independent record sold 104,000 copies on its first week of sales “marking the band’s biggest first week sales since 1996’s TRIAL BY FIRE,” according to Wal-mart stores- its exclusive distributor in the United States. How’s that for track record for Arnel Pineda’s international debut and Journey’s comeback?

What with the Revelation album itself? I wouldn’t say I was blown away on first hearing. Like wine, it has to age. As a ‘new’ fan, it’s a matter of taste and distinction. You either love it or dislike it! You’d have to listen to it at least twice to let the music grow on you- and that’s actually a good thing! It means the CD is that worth listening for without having to skip any tracks! And after having heard it, I must say that I like it!

Arnel Pineda truly deserves to be with Journey! He is the missing piece to this long aching band! Rediscovering Journey through Arnel Pineda is indeed a revelation. I can’t believe how great an instrumentalist Neal Schon is, and so are Deen Castonovo, Jonathan Cain and Ross Valory!
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B

elieve it or not, there’s only one exclusive Filipino Food Store in Massachusetts (MA).  With a Filipino population of a little over 10,000 scattered in and around Boston, that may not be not surprising (MA total population: 6.4 million). But with the Filipino’s innate entrepreneurial spirit, I find that unbelievable. I’ve always thought Filipinos created the concept of sari-sari stores (literally means mix-mix; a small assortment store selling goodies and what have yous).

a sari-sari store in the Philippines

photo credit: chitomadrigal.org

Naturally, I would think wherever we are in the world, no matter how small the number, there will always be one or two (sari-sari store) in the neighborhood. I guess it is only true in many parts of the West Coast (California et al) where there are over 1 million Filipinos therefore tons of market; therefore tons of Filipino stores! Read More »

When some middle aged adults begin to experience that their lives are not the way they wanted it to be and they have little time to change it, when they are on the verge of perhaps a midlife crisis, how does one gets his biggest break at 40 years old?

And when he does get it, how does one process fame, (fortune!) and glory coming from very humble beginnings, from surviving as a struggling musician singing covers of other people’s hits and now to becoming a bona fide international rock star performing beside legendary and iconic band as a front man?! How? Try being Arnel Pineda!

His is a story that could have been taken out of a Charles Dickens novel and as Arnel Pineda himself admits in a GQ interview: “My life is a fairy tale. But I’m awake, and I’m dreaming it.” His is a story of perseverance, hope and never stop believing in yourself! His is a true inspirational story of the 21st century not only for aspiring musicians but for everyone who dreams of making it.
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As if I don’t have enough widgets on my blog, I found another handy blog tool that I couldn’t resist having. The name is ROMlet.

ROMlet is a three in one widget: a brag badge, bookmarking tool and stats counter- for now. Who knows what other cool features this fresh website has yet to add since starting only a year ago? At a glance it looks as though it is just another blog social networking copycat but wait, there’s much more to it!

*Romlet is useful to both a blogger and their blog readers in multiple ways, despite the deceptive simplicity of the widget itself. Romlet helps a blogger quickly assess their own daily statistics and see their refering sources without logging into an analytics account. In turn, Romlet shows a blog’s reader the best buttons for bookmarking and supporting a blog. It also encourages readers to return to a site, out of curiosity bout refering sources.*

On its website, you can see “Currently Popular Articles on Romlet User Sites” which attracts you to click and read more- (like the Blogrush widget or Entrecard). It offers incentives to users by getting and giving referrals. It displays current and on-site information to you and your readers. It allows bookmarking of blog posts like Addthis; but unlike Addthis, *ROMlet automatically provides buttons that are up-to-date and relevant each time a visitor sees it. Like a FeedBurner readership badge, Romlet shows information about incoming visitors but is limited to one kind of statistic: number of feed readers. Romlet shows off the best statistics by displaying top referers at any given time.*

The process of registration and putting the widget on my blog was hassle-free! It took me about a minute to set everything up.

You’ll find yourself comparing it with a lot more blog resources available but you can’t deny it’s uniqueness. To go on, it works very much like MyBlogLog, Blog Catalog, Bumpzee, FuelmyBlog, RSS readers, Feedjit it, Stats counter among others but rolled into one, making it really another useful, relevant widget to have.

See the widget live on my right sidebar! Get your own and boost and boast your blog popularity!

* Information Source