From Time Magazine: This year’s top 10 viral videos include a baby Darth Vader, a “nasty” honey badger, a 90′s crooner, an epic gigglefest and of course- Rebecca Black’s “Friday”

Imagine a country where the government is able to shut down Web sites at the slightest provocation, where elected representatives invoke fears of “overseas pirates” to defend the interests of domestic industries, and where Internet companies like Google must cave in to the demands of government censors or risk being shut down.

No, we are not talking about China, North Korea or Iran — we are talking about the United States, where legislators in both the House and Senate are attempting to push through new anti-piracy legislation by year-end that would benefit Hollywood at the expense of Silicon Valley.

Some of the most powerful players in Silicon Valley — Google, Facebook, Zynga, eBay, Twitter, Yahoo, and LinkedIn — have made their opposition to the bill public, even going so far as to take out full-page advertisements (“We Stand Together to Protect Innovation”) explaining their position. via Washington Post

If you are a blogger, a Tumblr, Wordpress, Blogspot user, have a Facebook , Flickr, Etsy, Reddit, Linkd or Twitter account, etc. –under SOPA, any site that contains user-generated content, could be held liable for copyright infringement and be forced to shut down until the offending content has been removed.

Website Blocking

The government can order service providers to block websites for infringing links posted by any users.

Risk of Jail for Ordinary Users

It becomes a felony with a potential 5 year sentence to stream a copyrighted work that would cost more than $2,500 to license, even if you are a totally noncommercial user, e.g. singing a pop song on Facebook.
Chaos for the Internet

Thousands of sites that are legal under the DMCA would face new legal threats. People trying to keep the internet more secure wouldn’t be able to rely on the integrity of the DNS system.

An ad that appeared in New York Times- November 16th issue: signed by Google, Facebook, Mozilla, Zynga, eBay, Twitter, Yahoo, LinkedIn, and AOL

Tell Congress not to censor the internet NOW! – fightforthefuture.org/pipa

PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites– they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”

The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill would cost us $47 million tax dollars a year — that’s for a fix that won’t work, disrupts the internet, stifles innovation, shuts out diverse voices, and censors the internet. This bill is bad for creativity and does not protect your rights.

Inspired by Guy Fawkes Night commemorated every year primarily in Great Britain, and brought into the spotlight in the movie V for Vendetta — Anonymous group vows to ‘destroy’ Facebook on Saturday, November 5th, 2011. How they are going to do it and will they succeed? I can not wait to find out!

I have not been active on Facebook at all until I got myself a smart phone with unlimited internet access and easy social network connect capabilities, now it is almost impossible NOT to be on it all the time! I would probably be secretly happy if they could in fact take down Facebook, DELETE it’s entire database!! That’s what I’d like. If only they could hack the social network even for a few hours, enough to remove forever its content then all users could start over. A clean slate!! Who wouldn’t want that?! It’ll give everyone an excuse to ‘unfriend’ and ‘unlike’ people and things forever!

Partial transcript of the video:

Attention Citizens of the World,

We are Anonymous. We wish to get your attention hoping you heed the warnings as follows. Your medium of communication you all so dearly adore will be destroyed. If you’re a willing activist or a guy who just wants to protect the freedom of information then join the cause and kill Facebook for the sake of your own privacy. Facebook has been selling information to government agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms so they can spy on people from all around the world.

#opfacebook . Engaged.

This is our world now. We exist without nationality, without religious bias. We have the right to not be surveilled, not be stalked, and not be used for profit. We have the right to not live as slaves.

We are anonymous
We are legion
We do not forgive
We do not forget
Expect us

Who are these people hiding behind masks?

According to good ol’ reliable Wikipedia: Anonymous (used as a mass noun) is a group initiating active civil disobedience and spread through the Internet while staying hidden, originating in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, representing the concept of many online community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic, digitized global brain. It is also generally considered to be a blanket term for members of certain Internet subcultures, a way to refer to the actions of people in an environment where their actual identities are not known.

Anonymous have taken down websites representing banks, religions, and governments. What or who could stop them from stopping the social giant Facebook?

Go Ahead, share this news on your Facebook wall! Doesn’t that sound odd?! LOL.

As if his prayer wasn’t enough to cause giggles and a few laughs, Songify This made a song out of the prayer and it became even funnier. “Pastor Joe Nelms gives a moving pre-race prayer in the form of a country song all men, women, & children can dance to,” YouTube uploader schmoyoho says of the video parody they created.

Have a listen to the Songify This version first:

Then watch the original version:

The clip has been viewed over 100,000 times in the first 24 hours it was posted on August 3rd and is spreading virally on blogs, email and social media. Only three days later today, it has already garnered over 700,000 views and counting!

I say timing is everything because upon further research on YouTube, this kid has been around in the popular uploading site being filmed by others who were also clearly impressed by his singing voice. This year and the video above may just be the key to get him noticed by Hollywood or who knows record labels! We expect this kid to appear on the Ellen DeGeneres show soon just as when Charice exploded on YouTube and she was flown from the Philippines to appear on the Ellen show not too long ago.

Here below in a 2008 video, the same boy is identified as that from an Aeta descent*, Arjohn Gilbert, singing the Coblie Caillat hit “Bubbly.” In another 2008 video, he is singing “Always be my Baby” by Mariah Carey.

In this 2010 video, user Jothan Gaetz is urging people to repost the video he took of Arjohn with another kid. His description explains his ultimate goal- to get Arjohn discovered:

” The boys in this video go by the name DJ Ryan, and Arjohn. Both of them are street kids in the Philippines. My wife and I befriended them recently, and Arjohn asked us to help him get discovered. Arjohn wants to be the next Charice. You can help him pull himself up out of poverty by reposting this video and watching it as many times as you can. If you are a record producer, please contact me, I can bring you to him. Find me on facebook under “Jothan Gaetz” “

This kid has been featured in a TV news program in 2009 channeling Rihanna and Mariah Carey!

Yet again in a 2009 short TV documentary, this kid’s talent is featured and highlighted. Why is this kid NOT discovered yet by record producers?! Timing is everything…

*Aeta: an indigenous people who live in scattered, isolated mountainous parts of Luzon, Philippines. They are thought to be among the earliest inhabitants of the Philippines, WIKI

When I finally surrendered to owning an android ‘smart phone,’ one of the things I was prodded to download was the “Angry Birds” game app– to my chagrin.

For the first few weeks, I no longer had free time! In fact, most of my time was spent playing the all too time-consuming, battery-draining addictive game! I finished all levels on the original game, up to “The Big Setup,” completed the Christmas, Halloween and Valentine’s “Seasons” version and perfected the “Smuggler’s Den” and “Jungle Escape” with all three stars (!) on the “Rio” version.

I was so happy that I got over it after that. I have not opened any of the “Angry Birds” app on my phone for sometime now. A few days ago, I came across an article on PC World entitled: “Angry Birds Hits the Web for Free, Yippee!” This was not good news for me at all! I of course went on to immediately install the game tailored for Google Chrome. Arrgh! Now it is on my notebook and one can only imagine how easily accessible it is right on your computer…

No Chrome browser? You can try the game on your Internet Explorer 9 and Mozilla Firefox 4.0 here. Be warned however, it may not always work! I tried it on Firefox and just says ‘loading’ forever.

Tip you should know if you start playing on the web: you can zoom in and out of the game by simply scrolling your mouse wheel!

Angry Birds has reached more than 140 million downloads worldwide. The hugely popular game debuted as an Apple iPhone app in December 2009. Did I mention it is addictive? It is addictive!

I’m a self-proclaimed shopaholic. I’m always a sucker for coupons, sales and deals and that somehow takes off the ‘guilt’ from buying too much! I shop online all the time and what gets me to pick a particular online store over another is free shipping or pick-up-in-store deals.

This is going to be a new section on this site. I’ll try to update as much as I can whenever I find a deal or coupon code for online shopping. I’ll also put in drawing and sweepstakes even though I have never won anything yet- ever! Links to free sampling too, why not?! Please NOTE: most promotions and deals are for US residents only. Here goes:

>> FREE Twilight Sticker packs: Team Jacob or Team Edward is still available at Cafe Press until December 31st. Get the link here.

>> Get FREE shipping on orders over $65 from CafePress

>> Not backing up your files? What and where to backup? Read my suggestions here. Or just get 2GB automatic online backup for free right away here courtesy of MOZY. This works as a referral so when you sign up, don’t forget to invite friends. For every friend who signs up, you get 256MB of free space. The more friends, the more free space!

>> SeeHere Online Photo Store Promotions
50% off all photo posters. Promo Code: poster-26. 25% off photo wall clocks.  Promo Code:  clock-2. 25% off photo water bottles. Promo Code:  gogreen-2. 30% off photo pillowcases. Promo Code:  pillowcase-1. Order now and receive free standard shipping! Orders must be placed between March 4, 2010 and March 11, 2010 at 11:59pm EST to qualify. Only one coupon code per order. Code must be entered at time of checkout to apply discount. Discounts have no cash value. Noted cost does not include shipping and tax charges.

Sweepstakes:

>> Win free Kotex® for one year

Win FREE Kotex for a year! O.K., so getting your period isn’t exactly like winning the lottery. But you can still win big with Kotex®. Every 28 days you have a chance at winning a year’s supply of your favorite Kotex® products. That means you can spend your cash on other important stuff like MP3s, shoes or maybe a year’s supply of chocolate.

>> Free Sample Kit of Sanitary products

>> Sign up to get a free BeingGirl Sample Kit. Just fill out a quick survey. Included in the kit are: 2 Tampax Pearl Tampons, 1 Compak Pearl Tampon, 1 Always Infinity Maxi-Pad, 2 Always Pantiliners, and 1 Always Feminine Wipe.

>> Free Two Luggage Tags from KLM

Throw away those boring luggage tags and give your baggage a new look by designing your own, unique tag. You can use a photo of your family, your favorite destination, or, to make it easier, you can choose from one of the images pre-selected by KLM.

Two tags will be made with your design to ensure you can easily recognize your bags among thousands of others. Or, you can give the tags to someone else as a gift.

* maximum of one set of two labels per person

>> Win a trip for two to Edinburgh, Scotland, including Airfare, hotel and admission tickets.

WIN a Scottish Festival. Enter once, click here.

Any computer user knows how vital it is to have a backup of all our important computer files. Any computer user also knows that even with the risk of losing valuable data, half the time we are not backing up as we should. We have many excuses for it, the same excuses we use for leaving something undone or unfixed: procrastination, do not have the time, too taxing, time consuming, no extra storage available, etc.

When calamity strikes, when something hit us without warning, we are only left crying and hitting ourselves for not doing what we should have done in the first place.

A family friend lost his over thousand dollars Macbook, his girlfriend’s notebook and his external hard drive when their apartment was broken in recently. More than the value of the computers and hard drive combined, expensive as it was, what they were most sad about was losing ALL their data on the machines. He just graduated and all his college files, research, papers counting 4 years were there. Years and years of vacation photos from all parts of the world, compilation of music, videos, digital files and documents- all gone. How do you put value to that? They are irreplaceable and priceless.

I was stunned by the news and seriously felt sick when I put myself in his shoes. I was speechless because I wouldn’t know how to deal with that kind of material loss. I wanted to cry right then while a tinge of panic struck me. I am NOT ready for that kind of loss. My computer is practically my whole life placed in an unprotected digital box! I’d go crazy if I lose ALL my files. I will probably not recover!

That was a kick in my butt and totally forced me to update my own backups ASAP!

What to back up?

Backing up EVERYTHING may not be a great solution if you’re like me who loves to take hundreds of photos of one event, stores even the crappy and silly ones, record TV shows, rip music and movies into digital files, and keep documents even from 10 years ago! We have a home server with 2 Terabytes (TB) full of those plus four 500GB external hard drive and counting. But paranoid as I am, I still want to keep a backup of a back of a backup! I have made DVD backups of my photos and music and realized I stopped in 2008. I have no back up at all of any of this year’s events and this is the last month of 2009! I have been all over the US this year and the accumulated pics are huge and no backups? YAY! I will not be able to recreate those moments and memories and I will probably not go back to any of the places I already visited so I need those backups.

Backup what’s important to you. Ask yourself every time: if I lose this data, will I be absolutely, positively ok with it? Will I recover? If you answered yes, then it’s probably not worth backing up. But if your answer is a resounding NO! Then by golly, back it up!

Location. Location, Location!

Where to back up files? The most sensible and easiest thing to do of course is to have an external hard drive attached to your notebook with a ‘mirror’ of what’s on your computer. However, as my friend’s case was, his back up being an external hard drive was stolen too! If you really value your files and you’ll die or go crazy like me if you lose them, then backup a backup of your backup!

>> Put aside an external hard drive that you do not use other than to backup files. Place all your important data there and hide it. Keep it in a locked filing cabinet, a hidden drawer, wherever it is that is not easily visible and or that you’re the only one who has access to it. Every month, put it out and update the files or add more files to it. Then hide it again. For smaller data, use a USB flash or thumb drive. They’re very small and easy to hide or carry.

>> On top of the ‘hidden’ external hard drive, create DVD copies of your files. External hard drives CAN FAIL AND WIPE OUT YOUR DATA! There is nothing like a DVD backup. As long as you keep it clean and scratch-free, it will continue to read your files.

This isn’t full-proof. What if the thief still found your hidden place? What if your dog ate it? What if your house burns down?!! What if…?

>> Find a friend or relative that you can trust and leave copies of your backup to them, either an external hard drive or DVDs for them to keep.

>> Rent a safety deposit box! (Too expensive!)

>> Put it in the trunk of your car! (Your car could be stolen too! The humidity and temperature could affect your hard drive also- too hot or too cold or too damp!)

>> Leave your backups in your workplace if you have keys to your own drawers. (Of course the building where you work at could be hit by a UFO and gets buried underground…!)

>> Carry it around wherever you go! Strap it to yourself. (This is extreme and something I have yet to do- maybe when I become that irrational…)

THE BEST SOLUTION?

Simple. Automatic. Secure. Fast. Safe. The answer is Online Storage. The key feature here is peace of mind. Online storage solves every scenario I have presented earlier about the limitations of an external hard drive or DVDs. The question now is how much are you willing to spend for that peace of mind and assurance?

Well for starters, it could be FREE! Free is always great; even better when there are no strings attached. I have searched the internet for the best online service that can store all types of files. Photo sharing sites like Flickr.com or social networking sites Facebook or Friendster while it stores your photos, are also meant to be shared to the world. You wouldn’t want to bore people by showing them 20 poses of you that you won’t delete taken in one same spot, would you? These sites are also just limited to keeping photos, same goes with online photography stores like Snapfish, Seehere, Kodak and Shutterfly that will store your photos provided you order from them at least once a year or they will delete them or something like that.

The two best online storage I have found that really works and are FREE and which I have been using for over a year now is: ADrive and Mozy.

ADrive gives a remarkable 50GB FREE storage! With the Basic plan intended for individual or personal use, you already have the essentials to store, backup, share, and edit documents online. The Basic plan also features:

• Universal Access
• 50GB Storage Capacity (per account)
• File Sharing
• Folder/Directory Upload
• File Download
• Easy Search Tool
• Remote File Transfer
• International Character Support
• Zoho® Editor

They offer two paid plans starting at $6.95 a month or $69.50 a year.

The good:

>> FREE 50GB. That is a lot of storage!

>> No annoying pop-up ads. The ads in the free plan is not over powering or not too distracting.

>> No setup fee, no monthly payments, no credit cards, no hassle. Fast registration.

>> You can share the file with anyone.

>> You can download the files back on your computer again.

The downside:

>> They don’t offer automatic backups for the free service (of course).

>> You have to manually upload each file/photo to a folder you create in your account. The upload tool uses java which allows you to select as many photos as you would like for one upload up to 1000 files. However, as I find out, this is most unreliable because your system or their system could time out base on you internet connection and once you’re disconnected, your upload stops and even if it says 98% or 600 files copied out of 1000, sometimes the files aren’t copied at all and you still end up re-uploading those files. To avoid the hassle, I keep the upload to 50 files/photos at a time.

>> During the upload, you can’t switch between tabs to view other websites. (But you can always open another Firefox browser for the fix.)

>> They just added an extra security to prevent bots from logging in. A human verification to key in numbers that are very hard to read is required every log in.

>> They log you out when idle even only after a short time. I end up logging in every half an hour I think, which is cumbersome after awhile especially having to key in the verification keys every single time!

>> No referral system. I love referrals! Nice to get something back for your efforts.

MOZY! I love Mozy.

The good:

>> No setup fee, no monthly payments, no credit cards, no hassle. Fast registration.

>> Designed to work as a backup from the get-go. After the quick install, it gets to work of backing up checked files at once.

>> Works quietly in the background. Install and forget. Even after a reboot or shutdown, it starts itself. Doesn’t suck up the CPU or take up space in your machine.

>> Shows up a dialog box when a backup is successfully completed. (Option to hide)

>> Can configure right in your desktop without going to your account and log in on their website. Check and uncheck the folders you want backed up.

>> Unlimited backup for personal users is only $4.95 a month! Something to think about when the need to have more space arises.

>> Does referrals! So yes, let me invite you to join and sign up for Mozy today. For a limited time, for every person that clicks on the link here and starts using Mozy, we’ll both get another 512MB of free backup space. That’s right, we both get the extra space! That’s 1GB of free space for every two people! There is no limit on the free space we can get. So go ahead, sign up and invite friends so you get to have more free space. It all adds up. The regular free space for every referral is 256MB.

The Downside:

>> Only 2 GB free! (But with the referral system, we can get more!)

>> Not sure if in the paid service you could do this. But you don’t get to see the files that were supposedly backed up in your account. No way of knowing but fingers crossed– that the files checked to be backed up are actually there when you do need to restore them because they said so.

Conclusion:

What Adrive lacks Mozy provides and what Mozy lacks, Adrive has. I recommend use of the two services. Together I think it will best fit a regular computer user’s needs for backup- at least to backup some of the important ones anyway. Do what you have to do to protect your precious memories by backing up in whatever form or all of it.

I still have my physical backup on hand here at home, my external hard drives, the home server and the DVDs. The online storage is yet another way to appease my fear of losing my data.  We can never replicate those moments captured in images and videos. If you lose them, you lose a major part of the memories. What are we going to show to our kids and grandkids when we grow old? We forget. We need visual and auditory help to recall when unable to. We need our music, videos and photos to remember.

Back up your data with Mozy and save 10%!

“For A Limited Time only, so hurry…”

Mozy is a simple and safe way to back up important stuff on your computer. A copy of your data is stored in a secure, remote location; in the event of disaster your data is still retrievable.

Just type in SHAREMOZY at checkout and save 10% on a MozyHome Unlimited annual or biennial subscription!

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We all have seen these happen. People who were virtual unknown catapult to instant stardom beyond their wildest imaginations simply for putting out there a 2-minute or so video on YouTube. Bear in mind, YouTube was non-existent 4 years ago. Since its inception in February 2005, the way most of us ‘view’ life revolved around watching those clips, forwarding it, talking about it, blogging about it- next thing you know, the video has gone viral. Case in point the very recent Wedding Entrance march/dance video of the Heinz raking over 10 million views in less than 2 weeks.

YouTube has channels for everything- comedians, directors, gurus, musicians, reporters, entertainers, politicians and the ordinary ‘Youtuber’ further subdivided into regular viewers, those who have real talent like Charice, those who don’t, those who are desperate for attention or just plain crazies.

How does one video stand out amongst the thousands of uploads every minute? Remember the “Thriller” video performed by 1500 prison inmates in the Philippines? This was uploaded in 2007 and still rank among the most popular videos on YouTube currently with 31 million hits. How about the very funny “Evolution of dance”? Uploaded by comedian Judson Laipply in 2006 with 123 million views.

Or Noah Kalina’s self-portrait everyday photo?

Then Bree aka Lonelygirl15 anyone? This video blog was later exposed as mere fiction, meaning Bree is not real and was just a character played by Jessica Lee Rose.

Who could forget Gary Brolsma, the “Numa numa” guy singing “Maya hee, maya haha (Dragostea din Tei by O-Zone)”? Somehow the original video is no longer available on YouTube but according to “BBC article dated November 27, 2006 the original Numa Numa video has been seen over 700,000,000 times worldwide – making it the second most viewed viral video in the world,” says Gary.

Of course there’s Fil-ams Rin on the Rox, Erin and Roxanne whose channel was suspended by YouTube for supposed copyright violations but more like because the duo got “too” famous…

I have no talent in video editing and I’d rather hide in my writings as a blogger than face the camera. Let me rephrase that, I have no real talent whatsoever! So you wanna be an internet star? Knowing a few tricks will put you on the most-viewed list in no time. Check out this helpful video I found to get you started.

Below is a video for newbies who have never uploaded anything yet but are planning to.

Remember, all the successful videos have something special in them, something unique. The videos must make you feel something after watching. If you can make a viewer sad, cry, laugh, smile, emotional, happy or feel anything at all- the effect of one person feeling that would double as soon as he/she hits forward and then instantaneously, the video is spread throughout the world in minutes and days. Best of luck!

This is the best Entrance Wedding March or should I say dance, I’ve ever seen. It is so original and creative if not funny. Somehow in its humor, I was very touched because it felt real. Weird. I was laughing but it was so sweet I wanted to cry too. LOL! Everyone was genuinely happy as it should on one’s wedding day, including the guests. Awesome!

In just a week since its upload, the video has received over 6 9 million views/hits with a five star rating from over 3747 thousand YouTube members with over 35 50 thousand and counting comments! Already, user “TheKheinz” channel enjoys being the #2 – Most Subscribed (This Week) and #19 – Most Subscribed (This Month) on You Tube’s ranking. Pesky users and impostors also have already come up with copied videos of the original in the hope of getting hits and subscribers- very lame and shallow. They ought to be ashamed.

Below is the original version. please only forward or link with the original author in You Tube. Enjoy!

UPDATE: Shucks, they’ve disabled the embedding feature. Kindly click on the video to go to You Tube. It is working again. Watch it here!

Music: “Forever” By Chris Brown

JK Wedding Entrance
“Our wedding entrance dance to Forever…yeah, forever. It took place at a Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota.”

- The Kheinz

I was reading some of the comments on Youtube and was surprised to see some were negative and were not getting it at all. Lighten up people! This is done with love, respect and sincerity– that some couples in most ‘serious, conventional, and rigid’ ceremonies can only dream of on their wedding day. As for the song choice, “Forever” fits for a perfect wedding song- unfortunately it is associated with Chris Brown. Most people are appalled by what Chris did to Rihanna and so some commenters are ‘condemning’ this video for using the track. Still…

Thanks to my sis, Wena for forwarding this viral email! It made my day. I’m still smiling and have watched the video 5 times!

MORE UPDATE: August 5th

From Reuters: A video clip showing the traditional wedding procession reworked into a dance routine involving the entire wedding party is one of this year’s biggest viral video sensations.

July 27th

The NBC Today Show featuring Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira sure did not waste any time. On recent episode, the “TheKheinz” are introduced in the show and the following day, have the entire dance crew recreate the Wedding march scene on the Today show plaza in New York. Instant ‘fame’? Certainly. Kevin Heinz and Jill Peterson look like a happy couple that they are on that viral video.