Author: Rochelle Sy Chua

Get Gloo’d with Friends

Posted by Rochelle Sy Chua On December 5, 2009

I stumbled upon Globe Broadband‘s site today and I noticed that they have a new online tool. The tool is called Gloo. It is an online scrapbook, collaboration website which allows users to doodle and write things on a canvas in real time.

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The image above is my Gloo page hahaha! Pardon my weak artistic skills but you get the gist of what Gloo is about right?

Gloo is basically a place where you can collaborate with your friends & family. It is a cute & fun way to share stuff like images, text, videos, to do lists & messages. What’s best about it is that they are all done in real-time!

You can invite your friends to chat with you , doodle, share notes & watch movies together. Amazing how technology is really changing our lives these days, right? Very impressive!

You can achieve a lot if you’re using Gloo. Some examples on ways you can use Gloo are the ff.:

Online Travel Scrapbook – You can put photos, captions, cute messages & videos. You can collaborate with fellow travellers on the places you’ve been and you can enjoy watching it being edited real-time and relive the experience! 🙂
TV show or Celebrity Page – Are you a fan of a TV show and did you want to share your thoughts with the world? You can create your own TV show or celebrity page and collaborate with other fans around the world.
Homework or Projects – This is an excellent way to share stuff and help out on school work and even work projects. You don’t need to be physically together to work out your commitments. Gloo can be your ultimate collaboration tool for this purpose.
Integration with your Mobile Phones – This is cool! Once you have your Gloo space, you can send messages to your friends’ mobile phones. What’s more? You can even send any picture inside Gloo space and send it via MMS!

As for me, I collaborated with my iPhonePinas team using Gloo. We conceptualized on the logo for our new site and also shared what needs to be done next. Check bottom part of the screenshot. Those are the people behind iPhonepinas.com 🙂 Gloo is still in beta, but so far so good.

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I’m still playing around with Gloo but I can’t wait to share the good news with you! 🙂 Inquire about Gloo on Globe Broadband’s website to know more.

The DOs and DON’Ts of Blogging

Posted by Rochelle Sy Chua On December 5, 2009

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Last thursday night, I found out that 98% of my blog post was copied word for word including the original images in a Filipino-owned forum (only the image with me in it was removed). This resulted to my site losing a lot of traffic considering I was the only blogger who had a screenshot of the subject of my post. Google ranked the unauthorized copied post higher than the original and my post didn’t come out of search results.

While we can look at it as a form of flattery, it is still unethical. Sadly, it happens a lot in the online world. With this in mind, let me share with you some tips regarding posting stuff online. Hope this helps all of us while we continue with our online journey.

DOs & DON’Ts:

blog passionately, what excites you, what you know
ensure you follow your company’s guidelines on blogging (or else you might get fired)
respond to your commenters
put a disclaimer on your blog identifying how readers view your content, e.g. sign up for creative commons
always cite sources and links, including images
When you like something online and want to “quote” it, be sure to take only a snippet or at the most, 1 to 2 paragraphs then link back to the source.
obey copyright— is the text, audio, image or video you are including licensed under “fair use“?
When in doubt, *ask* the content owner for permission first.
Always be respectful whether you blog, disagree with other bloggers or when you comment.
Remember when you blog, you can also be sued for libel.
do not get the image link from another site and embed it on your own, even if you link back.
do not copy entire post and publish it on your website (even if you link back).
do not lie when you blog; readers can tell if you’re lying
do not spam other sites with your links.

These DOs & DONTs also could be applied to forums & social networking sites.

You can also checkout the ff. sites for tips on blogging:

Now, what if you find out that your content was stolen? Here’s what you can do:

Ask the person who stole your content to delete it
Report that your content was stolen (blog it! share it on social media)
Ask Google under DMCA provisions to block the offending site
If you still want to pursue legal action, seek the advice of a lawyer and be prepared for a long legal battle

PicPanda.com

The New Friendster is Finally Coming!

Posted by Rochelle Sy Chua On December 3, 2009

Few months back, I posted “is friendster getting revamped ?” Guess what? That time has come! We’re finally going to see some BIG changes to friendster. They’re on the comeback & it is happening tomorrow! 🙂

So login tomorrow afternoon and you’ll see a whole new Friendster. I myself liked it a lot as I’ve known about the changes for two months now. I’ve been itching to tell you dear readers about the changes! Of course, they asked us to keep quiet about it. Now, I’m glad we got the go signal to tell you! :D:D:D

Gosh! There are sssssoooo many changes! Where do I begin? This is the new, simpler, more fun Friendster that lets you connect and communicate with your friends:

easier to upload your photos
easier ways to find both current and new friends and their stuff
Enhanced Self Expression and Customization that lets you express yourself and personalize your Friendster profile and site experience
Far more Entertaining Content: you can now play games, share gifts and listen to music

let’s start with the fun and simple site:

Friendster has redesigned the site to focus on what people use it for the most: Shoutouts, friends, messaging, games, comments, profile editing, birthdays and bulletins. What else?

redefined homepage with focus on important user information: friends, new updates
simplified top navigation bar
top navigation bar helps you organize friends lists, profile and messaging and yes, games
comments and photos are now in the new activity stream

What’s the most exciting thing about friendster today? Let me tell you about the Gift Shop and the Wallet. The Gift Shop helps users show how much they care. They can send and receive special gifts. The Friendster Wallet gives users the ability to store money on Friendster, which they call, “Friendster Coins”. Friendster Coins can be purchased at convenience stores as pre-paid cards.

Friendster is looking to the future. Friendster Wallet & Friendster Coins are just the precursor. Friendster hopes to transform itself into a gaming portal. And lastly, these changes come with a new tagline that I think is perfect to describe the many changes of Friendster: “Connecting Smiles“

Finally, say hello to Friendster’s new logo. And yeah, they made donuts out of the new logo when they showed it to us! Yummy!

I obviously enjoyed it! This donut came from Krispy Kreme btw.

Here’s the official video from friendster about their new, simpler, more entertaining site:

So check friendster tomorrow afternoon when all changes go live and add me up as a friend!

Pictures from the events here & here.

Breakfast at Dongwu Hotel Taipei

Posted by Rochelle Sy Chua On November 30, 2009

æ±å³å¤§é£¯åº— Dong Wu Hotel Taipei
258, Section 2, Yan-Ping North Road, 103 Taipei, Taiwan
886 (02) 2557-1261

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Dong Wu Hotel Taipei is located at the heart of Taipei that is a small and elegant hotel. I enjoyed our stay there as it was clean, neat, quiet and has free wifi!!

We stayed there from September 18 to 21 and of course, free breakfast is included in our room rate. Every morning, we made it a point to go down to the basement to eat the buffet breakfast.

Non-hotel guests can also eat breakfast for 198NT.

It is an eat-all-you-can buffet that serves the usual breakfast items that we see in Taiwan. It’s just ordinary, nothing special but still, it makes our stomach full so we can be well and ready for our long day ahead 🙂

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By the way, my favorite is their congee. This one I really, really love! Don’t forget to put the condiments in the congee especially the bread. It makes a lot of difference on the taste.

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Before I forget to mention, the ambiance was really nice. They had bookshelves full of books, magazines and newspapers for us to read. They also have LCD television on display and cozy chairs for those who will be staying long, tinkering with their laptops.

More pictures here.

PicPanda.com

Taipei Story House

Posted by Rochelle Sy Chua On November 30, 2009

Taipei Story House
181-1, ZhongShan N. Road, Section 3, Taipei 10461, Taiwan
886 (02) 2587-5565
admission: 50NT

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Taipei Story House was built in 2003 by a tea trader as a museum dedicated to Taiwan life culture. The building was said to be inspired by a building a tea trader saw during his visit on the 1900 Paris Expo.

The Story House holds exhibitions, lectures, cultural performances & tea-related activities with the objective of preserving the heritage site, making it part of our modern life.

Located beside Taipei Fine Arts Museum lies Taipei Story House. The featured exhibit at the time I visited (September 18) was Story of Old Trees. I learned a lot about trees and its story. The exhibit ran from August 29 to November 29, 2009.

Taiwanese do have an utmost religious respect toward old trees but only a few do understand its importance. We’re all guilty of that right?

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Upon browsing through the museum pieces, I found one interesting fact: there are TREE doctors! There is even Tree Treatment Procedure, here it is:

Clinic Registration – a tree cannot tell us if it is well or not, so we would need someone to examine the trees to discover any problem then a tree doctor will be notified to visit the trees.
Diagnosis – a tree doctor will examine the appearance of the tree & collect information like soil hardness & acidity. A diagnosis will be made after much evaluation.
Treatment – a tree doctor will prescribe proper treatment for trees that might be infested by pests or other factors.

There were a lot of things being shared in the exhibit. Things like how to treat trees well, secrets of old trees, why trees are important & places named after old trees in Taiwan.

This was a truely unique experience! There were many interesting facts. It was a nice twist to the usual museum that Taiwan has..

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More pictures can be found here.