Category: Technology

WiniLa – Spend Small, Win Big

Posted by Rochelle Sy Chua On April 7, 2010

I stumbled upon The WiniLa auction site today and I wasn’t even aware that there could be an auction site like it. It was all new to me but I opted to share with all of you today since I really do find it very unique. We can discover the site together.

WiniLa is an online auctioning site where people can bid for the gadgets & accessories in the market.

The concept is really fairly new to me. Since the bidding increment is set in each auction you take part in, it makes the bidding process even more simple, and actually a bit more fun too.

With this process, the average daily discounts on the hottest electronic goods & accessories can be as high as 80% on products like Playstation 3, Wii, XboX, Blackberry, iPhone, iPod, Mac Mini, Apple TV, Sony digital cameras, and Nokia mobile phones.

There’s just 3 easy steps to remember when joining WiniLa:

Register for free.
Choose & buy a Bid package.
Select a Product & Bid on it.

The auctions can be on 1, 2, 5, or 10 cent increments, which makes the bidding process a bit more fun since you are most likely to bid more than once, twice, or even a greater number of times. The process seems complicated, until you really think about it and try it out yourself.

From the Winila Website:

Bids cost only $0.50 each. If you place a bid for your desired product the auction price increases by 1, 2, 5 or 10 Cents. To give another user the chance to win, we reset the clock to a maximum of 20 seconds. When the clocks goes down to zero and noone else placed a bid – congratulations, you are Winilished: you’ve won!.

It’s a unique auction experience, because you already know by how much each bid will increase the total bid price by, which is really very innovative compared to other auctions sites out there. And plus, where else can you participate in penny auctions that go up by only a penny each time!
If you have time on saturday (April 10, 2010), WiniLa will have its launch at the Domination IV event at the SMX Convention Center. A special live auction will be held at the WiniLa booth for its registered users. The products up for bid this Saturday will be iPods, Skullcandy headphones, Samsung 19â€ LCD, Sony Playstation 3 Slim, PSP Go, and other items.

e-games domination iv

The ff. are the list of features of being a registered user in WiniLa:

Choose from different bid-credit packages that suits your budget
Engage in auctions that start at a price of zero
Buy an item outright without bidding
Use an automated Winbroker who will do the bidding for you
Ease of use with multiple bid windows

Sounds interesting right? Since registration is free, why not give it try? I’m registering now as I write this post. Looking forward to place my first bid.

Official Website of Rochelle Sy Chua on media, events, travel, food and restaurant experiences in Taipei, Taiwan, Manila, Philippines and Asia.

iPhone App Review – Tawag Pinoy

Posted by Rochelle Sy Chua On March 6, 2010

This is the 1st pinoy application I downloaded on my iPhone. I must say that after just 5 minutes of using it, I’m impressed. Soooo impressed that I can’t help but brag about it. Filipinos are truly talented individuals. Hats off especially to Yves Gonzalez of Giro Apps who created Tawag Pinoy, such an awesome (I shall say it again, AWESOME) iPhone application.

Tawag Pinoy (Filipino Calls if translated in english) is an application that we can use in replacement of the default iPhone Contacts app. The thing that I like about Tawag Pinoy is that the application was specifically made to cater the needs of the people living in the Philippines.

My most favorite feature in this iPhone application is that it automatically sorts our address book contacts by carrier. By carrier meaning we can look at our list of contacts through Globe, Smart, Sun, Landline or all carriers. This is a feature that I’ve been wishing for in an application. Mainly because I’m a sun subscriber & since most of my friends have 2 cellphone numbers, sometimes I ended up texting their globe number even though they have their own sun number. You see, with Sun Cellular, my plan included unlimited calls & text to fellow sun subscribers. So Tawag Pinoy definitely addresses my need on this aspect.

Tawag Pinoy also comes with a T9 keypad that can help us search for our contacts easily. You just press some numbers then automatically any contacts who has those numbers in their phones will come up. Uber cool to the maximum level! Pardon me for my enthusiasm but I just downloaded the application and it’s just made of awesomeness!

Lastly, we can create our own group in Tawag Pinoy as well as add individual contacts as favorites. Pretty neat and it helps us to be more organized with our address book. I love it! 🙂

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Tawag Pinoy is as perfect as it is. There’s just one thing that I’ve been wishing the iPhone to have. I’ve always wanted to see the picture of my contacts in my text messages.

Can the developer make this? Let’s see…

Tawag Pinoy is available at the iTunes App Store for $1.99.

If you wanted to try out the application without purchasing it first, then Tawag Pinoy-Tipid Edition is for you. You’d be able to try the full features of Tawag Pinoy for 30 days then decide if you want to purchase the full version.

If you ask me, I’d say go buy the full version. It’s super worth it! 🙂

Official Website of Rochelle Sy Chua on media, events, travel, food and restaurant experiences in Taipei, Taiwan, Manila, Philippines and Asia.

My 1st Ever Tweetup

Posted by Rochelle Sy Chua On January 13, 2010

Last January 9, 2010, I attended my 1st ever Tweetup! I was very happy that I did. I met a lot of twitter friends personally. It was just so nice to be able to see your tweetmates in person. I really think tweetups can be more personal and bigger friendships could be formed.

For those of you who aren’t too familiar with twitter, it is a social networking and microblogging site. It allows us to share our thoughts in 140 character messages or tweets, as we call them. Think of it as a single text message but online. In fact, in other countries, you can send sms to twitter to appear as tweets.

Twitter is a bit addicting, really. I can’t go on a day without posting tweets. It can either be replying tweets from other people, sharing relevant links from different websites or just sharing news.

A few weeks ago, I saw several people i follow on twitter tweeting about a tweetup on Ayala Park. That was last December 2009. Unfortunately, I was too lazy that day to drive all the way to Makati. (Hey! In my defense, I was on vacation!). So anyway, I ended up sleeping instead and tweeting online. I later regretted not going. I was so excited when @mcmanoloto and @ssowy were tweeting about the next tweetup! And yes, I made sure to join 😀

haha! I was a bit late, ok I was late by 30 minutes. I only saw @mcmanoloto there at the time. At first I thought that this tweetup was going to be a bit of a disaster as the people who confirmed weren’t coming. A few minutes later, people were starting to arrive! Awesome right? Here we are 1 hour after the meeting time:

It was amazing. People just kept arriving and I felt so sad that that I was so pressed for time. I had another appointment to attend so I had to say goodbye & wasn’t able to join my tweetup friends for lunch. 🙁

Anyhow, I had the taste of what tweetup was like! 🙂 I must say that I loved it! It reminds me of the eyeball days when MiRc was still popular. I’ll make sure to attend the next tweetup! Holler to my twitter friends! 🙂

More pictures from the tweetup here.

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