Crimson Crux

Splashpress Media, one of the companies I work with and a major player in the international blogosphere has recently relaunched its main site. Along with the sleek redesign came long-deserved profiles for its formidable team of managers, editors, and bloggers.

The Filipino blogging community is well-represented in Splashpress’ roster, with the most notable Pinoy being J. Angelo Racoma, SP Media’s Editor-in-Chief. Yours truly is listed as:

Phillip Kimpo Jr., Editor

A published literary writer, poet, and professional blogger, Phillip has taken over as Editor of both Blogger Jobs and Blog Network Watch and helped breathe new life into both blogs.

With its recent major acquisitions, the future does indeed look bright for the blog network. Here’s hoping for more great things to come for Splashpress and its publisher, Mark Saunders.

As longtime readers of this blog might know, I’m a sucker for all things Roman, specifically, Ancient Roman. (This interest manifests itself in Roman Empire video games, history books, historical fiction novels, and classic maps, among others.)

That said, I’m quite fascinated by the Rome Reborn 1.0 project under the aegis of the University of Virginia. The huge undertaking took a whole decade to complete and involves both a 3D digital model and a physical miniature model of the city. (Speaking of minis, you know I’m a sucker for them, too!)

To quote the Communications of the ACM article:

The $2 million project, called the largest and most complete simulation of an historic city ever created, allows visitors to view a side of the city unseen by ancient Romans.

For more info and tons of pictures and videos, visit the Rome Reborn website.

Thanks to J. Angelo’s heads-up on the recent speed upgrade of Sky DSL / Bayantel DSL (which has been rebranded as Bayan DSL), I’m now squeezing more juice out of my Plan 1699 connection. From a max speed of 768 Kbps, I’m now due for 1280 Kbps, which is burstable to 1536 Kbps during off-peak hours.

Existing users will need to call Bayan DSL’s customer service to get this free upgrade. Just dial 411200, or better yet, dial 171 from your Bayan phone (if you have one).

Update: Here’s what I got with Bayan’s Speed-on-Demand:

Know our Komiks.ph story here.

Each to his own, as they say, but if you would hear my unsolicited advice, it would be: Don’t use Dreamhost. Well, maybe, if you’re American or can easily threaten them with legal action. But if you’re from a Third World country, stay away.

A few days ago, I received my first cheque from Text Link Ads. Nothing big, but still a welcome addition to my residual income.

Just last month, I also received two cheques from ReviewMe, and because I haven’t really been doing many reviews (not enough time!), the income is pitiable. Fortunately, my Google Adsense earnings stepped up a bit after I got my first cheque way back in March 2007.

Now, if only I can inject more regular content into my blogs!

Great news (for the Pinoy blogosphere and me as well — go figure). A Filipina has placed Runner-up in the recently concluded Sandbox Designs Competition!

She’s no other than Sophia Lucero, whose Tiffany Blue got the nod of the judges. Congrats, Ia; I hope this provides you with an impetus to create more free blog designs.

Here’s the list of winners, culled from a talented field of 46 entries. Kudos to all of ‘em — great blog designs, guys. Here are my three favorites (aside from Tiffany Blue, of course):

• Blue Berry by Dean Robinson — gotta love the header
• Walk in the Shadows by Adam Freetly — sleek
• Essay by Ian Stewart — great for a writer’s blog

If you think that the Google, Yahoo!, and MSN search engines scour an already impressive expanse of the World Wide Web, think again.

In one of my favorite Communications of the ACM articles ever, Bin He, Mitesh Patel, Zhen Zhang, and Kevin Chen-Chuan Chang shed some light on the “Deep Web”, the huge chunk of the cyberspace that isn’t reached by search engines. This chunk consists of data in massive online databases, as opposed to static HTML pages that are easily crawled by the search engine spiders.

The CACM article (titled Accessing the Deep Web) cites figures from this whitepaper, which says, “The deep Web contains 7,500 terabytes of information compared to nineteen terabytes of information in the surface Web.” Whoa. We are missing out on a lot, then.

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Less than two months ago, I started writing for Gadzooki and Blog Tutorials, which in turn came on the heels of my new Performancing job. Well, I’ve just accepted two new offers, this time for Blog Network Watch and Blogger Jobs.

Both recently-relaunched blogs are also under the Splashpress Media network, which means I now write for five SP blogs.

Blog Network Watch is a source of news and developments regarding the blogosphere’s biggest blog networks. On the other hand, if you’re looking to start or expand your blogging career, Blogger Jobs will definitely help you out.

Be sure to pay me a visit there!

Last week, we launched one of our more ambitious blogs / web projects to date — Komiks.ph, a website created to showcase everything related to Filipino-created comics.

The Komiks portal is envisioned to serve as three things:

1. a blog featuring the Pinoy Komiks industry, from news and events to reviews and editorials, with a few foreign comic features thrown in;
2. a directory of Pinoy comic creators, from artists to writers to animators; and
3. a free blog host and subdomain service for comic creators, producers, and historians.

The first item is fully up and running, while the second’s still in the works. The last service is the one we are actively informing people about right now.

If you’re a Filipino comic creator (artist, inker, writer, etc.), an animator, or someone with a strong interest in chronicling Komiks industry news and events, we are offering you a free Komiks.ph blog, along with a matching subdomain (e.g. you.komiks.ph). Newbies and amateurs to the industry are highly encouraged! You can read our FAQ to learn more.

On the other hand, if you’ve already released a comic book/booklet/webcomic, bigtime or indie, we would be happy to feature your talents on Komiks.ph. Feel free to fill up our contact form and we’ll get back at you right away.

That said, we’d be eternally grateful to people who can help us spread the word, either through their blogs, forums, or mailing groups. (Many, many thanks to sir Gerry Alanguilan, who gave us a much-needed and much-treasured shot in the arm!)

One of our goals is to help inject more life and vigor (as well as draw more creators) into the Pinoy Komiks industry, in every little way we can. We’re only three people (yours truly, Ia Lucero, and Garro Garrovillo) running this project, so we’ll need every bit of help!

Visit Komiks.ph, the portal for Pinoy Komiks!

Shortly after accepting the problogging job at Performancing.com, I was approached by Pinoy problogger extraordinaire J Angelo Racoma to write for four more Splashpress Media blogs. To make a long story short, I accepted two and kindly declined the others (too much food to chew on already!).

Hence, I’m announcing on this good ol’ pseudo-tech blog that I’m now writing for Gadzooki, home to all things gadgetry, software, gaming, and cars, and Blog Tutorials, where you’ll get to pick up some tips for creating a successful blog.

I’ll be blogging alongside some real-life friends — Ia, Mia, Ariel, and my older cousin, Anne. To find out which blogs they’re writing for, you’d have to drop by Gadzooki and Blog Tutorials, as well as their sister sites Travelogger and Froodee.

To send you off, here are my first four entries on both blogs:

• Gadzooks! New Writers!
• Three Games to Watch Out For
• New Blog Tutor, Signing On
• Use Image Attributes to Boost Your Blog’s SEO