Formspring

Posted by Clang Reyes on Nov 23, 2009 in Announcement, Blogging | 1 comment

Hey there Pinoy Teens readers. One of my favorite Tumblr bloggers is using this thing called Formspring.  It’s an avenue for her readers to ask her questions of all sorts–mostly linked to her area of specialty and some personal questions.  I thought of incorporating this thing in Pinoy Teens and I’m actually game for it!  Haha.  But if many people do like it, I think it might convince people like Kevin and Princess to have their own Formspring accounts too.  Basically, Formspring will enable you to ask Pinoy Teens authors their opinions about teen issues or whatever lang talaga!  :)  I thought of this since nahihiya ako kay Kevin na I’m not able to write a lot so much so maybe I can make up by doing this question and answer thing.  Well anyway, I will just bring up the idea to Kevin if this blog post garners many positive comments expressing enthusiasm about the idea.  Answers to questions will be posted in the blog during Fridays.  What do you think?

Software Freedom Day 2009 prepost

Posted by Kevin Paquet on Sep 15, 2009 in Wazzup? | 0 comments

Software Freedom Day is an annually celebrated event for Free and Open Source Software. This years SFD is on September 19 and will be held at UIC Davao. (in Davao) But is also celebrated in other places in the world.

It is that time of the year again when Free and Open Source Software advocates gather around and talk about various open source projects that they could benefit from. Davao City is no exception to this kind of celebration, nor is Davao new to something like this. It’s the Software Freedom Day 2009 that I’m talking about, an event that is simultaneously hosted worldwide.

This years SFD – Davao host is the University of the Immaculate Conception (Bankerohan) and will be this coming 19th of September which is a Saturday. Coincidentally, it is also the same date as WordCamp Philippines that will be held at the Asian Institute of Management in Makati City. I’m glad to be part of the FOSS advocates here in Davao City, and to be able to share my few words and views about free and open source blogging with WordPress, and yes, I’ll be there talking about blogging in an open source world yet again.

Unlike last year, I look forward not to debate with other bloggers about which blogging platform / service is best for you, but rather introduce WordPress from the very start so that everyone can understand the software better and find it more easier to use. I’m not sure if I can give away prizes this time around. My slides are almost done, and I’ll be sharing them on my Personal Blog later on. Basta, expect some input about WordPress and Blogging Basics and probably SEO as well. :p

Here’s the list of the talks that you can expect to hear about:
Keynote Speaker: Hon. Councilor Pete Lavina

Teaching Open Source in the University – Dominique Gerald M. Cimafranca
For the past year, Dominique Cimafranca has been teaching Open Source Technologies, Information Security, and Operating Systems as subjects in Ateneo de Davao University. He talks about the challenges he faced, the strategies he used, and the response of the students.

Free Software and Issue Advocacy – Victor Sapar
Vic Sapar, a well known advocate for the use of FOSS among NGO’s will be presenting his experiences in promoting FOSS to NGOs. He will tackle issues that hinder the mass adoption of FOSS and suggest ways to mitigate such problems.

Laptops for Education:  The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project
Last Year, DabaweGNU won in the best event competition together with 2 other organizations.  The prize was a pair of OLPC laptops.  The educational theory and features of the OLPC will be presented  during SFD 2009.

Blogging in an Open Source World – Kevin Paquet
His talk in last years SFD 2008 was one of the memorable ones. He was still a high school student then. More mature and with more bullets this time, he will be presenting the latest updates and features of his favorite Blogging platform, WordPress.

Business Intelligence – Evamay dela Rosa
Computer applications and systems are often used to manage operations.  Only a few are being used for business intelligence and decision making.  Evamay will present the importance of business intelligence and available FOSS tools for its implementation.

IdeaCamp: Open Sourcing Ideas – Mark Maglana
IdeaCamp is an unconference of ideas initiated by Mark Magalana.  In this presentation, Mark will talk about the rational of the project and share his experience in organizing an Ideacamp.  He will also share best practices on how to setup your own ideacamps.

Network Booting and Virtualization – Holden Hao
This will be a demo presentation. Holden will present the FOSS technologies that are currently deployed at the DabaweGNU laboratory. This includes network booting (no hard drives required!) and virtualization. The platform has proven to be an affordable and easy to manage setup for a computer laboratory. And Yes, the platform supports Windows too!

Lightning Talks
Lightning talks are mini presentations that are open to anyone who would like to share anything about FOSS philosophy, technology, community and issues.  The participants to SFD 2009 is highly encouraged to share their knowledge and skills.

For more information, feel free to visit Dabawegnu.Org

Ten Things I Learned from the SEO drought

Posted by Kevin Paquet on Aug 24, 2009 in Blogging Tips | 3 comments

It is no secret that Pinoy Teens is flushing down the stream once again, continuously, without even a single positive sign to end the burden that I have experienced the past three months, and intensively witnessing the past month and a half, it’s no wonder, why Pinoy Teens is under this SEO drought and I think that it has its reasons, the reasons that I’ll be sharing in the realizations that I have made.

Ten Thoughts why I have this SEO Curse

At first, I can’t barely come to think why I have this blessing in disguise and how it could affect my blogging, I know I’m lazy to do a lot of stuff but I surely have to change my style

1. I need to blog hop more often to have other blogs
2. I need to use my 45,000 and growing entrecredits
3. I should start my so-called Social Media Marketing and do it more extesively
4. I should not rely on (Google) Search Engine Visitors only
5. There’s more to money than the (dominant but still #1) Adsense
6. I need to get back to the ground and do things that I have done before. which includes..
7. Just writing.
8. Writing.
9. and writing.
10. I should not worry about visitors not finding my site, but find visitors to see my site.

Search Engine Optimization does you only good when you play well (especially in Google), but if you don’t what will you do? Many people just rely on the visitors from the search engines, and it is very reasonable when you get around 4,000+ visitors on average just because of these people finding your sites through search engines, but what if; one day you’re gone, pulled out, removed or penalized by the Search Engines?

You can’t make Google your bread and butter

You can’t actually make any search engine your bread and butter! You should do what a blogger at first does, visiting other blogs, socializing with people, promoting their content on social networks and social media sites, looking for new ways to gain related back links for their website and the likes. You can’t just write, hit publish and hope for the best every time. I know that fairly well from my own experience when I had to extend my off-site optimization for the Manny Pacquiao post that has earned me 16,000 pesos in just a day and a half.

It doesn’t means your nothing

When you do not do well in search engines, it doesn’t mean that you are not interesting to people, it’s just that people can’t find you and that is why you have to reach out to them, a good start doing so would be befriending other bloggers link to their related articles and discuss them on their site, make them get hooked to your content and have them as your friends. Having a friend or two like these comment on your post always boosts your confidence because you know that there are people who are interested in reading your content, so if these people are, then why not the thousand others?

Search Engine Optimization should only be the secondary pick of yours, bloggers need to engage with the online community, just like bloggers engage in national events through their blogs, you can’t expect everyone to find you among the many competition that you have, you need to do something to stand out, and that is taking that extra mile to reach your visitors.

It’s not a big realization but it is a vital one and a good sign to get it back on track, don’t you think?

Adsense, oh dear adsense.

When you start having visitors who also blog, you cannot hope that these people will ever gonna click on any ad on your website. And you can’t do a thing about it. It just depends on you, if you’re greedy for the money or if you would like people to get informed and find your site useful; rather than clicking away on an ad which appears more interesting to them. Truly, I’d rather have strangers from search engines click an ad than people indirectly looking up your site from incoming links. It’s shameful to think, that these people were referred by other sites, and clicked to you because they believe you are interesting, only to know that they clicked away to read some advert that is more of their taste.

Back on Entrecards

Posted by Kevin Paquet on May 2, 2009 in Announcement | 0 comments

My blogs particularly my Personal Domain which moved to studentblogger.net has been always part of the Entrecard Community from the first weeks it started between the third and fourth quarter of 2007. This community, or should I say, well-rounded network of bloggers of various niche and kinds has been the backbone traffic provider to my blog in times search engines appeared to be less interested in the content I wrote, it was there when I started gaining friends, building competitions, and always seeking to be better than those idols of mine.

Entrecard did not only gave traffic which was of decent quality nor did it only provide me with all the bloggers who are just like any other blogger, trying to provide most exposure for their blogs, it has been a place were I learned to be confident about my blogging and the stuff that I provide to my readers. There have been thousands of high quality websites, while others fail at certain ends, all I had to do was to correct their mistakes and I was on the right path again.

I have been misled to the wrong position when I left the community, I was no one big, no one too small, just that I was invisible and out of touch for them (I was ashame you know). I feared to get rejected when going into the discussion with someone of them, and I feared to end up standing out in an displeasing way. I followed some other users of that site, who also decided to leave the walls of entrecard for reasons of low quality traffic, no time to drop and more; it has been one big mistake that I have done, and need to correct now, that’s why I returned to one of the first blogging and social communities that I have been part of in my 2 year online career; hoping to shine brighter, and move further.

Anyone on EC who would like to be my friend? Exchanging RSS Feeds, Comments, or being Loyal Droppers? Or let me ask you, if someone knows about me? I believe that the community on Entrecard has always been kind despite the negative reputation I hear against them round the blogging sphere. So, prove it to me and say hi below in the comment form

Update: Design & Author

Posted by Kevin Paquet on Mar 14, 2009 in Announcement, Featured Article | 3 comments

I’ve been busy for the past two weeks, examinations, projects, and everything else that could bump my way has come my way, really. The blog hasn’t earned me a cent in February, I need to make a few cents out of it to keep my hosting bills green, and that’s why I’ll be back on blogging and blog about the topic that I do best blog about, and that’s blogging itself. Just that I won’t get a new domain under my ass to get things started, but blog on this domain name of mine, pinoyteens.net.

There has been a lot of changes in the past couple of days on this domain name, for those who have been visiting us frequently, you might have noticed the huge change in design on our blog page, for those who are here for the first time, welcome to the newly designed Pinoy Teens Online.

Indeed, the design looks much simple and very unprofessional, but that is exactly what persuaded me to use this design. I needed to grab something more simpler and user friendly, vibrant color to stick to the concept, as a blog for teens, even if the topics often go beyond the teenager zone and reach as far as entertainment concerns. But that’s just one aspect that I will be working on.

Aiding me in the revival of this blog will be my dearest friend Izy Mae, as she’ll be handling topics about online games and related content that will bring out the gamer in you. There are still going to be a few design changes here and there and of course, a new link page where all the links are going to be placed. I’ll be roaming around at other blogs again to get their links up here whilst we can get ours up on their website. It’ll be a though call but I’ve made it once before about a year ago, and I strongly believe that I can repeat the fame that this blog once has brought me, even if I won’t get the fame that I once had through blogging on this domain, I hope that the day will come where I can say at least, “I’m loving blogging again..”, which I really ain’t loving this very moment I am writing.