Software Freedom Day 2009 prepost

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

Discussing: Blog Design

I’m a newbie when it comes to Blog Designs, or should I say to designs in general? I can’t do anything but a bit of html on our themes and work around some WordPress codes, but who cares? My friend and I have gathered here at my house to discuss a few points about Blog Designs in general.

The first thing that came to my mind was questioning him, what he would prefer, paid, sponsored or free^GPL themes? And he answered straight back that he is in favor of Free Themes.

In WordPress Designs, or Blog Designs, rather; it doesn’t really matter what you offer your readers in terms of blog design, it’s still the content that counts, but having a blog design that suits the eyes of your readers and the niche of your blog is a great bonus, including strategic placement for advertisement. But who cares?

I have been left unsatisfactory a couple of times, the Revolution Theme and Revolution Two Series which gave me an headache in terms of getting the theme edited and the RevolutionPRO Media specifically in terms of server load caused because of all the customization that I applied. During these times, the quality of my posts has declined, and hey, it has really affected my blogging, but who cares?

[Read more]

Revolution Two launched

I was supposed to study my lessons tonight, make the final edits for my WordPress & Blogging Tutorials Page, and write 5 posts other than this, but I can’t hold myself no longer to share you some good news from yes, the WordPress Blogging World again.

As you know, WordPress has some cool and quality Themes available scattered on the world wide web. Created by famous names like Brian Gardner for example. Brian is the one behind the scene of the Revolution Theme Series that really lifted up WordPress to a new level and gave it that special CMS kick.

I can say that we here at Pinoy Teens are pretty lucky, because we are one of those websites that are running a valid version of one of the Revolution Theme Series, specifically the Revolution Pro Media theme that we’ve won at a contest a couple of months ago. But the emphasis of the Revolution Series is not the center of attention that I want to bring up.

Brian Gardner paired up with yet another Premium Theme Designer from the WP-Elements Premium Theme Series for the creation of yet another batch of exciting WordPress Themes which are aimed to be affordable for everyone out there who hasn’t got even a cent, yes, who hasn’t got even a cent. The new batch of Revolution comes with the Open Source License just like WordPress is, but of course, you can purchase special support for your theme on the website as well, or simply download the theme itself with no support from the authors attached.

This is a great movement that these two former premium theme developers have made and it was quite some shocking news for those who were unable to comprehend everything that they announced in the past couple of weeks. Those who were able to claim a Revolution Theme from the Revolution Theme Series can continue ask support from the Support Forum which has been made available, with lots of active people who are willing to support, even for free or a minimal fee.

You don’t have to worry about your theme because your theme stays unique as it is, the first Revolution Theme Series won’t go open source and will be phased out once the new batch is in, just like it has just been launched a couple of days or hours ago? I’m not exactly sure.

Go, grab your very own touch of the Revolution and WP-Elements taste for free via the new, Revolution Two!

Big WP Theme “Revolution” drives to open source!

Again, I rushed to my WordPress Administration Dashboard to checkout whether there is something new in the WordPress-phere (is there a term like that?) and really, there’s something going on, a REVOLUTIONary movement from one of the best WordPress Theme Designers out there. Thanks to Matt Mullenweg for keeping us updated again via the Dashboard.

At first I was pretty much shocked about the news that “Revolution goes open source.” But after reading the whole post entirely on the authors website regarding Revolution, my mind was calmed again. Although, this theme was a gift to us by another WordPress Theme Designer in one of his contest, the uniqueness of our site in terms of look is pretty much important to us, which has even led us to become a Finalist in the Philippine Blog Awards for the Best Design Category. (I don’t care much about that Contest because I was unable to know the news on time, so I wasn’t able to tweak around our design for a chance to get the top notch).

A nervous feeling came over me, I thought that the present series of Revolution Themes would go open source and be available for everyone to download. But Brian’s dedication to the present community that he has come up with (who paid for those designs) is very important to him; which led to the total extinction of the present series. (No more Revolution Themes available atm).

But hold on, he ain’t retiring from designing themes, it’s just that he moved from making bucks from his themes (the money is really worth those awesome designs) he decided to go open source, which will definitely challenge other designers out there to produce even better themes. With such a top notch designer going GPL, the future of WordPress Themes lies under a clear and blue sky.

Let’s see what he has in store for us in the next couple of weeks.

Kevin Paquet @ SFD

Here is the video of Kevin Paquet, Pinoy Teens Online’s Administrator speaking at the Software Freedom Day 2008. (although, he disallowed me to post this, I still would like to share his video to you)

SFD 2008 Davao – Kevin Paquet from ragingmon on Vimeo.

Software Freedom Day 2008

This is it, today is the day, today is the Software Freedom Day 2008, an Free Open Source Software (FOSS) related event for geeks of all kind, from bloggers, to programmers, coders and the amateur ones around. Like Princess has mentioned already, I will be there at the venue today and I will be speaking and representing WordPress, the best, if not the only ultimate open source blogging plattform.

For those living in the Davao Area and are interested to see me, just a quick reminder, the venue for the event will be the University of Mindanao Matina Auditorium, things will kick off at 1PM. If in case you care to meet me personally, you can always contact me via my mobile number 09153815289.

Just a short update about my father, he’s not really feeling much better, he is at the Davao Doctors Hospital now. He has been readmitted earlier this morning at around 3PM. I only had 2 hours of sleep, from 1AM to 3AM as my mother suddenly woke me up saying that I should accompany both of them to the hospital since my father’s abdomen pain started again. (that quite sounds like a personal entry XD)

So, I’d like to apologize to everyone, especially to my entrecard droppers for not being able to drop back on you since I don’t have internet at home right now. Alam nyo naman, SMARTBROKEN.

In Celebration of Open Source

The average internet user might not know about the manifesting beauty behind the code of the websites that they are viewing, behind the sites that they keep visiting, behind the softwares and applications that aid them in their daily life on the world wide web. Thus, let’s all together celebrate a very special event to thank all of these wares that made our life easier and more convinient, helped us do our tasks faster and more efficient, contributed to the feature rich applications we just can’t leave without.

Let’s thank Open Source for that. In case you don’t know what open source means, don’t you worry. Free and Open Source Software is the key to all this, and the localized Open Source Group Dabawegnu have organized a little event dubbed as the Software Freedom Day 2008, an attempt to let the average users like you, recognize the importance of FOSS and to gather developer, amateur or professional together at a single venue. SFD 2008 is an International Event celebrated almost everywhere in the world. Also here in Davao City, Philippines.

The University of Mindanao, Matina Campus will be the very kind host of this event in Davao City which will happen on the 20th of September. Some of the people that will be talking there include, Hon. Peter Lavina who will leave a keynote address, followed by talks about the Mozilla Based-Frame used in developing freefeathers.org Electronic Health Record. GIMP which is a image manipulation program and yours truly, WordPress.

But wait, there’s more. The talk about the one and only dominating open source blogging plattform, WordPress will be conducted by a Pinoy Teens Online Staff Member, yours truly, Kevin Georg Paquet, the head administrator of this website.

According to him, he’ll be sharing some stuff and struts regarding the use of WordPress, teaching the attendees of the event how easy it is to own a blog of their own and how easy WordPress is to modify. It’ll be his first time ever to talk in front of such a crowd, which hopefully won’t be that big (you know, he’s never been a good speaker XD)

Expect him to narrate a little bit from his own WordPress blogging life, some cool plugins that every blogger should have, WordPress resource sites, and a little bonus giveaway. If in case you are interested to attend the event and are reading this, we’d really appreciate if you leave a comment here, as we would be very happy to see you on the event for a little eye ball.

See you there!