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

WordCamp Davao aftermath

Kevin has just posted an update about his experience during WordCamp Davao 2009 as a volunteer, if you’re interested, you can check it out at his personal blog at studentblogger.net. Kevin noted that the attendance was very low, but it was still a lot of fun and a very informative event that all bloggers, even non-WordPress bloggers should have attended. He is looking forward to have more people attend next year when Matt Mullenweg (might) be back in Davao again if there is another leg of WordCamp Davao as a teaser to the main event that is usually hosted in Metro Manila.

Read more about WordCamp Davao aftermath.

Do you know your WordPress Dashboard?

In celebration with the launch of the tech blog here on Pinoy Teens, (A wholly moly new blog within a blog); let’s get the celebration started with a little contest. Just a little one, where ten thousand entre credits are at stake, just by leaving a simple comment. The question goes as the title says, if you know your dashboard.

Well, WordPress dashboards don’t really differ much, you can alter the font through editing the admin css, you can add and remove widgets, but there are some edits that most people oversee, and that’s what I wish you to have a keen look upon and tell me, what’s the difference between my dashboard and yours. There are obvious differences, but heck, the best comment wins. Yes, there will be one winner among all of you. But the credits account to 5,000 only. If someone can spot the difference that makes my WordPress dashboard totally unique from yours, you’ll get 10,000 credits with no further questions asked. How does that sound?

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3 Reasons to love Elegant Themes

A lot may not have noticed, but I’m truly an avid fan of Elegant Themes, one of the available premium WordPress theme sites out there. And it really rocks. I’m a bit bored and thought about writing down ten reasons why I love Elegant Themes, and why you should love them as well. Don’t you worry, I won’t leave you with affiliate links that will earn me money, you can hop over to elegantthemes.com and see for yourself how the beauty of design and reasonable pricing meets each other.

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WordCamp Davao 2009 Details

WORDCAMP is arguably the number one blogging event that is being held globally. Usually organized by a set of WordPress bloggers in a certain community. WordCamp Philippines has been existing since year 2008 and was back then dubbed as the first ever South East Asian WordCamp, with the special presence of Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress and head of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.Com and the Open Source Project WordPress itself. A few days ago, Nico Tongson informed you about a possible WordCamp Davao, and yes, I’m happy to confirm that there will be such a blogging even here in Davao and it will be the 2nd time it is hosted here, WordCamp Davao 2009 is all set!

WordCamp Davao 2009 Details

There is not much that you need for this years event, just a few bucks that you need to carry along for entrance fee. Unlike last year, people now have to pay 250 Pesos (200 for Students) in order to enter the said event. The money will be collected during at the entrance.  WordCamp Davao 2009 will be held at Villa Margarita Hotel, J.P. Laurel Ave., Bajada, Davao City this coming September 12, 2009 from 6:00 to 10:00 in the evening. Expect this years WC to be buzzer. With interesting bloggers and WordPress gurus sharing their tips and tricks about WordPress and SEO. This is also a good chance for you to meet fellow bloggers and network with them, and of course, no better time to get your WordPress-powered website plugged to the Davao Bloggers Community.

See you there!

Pre-post of 2nd WordCamp Davao

Update: 09/10/09: Click here to visit complete details about WordCamp Davao 2009

Greetings avid followers of this blog. We’re pleased to announce that our head from Davao City, Philippines will be present during the localized version of WordCamp, the WordCamp Davao to be held in Davao City, Philippines. As I write, I’m not certain where the said blogging event will be hosted in Davao City, but the date is sure, as of now.

Prior the big bang in Manila, the local WordCamp Davao will provide some teaser for the main event. So if in case you’re in Davao by that day, or if you already reside in Davao and are blogging already or, would like to start blogging, this is the event to attend to meet and greet local personalities in the blogging scene.

People that are expected to attend includes but is not limited to Davao City’s SEO Guru, Lyle Santos, the Mindanao Bloggers Head Blogie Robillo, and the Dental Blogger Charles Ortiz. Not not to forget our very own Student Blogger, Kevin Paquet.

There might be another event where he’ll be showing his face and might throw a few words for the discussion of Open Source Blogging if in case this years Software Freedom Day falls also on the 12th of September 2009.

We’re looking forward to meet and greet you readers and fellow bloggers at the said event, do us a little favor, if you have in mind to attend the WordCamp Davao, let us know by leaving a comment below. If in case you’re a bit curious about the WC Davao have a look on last years post of ours.

Learn how to Optimize Your Website

Are you curious how to optimize your website? Do you fear that you could commit a mistake that can cause irreversible trouble for you? If you feel that way, then you need to follow the Weekly Series, wherein this weeks concern is how to optimize a website.

Let me tell you more about this interesting topic for this week. Optimizing a website is very important and it can be very complex at times, especially in the eyes of the most serious ones as there are many factors to be considered, the design, the code behind the design, off-site optimization, search engine optimization and everything like that. It’s difficult to digest all at ones, so why not have a bite at the latest chunk about Optimizing Your Website by Using WordPress.

This topic talks about how to optimize your website by using the best free and open source software for blogging, which is WordPress. It provides a guide to plugins that you need to have installed on your blog that should not be missed out, and a few other important notes that you need to consider. So why not read on about site optimization now? Good luck in optimizing your website.

Reviewing Co-Authors Plus

WordPress comes in many forms, it allows you to blog on your own, create a blog with contributors, have multi users create a blog on WordPress Multi Version, and also create a social network with the help of Buddy Press, but one thing that is pretty much an eye candy is this plugin that the SEO Wright has reviewed for us, the Co-Authors Plus WordPress plugin that has already been activated here at our Pinoy Teens Online Blog. It’s handy especially if there’s more than just one person who contributed to a post with decent effort to be recognized as an author as well.

Read more about the plugin review on Kevin’s latest plugin and let us know what you think about it after you read it or even better tried it out yourself.

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Who is your INFLUENTIAL BLOGGER?

Yesterday, the 20th of May was a busy day for us from the Pinoy Teens HQ. We, the blogging trio Joseph, yours truly and Kevin Paquet spent some time together to seek ways how we could make our presence felt for the Influential Blogger 2009 Writing Project, and had no better option but have our seowright.com compete with the other established websites on the internet. We’d love to recommend you to vote for Pinoy Teens as one of your influential blogs which is powered by the blogging maestro Kevin, but since Pinoy Teens was founded in March 2008, we’re not eligible to be voted for, for this years contest; but blogs that have been created from May 2008 and onwards.

Kevin has been talking about that website and that annual writing project a couple of times already, letting us know how bad he would love to become a influential writer to other’s eyes. He said that he’d love to be one of those bloggers recognized as influential in whatever means possible. We told him to relax, reflect and look back at the path he has crossed. The transition he made from being a forum administrator to years ago of a forum with a 20 member capacity database to a websites that is at present entertaining 2,000 visitors daily for year 2009’s average.

We asked Kevin to recall the achievements he has done so far, reaching PR4 even if it didn’t lasted that long, surpassing 1,000 Feedburner Subscribers (it is bugged today May 21, ‘09 and shows 16 subscribers only), earning 350 US Dollar one Day in Adsense, having a traffic peak of 61,000 and a most popular post with over 800 of comments in a matter of days. That should be something, something a seventeen year old Student Blogger should be pleased about. But still, Kevin oversees all his achievements and milestones in his life. We asked, what about the Software Freedom Day at the University of Mindanao where you tackled WordPress as the leading Free and Open Source Software for blogging? The Digital Filipino Club event when you came home with bright eyes saying “bes, we’re the tenth hottest blogs among the new blogs for 2008“? Or the Mindanao Bloggers Summit, the WordCamps that you have attended in Davao City and Saint Benilde; Manila? Still it seemed to be “nothing” really special to him. But being a influential blogger to the community.

He has been actively contributing to the WordPress community in his own simple and unique ways, he talks about WordPress, blogs about WordPress and wants all of his close friends to switch to WordPress for some very good reasons. But it isn’t only that; he carries the load of other people at times to help them with their blogs, we made him think about the time way back when he bought the domain sugardrop.net for one of his loyal readers who won at a contest, or his crush-reader who won giftedprincess.com the same month now, but a year back. And then he suddenly came to smile and realized that he has been influential somehow, but we just cannot feed his satisfaction.

Even when we made him recall people who were worried about his downtime about a year ago, or people who blogged about him and see “inspiration” in him. Not to forget the fact that there are professionals who praise him for his hard work that he has done so far.

Kevin always works from the heart when it comes to his blogs, and at times overdos things a lot, which often blends a darker image into his personality, but when you come to know him better and his online history you’ll realize that this young aspiring seventeen year old teen is seeking to be recognized for the little tasks that he has done that compile into a better status than he is right now. If you feel that Kevin is really a outstanding blogger and young writer for his age, then you could help him out by a very simple deed. And that is taking part in the Influential Blogger 2009 Writing Project and citing his newest product, seowright.com as one of the most influential blogs from your point of view.

A bit more in detail…

What he needs is that you will write a blog post, containing links and information about your ten most influential blogs and bloggers. Just ten, ten of all the many linkies that you have, list ten of them; and include his blog to help him. SEOWRIGHT.Com is his new project that he will be working on; content about blogging, seo, and everything related to his “quiet” successful attempt to storm the blogoshpere during the late months of 2008 will be showcased for everyone.

After you finished your post, you of course need to publish it and bring it live up on your blog. You need to link to the write up post and encourage your readers and other bloggers to vote their favorite bloggers, too. And probably leave a hawt tip to include our young Student Blogger Kevin as well, who’s really looking forward for your help. Read more on SEOWRIGHT.Com

Hope you could create a list of your influential bloggers/blogs and include the blog SEOWRIGHT.COM and encourage your friends to help vote for us. It’s enough with those adults to win prizes, we teenagers can achieve something too!

OUR List of INFLUENTIAL BLOGS:

Coming soon (post will be updated)

I.D won’t go on Pinoy Teens

I’ve always had this problem about adding Intense Debate to Pinoy Teens, it’s just that I have once messed up with the installation and it’s just not going to be alright again without trying asking help from the tech (which I find too lazy at the moment). Instead, I’ve been so humble to keep the discussions here going without the help of the plugin and found rightful resource which suggests that I shouldn’t put the plugin back in, for the temporary time being.

One of the blogs that I have been following inside my Google Reader has had a couple of problems with the plugin and it’s strongly telling my mind that I shouldn’t go after installing the plugin and have the problems on my ass myself since I’ve got enough blogs aided with Intense Debate (this, this, this, this and even this). It’s only here that  I have been experiencing such problems!

Anyways, I’d like to enlist 5 reasons why you should not make use of that kind of software based on my personal experience:

• Auto-Login Feature sucks, I don’t know what’s wrong, but it’s really not working the way I would love it to.
• Spam Spam Spam – A lot of spam comments get through to moderation, even after I checked out the configuration to be at it’s most secure setting.
• SpamSpam Spam part 2 – That means even more spam gets into my email, since I would like to be updated about new comments across my blogs.
• Loading and Refreshing Issue – The speed of the plugin really bothers me at times, it causes a lot of loading problems, not mainly for the blog, but the comment section itself to get loaded at the bottom of every article.
• Why should I use it? -When WordPress itself is cool enough, and when there are tons of other internally working, light weight plugins that can get awesome jobs done for your comment area and the benefit of you and your readers? You’ve got to be kidding me that you really want to go after the features that cause you headache instead of lurking for a plugin that could maybe do just the same or better for you.

Now, if you want to make use of the plugin; I’m not saying you shouldn’t nor do I hate it, it’s just that it’s not the plugin’s time to shine on Pinoy Teens, but maybe when it’s out of its beta stages anytime sooner or later, whatever :p

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