racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

Apparently, Max’s isn’t just about fried chicken and pinoy food. These days, they’re into buzz marketing, too. And they’re aware of the power of blogs and bloggers when it comes to spreading the word.

I recently wrote about Max’s new breakfast line on Pinoy Urban Blog. Max’s PR agent sent me a handful of free passes to try out the breakfast meals myself. This is for tomorrow, Monday March 19th anytime from 7 to 10 a.m.

From my email exchanges with Blooey Singson, it appears they decided to get in touch with bloggers according to their apparent reach and readership. I guess they wanted to take advantage of the influence factor, and in different fields/niches at that.

My mother also got a handful of passes, but I guess that’s just enough for the big family, eh?

I have a few more I can share. If you’d like a couple of coupons, please send me a message at 0927-5360123. Remember, it’s for tomorrow morning only, so you must have a way of picking up the passes here from my place anytime from today to tomorrow a.m.

Image borrowed from yugatech.

Some people do the stupidest things with information entrusted to them. Take this case for example. PTB contributor Arnold Gamboa discovered that a certain website purporting to belong to the Commission on Elections NCR (National Capital Region) has published the entire list of registrants for the region.

I think COMELEC made a terrible — make that stupid — mistake by publishing the personal information of thousands of NCR’s registered voters. Comelecncr.com — NOT .gov, take note (is this even sanctioned by the government?) is a partnership between a COMELEC official named Dir. Ferdinand Rafanan and San Miguel Corporation (yes, what does a multi-million peso company has to do with Philippine elections?).

Dir. Rafanan said the goal is transparency. Ok, sounds like a noble intention. But the big question is, does publishing someone’s name, registration number and home address over the internet where billions of people can access a violation of the right to privacy?

If I were a stalker (which I sometimes am), this makes for good resource material. I’d better save the entire list then on my hard drive, for future reference! Now more dangerously–if I had a grudge against someone but I didn’t know where he lived, I could check out the list. Or if I’m a politico, and I want to send out campaign materials via snail mail (a.ka. SPAM) to people, I could use this info. Or what if I run a business? I no longer have to buy address lists. I just check out the registrants list and I now have people’s full names, birth dates and home addresses.

Oh, and their web design sucks. Frames? Tables? Animated GIFs? Marquee text? Oh my God!!! Looks like the site was made with MS Frontpage. Wait. It is!

2007 is mid-term election season here in the Philippines. Every three years, we get to elect local officials from lowest (barangay, or town) level up to national Senate level (senators have alternating six-year terms). And this is one of those years.

I wasn’t able to register as a voter–I have never done so in my entire life. Those who know me would probably recall that I prefer to be apolitical. I prefer to effect change through other means, and this is mostly because I’ve lost hope in the local political system. I’ve been part of government before, and I can say I had grown further disillusioned and disappointed with how things are run here.

But then again somehow I feel it’s time to make a change, especially with regard to helping our country’s political system grow. I’ve been observing politics in other countries–particularly in the West–and one thing I notice is that their political systems are mostly platform-based. They have strong party systems. In contrast, here in the Philippines politics is mostly personality-based. And we have a weak party system.

If in the US, Democrats stand for one thing and Republicans for another, here in the Philippines, most parties seem to give empty promises of poverty alleviation, job security and economic improvement, but there really is no solid, observable and viable platform. Or at least once people get elected, no one is sure if they ever follow through on their promises/platforms.

Sometimes I’m not sure whom to blame: the politicians or the electorate ourselves. After all, it’s the citizenry that elects people into positions of power.

So here’s my crazy idea

Political blogging is very popular in the west. In fact, a lot of blogs and bloggeres have grown to A-list status in election seasons by outing irregularities or helping out candidates.

As a blogger, I would like to do the same. But given that I do not identify myself with any party or candidate, I would like to invite candidates for this year’s elections (local or national) to collaborate with me on this endeavor.

The concept is simple. I (probably along with a handful of other bloggers) will be writing about candidates, their lives, their political parties, and their platforms during this campaign season. I still have to decide whether it will be on my personal blogs (which have better coverage and readership), or a new site altogether. Now this wouldn’t be the standard press-release like postings. We’ll do it as bloggers do–with honesty, candidness and straightforwardness (with a dash of our own insights, of course). This makes for good _new media_ coverage, no?

But it doesn’t end there. If and once that candidate wins the election, I will continue blogging about his/her activities as an incumbent, and through this we will see if that candidate has indeed followed through on election platforms/promises.

So for instance, he’s a Senatorial candidate who has campaigned on the platform of job creation, the people will know if the committees he’s become part of, the bills he’s authored, and other decisions and activities, are part of improving the employment situation in the country. Or if a candidate for City Mayor runs on the platform of cleaning up the city government of corruption, we will see if his activities once elected would, indeed, reflect that platform.

I’m aware that several local organizations are already focusing on blogging about politics, such as PCIJ, but they’re approaching it from journalists’ perspectives (particularly investigative journalism), and of course there is a difference. I would rather approach it as a citizen. Okay, let me be the devil’s advocate here. Let’s assume that all people are good and that political candidates have their prospective constituents’ best interests in mind.

I’m all ears!

If you’re running for office, let me blog about you, and _with_ you. You can get in touch with me directly here. And I’m hoping communication lines keep open, so I can continue to help with the transparency. After all, elected officials should be accountable to their constituents.

Is anyone willing to be part of this?

_Image source_

There’s a cabinet reshuffling over at the Blog Herald. My fellow problogger Abe Olandres has recently stepped down as Editor of the Blog Herald, and will be exchanging positions with Tony Hung, erstwhile Assistant Editor. Abe cites personal problems that prevent him from giving the Herald more attention at this time.

My recent personal issues/problems have slowed me down tremendously. A death in the family, legal troubles and more- all have piled up on me so quickly that I have been barely able to focus on my work. So I am glad that Tony accepted this role willingly and on such short notice. I will still be around, sometimes writing, but more on the back-end of things and I will continue to help Tony run the site. There’s still so much to do around here, as you know. Amongst other things, we’re getting a few more people into the writing team.

Abe tells me that he’s already spent so much because of the legal problems that it’s taking a toll on his finances. I’m not really sure I can discuss details of the case here, but believe me–it’s really quite stupid. Here’s how Abe describes it.

I run a fairly small start-up web hosting here in the Philippines. One of our former clients runs a forum that we used to host. Several members of that forum were throwing vindictives against a their former employer. That employer sent us a demand letter thru their law firm demanding that we terminate the site or be charged with libel as well. The client moved out from us the following day. However, the employer/complainant has now filed several libel law suits against us claiming that we are the owner of the domain and the operator of the site. The site is still up and running though hosted somewhere else, the domain was also transferred away from us. Still, the complainant is alleging we should have enforced some sort of regulations or control over the content when it was still with us.

Apparently, all they wanted is money and this case is just of one of their many business gigs.

If you ask me, I’d say that’s plain harassment. But you know how it is here in the Philippines. Corruption and inefficiency can be found in many parts of government (I should know, I was with government for quite some time). And the judicial system is probably not too prepared in handling such high tech cases yet. Court cases can take years to finish and in the end having to pay lawyers’ retainers, appearance fees and other miscellany (including suhol perhaps?) will be the real killer.

In line with this, some regular readers of the Herald suggested that we help out Abe with his expenses by setting up a legal fund. After all, this is a case where online publications are involved. And this could happen to any blogger (I’ve heard of bloggers in other countries being sued because of comments that readers have posted).

We’ve set up a Xoom link where you can send in funds: https://www.xoom.com/pay/26999757 . Xoom accepts any amount from $25 to $2,500. For smaller amounts, you can send paypal to theblogherald (at) gmail (dot) com.

Mark of Splashpress Media has also given an incentive to contributing:

Let’s try this: for the first 10 x $100 contributions made via the paypal that Angelo mentioned – theblogherald (at) gmail (dot) com – you’ll get a link in “friends” for the rest of 2007. Just specify the link & text you want with the payment.

It’s like an über-discounted advertising rate. But it’s better since you get to help out someone in the process.

We should show our support for Abe, and express outrage at how people can take advantage of individuals like this. In the end, it’s not just about the money. It’s about principle.

At least that’s what the Blog Parteeh! 2007 tagline says. Sounds like a cool event anyone into blogging would be interested in going to. Time for a little get-together offline.

The details are here, the list of sponsors is here. I’m actually part of—or was once part of—some of the groups and companies sponsoring the event (namely the Blog Herald, Enthropia and the PinoyTechBlog team).

The parteeh (Why can’t we just spell it as “party”? SEO reasons? Or was the blogparty.com domain already taken? Heheh!) will be this coming Saturday, the 27th of January from 2:00 to 8:00 p.m. Venue is 6th Floor (Poolside Area), Classica Tower 2 Condominium, HV dela Costa St., Salcedo Village, Makati City. Why, oh why, can’t blogger meet-ups be organized in Quezon City or somewhere near my place?!?

See you there!

Update: Sponsor list is included below.

This event is sponsored by: Sheero Media Solutions, MyJournal Philippines, FeedText, Inc., Migs Paraz, A Bugged Life, The Blog Herald, b5media blog network, About My Recovery, Pinoy.Tech.Blog, Enthropia, Inc., Krispy Kreme Philippines, GMA New Media, Awesome Philippines, Codamon.com, Boracay.com.ph, Recipes.com.ph, WebMaster.com.ph, Bouncing Red Ball, Bo Sanchez, Microwarehouse Inc.

BlogParteeh07 Donors:

Marc Javellana, Bubba Gump, e-YellowPages, Adobe User Group – Philippines, Weddings @ Work, Google Philippines, Hinge Inquirer Publications

Oh, the instructions say I should include my email address. Well, it’s in th e sidebar, or I can be reached here.