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

Wow! I didn’t realize this until I tried looking for our new apartment via satellite imagery. Previously, only the client-version of Google’s geo service, “Google Earth”:http://earth.google.com , had higher res aerial imagery of Metro Manila. now, even the online version, “Google Maps”:http://maps.google.com does! I say “higher” because this is definitely better than what Maps had to offer before. Still, it’s not as good as Google Earth, and it’s definitely not up to par with the aerial photos or “Ikonos”:http://spaceimaging.com / “Quickbird”:http://digitalglobe.com satellite images that the surveying companies will give you for a few million Pesos.

Some Snapshots

Here are some screencaps of imagery of my beloved Quezon City.

Both our old and new apartments “are in this area.”:http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=quezon+city+philippines&ie=UTF8&z=18&ll=14.647047,121.057706&spn=0.002263,0.004576&t=k&om=1

Here’s the “University of the Philippines Admin building, where the Oblation is located.”:http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=quezon+city+philippines&ie=UTF8&z=18&ll=14.654821,121.064937&spn=0.002263,0.004576&t=k&om=1

“Here’s the Gateway Mall and the Araneta Colliseum in Cubao.”:http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=quezon+city+philippines&ie=UTF8&z=18&ll=14.621224,121.053023&spn=0.002263,0.004576&t=k&om=1

“Here’s SM North EDSA, sans the new ‘Block’ mall.”:http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=quezon+city+philippines&ie=UTF8&z=18&ll=14.656518,121.031892&spn=0.002263,0.004576&t=k&om=1 This means the aerial photos were probably taken pre-2006, when SM was still using the area as a parking lot.

This could open up a lot of new business opportunities for people who do web apps! This was exactly what I was looking for back when I worked with i.PH–location-based services and geotagging were the hot thing back then. I wonder if it’s still a good idea to do this today. Joel was right. Google’s going to put those aerial photo and satellite imagery companies out of business (at least for the consumer/low-end market, and not those requiring millimiter-level accuracy). Google is giving this stuff away for free!

Web apps, anyone? I hope we beat you guys to it!

It finally happened. jangelo.i.ph is now no longer under my control–or at least a considerable level of control, like before. It has now been auto-upgraded to Calliope version 2, and I no longer have direct access to the base CMS. This is one of the very reasons I decided to move into my own domain and host my own blogging software back in April of 2006–I wanted to maintain control. The prospect of an upgrade had been looming at that time so I decided it was time to gradually let go.

For a while, the most part of 2005, I was part of the team that developed i.PH into what it is now (Calliope version 2)–or so I think–but it’s now time to say goodbye. I actually said my goodbyes earlier, when I first considered moving to racoma . net, and then eventually to racoma.com.ph.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to complete the move within the weekend, and finally say bye bye to jangelo.i.ph. Well, I’m not totally abandoning the site, but it’s more like keeping it as archives. You do know why I’m contemplating this move. I had been part of the i.PH development team during my short stint with dotPH, and I’d been privvy to the planned upgrades. Well, I can say they’re cool and all that, but still I prefer to have full control over my blog installation. And I’m not so interested in friendster-type social networking schemes. I’d rather go for good design and usability. And you do know that by “design” I do not mean only “style.”

Why?

In designing and conceptualizing a blog and blogging platform, I have a few ideas, and they basically revolve around usability (take out the clutter and the uglifying elements). Snazzy features are good, but they’re not essential. If the core functions of an application cannot easily be learned and used, then that degrades the value of the application. If a site cannot be navigated efficiently and effectively, then that just makes the user want to hit that CLOSE button as soon as possible.

Calliope is now no longer a publishing/blogging platform. It has evolved (or mutated?) into a mashup of social networking, publishing, and multimedia linking/hosting/aggregating applications. First and foremost, that’s not what I’m looking for. If you’ve read any good Web app and Web 2.0 ebooks lately, you would’ve realized that it’s the small, independent, but very useful apps that succeed today, not those that try to do everything. And frankly, I think it has lost much of the potential I originally thought it had. For one, there’s the timing factor–when you make people wait for so long for you to tweak something to perfection, chances are they’ll move on to the next great thing.

And may I mention that the upgrade broke all the permalinks and search-engine optimizations I had done to my jangelo.i.ph? That sucks.

Some observations

You’ve been pressing me for a review, Mikey. Yuga has posted his on PTB. Now here are some of _my_ initial thoughts, which I’ve held off writing about and publishing for quite some time, until now that I realized I’ve lost jangelo.i.ph already.

I wouldn’t delve much into the features and details of the new-and-improved Calliope, but I’m writing about the general feel, as I see it.

* Usability. Usability isn’t quite the strongest suit of Calliope. I’m an advanced user and I had a hard time learning and getting used to the original Calliope version 1 concept–and I had to, because it was then part of my job. Now I’m having a hard time adjusting to the new version 2 concept. And for all the snazzy features the upgraded site now has, users still cannot rearrange sidebar contents using a drag-and-drop interface–something the WordPress Widgets plugin has allowed for quite some time now. In fact, one can _not_ rearrange sidebar contents at all with Calliope, as originally promised. Sigh.

* Speed. Sadly, not everyone is on broadband in this country. I’m one of the more fortunate people who enjoy 512 Kbps plus speeds at the comfort of my own home, and I’ve got a relatively new computer. However, my patience still gets tested whenever I try to load up my old i.PH site and most other i.PH sites, and also when I try to change some aspect of the layout using the Calliope interface. That’s why I preferred directly editing the code in plaintext. That may be old school, but gets things done faster for me. However, even novices, for whom the GUI-updating mechanism of i.PH was intended, might find the wait too long for comfort. Hey, I’ve been hearing reports that i.PH sites take five effing minutes to load on some dialup ISPs. And I don’t think it’s the actual connection speed that’s the problem, since loading times still go past my patience threshold even on broadband. The sites are just plain heavy. Period.

* Flexibility. The reason I wanted direct access to the CMS (then Blog:CMS and now WordPress) is because I’m not just any regular blog user. I want to be able to edit my blog the way I want it, from using custom layouts to adding custom design elements, to doing away with the crappy, heavy sIFR fonts and being able to implement other basic stuff. I understand not everyone is comfortable with doing this, but I do remember direct access to the themes’ code was supposed to be part of the plan (at least for paying clients). But then again, I think it’s the Calliope front-end that’s supposed to be the selling factor of i.PH so this would probably never happen. Also, there are a host of other customizations I had on my old site that I was hoping would be part of the default features–basically on-site SE optimizations, and that leads to the following point.

* SEO. I’m not really a hardcore SEO fan, but I do believe that on-site optimization helps usability as much as it helps SEO, particularly in terms of navigability and structure. For instance, I cite two points here.

* Permalinks. Static links are important. Make ‘em too long (like the loooong alphanumeric ones some ASP-based CMSes put out) or too short (like the default WordPress ?p=123, etc.) or too non-descriptive and both the search engines and users would have a difficulty finding your content. Friendly permalinks (using .htaccess rewrites) are just a click away on WordPress. And here’s one really big gripe I have with the Calliope upgrade–all my permalinks have been changed (since Blog:CMS and WordPress use different permalink structures by default). Now all the pages indexed by Google, Yahoo! and other engines would just direct readers to the frontpage and not the actual article.

* The title tag. I have a thing against blog posts and articles that don’t display the exact article title on my browser’s title bar. It’s bad enough that search engines get to index your content using just your blog title on the results (and not the more relevant post title), but it’s also bad when you’re bookmarking a single post. Fixing this is as simple as using the proper tag on each static or archive page. Search engines love this. People also do! It’s easier to find when you have a ton of windows or tags open, and it’s definitely better when bookmarking locally or on social bookmarking sites.

A web app is only as powerful as a user can use it.

It all boils down to whether one is comfortable with using the Web app. And sadly, I’m not comfortable with Calliope as much as I try to _want_ myself to like it.

Maybe when we get to doing the FGD that i.PH has been asking about for quite some time now, we can get to resolve these things.

I’m still keeping jangelo.i.ph alive, though–but just as as an archive site for my old content.

It’s been several weeks since I published PayPal: One Great Way to Improve the Philippine Economy. Quite a number of people have expressed support and interest. A few have provided their insights and inputs into the matter. Others even have dissenting opinions, or at least don’t think that having PayPal would be helpful enough.

Links to these other posts and news items are available here. Reader fedeback can be found on the comment thread.

Things haven’t been quite slow these past days. I guess everyone’s busy. But here are milestones, so far.

* We’ve registered a domain, www.paypal4ph.com and even set-up an update blog at www.paypal4ph.com/blog (thanks to my colleague “J4s0n”:http://j4s0n.com ).
* We asked uber-cool designer Ia (who also works with us at Enthropia) to create some artwork for the site.
* J4s0n is coding a cool sign-up sheet with an equally cool frontpage (Enthropia is the team behind iBox, which I think is really cool). We can probably ride on the existing signature campaign on petition spot launched last year, which has 812 signatures to date. However, I think it would be good to start fresh (and so everyone who would sign up actually knows what the issues are).
* Mainstream media update: Joey Alarilla (journalist, problogger, father, and Palanca awardee) has written about the *PayPal for the Philippines initiative on CNet Asia*. Joey also writes for Inq7.net and I do hope we make it there, too, one of these days. His fellow Inq7.net journalist Erwin Oliva has also expressed interest in the advocacy, and I do hope we get the much needed mainstream-media mileage.

Other ideas:

* We’re likely to move the advocacy site to a .com.ph domain to support the use.com.ph campaign (and since it’s for the Philippines, anyway!).

Open Source / Collaboration

Sad to say, running an advocacy is not that easy. Firstly, I’m quite rusty as an economist, and after all, being a jack-of-all-trades makes one a master of none. So I’m not your expert on tech and e-commerce either, but I do try to make the most out of what information I can digest from other sources. And one of the things I’ve been a big fan of is OpenSource.

The most important thing I learned from the Open Source movement is that collaboration is key to producing great ideas and great output. Hence, with this in mind, I think it’s best to move forward with the PayPal for the Philippines advocacy as a collaborative activity. We are already doing this, as various people are contributing to advancing the cause in their own ways. However, we need to come up with a more defined and focused output. We need to get our facts and figures straight. We need to be able to talk to the right people (and at the right time).

For one, we need to come up with a whitepaper, as Migs suggested on the original blog post. We need a more solid argument to support our cause, and to help convince the right people (i.e., those in government, the banking sector, and even eBay/PayPal management itself) and in this regard, I think collaborative work is the way to go.

So here’s what our next step would be. I’m hoping for inputs and suggestions on how we can go about with it. For now, we shall be setting up a Wiki on the advocacy page to get started on a draft whitepaper (link later). Any inputs and help (with the appropiate sources and citations needed, of course) would be much appreciated.

Here’s one interesting observation I’d like to share. We ForeverGeek contributors sometimes post links to our more substantial articles on DIGG.com, to share and possibly get some inbound traffic (as with what other writers/bloggers are fond of doing). We have had our share of DIGGs, and it was great. Traffic usually rises to absurd levels (but of course, we make sure our servers could handle the load) and we get great feedback from readers and other blogs.

So far, we’ve already had four stories that were frontpaged, according to this query. Yes, this includes the DIGG link to the podcasting article I authored (which I’m quite proud of).

But if you tweak the search query to “include buried stories,” you get nine frontpaged stories, including older ones. But what’s intriguing is that this type of query would include quite a number of stories posted after the FG-DIGG issue where DIGG’s credibility as a reader-driven site was questioned. In particular, that one story was frontpaged by the sheer number (and speed) of DIGGs, but was quickly “buried” because of the sensitivity of the issue.

After that one, no other FG story had actually appeared on the DIGG front page, but the query for frontpaged stories (including buried), as likewise linked above, would say otherwise.

Something seems amiss. The search query classifies one story as “frontpaged,” but the article doesn’t actually appear on the frontpage. Now buried stories are prominently marked as “buried,” and I can understand why those will not appear on frontpage. But what of those classified as frontpaged, but not marked as “buried?” Why aren’t they appearing on www.digg.com?

I am very much confused why the DIGG search query classifies some stories as “frontpaged,” but “buried,” but without the appropriate “buried story” marking.

DIGG founder Kevin Rose mentioned something on the TWiT podcast about moderators actually choosing which stories to get frontpaged (here’s a recap I wrote for FG). So this means among other factors in the algorithm that decides which stories are sent to the frontpage, there are human “editors” who get to select their picks.

So in the end, one might ask, is DIGG.com really the user-driven website it publicizes itself to be?

Once a story has received enough diggs, it is instantly promoted. Should the story not receive enough diggs, or is reported, it eventually falls out of the digg area queue. Digg works because a large group of people actively promote good stories to the homepage. Since this site’s content is user-driven, it is up to YOU to contribute.

I used to be such a DIGG fan. Somehow, I still am–I still find DIGG’s ideals to be something to root for, especially given the collaborative nature of the Web today. But for me, DIGG.com has lost its magic!

The Chinese government seems to be cracking down on all forms of free Internet use, free meaning freedom to do, read, or write anything. First they shut down “unlicensed” Internet cafes. Then they wanted everyone who runs a website to register their real identities with the authorities. Now they’re requiring everyone with email servers to register for a license first. Of course, they continuously ban potentially sensitive websites and blogs (even the entire blogspot and other domains are banned).

Techdirt was correct in worrying about the costs to the bureaucracy. It must be a nightmare for Chinese officials to have to do every bit of censorship and monitoring big brother wants to implement. And I think it’s pretty silly and downright stupid for a government to suppress the flow and exchange of information.

So ban me, China!

[via Techdirt]