Video of Pacquiao fight up

This was fast. The video clip of the Solis vs. Pacquiao fight is up online. Check it out.

INQUIRER.net unveils blog network

Finally, INQUIRER.net unveils its blog network. Joey Alarilla, our resident game editor/blogger, admits he is the guinea pig in this project ;-)

Again you might ask, why do we blog? For INQUIRER.net, it is about extending the conversation with our readers. We get a lot of feedback from readers everyday. We hope to engage readers in a more, well for lack of term, interactive conversation. I've also been blogging for close to 3 years now. It started when my youngest daughter was born. Somehow, my blog evolved from being an online diary of my daughter into something more personal. It currently features my musings on blogging, technology, journalism, and recently, politics (since I cover the elections).

The INQUIRER.net blogs network aims to be not just any blog network. We hope to use it to make news your news too. And as Joey says, we also hope to take advantage of today's technology and use it to keep the conversation going. Happy birthday INQUIRER.net blogs!!!

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By the way, INQUIRER.net is currently co-convenor of Media Nation, a gathering of different news organizations in the Philippines.

Week 5: Embracing “citizen” journalism

I recall an interview with one of Philippines’ top blogger Abe Olandres. The premise of that interview was this: Should bloggers follow ethical guidelines in journalism?

Abe is a well-read professional blogger writing about technology. He prefers to be called a "meta-journalist," a term that describes his tech punditry. But after reading Mark Glaser's article , I say Abe is a journalist.

No matter how he puts it, Abe is doing journalism. He writes based on facts -- but insists that some are based on "speculations" or better, an informed guess based on industry sources.

As Max Kalehoff, an executive at Nielsen BuzzMetrics, wrote on Jeff Jarvis’ BuzzMachine blog :

Why not just call journalism “journalism” — a word the citizens, amateurs, networks, distributors and professionals can understand? Journalism can be “practiced” in all sorts of ways, and by virtually anyone. You don’t even have to be a citizen or a professional; you could be a foreigner, or even an alien from outer space. But I do agree with your overall beat: journalism is not some exclusive club; it’s something that takes many forms, including all the ones you describe.

Citizen journalism has emerged because of the Internet and blogs. Similar to Dan Gillmor's story on Joe Nacchio, Abe and other local bloggers like J. Angelo Racoma have become sources of my stories. From time to time, they pick up juicy information, which I end up writing as a full-blown news report.

As Gillmor pointed out, citizens like Abe and Racoma are no longer consumers of news. They make the news. They are today's citizen journalists. Gillmor adds:

[T]echnology has given us a communications toolkit that allows anyone to become a journalist at little cost and, in theory, with global reach. Nothing like this has ever been remotely possible before.

Week 4: News Story # 2

Intel helps ‘marginalized’ sectors get on the Internet

By Erwin Oliva

In today’s digital society, the number of people without access to the Internet is still surprising.

Intel hopes to change that in five years.

Committing 1 billion dollars to push initiatives geared for “marginalized” communities in the world, the chipmaker has initiated various projects worldwide, including in the Philippines that intend to connect people to the Internet, educate them about information technology, and develop more relevant community-based information accessible via the Web and other digital means.

Intel’s program, dubbed Intel World Ahead, has started connecting Philippine communities to the Internet using a Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (Wimax) technology, a new technology that provides wireless Internet access at great distances.

Intel worked with local telecommunications firm Innove to wirelessly connect 150 local residents in Gen. Trias, Cavite and Alabang, Muntinlupa, Intel World Ahead program manager for Asia Pacific Leighton Phillips said.

Intel’s Wimax deployment is part of the Asian Broadband Campaign Wimax trials conducted in select countries like the Philippines, the Intel executives said.

Meanwhile, representatives from Intel met with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (Asean) in Manila recently to discuss projects, and best practices, Phillips said. The Asean members and Intel discussed how they could use public domain to develop web content for marginalized and rural communities.

The Intel executive said that content on the Internet remains irrelevant to most marginalized societies, while cost of access remains expensive.

Intel was committing US$ 250,000 in an Asean project to produce more relevant content, and was offering an e-learning software called SKOOOL.

The Intel World Ahead program intends to push various programs to developing regions in the form of accessibility, connectivity, education, and development of applications and content.

The US$1-billion commitment for five years intends to fund efforts to connect the "world's next billion users, while training 10 million more teachers and 1 billion students," Intel said.

Intel is now working with the Philippine Commission on Information and Technology (CICT), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization National Commission of the Philippines, and the Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication for the Intel World Ahead project.

Florangel Rosario Braid, chairperson for communication of UNESCO National Commission of the Philippines, said Intel’s project is consistent with its plans to develop relevant digital content for marginalized communities.

Tag that magazine

In the "spirit" of convergence, a Philippine magazine introduced a new marketing gimmick in their magazine. It involves taking "snapshots" (using a mobile phone camera and a special software) of a bar code-like symbol placed in the cover of the magazine. The Tag Mobile System (TMS) -- as it is called -- will take the mobile phone owners to a special website (a WAP site) that will contain other information and goodies. As this blog states, TMS is:

TMS is a convenient way to download any form of multimedia into your mobile by turning your phone camera into a barcode scanner.

Just imagine the possibilities. Magazines or any publication (actually the TMS works on websites too) can now push information via mobile phones. If you're using a smart phone, you could conduct transactions (say buy a product from the magazine or view more photos on your mobile phone). I remember an old article written by my editor Leo Magno years back. With convergence, content is now portable to any device/medium. With technologies such as TMS, content will be "spiraling" up and around all these mediums/devices. Thus he writes:

This consequently is redefining the word “media" as we know it. The flow no longer comes from a broadcaster’s or publisher’s point of view down to the audience, where the old communications model of sender-message-receiver is followed. Information flow in this day and age is no longer linear. With the participation of citizens -- the audience -- as both content consumer and producer, it has become multi-dimensional, spiraling up and around several evolutionary ladders of communications.

WEEK 2: Convergence is inevitable

Convergence in journalism involves the marriage of old and new mediums. "Mass media" is no longer enough to describe today's new media. The audience is growing because it is spreading virally through blogs and other social networking services such as YouTube or Flickr. Instead of the old paradigm of "one to many," the convergent media is now a medium of "many to many."

It also has gone "multimedia."

Blogs have allowed anyone to become a "journalist." Mainstream media is now embracing technologies, such as blogs, to deliver news. According to this paper from the University of Essex, titled "Blogging: personal participation in public knowledge building on the web,"

Blogs have emerged from a humble beginning to become a highly networked mass of online knowledge and communication. All kinds of research, from searching for the best price of the latest mobile phone, to more rigorous forms, are conducted through the blog medium.

Blogs or blogging have become "cheaper" and efficient means to publish information on the Internet and deliver news to a bigger audience. This is just example on how convergence has spread so quickly worldwide. Anyone with an Internet connection, a decent computer, and a good command of English can become a journalist. Thus we've seen the rise of citizen journalism, which is now gradually being embraced by MSM.

Convergence is happening in the Philippines. With a growing population of Internet users, a close to 40 million mobile phone users, it is evident that Filipinos want news pushed to them via new mediums. The company I worked with, INQ7.net, now sends breaking news to 20,000 mobile phone subscribers. Everyday, the local news website gets more than one million unique visitors -- that's about three times more than the current readership of our sister firm running the print medium.