Winston organized the gathering by posting an invitation in his site for a meet-up. Winston and Blogie Robillo then shared with Cebu bloggers how they were able to organize the Davao blogging community.

DAVAO, CEBU BLOGGERS. Wilson Ng talks about plans for the coming Mandaue Business Month during the meet-up of Cebu-based bloggers. The business activity in August will have several tech-related events. Click on photo to view larger image.

I came into the meet-up from a meeting with Wilson Ng and Rio Calle on a web development project related to the Mandaue Business Month in August. During the meet-up, Wilson presented his plans for the Mandaue activity, which will include several technology-related events.

During the meeting, the bloggers agreed to meet regularly for coffee on certain weekends. Winston gathered contact details of those present and will be setting up a mailing list to centralize discussions related to Cebu blogging meetings and events.

Among those who attended were Aldrin Ponce, Rodelio Lagahit, Aileen Estoquia, Wilhelmina Sarawi, Kevin Ray Chua, Xerxes Bernadez, and Mark Abitona.

BLOGGING MEET. Blogie Robillo (2nd from right) talks about his experience organizing events for Davao and Mindanao bloggers. With him are (from left) Kevin Ray Chua, Xerxes Bernadez, and Wilson Ng. Click on photo to enlarge.

It was great to meet Cebu-based bloggers and talk shop. I hope meetings can finally be held regularly. I still want to organize a local WordPress users group—maybe next time. In yesterday’s meet-up, I was able to hand out my last three Ubuntu CDs (the others have all been claimed by Sun.Star Cebu readers).

Since I came into the meeting with Wilson and Rio, it’s quite understandable that I’d be mistaken for a Ng Khai employee. Sorry, but I’m not. I work full-time for Sun.Star Cebu but I run my own consultancy for new media projects. Right now, however, I’m considering spending more time on new media projects that I have long wanted to start. Interesting times.

Quite a few Cebu-based bloggers have already confirmed their attendance. I’m also attending the event and, if I can remember to bring them, hand out the remaining Ubuntu CDs still not claimed by Sun.Star Cebu readers.

Many of those attending use WordPress to run their blogs. The meet, organized by Winston so that he can meet Cebuano bloggers, might be a great time to start a local WordPress users group, what with Blogie Robillo attending.

If you’re a Cebuano or a Cebu-based blogger, let’s meet tomorrow
at 2 p.m. Manny Pacquiao’s gonna win anyway. If not, we can drown our collective sorrow on espresso.

Chua, in his speech during the opening of the Philippine Open Source Summit at the Cebu International Convention Center (CICC) early today, said that despite the existence of FOSS products, many Filipinos still use pirated software.

OPEN SOURCE SUMMIT. The Philippine Open Source Summit at the Cebu International Convention Center. Click on photo to enlarge image.

“Regrettably, however, the more common option for many users is the purchase of pirated copies of proprietary software. There is, therefore, a need to bring open source to the awareness of users as a legitimate option and to provide the required support for its implementation,” Chua said.

Open source software are those released under a license that legalizes sharing of the application and building up on it. It got its name from the requirement of making the source code available with the software.

Unlike some countries that require its government agencies to use open source software, Chua said the policy of the CICT “has always been freedom of choice.”

“We believe that the marketplace should decide the use of proprietary software versus open source software. We just need to make sure that there exists a fair marketplace and that the consumer is fully informed of the available choices,” he said.

Chua said the CICT uses FOSS in several of its projects. He said the eGovernance Center of Excellence in Quezon City “is a showcase of open systems technology and solutions.” The CICT, he said, is also introducing FOSS through education-related projects such as the iSchools and eSkwela. The projects provide students with Internet-enabled personal computers (PCs).

Chua said they decided to use open source software for the projects because of its “cost effectiveness relative to proprietary solutions.”

UBUNTU HEAVEN. This booth at the ground floor of the Cebu International Convention Center gives away free Ubuntu CDs. The Ubuntu shirt at the back, however, isn’t for sale or giving away. Bummer. Click to view larger image.

“Put simply, cheaper computer labs means more computer labs that we can roll out,” he said.

Chua also said that the Nettop ng Bayan, a project that aims to provide low-cost PCs to the public, was able to meet its target of less than P10,000 for an Internet-centric PC because of the use of open source software.

CICT urged members of the open source community to work together to “make Filipinos aware of the many benefits that (open source software) has to offer and that they have a cost-effective alternative to proprietary solutions that does not involve software piracy,” he said.

Ready for prime time

Global Gateway Venture Capital (G2VC) chairman and founder Winston Damarillo, meanwhile, said key indicators show “open source is ready for prime time.” Damarillo is the founder and chairman of Exist Global, Inc. He is also the executive chairman of Morph Labs, a company that offers software as a service.

MORPH, EXIST. The booth of Morph, G2VC, and Exist. Open source in Cebu got a huge boost with the opening of these companies here.

Damarillo said that among these indicators are open source products that have become market leaders, notably Apache, the dominant web server in the market.

Open source products, he said, have also become models for collaboration and drivers of software entrepreneurship. They also boost the compensation of developers by as much as 30% to 40%.

Open source has also been recognized as “de facto point of innovation,” Damarillo said.

The Philippine Open Source Summit is now open at the Cebu International Convention Center in Mandaue City. The two-day summit is

Vice Mayor Michael Rama, speaking for Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmena, told the delegates that information and communications technology (ICT) should always be guided by the fact that technology is a human creation and should be usd for the betterment of humanity.

He said technology should be used as a tool for nation-building. He urged those in the ICT industry to use technology to be the answer “to what we call global misery.”

In giving an overview of the summit, Cebu Educational Development Foundation for Information Technology (Cedfit) executive director Bonifacio Belen talked about how open source has taken the world by storm.

He said they decided to hold the summit as a way for companies and organizations to understand the “business value of open source.” The summit, he said, is preparatory to the Asian Open Source Conference that will be held in Cebu in October.

After the overview on the summit, heads of local universities and colleges signed a memorandum of agreement with Kwangwoon University.

10:50 a.m. Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) Secretary Ray Anthony Roxas-Chua said Cebu “has again broken ground” in hosting the summit.

Chua said there is still a lack of awareness and support for open source software in the country. He said the prevailing option of most consumers is to install pirated software. He said this shows the need for ICT players to spread the word on open source.

Chua also talked about how his department uses open source software for projects ranging from e-government centers to school computer laboratories. He said, however, that government agencies have the option of going either with an open source or proprietary solution.

Chua said the policy of CICT “has always been freedom of choice.” He said their task is to make sure that there exists a fair market place for open source and proprietary software. He said the CICT’s choice of open source software is driven by costs: cheaper computer labs means more computer labs in schools in the country.

—Free wi-fi in the CICC plenary hall gets cut off.

Ümobile, as I wrote earlier, gives you cellphone load for every mobile advertising message you get on your phone. To get your invitation, go to the ümobile website and click on the invite codes offer. As I write this, there are still 423 invite codes left.

Thank you, Bibbo for the update.

The launching was held in Club Vudu and by the time it ended, I knew more about what “Vudulicious” was than the details of ümobile that I had wanted to find out during the launch.

CHANGING YOUR MOBILE NUMBER. Ümobile allows its subscribers to change their mobile numbers by themselves in the company’s website. The first change of numbers is free, succeeding ones will be charged P50. Click on photo to view larger image.

The time indicated in the invitation—9 p.m.—and the venue told me it was going to be a launch party, with emphasis on the “party.” I was there at 9 p.m. and found Club Vudu still deserted but for ümobile staff doing last minute preparations. I asked one of them whether they would be holding a press briefing and was told none was scheduled. She did say one ümobile official would look for me later and answer my questions.

Fast forward one hour and a half.

UMOBILE PARTY. Vudulicious in Club Vudu. The umobile launch was the loudest telecoms-related launch I’ve ever attended. Click on photo to view an even larger image.

Club Vudu was filled to the last square foot. Cigarette smoke fogged the bar and all around me people were drinking—the waiters barely able to meet the orders of free beer, vodka, tequila, scotch…and iced tea for me.

I have always been curious about this “Vudulicious” marketing pitch. I looked around at the people partying happily and asked myself, who’s “Vudulicious?” There was this sexy former newsroom intern (she had to remind me when we were introduced that she had once been assigned to my section) who danced in a sinuous manner and all over the dance floor, several guys ogled her. If you’re reading this, do e-mail me the photo you took of both of us.

And then there was this stunner undulating on the corner, her body saying: “come, dance with me.” Is this Vudulicious? If it is, then I ♥ Vudulicious.

And just as I was about to finish my fifth glass of iced tea, I spotted the ümobile staff member who promised to answer a couple of questions on their product.

This was how the interview went:

SHE GOT THE FIRE IN HER EYES!!!
me: How’s the quality of Fring calls in your network???!!!!
Ümobile guy: What??? !!!

FIRE ON HER WAIST!!!!
me: How’s the quality of Fring VOIP calls in your network????!!!!!
Ümobile guy: Yes, we have a partnership with Fring for VOIP calls!!!!!

FIRE IN HER THIGHS (YEAAHHH)!!!!
Club Vudu marketing director Jaja Rama passes by and tells me: You’re still drinking iced tea????!!!!!
A group at our right started screaming in celebration. Apparently one of them won a cell phone in the raffle.

BUT I LOVE THE SCANDAAALLLL!!!
Ümobile guy: Let’s just talk about your questions over e-mail!!!!

It’s a good thing the ümobile website provides a lot of information. I didn’t have to e-mail questions for this post (a tamer version of which is printed as a column in Sun.Star Cebu).

Ümobile—treat the starting u as a smiley and not as the letter u with an umlaut—is a telecoms service provider that gives its users cellphone load credits every time they receive a mobile advertisement.

“That will be like earning money or credit by watching commercials on television or viewing print ads in newspapers and magazines, except that they do it through their ümobile phones,” chief marketing officer Ardie Balderrama said in a press statement.

It is a picky telecoms service provider, and for a good reason. It’s targeting the niche market of 15 to 35 year-olds—a demographic slice it describes as “early adapters and movers.”

The ümobile Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) isn’t something you can just buy from your neighborhood sari-sari store-cum-e-load center (although you can probably buy ümobile credits there).

You have to be invited to the service and the company is limiting new subscribers to just 10,000 a month. (If you want an invitation, leave a comment below. For those who left invitation requests in other posts and pages in this blog, please re-enter the request below.)

Before you get into the service, you have to answer on the ümobile website a detailed questionnaire on your lifestyle, from such things as the gadgets you own to whether you regularly go to the gym or the brand of cigarettes that you smoke.

Your answers to the question will guide the company on which ads to send you.

Ümobile uses what is the coolest cellphone prefix in the country—0999. But what sets it apart is that its users can change their phone numbers by themselves, by going to the website at www.umobile.com.ph.

The first time you change you number is free. You’ll be charged P50 for each succeeding change in phone numbers.

I tried changing mine to all 9s and, as expected, found it to have been taken already. All 7s is also gone. By the time I was ready to try other combinations, the website took down the number-changing facility with a notice that they are still updating it and that it will be back up soon.

Ümobile rides on the extensive nationwide network of Smart so you are assured of getting a signal—not only for messaging and calling but also for mobile Internet— throughout the country.

I’ve tested the mobile Internet connection on the LG phone that I won in the event (one of the more than a hundred units they raffled off during the launch) and found it relatively fast and dependable. And like Smart, ümobile charges just P10 for every 30-minute mobile Internet connection block.
The company also has a partnership with Fring, a great piece of software that allows users to do instant messaging, post Twitter updates, and call via VOIP (voice over Internet protocol) on their phone.

Fring is really a good software, one that I use almost everyday for IM and Twitter. I tried VOIP calling, via a wi-fi connection, to my sole Fring contact and found the quality of call good. I was able to use Fring with Smart mobile Internet but not the latest version for the Sony Ericsson P1i. The previous version worked flawlessly with the Smart network, somehow the current version in my phone only runs on wi-fi connections.

Ümobile is still building up its array of services, which would include a “virtual phone” in August, and I still haven’t received a mobile ad. I also haven’t tried loading credits to my account albeit the website said you can buy credits online.

More photos of the party (click on thumbnails to enlarge):

The meeting is preparatory to the Joomla Day that will be held in UP Diliman on June 14. During the meeting, members of the Joomla community in Cebu are scheduled to plan activities for a year and consider participation in a coming Open Source summit in Cebu on June 23 to 24 at the Cebu International Convention Center. The Open Source summit will have a track on Drupal, another popular open source CMS.

The “Panag-abot sa Cebu” (Cebu meet) on June 7 will start at 8 p.m. Lawyer Magdalena Lepiten and Guilliam Roque will be holding a lecture on “Copyright and Creative Commons, License on Open Source Application.”

During the meet, Roque will brief attendees on Joomla and its history. He will also talk about Joomla Philippines.

I am not a Joomla user but I am an open source CMS fanatic. The last time I tried Joomla, it was still Mambo. My CMSes of choice are WordPress and Drupal but I’ve long been meaning to try Joomla although I still haven’t found the time to try it out, what with my full-time schedule at the Sun.Star Cebu newsroom.

For those who want to attend the Joomla “Panag-abot sa Cebu,” here’s a map to the venue:

Globe, SingTel, Bharti Airtel and Optus have signed an agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone to the Philippines, Singapore, India and Australia, according to a brief statement released by the company.

There aren’t details yet on how the units will be marketed.
But costumers will likely have to sign up to a monthly plan that will lock them into Globe for a year or two.

With all the hype that surrounds the iPhone, the agreement with Apple is a marketing coup for Globe.

I had initially decided to stay away from using the beta version—the amount of updates you have to download on the run-up to the final version can be huge. I had several urgent tasks and didn’t want to deal with regularly updating my laptop.

HARDY HERON running on my MSI S260 laptop. Click to enlarge photo.

But Chin Wong made me do it. The devil, in turn, made him do it, or at least that line kept playing in his head as he installed the beta version in his desktop computer. During the installation, he had problems with sound in his system.

A day later, however, he posted a fix to the problem.

That broke my resolve to stay away from the Hardy Heron beta and proceeded to install it, as opposed to upgrade, in my MSI S260 laptop.

Clean install

I’ve never upgraded Ubuntu in my laptop. What I do is perform a clean install of a new version. This is a habit carried over from Windows and retained because I hate to wait for downloading of files to complete while doing an update to a new release over the Internet.

A new install, after all, takes just a few minutes and I take pleasure at customizing my installation all over again.

I downloaded the beta version of the desktop edition via Bittorrent and burned the ISO file. Installation was a breeze and after just a two-stick cigarette break, Hardy Heron was already running in my laptop.

The first thing I did upon logging in was check for updates. The update manager listed 287 files to download, amounting to a whopping 128 megabytes. At least two more update queues had more than 200 megabytes of files each.

UPDATE QUEUE. When you install the beta release, be prepared for frequent application updates. If you install the final release, you won’t have to download huge file updates. Click on photo to enlarge.

What I did was I left the laptop on and worked either on my office desktop or my Asus Eee PC.

If you want to go over the details, including the minutia, of the new things in Ubuntu Hardy Heron, just go to the Ubuntu website. Hardy Heron is a Long Term Support (LTS) release, this means it will be supported for three years.

Desktop eye candy

Compiz, with all its snazzy desktop effects, is installed by default in Hardy Heron but not its configurations manager. It’s easy to add it, though, through the synaptic package manager, just look for compizconfig-settings-manager.

The network manager applet has improved compared to when I last used it in Feisty Fawn and I saw no need to install wicd, my manager of choice for LAN and wireless connections. Firefox 3 beta was installed by default but then removed in one of the updates. I just reinstalled it after a few days.

GET YOUR DOCK HERE. Avant Windows Navigator, a cool applications launcher dock, can be easily installed from the repository. Click on photo to enlarge.

Avant Windows Navigator or AWN, a cool Mac OS X-like dock, is now in the repositories and can be installed easily using the package manager. If you want to start AWN, just include it in the list of startup programs in System > Preferences > Sessions. The command is avant-window-navigator.

Using Bluetooth also seems so much easier in Hardy Heron. In previous versions, I had to wrestle with using the command line to detect my Bluetooth USB dongle. After a few unsuccessful attempts, I gave up (what can I say? I’m lazy). With the Bluetooth tools in Hardy Heron, pairing is easier. I haven’t tried sending files from my Sony Ericsson P1i, though, because I encountered an error that I had no time to check yet.

Hardy Heron also comes with the latest stable version of Open Office, which is 2.4. If is a full office software suite for writing documents, creating presentations, managing spreadsheets, among other tasks.

JDarkRoom

But while Writer is a good writing software, I’ve always preferred to write my first draft on the minimalist and full-screen editor JDarkroom.

NO-DISTRACTION WRITING. I write my drafts on JDarkRoom, a minimalist and full-screen editor.

It’s easy to install JDarkRoom in Ubuntu. Just go to this site and download the jar file. To start the application, just open up a terminal and navigate to the folder where you stored the jar file and then type java -jar JDarkRoom.jar.

To save myself from the tedium of having to do this every time I needed to write something, I created a batch script using instructions in this forum post. In my case, I saved the JDarkroom jar file in its own folder in my home directory so my script is:

#!/bin/bash
cd /home/max/jdarkroom
java -jar JDarkRoom.jar

After that, I CHMODed the file, again using the instruction in the forum post. I could now start JDarkroom by typing jdarkroom in the terminal. But, as I’ve repeatedly said, I have a terminal case of hatred for the terminal and so I created a panel launcher using whatever icon I could find in the system that had a pencil on it.

Web development tools

With my writing tool installed, I proceeded to add other web development tools. The first program I added was Bluefish, a really good text editor that I use alternately with gedit, depending on my mood. I then added Filezilla for my FTP needs.

Since I use versioning for some of my work, I installed the SVN Nautilus scripts via the package manager but couldn’t get it working. I just installed RapidSVN, taking time to say a short prayer for the emergence of a Linux tool akin to what TortoiseSVN does in Windows.

With all the other tools installed, I then went on to download Aptana Studio, a really good IDE for web development. Aptana is my HTML and CSS editor of choice and I use it extensively for initial work with WordPress themes.

I installed Aptana Studio last because I thought I’d encounter problems with it. It turned out installation was as easy as just unzipping the downloaded file. I then created a launcher for Aptana using the icon from this site.

The Hardy Heron beta did not come with Wine, a software that allows you to run Windows programs in Linux. I wrote about installing Adobe Photoshop 7 in Linux previously. The current Wine version allows you to install and run Adobe Photoshop CS 2 in Ubuntu Linux smoothly. I had to install Photoshop because I still haven’t gotten around to learning how to use Gimp (soon, I know, soon).

Adobe Photoshop CS 2 running in Ubuntu Hardy Heron using Wine.

Overall, Hardy Heron is a great release. With its ability to be installed in Windows, I’m sure more people will be trying out Linux for the first time using the Hardy Heron release.

I told a colleague, who is about to embark on a career-changing project, to use Ubuntu for the computer component of his program. He agreed and I’m excited for it to start.

Since I started using Ubuntu last year, I’ve never encountered major problems in my laptop. Maybe I’m just lucky with my MSI S260 hardware since I still read posts trashing Ubuntu hardware support.

The only thing that’s not working in my laptop is the built-in card reader. I tried looking for fixes last year but just gave up and bought a cheap USB multi-card reader.

Part of me keeps saying Hardy Heron will be the last version in this laptop. I don’t know whether its specifications can still meet requirements of coming development releases. But let’s see. Six months from now. But from here on, it’s Hardy Heron.

I regularly read the classified ads section of Sun.Star Cebu, the paper I work for. At any given day, you’d have people selling anything from pets, houses, power tools to second-hand vehicles to adult toys (under Various Items, together with “Injectable Testosterone for male menopause”).

Sunday is the best day to read the classified section. Sun.Star Cebu averages a hundred pages on Sundays, with the classified ads section accounting for half of these. Looking for a boarding house in Cebu? You can find a lot of advertisements there for boarding houses. Looking for a job in Cebu? On a Sunday, many companies put out full-page advertisements listing their job vacancies.

Classified ads are billed by the column inch so you often see ad copy abbreviated. And so you have massage services promising “good quality srcs. w/guartd 2tal satsfction young M/F exprt thrpst.” One says they have “cuteboy & pinay” for home and hotel service. There’s also the “NONSURG” services for face-lifts, mole removals, and get this: “earhole repair.”

But this ad takes the cake:

Most likely the advertiser meant Internet cafe. But if you think he or she is really selling the Internet and you want your piece of the action, send me an e-mail and I’ll give you the contact numbers.