Shout Out Loud !!!

A Little Side Trip: Dinagyang Festival

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 10:19:00 +0000

I was quite busy last week and this is one of the reasons. Iloilo City, Philippines celebrated its yearly Dinagyang Festival which is held on the third week of January. A festival that Ilonggo's celebrates to show their appreciation and devotion to Senior Sto. Ninio(baby Jesus). Its a week long celebration, people from all over Panay Island and the rest of the Philippines gathered to celebrate this festival. Natives and tourist alike enjoy themselves with the native foods serve at the food festivals, listening to live concerts held every night while awaiting the two day finale which will feature several competing tribes in two categories. In this years festival 20 tribes have competed with each other to grab the championship trophy.

The tribes ready themselves and practice 2 months before the competition. They rigorously disciplined their tribe members, designed colorful custumes using native materials, compose unique music using drums, congas and other native instruments. Tribe members paint their whole body with black latex paint and prepare for the tidious street dancing around the city's five staging areas while the punishing heat of the tropical sun beats on them. This grueling activity demonstrates their devotion to their faith. Some can handle this while others succumb to the punishing heat, fatigue and dehydration. This festival was cited by the Philippine Department of Tourism as the best Tourism event in the country. Tourist would usually book their hotel reservation 1 month before the festival.

The Philippine Islands celebrates quite a lot of festivals, well known festivals in the Visayan Islands are usually celebrated during the months of November to January. Iloilo City is 6 hours drive away from Boracay Island( a white sand beach on the northern part of Panay Island), tourist would usually refresh themselves in the crystal clear water-powder white beach of boracay. Tourist also festival hop from island to island. They would usually start their festival hopping in Bacolod to attend the Maskara Festival, after which the Ati-Atihan of Kalibo will be celebrated followed by the Dinagyang festival then would end their journey in Boracay Island. This is a unique cultural event, a colorful celebration in which Ilonggos are proud of.

Fine Tuning

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 03:22:00 +0000

I was about to feature some blogs about SEO but i can't seem to find the site that i once visited and added to mybloglog community, i know it's there somewhere. Oh bugger! i should have subscribe or at least booked marked it . I know it was a great site, loads of tips and tutorials on how to fine tune your sites and blogs for greater visibility and encourage traffic, tricks on how to get your site in a search engines listing and searches. A great material worth keeping.

Whewwww after spending hours scanning through my communities jumping from one site to the another i finally found the sites i was looking for, well not all of them i guess. I found a couple of sites worth checking out. The first site is that of Graywolf a guy who sure is howling on his stuff and his good at it too. The other one is a site authored by two SEO junkies Chris and Tamar the site is 10e20, you can find loads of useful SEO stuff here and professionally done as well.

I have yet to find the other sites. I'll post an update once i found them, in the meantime you could recommend an SEO site on your comments. I'll post it in my update once i checked it and find the site worth Shouting Out.

Keep on Blogging

Blogging to Fame

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 11:29:00 +0000

My friend antman left a message at mybloglog community. He has made a Shout Out about a blogger by the name of Divya Uttam and her blog entitled Blogging to Fame. Curious, i checked it out and found myself stuck into it and amassing as much info as i could. Her blog gives an extra edge to fellow bloggers of the ins and outs of blogging, tips and tricks that could encourage extra traffic to your blogs and sites. A blog worth visiting, and highly recommended to beginners as well as experienced bloggers. If i were to compare her blog to a bar of chocolate hers has an extra gram, a sort of a bonus worth biting =).

If only i have visited this blog days before, but since my connection has failed me again! and bloggers homepage is loading up like a lazy snail i don't have a choice but to keep myself busy and try time and time again to log in to blogger so that i could Shout her blog Out. Finally this afternoon i have overcome my log in problem and i must say that i fell so good about it. I hope im not that late though, cause i know its worth Shouting it out.

Cheers also to the following bloggers who have accepted and used brother antman's megaphone with the hope to level the playing field of exposure. Watch out for them, they may be buzzing around your work checking it out if its worth Shouting Out.

- Sizzlemash and his blogs sizzlemash blog and sizzlemash forum
- Soho Cheerleader and her blog SoHo CheerLeader
- Casey and her blog Celebrating Holidays Everyday
- cctech and his blog SEO Web design and Technology News
- Feed The Bull and his site Feed the Bull

Keep on blogging guys!

Free useful platform and ping service

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 09:29:00 +0000

I have 2 blogs being maintained, after each post i make i see to it that i ping every blog directory and RSS service i signed into to let them know that i made an update or a new post. For a couple of blogs i know its an ardous task to ping your blog and jumping from one site to another. What if you have more blogs, podcast or sites being maintained than i do? wouldn't it be more diffult?.

autopinger.com offers you an alternative to this problem. It's a free pinger service that allows you to ping known blogdirectories and feed services. Membership is free, and pinging services is free as well. After signing as a member you could start ping, just enter your blog or sites url. It has a real time ping window which show the actual ping response from the servers, it makes more sense than a success or failure response. It also has ping success rate beside each service which will tell you the success rate if you ping a certain service. Im a member of autopinger and using it since, fell free to check it out or better yet try it its free.

Another useful service that i have encountered is Mobile O/X. A free platform that allows you to access all your favorite sites simply by typing in your own personalized domain from any browser on any computer. Yes you heard me right you can make your own personalized domain and Mobile O/X offers it for free. If your not currently satisfied with your domain name or want to add a personalized touch to it i suggest you check out its free services.

For the Love of the Environment and Art

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 06:20:00 +0000

As you may have noticed, as wasn't able to post for the past few days. This is due to my snail like internet connection. Internet and other communication in the Philippines have not been restored to its optimum capability, im currently writing this post on a very irritating speed. Uploading a page, saving and publishing seems to take forever. I want to let brother antman know that I'm still here and not abandoned our quest to give exposure to fellow bloggers =).

Our featured blogger for this post has a passion for art, and not mention a noble quest in saving our forest. In her blog entitled Save Our Forest twinsherry discussed what is happening to the forest in Asia. She presented stats on the number of remaining forest on certain countries in Asia. One post discussed about China's plan to sacrifice rain forest to be used in the construction of its sports facilities for the 2006 Beijing Olympics.

A woman with a taste for art as well, in her other post entitled My Rainbow Cafe she featured digital arts, colored pencil drawings (my favorite), sketches, Chinese ink painting, collage and among others.

I personally recommend checking out her post, A beautiful woman with a taste for art and environment is truly a rare combination.

Blogger Hacks Galore

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 05:58:00 +0000

Lets start the new year by featuring bloggers who have broken through bloggers matrix and made hacks to be used in customizing its existing templates. As a blogger user i know how hard and frustating it is to make modifications to bloggers existing templates, especially if you want to incorporate something in your template but blogger does'nt have the tool.

Although Blogger has an amazing drag and drop interface, but still, you are limited to add page elements in three locations, at the top of your post, in you side bar and at the bottom of your post. Blogger has its own hacks posted at their Help Support Center, but its seems that some folks are not satisfied with these hacks, maybe thats the reason why there are some bloggers who are trying to hack though bloggers matrix to add additional hacks.

For their amazing contribution to the blogger community i'm making this Shout Out to the following bloggers:

Vivek Sanghi @ stubborn-fanatic.blogspot.com - if you are looking for a compilation of blogger hacks you can find it here, vivek has a list of his own hacks and also links to other hacks.
Deniz @ web-messengers.blogspot.com - his list of hacks includes 3 column templates for ThisWay, Rounders and Minima. Son of Motto and SandDollar templates hacks along with some Adsense hacks, though most of this hacks are made for blogger beta.
Deepak @ blogger-hacked.blogspot.com - cool blog, you could see his hacks in action as he applied it in his blog, ajax labels and beta hacks are featured in his blog
Loui$$ @ bloggingsecrets.blogspot.com - More beta hacks could be found in his blog including adsense beta hacks.
Aditya @ lastword.blogspot.com - New blogger hacks done on the new version, extensive hacking and a cool blog as well.
Ramani @ hackosphere.blogspot.com - Lots of new hacks for post, widgets and template, a must see blog checked it out.

There you go our six featured bloggers who have made a great contribution to their fellow bloggers. Keep up the good work guys. I hope to find new hacks in your blogs =)

Our first three SHOUT OUTS

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 09:16:00 +0000

This is it guys, i'll reveal my first three shout outs of the week, i hope to make a daily shout out's if time will permit. My first shout out goes to...drummers feverously drumming for...The brains behind SHOUT OUT, the genius insect himself, antman( deafening applause could be heard >_<). The inspiration behind this blog who have a noble purpose to give chance and exposure to those who have worked their butts off (pardon for the language) just to give quality information to their readers. Who would hopefully set a trend to fellow bloggers to give chance to each other in gaining exposure, don't be selfish now my friends, come to think of it, you won't stand a chance in this competitive world called blogosphere / web on your own. So we hope you'll follow our lead and help each other =).

Our second shout out goes to...drums rolinggggggggggggg, Eric, one of the founders of mybloglog.com, upon registering to mybloglog he would be your first contact / friend and would gladly help you navigate the systems user friendly interface. For those who don't know mybloglog.com, it is a community of bloggers that was developed by unknown geniuses(except for eric^^^, i hope you'll reveal your conspirators eric) that offer a cool features such as cool copy paste widgets where you can see in real time who's your recent readers in your blog or site for that matter. A widget for the top link in your site, you'll let your readers be aware of the most popular links in your site. A tracking script that lets mybloglog track your update. Mybloglog is an excellent bloggers community, i've tried other communities but nothing comes close to it and to tell you the truth almost 60% of my traffice comes from mybloglog community.

My third and surely not that last SHOUT OUT goes to...gurushabad my first community member in my other blog in mybloglog.com entitled a free and decent blog host, thank you for believing in me my friend, like garushabad i myself seek knowledge. In his blog you could find words of wisdom with regards to life and how to deal with it, i just hope you'll add an update to the blog >_<, coz im always checking that site for an additional words of wisdom hehehehe.

So there you have it my friends, our first three SHOUT OUTS of the week, please stay tuned for our weekly or perhaps if time will permit a daily shout out. Who knows, your blog / sites may end up here and be featured in this blog. Always remember, a link or referral from other sites will give you additional traffic and give a sense of satisfaction for your hard work.

KEEP ON BLOGGING MY FRIEND =)

"A legacy of the antman"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 05:41:00 +0000

Hello dear readers, if you're wondering what this blog is all about then let me give you a little background. A friend of mine in MyBloglog community has recently released a blog entitled cre8Buzz, calling out to fellow bloggers to share useful information to each other and to give exposure to deserving bloggers in mybloglog community and the blogosphere, a great and noble idea coming from a genius. Certainly a good news to those who work hard to make a quality, unique and useful content but gain little or less exposure.

Are there other link and referral ideas out there?

Yes, there are a lot of link and referral idea's out there, some will ask you to write 5 things about yourself that people don't usually know about you, in exchange, your link will be included to their site. Im not saying that im against these or won't accept such links if given a chance, i believe that's its a great idea too because it creates a viral effect, a really good thing if you want additional traffic. Others will put your link to their site or blog that has relevance to their own content, again a really good idea, it will work both ways, additional traffic to the link and additional relevant content to the site that will put a link because it usually comes with a positive reviews about the link.

So what made SHOUT OUT different from other link and referral idea's?

Well, i could point out 2 things, first, it will give you additional relevant content if you choose to SHOUT OUT blogs or site that has relevance to your own content, don't forget to add review's or comment about the link you want to refer, what's the difference you ask? the difference between the previous idea and SHOUT OUT is that, usually(but not always) the links that people put in their sites are those who already gained a considerable amount of exposure or those that are on top searches of a search engine or have garnered a high alexa rankings, bad news for those who have made an excellent and useful resource but receives less or no exposure at all.

The idea of SHOUT OUT (i hope brother antman will agree with me) is to give exposure to those bloggers / authors who have made an excellent article for other users to utilize and hopefully learn from. Secondly, SHOUT OUT will employ a viral effect to your traffic but won't add irrelevant content to your site as 5 links would do, unique content? yes, nevertheless an irrelevant one, again i must point out that im not againts 5 links idea, i have great respect to whoever pioneered that strategy because only a genius could ever formulate such an idea.