From an article on Forbes by contributor Beth Greenfield, the Philippines ranked number 8 in the HSBC’s Expat Explorer Survey, released last month. “This country is friendly on wallets, too: 47% report an increase in access to luxuries, including domestic staff, swimming pools, and owning properties,” the survey revealed.

And I thought we were ranked number one or somewhere in the Top 3! (Nah, not really…)

The top three nations dubbed as friendliest of all countries ranked highest in the following: they are the easiest to befriend locals, learn the local language, integrate into the community and fit into the new culture.

15 France

14 Singapore

13 Mexico

12 Italy

11 Brazil

10 Malaysia

9 Spain

8 Philippines

7 United Kingdom

6 Turkey

5 United States

4 Canada

3 South Africa

2 Australia

1 New Zealand

via Forbes on Yahoo News

From Time Magazine: This year’s top 10 viral videos include a baby Darth Vader, a “nasty” honey badger, a 90′s crooner, an epic gigglefest and of course- Rebecca Black’s “Friday”

Imagine a country where the government is able to shut down Web sites at the slightest provocation, where elected representatives invoke fears of “overseas pirates” to defend the interests of domestic industries, and where Internet companies like Google must cave in to the demands of government censors or risk being shut down.

No, we are not talking about China, North Korea or Iran — we are talking about the United States, where legislators in both the House and Senate are attempting to push through new anti-piracy legislation by year-end that would benefit Hollywood at the expense of Silicon Valley.

Some of the most powerful players in Silicon Valley — Google, Facebook, Zynga, eBay, Twitter, Yahoo, and LinkedIn — have made their opposition to the bill public, even going so far as to take out full-page advertisements (“We Stand Together to Protect Innovation”) explaining their position. via Washington Post

If you are a blogger, a Tumblr, Wordpress, Blogspot user, have a Facebook , Flickr, Etsy, Reddit, Linkd or Twitter account, etc. –under SOPA, any site that contains user-generated content, could be held liable for copyright infringement and be forced to shut down until the offending content has been removed.

Website Blocking

The government can order service providers to block websites for infringing links posted by any users.

Risk of Jail for Ordinary Users

It becomes a felony with a potential 5 year sentence to stream a copyrighted work that would cost more than $2,500 to license, even if you are a totally noncommercial user, e.g. singing a pop song on Facebook.
Chaos for the Internet

Thousands of sites that are legal under the DMCA would face new legal threats. People trying to keep the internet more secure wouldn’t be able to rely on the integrity of the DNS system.

An ad that appeared in New York Times- November 16th issue: signed by Google, Facebook, Mozilla, Zynga, eBay, Twitter, Yahoo, LinkedIn, and AOL

Tell Congress not to censor the internet NOW! – fightforthefuture.org/pipa

PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites– they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”

The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill would cost us $47 million tax dollars a year — that’s for a fix that won’t work, disrupts the internet, stifles innovation, shuts out diverse voices, and censors the internet. This bill is bad for creativity and does not protect your rights.

Who: Multi-talented singer songwriter and musician Keaton Simons and equally multifaceted artist Didi Benami in a duet!
What: The captivating new song, “If I Hadn’t Forgotten”

Where: now available on iTunes and Amazon as digital downloads.

When: release date, November 01, 2011

Song Trivia: Heard on Private Practice Episode 506, “If I Hadn’t Forgotten” | November 3rd. 2011

Why you should buy: It is organic and thoughtful in its simplicity. Unobtrusive, noteworthy on its gentleness. The duo’s solid vocals and phrasing shine through. Keaton Simons is giving and unassuming; Didi Benami’s quiet surrender and commitment to the song is compelling. Together, it makes for beautiful harmony and one you could put on repeat. via Amazon

The Making of “If I Hadn’t Forgotten”

Song preview at Didi Benami’s Official website. Keaton Simons official site here.

Get FREE song download from Didi’s fansite.

@DidiBenami on Twitter
@KeatonSimons on Twitter

Keaton’s Official Facebook | Didi’s Official Facebook

Inspired by Guy Fawkes Night commemorated every year primarily in Great Britain, and brought into the spotlight in the movie V for Vendetta — Anonymous group vows to ‘destroy’ Facebook on Saturday, November 5th, 2011. How they are going to do it and will they succeed? I can not wait to find out!

I have not been active on Facebook at all until I got myself a smart phone with unlimited internet access and easy social network connect capabilities, now it is almost impossible NOT to be on it all the time! I would probably be secretly happy if they could in fact take down Facebook, DELETE it’s entire database!! That’s what I’d like. If only they could hack the social network even for a few hours, enough to remove forever its content then all users could start over. A clean slate!! Who wouldn’t want that?! It’ll give everyone an excuse to ‘unfriend’ and ‘unlike’ people and things forever!

Partial transcript of the video:

Attention Citizens of the World,

We are Anonymous. We wish to get your attention hoping you heed the warnings as follows. Your medium of communication you all so dearly adore will be destroyed. If you’re a willing activist or a guy who just wants to protect the freedom of information then join the cause and kill Facebook for the sake of your own privacy. Facebook has been selling information to government agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms so they can spy on people from all around the world.

#opfacebook . Engaged.

This is our world now. We exist without nationality, without religious bias. We have the right to not be surveilled, not be stalked, and not be used for profit. We have the right to not live as slaves.

We are anonymous
We are legion
We do not forgive
We do not forget
Expect us

Who are these people hiding behind masks?

According to good ol’ reliable Wikipedia: Anonymous (used as a mass noun) is a group initiating active civil disobedience and spread through the Internet while staying hidden, originating in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, representing the concept of many online community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic, digitized global brain. It is also generally considered to be a blanket term for members of certain Internet subcultures, a way to refer to the actions of people in an environment where their actual identities are not known.

Anonymous have taken down websites representing banks, religions, and governments. What or who could stop them from stopping the social giant Facebook?

Go Ahead, share this news on your Facebook wall! Doesn’t that sound odd?! LOL.

As if his prayer wasn’t enough to cause giggles and a few laughs, Songify This made a song out of the prayer and it became even funnier. “Pastor Joe Nelms gives a moving pre-race prayer in the form of a country song all men, women, & children can dance to,” YouTube uploader schmoyoho says of the video parody they created.

Have a listen to the Songify This version first:

Then watch the original version:

The clip has been viewed over 100,000 times in the first 24 hours it was posted on August 3rd and is spreading virally on blogs, email and social media. Only three days later today, it has already garnered over 700,000 views and counting!

I say timing is everything because upon further research on YouTube, this kid has been around in the popular uploading site being filmed by others who were also clearly impressed by his singing voice. This year and the video above may just be the key to get him noticed by Hollywood or who knows record labels! We expect this kid to appear on the Ellen DeGeneres show soon just as when Charice exploded on YouTube and she was flown from the Philippines to appear on the Ellen show not too long ago.

Here below in a 2008 video, the same boy is identified as that from an Aeta descent*, Arjohn Gilbert, singing the Coblie Caillat hit “Bubbly.” In another 2008 video, he is singing “Always be my Baby” by Mariah Carey.

In this 2010 video, user Jothan Gaetz is urging people to repost the video he took of Arjohn with another kid. His description explains his ultimate goal- to get Arjohn discovered:

” The boys in this video go by the name DJ Ryan, and Arjohn. Both of them are street kids in the Philippines. My wife and I befriended them recently, and Arjohn asked us to help him get discovered. Arjohn wants to be the next Charice. You can help him pull himself up out of poverty by reposting this video and watching it as many times as you can. If you are a record producer, please contact me, I can bring you to him. Find me on facebook under “Jothan Gaetz” “

This kid has been featured in a TV news program in 2009 channeling Rihanna and Mariah Carey!

Yet again in a 2009 short TV documentary, this kid’s talent is featured and highlighted. Why is this kid NOT discovered yet by record producers?! Timing is everything…

*Aeta: an indigenous people who live in scattered, isolated mountainous parts of Luzon, Philippines. They are thought to be among the earliest inhabitants of the Philippines, WIKI

When I finally surrendered to owning an android ‘smart phone,’ one of the things I was prodded to download was the “Angry Birds” game app– to my chagrin.

For the first few weeks, I no longer had free time! In fact, most of my time was spent playing the all too time-consuming, battery-draining addictive game! I finished all levels on the original game, up to “The Big Setup,” completed the Christmas, Halloween and Valentine’s “Seasons” version and perfected the “Smuggler’s Den” and “Jungle Escape” with all three stars (!) on the “Rio” version.

I was so happy that I got over it after that. I have not opened any of the “Angry Birds” app on my phone for sometime now. A few days ago, I came across an article on PC World entitled: “Angry Birds Hits the Web for Free, Yippee!” This was not good news for me at all! I of course went on to immediately install the game tailored for Google Chrome. Arrgh! Now it is on my notebook and one can only imagine how easily accessible it is right on your computer…

No Chrome browser? You can try the game on your Internet Explorer 9 and Mozilla Firefox 4.0 here. Be warned however, it may not always work! I tried it on Firefox and just says ‘loading’ forever.

Tip you should know if you start playing on the web: you can zoom in and out of the game by simply scrolling your mouse wheel!

Angry Birds has reached more than 140 million downloads worldwide. The hugely popular game debuted as an Apple iPhone app in December 2009. Did I mention it is addictive? It is addictive!

At one point in his life, Arnel Pineda made twenty cents a day gathering scrap materials at a pier in the Philippines. Eventually he made ends meet singing for cover bands in a few marginal bars. Born into poverty and raised on the streets, Arnel abused drugs and alcohol to escape the turmoil of his everyday life. But he never stopped singing and believing in his talent – even when he almost lost his voice for good on two separate occasions.

Following a haphazard decade of singing in various bands, Arnel decided to clean up and follow his dreams. He formed a new cover band called Zoo and performed as much as possible to raise the band’s profile. As the band progressed, an admirer of Arnel’s began posting clips of the band to Youtube in hopes of spreading the word to potential new fans.

Little did he know he’d find one in Neal Schon, lead guitarist of the iconic American rock band Journey. Nor could he have expected that Arnel would be asked to audition to be lead singer of the band! Our independent film Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey intimately chronicles the amazing true story behind Arnel’s overnight rise to international stardom. As media hype starts to mount worldwide, we follow Arnel as he deals with a new set of obstacles and pressures – which push him further on his personal journey than he could have ever imagined.

Arnel’s story is a fascinating look at how fame and celebrity have transformed in our super-connected Youtube age. Like fellow Youtube sensation-turned-pop icon Justin Bieber, Arnel was catapulted to stardom after being “discovered” by sheer chance. Our film follows him through this uncharted world of democratized media, where a celebrity’s fame is fueled by viral hype and destroyed by short attention spans and fickle opinions.

Do you want to be part of a real-life rock’n’roll legend in the making? The good news is that the film has already been shot. We now need to raise $50,000 to kickstart the editing phase and need your support! Whether you’re a Journey lover, an Arnel follower, a documentary buff, a fan of inspiring true stories, or simply want to get involved, we are looking for “Believers” to help us finish our film. Join us! Thanks in advance for your interest and support.

VISIT THIS PAGE TO CONTRIBUTE…

Sign up for updates and view the teaser trailer, full synopsis, filmmaker bios, at the official website: http://everymansjourney.com/.

Join on Facebook by “liking” the fan page and adding as a friend on their official page.

If you tweet, you can follow them at their official twitter page. Please tweet about the film, and be sure use the hashtag #EverymansJourney.

Be sure to check out on imdb.com as well.

Katy Perry no doubt created numerous hits over the last three years of her career. Though she still has a bit to prove in terms of record sales, putting her along side Lady Gaga, Christina Aguilera, P!nk, and the still relevant Britney Spears– they are considerably among the biggest stars in pop music today and reminiscent of what Madonna was in the 80′s.

[ I can not mention Madonna without saying how she certainly shaped Pop music to where it is now. There is no comparison. She defied convention and paved the way for other artists to push boundaries in its lyrics, style and imagery. Truly a pop culture icon, Madonna is still the world's top-selling female recording artist of all time having sold more than 300 million records worldwide and on the business side as an entrepreneur- a true genius! ]

While I question most of Ms Perry’s music for lacking depth and profundity and for sounding too commercial and artificial at times, every once in a while I come across covers of Katy Perry’s songs stripped, created in such heartwarming tracks that the music becomes art itself. I could listen to these covers over and over.

Listen in and appreciate…!

“Teenage Dream” by The Rescues

Acoustic Cover of “Firework” by Tyler Ward and Alex Goot

“Teenage Dream” piano acoustic cover by Boyce Avenue

A Capella Beatbox Cover of “Firework” by Mike Tompkins

“Teenage Dream” acoustic piano cover by Tyler Ward

I cannot end this post without giving the best music parody to “Teenage Dream” . The lyrics masked in pain & vindictive thoughts in a ‘Weird Al Yankovic’ kind-of-way will crack you up…