Pinoy Blog Machine (Beta)

With WiFi hotspots spawning around like wildfire, your resident gadgetspotter decided to try out a few hotspots in and around the Metro all the way through part of the South Luzon.

Lets start with the Metro. Around the De La Salle University campus area, there are quite a number of food establishments around. In fact, as of typing this entry, I am enjoying a bite at Cerealicious Taft Avenue Branch. The cereal is good. Unfortunately... the WiFi connection leaves much to be desired. Its not as if I was able to connect to it anyway. The wireless router was visible but it took almost forever to obtain a network address. Anyway, running on pure battery power, why would anyone bother? Fortunately Luckily for me, there was another open network powered by globequest. Most probably, this is the BIZ connection from Globe. Perhaps this is from one of Cerealicious' neighbors? Bo's perhaps. It was good considering I didn't even know where the access point is. uTorrent worked wonders and so did my three browsers. When I decide to come out of the store I'll check for the access point. But fact aside, until I finally get a network address from their router, Cerealicious WiFi rates a big FAT 0.

Next stop... Starbucks, Torre Lorenzo, Vito Cruz...
Starbucks... One of the few havens for coffee lovers in the country. Yet, surprisingly inconsistent with their internet service providers. I recall one branch which uses globequest. However, the one at Torre is powered by airborneaccess. This was unfortunate. airborneaccess powered hotspots are rarely free. This one is no exception. They do sell cards though. The one I used for the test was only the Php 100 denomination (for 1 hour?!?!). Well, it was just a test. Just have to remember thats its an addition to my collection.
For a pay-per-use access, it wasn't what I expected. uTorrent did work but not as fast as it does at home (considering I have smartBro at home). But the coffee was good. And they didn't say it was free in the first place. Access speeds during my trial were around 50kB/s. Not too fast, not too slow. Lukewarm hotspot if you ask me.

Well, two down, indefinite number of hotspots to go. Rest assured, as long as I remember to bring my laptop to places, I'll continue checking out other hotspots. But as of now, class starts in a few minutes. 'till then... sayonara folks!


UPDATE:

I recently got around to connecting to the Cerealicious hotspot and it was good enough for something you can use for free. Gone is the requirement for a network key, and for a meager 20 pesos, you can plug your laptop into the wall socket for as long as you intend to stay. The connection speed was fast enough to load most pages without a sweat.

Also, the mysterious globequest signal was gone. And so was BO's Coffee. Coincidence? Well, most probably, it was their signal I saw before. Too bad they're gone now. I happened to like their breakfast meals.

Add the prominent Halalan 2007 blog to my list of journalists, media organizations, and bloggers that posted about our project (posts here and here). The second period (which covers March 3 to 16) is going to be available sometime next week in the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility site.

I don't think this trend is going to happen anytime here soon, but the possibility is there nevertheless.

From Tom Rosenstiel of Project for Excellence in Journalism:

State of the American News Media, 2007:
Economic Challenges Usher In Era of the Niche For Mainstream Media, Says Fourth Annual PEJ Report

Every Component of TV News Is Losing Audience

Washington, D.C. – "For the first time in years, every sector of television news lost audience in 2006. And newspapers, despite garnering a larger audience than ever for their content via online platforms, faced more downbeat financial assessments. The shifting economic fundamentals are spurring mainstream news organizations to try to build audience around 'franchise' areas of coverage, specialties and even crusades, according to a new report on the state of journalism in America by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a nonpartisan, non-political research group.

"The new phenomenon is exemplified by cable news, which had been growing for a decade, but is now suffering audience declines. Cable’s “Argument Culture” is giving way to something new: the Answer Culture, a growing pattern that has news outlets, programs and journalists offering up solutions, certainty and the impression of putting all the blur of information in clear order for people.

'These are some of the conclusions from The State of the American News Media, 2007, a 700-page comprehensive look at the state of U.S. journalism by PEJ, a project of the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. and funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts. This is the fourth annual report.

"'Trends that we have been tracking now for four years are reaching a pivot point,” PEJ Director Tom Rosenstiel said. 'Only one media sector, the ethnic press, is still growing, and every measurement for audience—even page views and visitors—is now being questioned. Things are now moving faster than companies can even recognize. Mainstream news media are adapting, in part, by focusing on specialties. In a sense, every outlet is becoming more of a niche player with reduced ambitions.'

"That does not mean that journalism is dying. There is even more reason than a few years ago to believe, the report concludes, that the old newsrooms of America are most likely to be the successful newsrooms of the future.

"But the report also cautions that the consequences of the overall trend toward franchise branding remain unclear. 'Hyper localism,' a favorite term on Wall Street, can be market speak for simple cost-cutting. Branding can be a mask for bias. Pursued mindlessly, the franchise approach could also spell the death of a big city metro paper. The character of the next era, far from inevitable, will likely depend heavily on the quality of leadership in the newsroom and boardroom, the report concludes.

"The 2007 report includes a special content analysis of digital journalism, which systematically examines the nature and character of more than three dozen websites offering news and information in a variety of styles. Among other findings, the online analysis concludes that while journalists are becoming more serious about the Web, no clear models of how to do journalism online exist yet, and some qualities are still only marginally explored. Features such as immediacy and customizability, for instance, have been developed much more than others, such as depth or the use of multimedia."

The study, which contains detailed charts, graphs and citations, can be accessed online at www.stateofthemedia.org. Photos in this post from the site.

Thanks to GMANews.TV (for this and this), Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism's Avigail Olarte (for this) and Lala Ordenes-Cascolan (here), Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) consultant and Freedom Fund for Filipino Journalists coordinator Ma'am Rachel Khan (here), and The Philippine Star's Marichu Villanueva (sorry, I couldn't find any online version of her recent column). I hope more journalists and media organizations write about the latest CMFR project, "Monitoring the news media coverage of the 2007 national elections."

The latest CMFR study showed that the media coverage of the first three weeks of the national campaign barely reported on and discussed the party-list elections, despite these elections' being national in scope. Like in 2004 when CMFR did its a citizens’ monitor of the national elections -- a first in Philippine electoral experience -- there was the usual emphasis on celebrity and celebrity-related news.

As I have posted earlier, CMFR held a round table discussion last March 5 discussing its 2004 study findings and recommendations before coming out with the first analysis of the coverage of this year's elections.

Click here for a short report about the March 5 event. The discussion that followed afterwards was very interesting, I tell you.

I also posted video clips of the round table discussion in my Youtube account. Sorry if they are quite grainy -- Ate Carol (our office finance manager and overall rah-rah girl), I think we need to buy that new videocam I saw the other day. And Venus, Don, Bimbo, and Junette, I think we need to practice more on how to shoot videos (lol).



Click on the clip and this will lead you to my account, containing the rest of the videos.

Speaking of my dear colleagues, Nathan, dude, I'm sorry If I and Venus did not join the chat session with the staff earlier. Toxic PJR Reports work.

Kahit di ko gusto si Annabelle Rama, gusto ko siya sa interview niya sa THE BUZZ.



Alamin kung ano ang mga sagot niya sa mga tanong ni Ruffa kung saan sinabi ni Annabelle na plastic si Ruffa.
hehehe


entertainment,Ruffa Gutierrez,Boy Abunda,Anabelle Rama,celebrities

Representative Liza Maza of Gabriela Party List fears she is next to be arrested for what she describes as a trumped up charges filed against her in Nueva Ecija. Gabriela is a women’s rights movement affiliated with Bayan Muna the number one party list garnering the most votes in the last election and predicted to lead again in the May election. Meanwhile re-election candidate Senator Joker Arroyo being true to his name joked about advising Satur Ocampo not to escape this time around. Arroyo not related to the one cheating errrr seating by the Pasig River was the lawyer of Ocampo during his 1985 escape when he was allowed to vote in the NPC election. Inquirer Newsbreak reported that Joker Arroyo claimed to have advised Satur Ocampo to escape because it was not “illegal” back then under the illegitimate Marcos regime. Lucky for Mr. Joker he is with the arresting errr party in power who...

Philippine political & social events as seen from the vantage point of a Cyber Pedestrian Observer, visit the site to read the rest or for other related articles.