Daily Bitekletas

Today, meebo releases another milestone in online instant message. The service is called Meebo Rooms. Looks like a really nice move to bring back the glory of IRC (those were the days) by AJAXifying it. Over-all it really looks neat and useful. At the moment, only 80 people are allowed to per room but anyone can join in as a guest.

Meebo Rooms allows webmasters/bloggers or site owners to embed existing or user created room on third party sites. Neat features huh?! I’m a meebo fan myself and bound to explore this new service along the way.

Today is election day in the Philippines. I just thought of writing a simple guide when voting and securing your ballot.

1. Make a list of candidates whom you’re voting for.
   
2. Bring extra identification cards/Paper before going to the designated precinct.
3. Look at everyone’s doing, be a watcher yourself.
   
4. When filling up the official ballot, put an “X” mark or strike out empty lines. This will ensure that nobody can put names on those empty lines.
5. Make sure you write the complete name of the candidate you are voting for. Writing only the last name could invalidate your vote worst, cheater can add in a first name thereby using your ballot for cheating.
6. Indelible Ink should make a mark on your index finger for at least 2 days. Make sure that it really does. A lot of people have reported (with videos sent to ABS-CBN) demonstrating how easy it is to remove the indelible ink by using alcohol and a simple brush. This is against what has been specified by COMELEC ( law ). If you think that your precinct is using a substandard ink, make a complaint or inform the election officer of your precinct.

Big change starts in small ways. Don’t let money influence your vote. Keep the money but vote for those who are deserving leaders.

If you are a pinoy and will be participating in the 2007 National Election this May 14, 2007 - you may want to verify your precinct for convenience. This is a good move from the Commission on Election (COMELEC) in making the move to modernize some processes in the commission. Unfortunately though, I’m afraid that some of you may never get any result as I believe the is not as complete as it should be. In have no luck in finding my record. Oh well, it’s worth a try!

A word of caution, the site takes about 10 minutes to load on a decent DSL connection.

At the office, we use Yahoo Messenger for communicating with co-workers at our remote office in the US. After successfully logging in to my Y! M, a notification window pop-up with an announcement regarding their “latest exciting feature” called Message History. This feature is related to their earlier announcement of their Web-based IM (flash) application.

So what does this mean for all YM users like me?

The good side - your chat history is available anywhere. After having been into “Laptop” Recovery mode all weekend - and lost all of my YM chat history because of my stupidity - it would have been very good if this Y! Messenger feature was lunched earlier on.

The bad side - your chat history is now owned by Yahoo. Privacy issues anyone?

Expectations, Expectations..

1. Yahoo! Messenger for desktop should fetch or store chat history on Yahoo! Server or Desktop depending on the user preference
2. History-off - allow a user to explicitly turn the Message History off on both party (e.g. I can turn off message archiving for a certain user so that the person I’m talking to cannot save the current conversation).

Other instant messaging platform that offers online message archiving/history (that I use are) are Gmail/Google Talk and Meebo.

Joost just got another boost when it announced their latest deal with Warner Bros. Yes! Warner Bros is offering exclusive content online with Joost with it’s WBTV: SCI-FI FIX and WBTV: Before They Were Mega Stars channels.

Both WBTV channels will launch on Joost this month. WBTV: SCI-FI FIX will feature popular shows like Adventures of Briscoe County, Aquaman, Babylon 5, Crusade, Human Target, Invasion, Max Headroom, My Favorite Martian, Prey, Time Trax and V.

The WBTV: Before They Were Mega Stars channel will include shows from the past that feature some of today’s biggest stars of the big screen. Before they were famous, celebrities like Brad Pitt, Kirsten Dunst, Samuel L. Jackson, Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson made guest appearances on shows like Growing Pains, Kung Fu, Sisters and Spenser: For Hire. Viewers will be able to find these guest appearances and more exclusively on Joost.

Joost has a growing list of partners which includes CNN, Sony, NHL and now Warner Bros. Is Joost going to be the Internet TV monopoly of the future? We are going to find that out soon.

I would really love to see Joost offering alternative bit rate for low-bandwidth viewers like myself. I love Joost but I can’t make it to not go into “choppy mode” on my 384kps connection at home or even at a higher bandwidth connection at the office. I would really really appreciate if they can make this happen.

Yes! Out MyBlogLog, In BumpZee and BlogCatalog!

While it is true that I have no experience using MyBlogLog, I confidently can say that BlogCatalog and BumpZee will definitely beat MyBlogLog soon. Design-wise,  BumpZee and BlogCatalog is far more appealing than MyBlog. Functionality-wise, they are far more superior.

Bump with BUMPzee

BumpZee’s design and color theme is all about being hip and fresh. ‘Zees’ allows members to say what they want publicly on a particular community/group. Features I really like are: Discussions/Forum, Zees, Tag cloud, community/grouping, community blog listing, Digg-like voting (a.k.a. ‘Bump’) of member’s blog post. I give BumpZee an A+!

Simply BlogCatalog

BlogCatalog’s design and color theme is all about being clean, simple and formal. The features that I really like about this service are: Flat-based-great-looking discussion page.

MyBlogLog, BumpZee and BlogCatalog offers widget that can be placed on your blog. I have nothing against MyBlogLog. I just that, there is something in it that I don’t like. To conclude, I think there is a noticeable competition in “social networking for blogs” service. Keep an eye on BumpZee and BlogCatalog because its only a matter of time that these two companies will be acquired by a much bigger company.