かわいい! Meet Wikipe-tan. She’s the unofficial mascot and moe anthropomorph of Wikipedia. Here, she’s wearing the baro’t saya, the female national costume of the Philippines. Isn’t that cute?

What happened was, Nanami Kamamira, a Filipino Wikipedian in the English Wikipedia, asked Kasuga, a Japanese Wikipedian, to draw Wikipe-tan wearing the Filipino costume. This is after Kasuga created pictures of Wikipe-tan wearing the áo dài, the Vietnamese national costume (think Miss Saigon), and a full-blown ancient Egyptian regalia. Nanami wanted this as a surprise to the Filipino Wikipedian community at the English Wikipedia.

I think it’s a very well done drawing by Kasuga, especially considering that he based his drawings from pictures on the Internet. The only iffy part is I don’t ever recall Filipina ladies carrying the train of the skirt on their arm. Nevertheless, I don’t think it detracts too much from the overall appeal of the drawing.

Wondering why Wikipe-tan is wearing jigsaw puzzle pieces as hair clips? Well, these puzzle pieces are inspired by the Wikipedia logo, which depicts a sphere composed of jigsaw puzzle pieces. Notice also that instead of floral embroidery on the baro’t saya, we have outlines of puzzle pieces. Neat!

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to catch all of the sessions since I attended a baptism in the morning with a reception during lunch. So it was in the middle of Manolo’s talk that I barged into iBlog4. I’m glad I caught Manolo speak (and it’s the first time I heard him give a speech) since he was very engaging and funny. He’s probably one of the few bloggers that’s able to translate his online eloquence into the real world.

Other highlights of iBlog4 were Ria Jose’s anecdotes into the happenings in Mindanao’s blogosphere, proving that the Filipino bloggers are not just active in Metro Manila; and JJ Disini’s talk about the legal aspects of blogging. Illegal downloaders of MP3s everywhere can now point to JJ’s example of fair use. Hehehe.

Too bad that I didn’t catch Juned’s talk and how he wowed the audience by bringing out his platoon of cameras. I also heard that Karlo revealed that he is earning around $1,000 a month. Nice. And he’s still studying at that! If ever he won’t get a job after graduating, I’m sure he’d do pretty well becoming a problogger.

It’s quite noticeable that this year’s affair is much smaller than last year’s two-day extravaganza with its more than 20 speakers covering a much wider range of topics. (See my coverage of last year’s talks.) Be that as it may, content is still king, and I think that iBlog4, my second iBlog, is as successful as iBlog3. Congratulations to Janette and JJ and I again am looking forward to iBlog5.

The big news that’s rocking the physics, electrical and electronics engineering fields is the proof of the existence of the memristor. “Mem-what?” Well, that’s what my initial reaction was, too. The memristor is apparently the missing fourth fundamental basic element of electrical circuits, alongside the resistor, the capacitor, and the inductor. And the cool thing about this is that the memristor was first hypothesized in 1971 by Leon Chua, a Filipino-American professor at the University of California at Berkeley who got his degree in B.S. Electrical Engineering at the Mapúa Institute of Technology in 1959, here in the Philippines! Yay, Pinoy!

Basically, the memristor, short for “memory resistor,” is a passive electrical device whose electrical resistance is a function of how much current had passed through it (well, more or less). To imagine how this works, think of an incandescent light bulb connected to a DC battery. A light bulb is actually just a simple resistor (that simply happens to give off light). This light bulb shines at a steady brightness because it has a constant resistance and is fed by a constant voltage and passes through a constant current. Now imagine that the light bulb has characteristics of a memristor instead of a resistor. What happens is that the light bulb will grow progressively brighter the longer it is connected to the battery—it’s resistance decreases. Now, reverse the connection of the memristor light bulb to the battery (swapping the electrodes) and you should see it grow progressively dimmer—it’s resistance increases.

The memristor was developed by engineers at HP Labs last month and was announced on April 30 (see the articles in Nature and the EE Times.) What the HP engineers did was to dope a thin film of titanium-dioxide with depleted oxygen atoms and the oxygen “holes” move—increasing or decreasing the film’s resistance—when an electrical current is applied to the film in one or the other direction.

One good application of memristors is as a form of memory storage. While DRAMs (e.g., your typical SDRAM) store binary 1’s and 0’s via charged or uncharged capacitors, memory-based memristors store 1’s and 0’s via high and low resistances. And unlike DRAMs that lose their data when power is turned off, memristors don’t. As a proof of concept, the guys at HP Labs have managed to use memristors to store 100 gigabits on a single die in one square centimeter. While this is comparable to today’s existing hard disks and flash drives, the prototype memristor storage has access times similar to DRAMs—much, much faster! And these are just prototypes. HP thinks that they can push the storage up to 1 terabit or more. (See this ars technica article to learn more.)

One particularly interesting property of the titanium-dioxide memristor is that its effect becomes more pronounced the smaller it becomes. Plus, it doesn’t generate the excess heat that’s now cooking your thighs underneath your laptop. Memristors have far-reaching implications for the computer industry because memristor-based transistors can be constructed much, much smaller than today’s semiconductor-based transistors, thus potentially pushing Moore’s Law a lot further into the future, something that had been troubling the semiconductor industry for sometime now.

It’s a good thing that I’m already done with my B.S. Computer Engineering degree. The reality of the memristor means that electrical and electronics textbooks definitely need to be rewritten. I have a good cognitive grasp of how resistors and capacitors work, but somehow, inductors fumble me. What more with memristors! Hehehe.

A big thanks to Urbano for blogging about the memristor. The image above is from the Wikimedia Commons.

As a sort-of teaser to my “much anticipated” coverage of iBlog4 and the 88DB.com Bloggers’ Night, I have revealed the faces behind ten of the You Got Tech bloggers and I have also posted on YouTube a video I took of Lose Your Beer Belly.

Aileen’s pet group blog project, You Got Tech (yes, the phonetic similarity to a popular local blog is deliberate), has this tantalizing header consisting of the eye mugshots of their bloggers. It’s easy to recognize some of them but for your convenience, the diagram above shows the bloggers in their first ever group picture (four of the bloggers in the picture are based in Davao), after yesterday’s iBlog4, matched to their eye mugshots. From left to right (group picture) they are: Coy, Markku, Juned, Andrew, Aileen, Jay, Winston, Ria (she doesn’t seem to have an eye mugshot), Migs, and Janette. Not in the group picture are Benj, Jun and Honey.

I took a video of Ade’s band, Lose Your Beer Belly (LYBB) performing Vertical Horizon’s You’re a God at the 88DB.com Bloggers’ Night. (The screenshot above links to the video’s YouTube page.) Sadly, I only caught the last chorus of the song (and pardon the lighting; the place was dimly lit). Their gig last night was also the first time Lauren got to jam with LLYB. Now I’m not a band connoisseur but I thought they were pretty good and their original songs are very nice.

You should know by now that tomorrow, April 26, there will be two back-to-back bloggers events. The first is the iBlog4: The 4th Philippine Blogging Summit at Malcolm Hall in U.P. Diliman, and the second is the 88DB.com Bloggers’ Night. These blogger events are very good ways of meeting other bloggers that you have only conversed with online as well as an excellent venue for networking and gaining more friends and acquaintances.

In these events, there are plenty of ways to promote your blog. From the common T-shirt, like Benj’s, to the creative jester’s hat worn by Pierre (Picture by Sasha). But if you want to be downright conventional, you can go with business cards.

I’ve managed to build up a modest collection of business cards from the blogging events I’ve attended, so let me give these “carded” people some publicity!

Here’s Andrian’s Asia Pay business card which I got from last December’s Red Box Blogger’s Christmas Party. It’s simple and business like (though the orange is a bit harsh).

Fellow BBN blogger Sophie with her Beauty & Minerals card. Very sassy.

Noemi’s card definitely reflects her personality.

Renzie’s make-money-online card, which I received during last year’s Blogger Mixer event, could definitely use some sprucing up.

I like how Markku Seguerra’s BlogBank card looks (which he gave away during the BlogBank launch). The only problem is the ink is a bit runny.

The Digital Filipino card of Janette is one of the few portrait cards in my collection. And the bright colors are attention-grabbing too.

J. Angelo’s card, which I got during the Philippine BlogCon 2006 (the first blogging event I ever went to), is so Web 2.0 with its shiny-floor-reflection effect. But I like Abe’s Web 2.0 card better.

Juned’s Baratillo and Piscinarii card is simple and modernist in its design.

What better way to show your drawing skills than by placing one of your creations on your business card, right? Card by Karlo.

It’s not obvious from the photo but Shai’s b5media business card is the only non-rectangular card of the bunch—the corners are rounded or tapered. I also really like the graphic design on the card.

Aside from the BlogBank card above, Markku also has his personal card. This is the first photographic card I’ve ever received and it really suits his photography hobby. The cards come with different artistic pictures and I chose this sunset shot. (I love sunset pictures!)

Not to be outdone, Juned also made his own photographic cards (with various photos) several months later. Amazingly, I also picked another sunset photograph forgetting that I already had a sunset card from Markku. (I must really love sunset photos. Hehehe.)

During the Boracay weekend, Melo gave me this intriguing card holder thingamajig containing his Lakbay Pilipinas card and I absolutely love it! The card itself is pretty decent but the card holder takes the cake. Thus I give Melo the Best Business Card as of April 2008 Award.

Ironically, I still have no business cards of my own. Hehehe. See you guys tomorrow, and who knows, you might win the next Best Business Card Award. Just give me your cards, aight?

Two weeks ago, a few bloggers and I got to talk to a journalist who had the experience of being charged with libel and spending overnight in jail. I won’t mention the journalist’s name because she requested it, but the insights she provided about libel were quite enlightening, to say the least, especially since bloggers are affected by it too.

Anyway, the topic of libel came up because of Brian Gorrell’s blog and the surrounding controversy that’s been taking the Pinoy blogosphere and Manila high society by storm. Brian, as well as many of his supporters, had been booing the mainstream media for not mentioning the names of various incriminated individuals. The reason why journalists had been skirting the issue is because of libel. Yuga relayed some of the opinions of lawyers about the controversy in relation to libel in a blog post and got flak for it from Brian’s supporters.

Well, I thought that the media was being too cautious about the whole thing. It was only when we talked to the aforementioned journalist that I got to see where the media was coming from. In a nutshell, the sentiment of the media is that this issue is not worth sticking ones neck out for the harassment of libel when one can do away with reporting on the scandal without mentioning names (or showing unblurred photographs).

If the issue is a matter of public interest (which is altogether different from what the public is interested in, like Brian’s blog), then going into defamation territory is warranted especially since the media has resources for defense if needed (e.g., the libel cases of First Gentleman Mike Arroyo). In the case of Brian Gorrell, the issue is simply not worth risking the potential for libel (compared with, say, the NBN-ZTE scandal) even if the plaintiffs won’t win. The problem is, libel has been used as a tool for intimidation and harassment especially if the libel suit is unlikely to win in the first place. The journalist we talked to mentioned that the libel case she and a few others were charged with was eventually dismissed but getting detained in a jail is so much trouble.

Hence, the takeaway is that journalists and the media need to choose their battles. And Brian Gorrell’s story, unfortunately, is not a libel battle worth fighting over; thus the need to play safe.

I guess there really is a need to decriminalize libel, defamation, and slander so that there is no unnecessary muzzling of the press. To expound more on that topic, I’d like to point you instead, to this excellent article by Luis Teodoro on libel in the Philippines.

Almost one year ago, Yuga raised the alarm that Intel might move their Cavite operations to Dalian, China. Well, it didn’t happen at that time. Also, when Intel announced last year that they will sell off their flash memory unit to form a new company called Numonyx, the closing fears circulated the rumor mill again since half of the operations at Intel Cavite was in the manufacturing of flash memory. Well, just yesterday, an internal announcement came that Intel Cavite might close off for good within the next six to nine months.

I got ahold of the leaked (?) info about Intel Philippines closing from the comments left by current and former Intel employees on my “Intel Philippines, Cavite Plant” article over at Vista Pinas. Here are some choice comments:

“Corporate made an announcement today about the closure, including how the separation of employees will be managed.” —JV, April 2

“many employees cried… too bad they had to close it down. the high costs of maintaining the site (i.e., high electricity bills, very high government taxes, building rentals, etc.) drove the closure.” —tuluk, April 3

“Yes, the plant will be closing down 6–9 months from now from what I have heard from those who decided to stay behind. […] The high taxes is not just the unbearable part but the other employees who abused the management and company, stealing microprocessors and selling them to the black market. Oh and yeah, electricity is not only causing them lot (being expensive and all) but causing them lost production time due to fluctuations.” —nie, April 3

Searching around the blogosphere, an Intel employee recounts in his LiveJournal blog that the “official” statement for the planned closure is:

“[Intel Philippines needs to] find another building so that structural abnormalities in CV1 [Cavite Plant 1] can be remedied else Intel will cease all future Manufacturing operations in the Philippines…”

If this is true, and I think it is (Numonyx officially became a company last March 31, 2008 making the timing extremely uncanny), it is a sad day for the Philippines as an investment site. Intel started its operations in the Philippines in 1974, a mere six years after Intel itself was founded, and after 34 years Intel will likely cease operations here having moved to places like Vietnam and China, which are apparently more manufacturing-friendly.

The Philippines needs to get its act together. Otherwise, the only thing we’ll ever be good at here for investment is call centers and business process outsourcing, which is not enough to keep jobs in the country.

Some people consider me a problogger but I can assure you that my online activities, which includes blogging, are hardly my main source of income. While I did get my first AdSense commission last year, I’m still in the red as far as revenues versus expenses go. Just look at the chart below.

As you can see, even if I include the income I expect to receive to my received revenues, I’m still far from recouping my expenses. In this sense, blogging, and other online activities, is still very much a somewhat expensive hobby instead of a business or a sideline. But I definitely plan to turn my online life into a more serious sideline and maybe possibly, as a full-time gig (like some others that have taken the plunge).

Anyway, I’m proud to say that my received revenues include the aforementioned Google AdSense commission as well as a direct advertiser and compensation for blogging. The compensation and the direct ad are actually individually larger than my received AdSense income. So definitely, man does not live on AdSense alone. As for the receivables, AdSense is just one of my pending sources of income; I plan on building the others soon.

Now, what are my expenses? I consider only two basic categories: overhead and recurring. My recurring expenses only includes Web hosting and domain registrations (dated since 2003), and a portion of my Internet charges, viz. home DSL, Internet cafés, Wi-Fi access, and dial-up cards. I consider the rest of the Internet usage as personal consumption, much like food and gasoline, instead of as a “business expense.” Note that the apportionment between what I consider as personal or business expense is quite arbitrary and certainly won’t pass an accounting audit.

The overhead expense, on the other hand, is simply half of what I paid for my desktop and laptop PCs. Like with my Internet charges, I consider the remaining half as a personal expense, similar to my purchase of an iPod. As is obvious from the chart, I’m still far from getting back my PC investment. Hehehe.

I deliberately omitted the actual figures from the graph. But it should be quite easy to infer ballpark figures.

How about you, are you in the red or in the black with respect to your revenues and expenses?

When I opened a Linux terminal this morning at work, the following fortune quotation came up:

“April is the cruellest month…” —Thomas Stearns Eliot

The coincidence of showing T. S. Eliot’s famous phrase on this first day of April is kinda funny and creepy at the same time. Hmmm, maybe there’s an easter egg in the fortune program just for April Fools’ Day? Hehehe.

“I was the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time…” so starts the intriguing short story set in the United Kingdom and told via the Google Maps API. “The 21 Steps” by Charles Cummings is the first story of Penguin Books’ We Tell Stories, a collection of six stories by six authors and released in six weeks (hmmm, 666?). We Tell Stories aims to do storytelling using the various tools, interactive or not, Web 2.0 has to offer; looking at the two stories so far released, the first uses Google Maps API, while the second uses blogs and Twitter. Interesting, isn’t it?

I haven’t read the second story “Slice” yet, but having “experienced” “The 21 Steps,” I’m quite impressed! Google Maps and Google Earth have been used to tell stories before (e.g., family vacations), but I have never seen storytelling presented in a compelling manner as “The 21 Steps.” You have got to try it to believe it. I like the way the story leads you via an animated blue line laid on top of satellite imagery to the next location, whether it is London’s St. Pancras Underground Station or Scotland’s Edinburgh Castle. From the story, I also got to “see” the ultra-busy Heathrow Airport in ways that reading plain prose alone cannot impart. Kudos to Six to Start for developing the technology behind this short story!

That said, the story itself kinda sucked. I mean, if you strip away the dazzling novelty of using Google Maps API as a tool for storytelling, you’ll probably be disappointed with how the story resolves itself. And there are some weird plot holes; for instance, despite the protagonist professing having never been to Edinburgh, he seems to manage quite well going around the city, Scotland’s second largest.

Nevertheless, the short story is still quite amazing. I can certainly imagine a new batch of storytellers using Google Maps API in the same way to tell their own stories. Wouldn’t you want, say, to experience the story of a guy from the province finding fulfillment in Metro Manila through Google Maps? I know I do.

(Hat tip to Google Maps Mania.)