This is one of the best videos I have seen this year!

Less than three minutes long, this anime-style short piece was shared by a friend a while back but I never did get the chance to see it in full until today.

Full credit goes to the brilliant Mike Inel, who is a Philippine-based digital colorist by trade. Visit his DeviantArt page for more samples of his brilliant work.

It has really been a while, but what the hey! I’m just pleased that I got the time to post here before the end of the year.

I would like to share this amusing, highly entertaining video that I first saw on ABS-CBN‘s daily gag show, Banana Split. Nearly half of the music video, which was originally posted on the omnipotent YouTube site, was shared on the aforementioned show’s Balitang Siksik segment.

Without further ado, here are the Transformers XD dancing the Wonder Girls’ worldwide hit, Nobody:

If the above video does not work on your browser, please follow this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jywQLnUnMG0

Enjoy! (I’m sure you all will.)

I was browsing through random web logs earlier when I read from one of them about a particularly “sassy” 404 error page. Gifted with insatiable curiousity, I, naturalmente, went ahead and had a look at the much-esteemed page myself.

Click the link that follows and find out for yourself: The page cannot be fucking displayed.

Especially recommended for those who are not very fond of the mega-empire Microsoft.

As most of you may probably already know, I have been in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman since October 2nd this year. My primary reason is, understandably, to seek my fortune.

I have not been actively online since then and for some time before that, but I have been lurking here and there and religiously checking my e-mail.

Now that I am more settled physically, psychologically and emotionally, my blogging may most likely take on a more active turn.

I am proud to plug my first Oman-based blogroll link and Twitter friend, Kishor Cariappa. He blogs on everything Oman, in a nutshell.

I am currently adoring Twitter to cuddly, fluffy, squeezie bits and pieces.

Twitter is basically an online tool that will allow one to tell friends, website visitors and blog readers about what he or she is currently up to, simply by typing a sentence or two into a web-based field.

A few seconds later, the entry is published on your personal page, website ticker and RSS feed, among others. The update may also be made through a text or instant messaging service.

Not only does the site offer cool and user-friendly “what I am doing now” utilities, your webpages may also be customized to suit your aesthetic preferences. You can choose the colors of your profile as well as your identifying picture.

As such, my Twitter is unapologetically pink to match my blog, all dolled up in myriad carnation hues.

I have just registered with this service, having seen it at work on the blogs of Eric and Jason.

Go ahead and try it out, sign-up is free!

The Official Google Blog has an interesting post on the parallels between the Star Trek universe and today’s blog-and-Google ICT culture.

Oh, yes. Captain Kirk was indeed a blogger, quite fond of voice posts, no less. Perhaps he was posting to a rudimentary incarnation of LiveJournal back then.

Along this line, I would have loved it if Ensign Kim blogged and had a webcam. I definitely would have volunteered to be his online bitch.

Even if K’s Choice has the song Everything For Free, I am afraid this would not really hold that true to the Internet anymore.

Most of the so-called freebies have a catch anyway, such as annoying pop-ups and banners in your website or e-mail control panel. Not to mention tons of spam in your inbox.

I abhor all that stuff, with a vengeance.

I have just clipped out an article from yesterday’s edition of our local national daily The Philippine Star. It was about the paper getting it straight from reliable inside sources that Yahoo! and MSN Hotmail may no longer be free for much longer. There were projected annual charges for the use of their e-mail and other related services, ranging from a minimum of 200 to 400 Philippine pesos a year.

The bigger question on such a thing happening is that how would all their non-credit-card-using users pay?

A great portion of Yahoo! and Hotmail users are below 18, as reflected by the slew of teen-centered sites and communities taking over the Internet. It is indeed very disappointing to think that a lot of people may no longer be able to avail of the services they had previously used for expression and for sharing information,

It cannot be denied that the world is ruled for the most part by pecuniary concerns. Not even the seemingly boundless cyberspace is spared from that.

This article is very interesting. I am not a big Betty La Fea fan but, well, I have a high regard for the unconventional. It is rather disappointing when things you thought were fresh idea-wise would eventually get on the ugly-duckling-turns-to-beautiful-swan bandwagon.

Anyway, I found a blog through a “top sites” list. Said blog was ranked high, shuttling between first and second in the rankings. When I visited, out of sheer curiosity, I was, as J.R.R. Tolkien would put it, flummoxed.

There was absolutely nothing in this blog.

That would be an exaggeration, of course, given that there is a log of sorts on the index, but it is close enough when you are a webmistress who had from the very beginning cared about content in websites.

The thing is, it would have been all right with me if the owner of the blog had written about his/her life in the entries, but NO. The entries were about rankings in several “top sites” lists, encouraging visitors in each and every entry to “support” the blog.

If you remove all entries with this repetitive self-plugging, then I would not be exaggerating any longer. Nothing would be left.

The person blogs to get more blog votes. That is mystifying. What is the point?

This article was forwarded to a mailing list of which I am a member. It was, in a nutshell, about the Pope’s opinion on the current state of the Internet. He deems cyberspace to be a place of “both danger and promise.”

The Internet has given us human beings, with our limited perceptions and flawed faculties, the power to access and transmit a lot of information in so short a span of time and so easily.

Power in itself is neither good nor bad; it depends on who uses it and how he or she does so. Spider-Man realized after the death of his Uncle Ben that with great power comes great responsibility. Even if we are not superheroes, this adage does apply to us in a manner that whatever we have, we should never seek to abuse it or use it without regard for the consequences. Responsibility is about caution, foresight, moderation and, above all, consideration for the welfare of those around us and who rely on us.

I have been writing research and position papers on the Internet and its various facets ever since I was in high school. Time and time again, I could not help but stress that it is a double-edged sword. We just cannot use it mindlessly, as there always will be repercussions to our actions if ever we cross the line between what is freedom of expression and what is abuse of that freedom.