Hot Blonde Student-Banging Teacher Gets Off

Charges against Kerry Sanders, the hot blonde 25-year-old teacher who banged her 14-year-old male student, have been dropped.



Administrative charges against Mizuho Kazami, the hot young redhead teacher who also banged her younger male student, were also dropped.

Yes, I know. Lucky bastards, those kids.

(Via Scott Adams.)

Lessig of Liberty

So is the blogosphere a land of the free and home of the brave? ;)

(Via Doc Searls.)

Gundam YMCA!

I always suspected Heero Yuy was gay.

PageRank Prediction Glitch?

PageRank predictor tools are predicting massive PageRank drops on everything.



I'm sure this is just a temporary glitch in how the tools interact with Google's datacenters. Is this related to Google's software upgrade rollout?

Alienware Sells Out to Dell

Remember when I asked cutting-edge video/gaming PC maker Alienware not to sell out to dumbing-edge granny/n00bie PC maker Dell?

Well, they did anyway.

Petition: Kinokuniya Philippines!

Just posted a petition in Pinoy Cosplay to bring global manga paradise Kinokuniya to the Philippines.

If you want aisles and aisles and aisles and aisles of the latest manga brought to the Philippines, let your voice be heard. Support the petition. :)

Bill Gates Likes YouTube

Bill Gates was producing viral parody videos of himself long before Gary Brolsma did the Numa Numa....



....so I'm not surprised he likes the funny Bill Gates videos on YouTube. Say what you like about the guy's business practices; he knows how to roll with the flames.

Is an acquisition in the offing? Is this a shot across the bow to Google Video?



Is Steve "I'm going to fucking kill Google" Ballmer jumping for joy? Stay tuned.

US SEM Salaries: Big and Experience-Based

Check out this list of annual salaries for US search engine marketing (SEM) professionals.

• Entry-level SEM position; $30,000 to $45,000 or about $10 per hour.

• Three to five years of experience; $50,000 to $75,000.

• Expert-level; $75,000 to $90,000.

• Senior managers; $70,000 to $120,000.

• SEM Directors; $95,000 to $150,000.

• VP level positions; $100,000 to $200,000.

Hot damn. And to think the last time I launched an SEM campaign for a company (solo), it was a freebie favor in a management consulting gig that paid way less than this! And I've been doing Web strategy for seven years!

Philippine companies selling online services should shake off old offline marketing mindsets, and learn the value of online marketing.

Companies outside the Philippines should outsource SEM here. Just look at Google senior engineer Matt Cutts praise local SEM pro Marc Macalua. Just look at the ridiculously low labor costs in this local SEM outfit.

(Via Benj Arriola.)

Google Finance Saddens Zawodny

Jeremy Zawodny laments that ideas his Yahoo! Finance team dreamed up years ago are now being lauded in Google Finance. The most biting part: Katie Stanton, formerly of Jeremy's team, was the one who announced Google Finance.

I suddenly remember John Batelle saying that every idea in Yahoo needs to be justified with a business case before it even gets tested, while Google allows the implementation of wild ideas in 20% time.

I can relate. You won't believe how many Philippine organizations (yes, even IT companies) lack either the manpower or the mindset to test new (or even Web 1.0) ideas.

nVidia Adds Havok Physics Modeling

I remember a joke about the Grand Unified Theory being discovered as a programming shortcut in the Half Life 2 physics engine. Yes, it is that awesome.

That joke comes to mind as nVidia teams up with the developers of that engine, Havok, to add physics modeling to nVidia video cards.

I'm an ATI user because of their HyperMemory technology. My last three video cards were ATIs. If nVidia's latest feature is as cool as it sounds, ATI had better do something pretty awesome to keep my loyalty.

(Via JC Cuneta.)

TV Ads Declining

At a PICS board meeting last night, Maan Tolentino noted that local TV news covers the Internet only when something bad happens. I proposed that, aside from local TV's sensationalist penchant for pandering to technophobia, it's because local TV is threatened by the Internet.

Turns out they have reason to be afraid. According to 133 advertisers who control more than $20 billion in advertising, TV ad spending will soon decline in favor of online ads.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: When enough people have enough bandwidth for HDTV-quality video on demand, ad-supported video streams could replace traditional TV entirely.

TV is dead. Long live YouTube and Google Video.

(Via Steve Rubel.)

Gamer Babies are Smarter

I like Marikit's recent feature on gamer babies Yuki and Sarai, so I'm glad to see their hobby will help their intellectual development.

Legendary game designer Will Wright tells us why gamer babies are smarter.

Just watch a kid with a new videogame. The last thing they do is read the manual. Instead, they pick up the controller and start mashing buttons to see what happens. This isn’t a random process; it’s the essence of the scientific method. Through trial and error, players build a model of the underlying game based on empirical evidence collected through play. As the players refine this model, they begin to master the game world. It’s a rapid cycle of hypothesis, experiment, and analysis. And it’s a fundamentally different take on problem-solving than the linear, read-the-manual-first approach of their parents.

(Via John C. Dvorak.)

Yahoo Localizes Services for the Philippines

This just in from Robert de Quelen of Eon:

Yahoo! Localizes Services for the Philippines
Front Page, Search, Mail, News, Entertainment and Sports now more relevant

MANILA, 22 March 2006 – Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company, today announced the launch of a new Yahoo! local Front Page site for the Philippines. The new site aims to make Yahoo! the most relevant entry point to the Internet for the millions of Filipinos that are living at home and abroad.

The new Yahoo! local Front Page for the Philippines is available at yahoo.com.ph.

In addition to the new local Front Pages, Yahoo! has been updating its communications and content services on all its Southeast Asia sites over the past year. By integrating local country and local language versions of Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Entertainment and Sports, the company is making it a priority to provide users in Southeast Asia with the information they want, when they want it, how they want it and on any device.

Yahoo!’s strategy in Southeast Asia aims to localize and integrate services under its four strategic pillars -- Search, Content, Community and Personalization.

“Yahoo!’s investment in developing localized services aims to make the Internet more relevant for the 60 million internet users in Southeast Asia, as well as the millions of new Internet users that come online each year in the region” said Reza Behnam, Managing Director, Yahoo! Southeast Asia. “Instead of adopting a ‘one-site’ or ‘one-service’ fits all approach, Yahoo! provides the necessary local relevance that can encourage Internet access and adoption for all users in Southeast Asia,” Behnam added.

For Yahoo! News, new partnerships with local content providers in each country give users relevant news and entertainment and sports information. For Yahoo! Mobile, local mobile telecom operator partnerships provide users with SMS alerts, WAP-enabled Yahoo! services and content for Yahoo! users on the go.

“Yahoo! local Front Pages provide a great starting point for users to find anything and everything they want on the Internet,” said Larry Jordan, Director of Product Management, Yahoo! Southeast Asia. “Our services also help users connect to share ideas and information via PCs and mobile phones, added Mr. Jordan.

According to the Computer Industry Almanac (Jan 2006), worldwide Internet users are forecasted to reach 2 billion in 2011, which is a 100% increase over the 1 billion users at the end of 2005. Yahoo! anticipates significant growth of internet users from Southeast Asia as local governments continue to encourage information and communication technology (ICT) adoption for its citizens.

They've owned yahoo.com.ph for some time now; it's about time they used it. Yahoo Messenger is immensely popular among Filipinos. Most freemail addresses in the Philippines end in "@yahoo.com". Yahoo's knack for community-building appeals to one of the Filipino core values: bayanihan (community collaboration).

Furthermore, Filipinos are natural adopters of social media. Half of all Friendster users are Filipino, and the Philippines is among the top countries on BlogExplosion. Yahoo's recent penchant for buying social media apps should work well for them in the Philippines, if they properly present those apps to Filipinos.

Too bad they've ceded the search space to Google. I'm sticking with my Google juice for that.



Oh, and Yahoo: get some real Filipinos for your stock photography. We don't look Taiwanese. Pan-Asianism works with much of Asia, but not with this archipelago.

24-Monitor Gaming!

Now this is gaming: 10,240 x 3,072 pixels on 24 monitors!



Combine this with 1GB video cards and you may never leave your desk.

Welcome to Information Narcosis, Marikit!

Hot from Pinoy Cosplay, welcome the newest contributor to Information Narcosis: global Filipina gamer-blogger-cosplayer Maira "Marikit" Bautista!

Finally an Honest Ad...

Carlton Draught makes me laugh. This is my favorite ad ever. It's honest, and straightforward, as well as hella creative! I wonder how many people they used for that.

Check out the Carlton Draught Big Ad.

1986 Ballmer Windows Ad!

I dedicate this video to Jerry, who just sat through a whole screening of Pirates of Silicon Valley.



Screaming Steve Ballmer sells Windows 1.0.