Level Up Loses a Loyal Customer

After reading this, I'm not sure if I should feel good about Abet lending his talents to Microsoft, or bad about his not being around to help fix things at Level Up.

Level Up, listen up. You're about to lose one of your most loyal US customers (a Shadowmaiden at that!) to your sweeping policy changes and persistent service issues. She loves your game, and she loves your global community, so it took her a lot of guts to post this.

News flash, people: RMT and botting are not the same thing! Just because you allow the former, doesn't mean you should allow the latter!

Let's see how clued-in Ben's people are. Let's see how they respond to a serious public complaint by a loyal customer who's a US-based member of the Philippines' most influential gamer girl clan.

MySpace Song

After an amateur song about YouTube, we have a commercial song about MySpace.



Check out Gym Class Heroes' New Friend Request.

Andrea del Rosario Visits There, Part 2

I had a great time with popular Filipina actress Andrea Del Rosario during her appearance in There Philippines last night. With me in this picture are Groovenet President Greg Kittelson (left) and his staff. Not shown are Groovenet Chairman David Foote and Filipina cosplayer Jerry Polence. Jerry helped Andrea design her avatar.



Here's one for the gossip columns: Greg's avatar kissing Andrea's. Andrea's avatar would have kissed mine, but I was offline.

I've also started a bloggers' group in There Philippines. There features a lot of social interaction and content creation -- the things bloggers love.

Seth Godin Guest-Posts on Donald Trump's Blog

I recently linked Donald Trump's post on Britney Spears to Seth Godin's ideas on Brand You, so I'm glad to see Seth now guest-posting on Donald's blog.

Level Up CTO Moves to Microsoft

Congratulations to Level Up CTO Abet de la Cruz on his move to Microsoft. Microsoft Philippines could use some clue, and Abet's got clue in spades.

Glad he fixed Level Up's torrents before leaving.

YouTube Up, TV Down

Signs of the fall of TV and the rise of social video -- and what big media should do about it -- at Pinoy Tech Blog.



As this kid says:

YouTube for the win
Replacing TV ohohoh
I thinking I'm going blind
From my monitor's screen

Andrea del Rosario Visits There

Filipina actress Andrea del Rosario will visit the Tiki Cove Plaza of There Philippines tonight at 7pm, GMT+8. I'll join her in the real world; you can meet her in There.

Donald to Britney on Self-Promotion

Brand You should be internally consistent. That's essentially what Donald Trump tells Britney Spears in his latest blog post.

Pinoy Cosplay Acquires Google

No, Pinoy Cosplay has not acquired Google. Yet.

Make your own Google logo.

The Power of the Marginal

Just read a great essay by Paul Graham on The Power of the Marginal. Advice for prosumers and the suits who hate them:

Though the Web has been around for more than ten years, I think we're just beginning to see its democratizing effects. Outsiders are still learning how to steal audiences. But more importantly, audiences are still learning how to be stolen -- they're still just beginning to realize how much deeper bloggers can dig than journalists, how much more interesting a democratic news site can be than a front page controlled by editors, and how much funnier a bunch of kids with webcams can be than mass-produced sitcoms.

The big media companies shouldn't worry that people will post their copyrighted material on YouTube. They should worry that people will post their own stuff on YouTube, and audiences will watch that instead.

Great advice for entrepreneurs, too:

The really juicy new approaches are not the ones insiders reject as impossible, but those they ignore as undignified.

Work like a dog being taken for a walk, instead of an ox being yoked to the plow.

Clear a half-hour to read this one. It's a page-scroller.

(Via Robert Scoble.)

Strange Statues Around the World

More here.

Level Up Silent Operations in Europe?

Level Up, the Philippines' top online game publisher, holds licenses to publish in India and Brazil. I applaud them as a homegrown market creator expanding globally.

As such, I'm curious as to why they haven't announced their European operations. Can anyone shed some light on this?

Jon Stewart Roasts Ted Stevens

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart roasts US Senator Ted Stevens' ill-informed definition of the Internet.



Gee, Senator, is that why they call it YouTube?

More on net neutrality here. Celebrity endorsement here. Ninja here.

Bonus: comic roasting from Scott Johnson.

Bonus bonus: and the Senator is now blogging, too!

(Via Tim Swanson.)