Not that PayPal has never reached the Philippine shores. We already have PayPal a while back. Only that the one they gave us before was a way to pay for our online purchases. Now we are able to receive payments/donations through them. A boon to programmers, designers, professional bloggers, writers, SEOs and whoever who live off the internet. The ability to receive funds alone is reason for us to rejoice.

If you haven't heard of PayPal before, which I doubt. It's a payment gateway/service acquired by eBay a long time ago that enabled payment for items and services bid, bought or sold at their stores. It's a hassle free form of transferring funds online. If that wasn't clear enough, picture this: PayPal is virtually your money on the internet. It is so because it's the widest accepted way of sending or receiving online funds.

PayPal being finally here is perfect. Except for one thing. You can only withdraw the amount to a US bank. I'm not clear yet whether you should open an account with a bank in the US or having an account to a local US based bank is enough. I do have one workaround at the moment that could work. It's allowed to withdraw funds to a debit card. Unionbank issues VISA debit cards locally called EON or eWallet. Take your pick. I have EON and it works like a charm for online purchases. I'm definitely going to try withdraw money to it in the next few days when I'll be charging my offshore clients for services rendered.

The premiere Ilonggo online community site Dinagyang.com is celebrating it's 2nd year of providing a place online where Ilonggos get together and discuss just about any topic under the hot Iloilo sun.

New developments such as raffles (iPods, I gathered) awaits frequent forum posters. Being an active lurker, I have no way of winning the iPod (I'd love to have one!). But you might. Just participate in the lively discussions. Or better yet, start your own thread and pour out those emotions, negative and positive.

Inmates from CPDRC doing a Michael Jackson classic. Too bad, they can't join events like Sinulog or Dinagyang.

Found this video thru Philerweb.

There's more where that came from. Visit Philerweb.

.sǝǝɹbǝp 081 ɹoʇıuoɯ noʎ buıuɹnʇ ʇnoɥʇıʍ sıɥʇ pɐǝɹ uɐɔ noʎ ǝdoɥ ı ¿ʇɐɥʍ ɹo ʎʞɐǝɹɟ sıɥʇ sı

I didn't know one could write text upside down without making it an image. I found this post from reddit. It has been tested to work with Google Talk. I haven't test it with Yahoo Messenger.

Yeah, I know, it's pretty useless besides making some pranks.

Again, forgive me for the long absence. There are a lot things I trying to get done. I just registered the domain name for my future startup. That includes a dedicated office in downtown Iloilo. I haven't registered the name with DTI. And inline with the planned startup, are two web applications targeting niche markets I was interested in recently while going through the process of selling and buying cars. Both will try to target local (Iloilo) markets. If time permits, one app will launched, under the new startup name. Both will be free to everybody until I figure out a way to monetize them.

Even though I'm using PHP extensively for regular work, I'm using Ruby on Rails to develop the upcoming web app and hopefully for other projects under the startup.

So there. A long absence in reporting irrelevant events in Iloilo resulted to webapps Ilonggos can use or, even better, profit from.

Philippine Blog Awards winners for 2007 is out. I can't remember us having this in the past, so, safe to say, this is the first major awards for Blogs in the Philippines.

A short list of winners in major categories:

• Best Personal Blog: Misteryosa
• Best Home & Living Blog: Wifely Steps
• Best Socio-Political Blog: Philippine Commentary
• Best News & Media Blog: Inside PCIJ
• Best Fashion & Lifestyle Blog: Bryanboy: Le Superstar Fabuleux
• Podcast of the Year: HappySlip
• Best Technology Blog: Leon Kilat: The Cybercafe Experiments
• Best Business/Entrepreneur Blog: Reflections of a BizDrivenLife
• Best Entertainment Blog: Retzwerx
• Best Sports & Recreation Blog: Who rides a Vespa?
• Best Travel Blog: Ivan About Town
• PhotoBlog of the Year: Señor Enrique: Wish You Were Here

For the complete list of winners, head over the official Philippine Blog Awards website.

Last night I found time to update drupal, the content management system the powers MyIloilo.com. We are now running on Drupal version 5.1 from version 4.7.6. The upgrade should've happened december of 2006 but due to unavailable upgrade to the corresponding addon modules that we use, it was deferred until yesterday.

I changed the theme as well. The old theme has an update for the new engine but I like this one is better.

I hope this will get me started posting about Iloilo more frequently again.

Somebody from Iloilo Dinagyang Foundation Inc. just informed us today that the newly reconstructed and redesigned www.dinagyangfoundation.com is up and running. I just checked minutes ago and the site is still in the process of updating their pages.

Beware of phishing. Phishers are now targeting Philippine banks. The latest bank to be targeted by phishing scams is BPI Expressonline site as reported in Technobiography. I bank online using BPI Expressonline and Union Bank so it certainly raised my scam alert level.