Warren Buffet who is worth $44 billion will be giving away 85% of his fortune to charities - like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

From Wikepedia - Mr. Buffet has indicated that he opposes the transfer of great fortunes from one generation to next. I admire him for saying that because the politicians here in the Philippines are doing the exact opposite. Amassing huge bank accounts for their children and the grand children, and so on so forth. (I forgot to mention mistresses.)
He should come here (Philippines) and lecture our congressmen and senators. That way, he would be actually helping millions of people without spending a dime. I would pay for his airplane ticket and I’ll let him stay at our house And I’ll probably ask him if he can pay off the debt of the Philippines and then run for president. hehe! Then dictate us until he dies. hehe!

Yesss! Friday. I love Fridays. I want to play The Cure’s, Friday I’m In Love song but I am listening to SSS on SomaFM right now. I have been very busy this week. I literally work from 930AM-630PM (at the office) and then at 730PM-1AM (at home). So that is 9 hours plus 5/6 hours. I need the extra income from the sidework. Gas prices are insanely high — they are still increasing it as of now. At a daily rate without letting us know. When you fill your tank today, then you fill it again tomorrow, the price won’t be the same.

I am planning to apply for a new job today. I will be making my resume — the first time 2 years. The company is just a couple of meters away from home. I can save more on the gas and food I have heard a lot of good things about this Focus. Real good stuff. Enough to convince me — and I’m hard as rock. hehe! I am very optimistic about this new job oppurtunity. I still feel good about my current job. EMSSI has been real good. But the thought of money always moves everyone — even someone like me ;P

Now for the good news. Yes, good news. You heard me right. Even though we live in this god-forsaken country, good news still pops out every now and then. The Philippine Stock Market is doing realy well these days. Yey! When you go to Yehey.com/Finance, you will see that most of the stocks are green. Hurray for President Arroyo. The oppisition can kiss her presidential ass on this.

Headlines say that the stock market’s performance this month/year or something, is the best in 7 years! 7 Years ago, the dot-com bubble bursted and scandals plague the Philippine Stocks Exchange — thanks a lot BW for ruining our lives. May god have mercy on your soul and may you burn in hell for all eternity.

Let’s pray that this trend goes on for the sake of our country and our economy.

I tried to register an account at adCenter using Firefox but I got an error that Mircosoft adCenter does not currently support the browser I am using. Hmmm… Microsoft is playing dirty. But anyways, it is always good to see some competition in online advertising. Honestly, those Google Ads are starting to look boring. Almost 90% of the sites I visit these days have an Adsense on them.

A BUG/ERROR AT adCenter SIGN UP PAGE: How sad.

UPDATE: I just tried to sign up for an account using Internet Explorer 7 and I got bugs or something. How discouraging. Google’s Beta programs never had these problem — at beta stage even! To make the story short, I could not sign up because I get an error in the “Country Listings”. I could not select a country, instead I am shown “ENRROR_ENTITY_HAS_PROBLEMS_IN_LISTING”. Aside from that, it took about a full minute to load the sign-up page — probably caused by the bug. I tried refreshing the page, but still it didn’t load well. For god sakes, it is a sign-up page. MS should know better to fix it!

Here is the story I found on The Seatle Times.

Microsoft today is launching its adCenter online advertising system in the U.S., and will now compete directly with Google and Yahoo! in selling ads on the Web.

The official announcement is coming this morning when Chief Executive Steve Ballmer addresses the company’s Strategic Account Summit, a wide-ranging two-day event that on Wednesday included an unusual onstage interview of Chairman Bill Gates that touched on his private and professional life.

Over the past year, Microsoft has been slowly weaning itself from Yahoo!, a rival that it had hired to serve advertising alongside the Redmond company’s Web search results. Now, Microsoft will be working directly with advertisers.

AdCenter will give advertisers sophisticated information about consumers, including their location, age, gender and sometimes, their level of wealth. That’s more than what Google and Yahoo! offer, said Joe Doran, senior director for monetization in Microsoft’s MSN ad-planning group.

The service will also allow advertisers to choose specific times of the day or week in which their ads would be displayed.

“It’s a clear differentiation for us,” he said. AdCenter will not give any information that can allow advertisers to personally identify a person, he added.

Microsoft earlier launched adCenter in Singapore and France, and for the past nine months it has run a pilot program in the U.S. with 6,000 customers.
Read the rest of this entry »

I was at Slashdot and found this. And Slashdot got it from here.
Let’s just look at a casual status report of Microsoft’s bed-ridden condition:

1. Vista OS. It’s now so delayed that its consumer version will miss the 2006 Christmas season. It’s now supposed to arrive in early 2007. Even when it does, all of its promised cool features have been removed and it appears to be little more than a gussied-up version of Windows XP. It appears as if it is going to be a great disappointment. This should have been the company’s number one priority.
2. Office 2007. There is nothing in this new suite that is going to do much more than sustain the product as a dominant office suite. Unfortunately seven different versions are going to be released which will just confuse things. A new enterprise version has been added which appears to have a Lotus Notes-like element called Microsoft Groove. This is being sold as some sort of solution for online collaboration. If it is anything like Notes it will create a lot of anguish with users.
3. MSN. Microsoft should have abandoned MSN a decade ago. There is a lot of talk about Microsoft becoming more of a publisher and selling advertising. Microsoft should be buying advertising not selling it. This is not a media publishing company; it’s a software publishing company. Why people keep encouraging Microsoft to go in this direction is baffling.
4. MSN Search Engine. Again more of the same and pointless. Selling ads
5. Xbox360. The potential to become the dominant game platform and an eventual and enviable profit center. Unfortunately the company did not foresee the Sony delays and failed to manufacture enough units to satisfy the demand. This was an exhibition of poor planning and bad business intelligence gathering.
6. Pad-based computing. According to Gates just a few years back this was to become the dominant form of computing by now. What happened?
7. Dot Net initiative. The .Net framework that many believe is an example of how Microsoft can actually put together elegant and powerful architectures when it wants to, is being killed by Open Source systems that are free and almost just as powerful. Microsoft has been unable to cope with Open Source except to complain about it.
8. Preoccupation with Google. Microsoft is too easily distracted by successful companies who are not competitors. There is a deep-rooted belief that if a company like Google is successful, then they are an enemy per se. So the company obsesses on what Google is doing rather than concentrating on important Microsoft projects. Now Microsoft is about to do a deal with Yahoo to flank Google. This old-lady-like skittishness is unbecoming for a company this size.

This only scratches the surface of the Microsoft malaise. Now if the investment community sees light at the end of this tunnel good for them. I sure don’t see it. I see a company that has settled in and has become big, profitable, and unexciting, lacking real focus or spirit. 

The complete article is here.

By Therese Poletti
Mercury News

Apple Computer still reigns the digital music world.

When the Cupertino company confirmed this week that songs at its iTunes Music Store will remain 99 cents each, it showed that Apple continues to set the terms in the digital download market it pioneered just three years ago.

As CD sales have continued to decline, Apple’s digital music sales and its iPod music player have been a standout success story. Music industry executives have meanwhile clamored for more control over prices — just as popular CDs cost more, executives have asked for the freedom to charge a premium for hit songs.

Apple’s answer: No.

No further details on the negotiations, which were confirmed late Monday, were available. Natalie Kerris, an Apple spokeswoman, would only say Tuesday that Apple had renewed its agreements with the major music companies.

“We’re pleased to continue offering iTunes customers music at 99 cents per song from a library of over 3 million songs,” she said.
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A real world cash card that allows gamers to spend money earned in a virtual universe has been launched.

Gamers can use the card at cash machines around the world to convert virtual dollars into real currency.

The card is offered by the developers of Project Entropia, an online role-playing game that has a real world cash economy.

Last year, a virtual space resort being built in the game was snapped up by a gamer for $100,000 (£56,200).

The buyer, Jon Jacobs who plays in the game as a character called Nerverdie, is developing the space station into a virtual night club through which the entertainment industry can sell music and videos to gamers.

“We’re bridging the gap between virtual reality and reality right now,” said Jan Welter, founder of Project Entropia.

Complete story from BBC here.

I came upon this article while reading news at Sunstar (a local newspaper here in Cebu, Philippines).

If there’s one sector that has benefited from the growth of the Internet, it would be the real estate sector. Online, you can now see websites, like AboitizLand.com, selling Cebu properties to Filipinos based here and abroad.

In my e-commerce training two years ago, I had a student from Bohol, who maintains a portal that showcases the island. Through her website, she was successful in selling properties in Bohol that really made her take the business seriously.

Click here for the full article. 

Hmmm… anyone interested in advertising on this site? email me