Pinoy Blogfest 3.0 takes on the Digital Divide

Give each side a chance to air their story—that’s one simple solution to settle the long-standing feud between pro- and anti-Internet piracy supporters. Pinoy Blogfest 3.0, an annual event staged by Gadgets Magazine, aims to do just that. Everyone—no matter which side of the piracy issue you’re on—is invited to be part of this instructive yet fun event, happening on Saturday, 22 September 2012 at the Alphaland Tents (EDSA cor. Chino Roces, near Magallanes MRT station) in Makati City.

Pinoy Blogfest 3.0 is themed Caught in the Web: Both Sides of the Digital Movement, and promises a whole afternoon of exciting activities. Whether you’re a tech geek, a music buff, a gamer, a fashionista, or just someone who wants to learn and discover new things, we’ve cooked up something special just for you.
The afternoon program, which opens at 12:00 noon, is free and open to the public.

The series of activities starts out with a digital photography workshop courtesy of Canon Philippines.Also lined up to talk about internet piracy, its effects, and how online movements are bridging the gap between consumers and content-makers are Atty. Ann Edillon of Bengzon Negre Untalan (BNU) Intellectual Property Attorneys, Diego Mapa of OPM bands Pedicab and Tarsius, and Mark Laccay from local creative funding platform Artiste Connect.

Color It Red, Taken By Cars, Ciudad, and other local OPM bands will be there for special guest performances. You can pick up gifts and prizesfrom our sponsors when you participate in the activities. You can also pick out awesome finds in our fashion aisle courtesy of Supersale Bazaar, while gaming rigs will be set up for those who want some free gaming action.

At the evening program, resource persons from the visual arts, publishing, music and legal industries will give an interactive discussion on internet piracy and digital rights. Legal luminary Adel Tamano, Director for Public Affairs and Communication of Coca-Cola will be the evening’s Keynote Speaker. Concluding the program will be the announcement of the winners of the GoodBlog Awards, music from local band Runmanila, and the raffle draws.

The evening program, which starts at 6:00 pm, is a BIO (By Invitation Only) event. If you wish to attend, please visit the Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/GadgetsMagazine and send a private message with your name and contact details so the organizers can put you on the guest list.

Pinoy Blogfest 3.0 is staged by Gadgets Magazine and is made possible by Coca-Cola, NEO, AOC, Edifier,Ginebra San Miguel Premium Gin, and official media partner Manila Bulletin. For more information, head on over to www.gadgetsmagazine.com.ph/pinoy_blogfest3, or check out our daily updates at www.facebook.com/GadgetsMagazine.

Bing Testing New Google-like Local Search Results

The New Bing local search result taking Bing listing mixed with organic search results. 

Bing Local is rolling and testing a new display of the local search results on their search engine results page, which has some resemblance of what Google shows on local search results.

Compared before bing local search result shows pack of businesses listing and maps consistently on the top of all the regular organic search result. With the newest form of Bings local search results,  the new display on Bing shows a mix of local results. Pack of  Bings local search results may appear anywhere and can be replaced by organic listings blended with smaller list of local listings and merged in as part of the search results page in a form of search snippet. Another one is that local listing information blended with organic results, and like on Google the map is shown on the right column floating expanded results with interactive pins as you scroll down the results page.

New Bing local results:

The local listing in the Bings organic result may point to a Bing Local listing and point to the business website. The local listing which appear on the search result also includes  review count & star rating from Bing Local. It also display the meta description from the website and a direct link to the site. 

With Bing focusing on local search results will this narrow down their market share gap with Google? Or just taking a leaf out of Google’s book?

Twitter’s Self Serve Ad Platform Goes Live

Twitter's self-serve ad platform  which was open to few advertisers back in November 2011 will officially launch this March expanded to more advertisers and midsize businesses. Twitter partnering with American Express, cardmembers will have the priviledge to be invited first and American Express will give a free advertising worth $100 to the first 10,000 businesses to sign up.

Twitter the most popular microblogging turning into a revenue stream will offer geotargeting advertising and a dashboard analytics that will serve as a measurement tool for its advertisers to take look deeper into the data. The data would include the interests , engagement (those retweeted their content), location and other vital informations of those users who follows their brand.

Twitter's self-serve ad platform  will have 210 designated market areas in the U.S where advertisers can choose from. The mix of advertising options on Twitter would be  Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts products which comes up with Timeline of Activity view.