I’ve mentioned quite a few times here and elsewhere that I consider Bonifacio Global City as the place in Metro Manila that is undergoing the most drastic development (like roads come and go and there’s always a building under construction somewhere). Because of that, I think that how various maps depict this district is one of the best indicators in gauging how updated any such map of Metro Manila is. For instance, I analyzed the 2007 edition of the Citiatlas Metro Manila atlas by examining its coverage of Bonifacio Global City.

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Yuga once asked back in 2007, “Google, where’s our street maps?” Now the answer has come less than two years later when majority of the data contributed by Filipinos to Google Map Maker was recently pushed to Google Maps sometime in the latter half of February (see the official graduation announcement). To celebrate this milestone, Google held a press conference about two weeks ago. However, while what’s there right now in Google Maps for the Philippines is a vast improvement over the really laughable data before, there’s still room for improvement and Google needs to up its ante.

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Back in June of last year, I wondered if was the first plurker based in the Philippines. Well, the answer to that question was answered for me by the researchers of Qtube, this new magazine TV show on QTV 11 focusing on Pinoys on the Internet. They had their pilot episode last March 12 and their sophomore episode last March 19 had Plurk as one of their segment topics. As it turns out, the first Pinoy plurker is a guy named Kerwin Rosete with Plurk username kimforlai. He registered way back in April 4, 2008, which means that he got the account during the private beta phase since Plurk was launched in mid-May 2008.

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I usually check the movie schedules at ClickTheCity.com every Wednesday to find out what new movies are screening. The film that caught my attention last week was The Boy in the Striped Pajamas which was only showing at Shangri-La Plaza. I did some research and it turns out that the film is an adaptation of a novel by Irish author John Boyne. The novel and the film’s premise concerns the Holocaust as seen through the eyes of an innocent 8-year old German boy named Bruno. Bruno’s father was a member of the SS and was assigned to be the commandant of a Jewish concentration camp in the countryside. Having no preconceived notions about Jews, Bruno secretly befriends a Jewish boy in the camp named Schmuel.

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For this post, I’m going to be talking about my ASUS Eee PC 701 netbook. Yes, this is a pretty late topic and totally out of date but it’s my blog and I can write whatever the hell I want, right? I won’t do a review since there are plenty of them out there (most are over a year old), but I’ll just write down my personal insights and observations from the more than eight months that I’ve been using this little baby. (I’m actually typing this entry using it.) The Eee PC has joined my PC family, together with my desktop and my laptop—I’ve definitely skewed the computer-per-capita figure in my household. Hehehe.

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Google Earth 5 was released last February 2 via a much-hyped launch event at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. The special feature that was unveiled (to no one’s surprise because of the many clues released prior to the event) is the arrival of Google Ocean, which lets users explore the world’s oceans in 3D. What was unexpected were the three other major features added: Google Mars, easy KML tour recording, and—the one I’m most interested in—historical imagery.

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I plurked in early January that I finished my initial draft of my personal 2009 budget. I mentioned then that I only increased my projection by 1% compared to last year’s budget due to, yes, the worldwide economic crisis. Based on the comments to that plurk, I thought it would be interesting to do a series of posts explaining how I manage my money such that I am actually able to do a year-long budget.

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In the evening, after the Blogging Ethics Round Table, I met up with Maning (whom I’ve met before) and a several other OpenStreetMap mappers and supporters for the first ever Philippine OpenStreetMap Meetup, which was held at Grappa’s in Greenbelt 3. Over micro-brewed Czech Praha beer and some pizza, we dicussed mapping anecdotes, the need (or not) to set up a local OSM organization, the idea of setting up a mapping party, and other relevant stuff about mapping in the Philippines. Details can be read over at the OSM talk-ph mailing list.

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