(Official Philippine Blog Awards Website)

San Pablo City Online is a Finalist under the Travel Category – Luzon while Kabalyero and in2ndLIFE are Finalists under the Gaming Category – National. The winners were announced last night in the awarding ceremony which was held at the Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium, RCBC Plaza, Makati City.{adinserter Adcode04}

I wasn’t able to attend the event because of personal reasons but I’m sure the results will be posted in Philippine Blog Awards website. I’m not expecting to win but I am curious to know who the winners are.

The Philippine Blog Awards is held every year and it aims to recognize the best blogs in the Philippines. Hopefully, the Philippine Blog Awards will not turn into a commercialized award giving body where people have to buy nominations to enter like the Philippine Web Awards.

  
(Finalists in the 2011 Philippine Blog Awards)

Anyway, I would like to thank the Philippine Blog Awards for recognizing these three blogs of mine. I’m not that good of a writer but I do enjoy blogging and I’m very happy that it’s good enough to get at least three of my blogs to the Finals of the 2011 Philippine Blog Awards.

Also, if you are a finalist in the recently concluded 2011 Philippine Blog Awards then why not show it using this simple 125×125 banner that I created.

(Finalist – 2011 Philippine Blog Awards)

Just create a new text widget and copy/paste the code below:

<div style=”text-align: center”><a href=”http://www.philippineblogawards.com.ph”><img src=”http://i.imgur.com/T7uzO.jpg” alt=”Finalist – 2011 Philippine Blog Awards” width=”125″ width=”125″ /></a></div>

Currently, the computer I am using is an older computer powered by an Intel Celeron D processor. It’s no where near the speed and performance of my work computer which is powered by an AMD Phenom II X6 processor but it allows me to browse the internet, send and receive e-mails and write my blog posts.{adinserter Adcode03}

In fact, I’ve already blogged about what happened to my power supply unit on my other blog, R.O.M.E.L.O. If you wish to know the details of what actually happened then please feel free to check it out anytime.

Learn more about computer mechanics through accredited online college programs.

(SmartBROken, Image Credit: Google Image Search)

The customer service representative created a service request and had us scheduled two days later. My internet access went down on May 20, 2011 and service technicians from SmartBro were scheduled to come by two days later, May 22, 2011. Because of this unexpected problem, I had 2 days of no internet access.

My local ISP is SmartBro and I think they have some serious security issues with their antenna because for the second time this month my internet access went down and their service technicians had to replace it with a different one. I asked their service technician, who replaced the antenna, why it was happening and he said someone could be messing with the system.

From what I gathered, someone who knows my account information can access my antenna via remote. This someone can be a former service technician or contractor of SmartBro and it’s not impossible because SmartBro had issues with illegal connections earlier this year. I asked the service technician if there is a way to stop other people from accessing my antenna via remote and his reply was not very promising.

I also asked the service technician if he can change my Account Information because if he can then that might stop people from accessing my antenna via remote. Unfortunately, he can’t. He said that only the main office can change or update a customer’s or subscriber’s account information.

Anyway, I have my internet access back today and, to whomever is messing with my antenna, please stop it. Go find another antenna to mess with.

(Image Courtesy of Google Image Search)

We called SmartBro’s Customer Service many times and everytime we call them, they would always make us do all these troubleshooting stuff like turning off the modem, checking the cable, etc. After a couple of days, they finally scheduled a technician to come to our home and take a look at the problem but it will take their contracted technicians another two days to come.

This was not the first time my SmartBro Internet Access went down. A couple of weeks ago, my internet access went down because SmartBro did something like a global reset in our area that messed up all of their customers internet access. I heard that they did the reset to disable or deny access to illegal connections but it also affected those who were using their service legally.

Yup, there are many illegal SmartBro connections and do you know who are connecting these illegal connections? SmartBro’s Contractors. The same contractors who installs legal SmartBro connections are also the ones installing illegal connections. I should know because someone offered it to us once but we didn’t go for it. We decided to get a legally installed SmartBro Internet Access instead.

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Unfortunately, their attempt to disconnect all illegal connections by resetting everyone’s internet access (in a particular service area) only outraged their paying customers. It took them two days to reinstate my internet access back and, a couple of weeks later, my SmartBro Internet Access was down again.

Do I get any compensation for it or any freebies or a pro-rate from my bill? Of course not. I still need to pay my bill in full even if it was their fault my SmartBro Internet Access was down.

Besides, if they want to fight illegal connections then they should be looking into their own contractors or even former contractors. Their paying customers had or have nothing to do with it.

This time, the problem was with the canopy or whatever its called. For some reason, the darn thing suddenly stopped working. The technicians who came had to bring it down and replaced it with a new one. I waited for four days for a couple of hours work.

Anyway, I’m just happy that my SmartBro Internet Access is back and running. I can now go back to my daily routing of surfing the internet, updating my blogs, looking for new projects, building new virtual items for my small Second Life business and others.

A couple of months ago an individual named Shamshad contacted me regarding some web design work. He introduced himself to me and said that he is with Reality Web Design. His proposal was if I could submit a design study for one of their project they will give me more projects to work on. Seeing that this could be a new opportunity to earn some additional income, I gladly agreed and submitted a design study. After a while he contacted me again. Now, he is saying that the client liked another designer’s design but this designer was charging too much for it. So, he asked me if I could create a design which is the same but not exactly as the one the other designer made. And so I did. In fact, I created 2 designs and a flash animation for the main banner. Unfortunately, he told me that the client still liked the other designers design and he will stick too that even if he will not earn any money and he will send me some cash for my effort. The said cash never came.

He again contacted me regarding a new web design project. This was for a friend of his. It was a sporting site for a store and it will only have one page. I asked him how much will he charge the client for this one page website. He said that because this was his friend he will not charge him anything for it and he promise that he will still send me the money he promised before. It again never came.

Finally, he contacted me again regarding a new web design project. This was for Burnstar. I created a flash intro which the client liked and the client paid a down payment of 150 pounds and the client promised to give both of us a DVD player. He asked me to continue and design the entire site which I did. When I finished the design I gave him copies of the pages in .JPG version and told him that the HTML version will follow soon. At this time he offered to send 80 pounds to me. This amount never came. I told him that the HTML files are ready and I will send it once I receive payment but he insisted that if I don’t give him the HTML files, he will find another designer to do the design but they will still pay me for the flash intro. I did not receive anything from him. Not a single cent and when I visited Burnstar’s website I was surprised that they were using my design. Since I only gave them .JPG images the site looked really amateurish because they just chopped the image and added some lousy effects on it but still the fact remained that it is still my design. They were using my design which they did not pay for.

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In my opinion, this guy does not really know how to pay and I guess his MO is contacting designers, asking them to create a design with the promise to pay and if you’re a little bit dumb like I was, you’ll give him the final product but he will not pay you and you have no way of collecting what he owes you.

To my fellow designers the world over, this is a warning. Do not make the same mistake that I made. Never work on anything without an agreement and an initial payment. An agreement will protect you from people like Shamshad of Reality Web Design and an initial payment will set you off incase the job did not push through. Be wise in dealing with people you don’t know. This experience taught me a big lesson and I hope you learned something from it too.

Website Design

Website Design services are as common as the common cold but those who caters to small/medium enterprises, start-ups, NGOs and individuals are still very rare. This is where I come in.

I will design you a website at a fraction of the cost of what your normal design agency charges. It’s fast, inexpensive and you work directly with the designer himself.

I am a Filipino Web Designer based in the Philippines with more than 8 years experience designing websites both for local and international businesses.

Themes and Templates Design

Themes or Templates are very common to popular content management systems like Joomla or blogging programs like WordPress. I can either help you customize an existing theme/template or help you create a new one with a design custom made just for you. Please view my Portfolio to see some samples of themes and templates I designed. You can also visit some of my blogs for your further review.

Graphics Design

Graphics are very important to a website because it gives the website color and life. I can help you design banners, headers, buttons, etc. for your website. If you need someone to customize existing graphics then I can also help you with that.

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This particular Blogger Template is very popular. In fact, it has been downloaded a total of 25,289 times. It is the second most downloaded Blogger Template in eBlog Templates. What that simply means is, thousands of other Blogger blogs are using it. As a blogger, I wouldn’t want my Blogger blog to look like the other 25,000+ Blogger blogs that are also using the same Ads Theme Blogger Template.

That is why, I would always modify or customize my copy of the Ads Theme Blogger Template before using it on my own Blogger blogs and, on this post, you will be able to download one of them.

I named this one Ads Theme Space Blogger Template because, obviously, it has a Spaced/Sci-Fi/Futuristic look to it.

How To Install

1. Download and Unzip the file to your Hard Drive
2. Login to your Blogger account
3. In your Dashboard, click on the Layout link of your Blog
4. Under Layout, click on the Edit HTML link
5. Click on Browse, find and open the ads-theme-space-blogger-template.xml file and hit the Upload button

That’s it and enjoy!

(Spec of the computer I am currently using)

Currently, I am using my children’s computer which is based on an Intel Celeron processor with 512MB RAM, onboard video, LAN and sound cards (see screenshot above). It’s also pretty unstable. It hasn’t been used for more than a year now and it has issues booting and would sometimes freeze.

I was kinda hoping that, at least, I can work on this computer but with the freezing and booting issues? I’m not sure I can.

I’m really in a tight spot right now specially when I just got my internet connection back after weeks of having none. Now, I have to deal with my computer crashing.

I have on-going projects and I need to work on them and finish them to get paid but without a reliable computer, I don’t know how.

A new computer is not possible simply because I don’t have the money for it. I am seriously thinking of selling one of my blogs, KABALYERO.COM, to be able to raise the funds needed for a new computer. If there are anyone interested in buying KABALYERO.COM then please e-mail your offer to me at romelo.itong@gmail.com.

For my existing clients and projects, I will continue to work on them as much as this computer will allow me too. I just have to be very careful on how I use this one. T_T

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Just because I created landing pages for another company or client doesn’t mean that I’m going to start annoying people with pop-ups or that I’m going to start e-mail spamming people. It was just work. I was subcontracted by a company to make landing pages and banner ads and it was an honest paying work that fed my family for several months. I don’t see anything wrong with it.

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I was removed from designing e-mail promo pages but was transferred to designing survey promo pages. A template was provided for me to use and I was instructed to just base my designs on the template’s design, which I did. At first, everything was running smoothly and I was commended for doing a great job on the designs I make even though all of them looked basically the same with minor variations on the fonts used, gradient styling, color scheme, etc. but they were fine with that simple style.

Recently, I was told that I wasn’t changing much on my designs of survey pages but because they were liking it I assumed that I was doing it the way they want it done. Unfortunately, I wasn’t and I found that out after completing, like, 10 or more survey pages.

In my recent communication with them they’re practically telling me my designs are shit (in a much nicer way) and yet, in my mind, I was just following their previous instructions specially on designing survey pages. As can be seen below, the designs are practically the same with only some variations because that is how I understood the instructions given to me.

[singlepic id=63 w=240 h=180 mode=web20 float=left] [singlepic id=61 w=240 h=180 mode=web20 float=left]

Personally, I didn’t like it because I felt that doing everything like that was very restricting but I have to follow instructions.  Maybe, my fault here was I took the instructions to me too literally.

[singlepic id=59 w=240 h=180 mode=web20 float=left] [singlepic id=58 w=240 h=180 mode=web20 float=left]

Anyway, I really didn’t appreciate the tone that was used when I chatted with two of them in Yahoo. It was civil and casual but still some negative emotions can be felt on the way they weave their words. Specially with the female one!

I guess, all I can do now is go back to my old way of designing these landing pages and hope they like it this time because I can’t afford to lose this gig right now due to heavy financial obligations but if worse comes to worst then I guess I’ll just have to go back to finding my own projects, as I have done in the past hundreds of times.

By the way, I was also asked if I still want to continue to work with them. The question kinda made me uneasy because it seems that I would be sacked anytime and not to mention that I haven’t received my pay for the month that ended. It’s not like them to delay payment so I’m currently really, really nervous about not getting paid.