We all know that  there are three things that we can’t get back…

…a spoken word

… a missed opportunity

… a spent time

I’ve been meditating for the past weeks already and contemplating on what to do on my “online job” for this year 2012.  I’ve been thinking too much about it to the point I’m on the verge of missing what is my plan for my “offline life”. Another year had passed and all of us will add another number in our age.  Time is something we will never get back, ever.

If there is one thing you are careful about in your life, I hope it is your time. Spending time with my family is one of the topmost on my priority list. And, I’d promised my family that I’ll be spending more time with them not only for this year but all the time. A promise which I’m praying that I can keep for the rest of my life.

So I also encourage you dear readers, don’t get so caught up in the online world that you forget about the people you love the most. Spend time with them and show those that matter to you that you care.

With my family during our recent 2nd trip to Banaue Rice Terraces-Philippines

Plan a great bonding time with your loved ones.  Play, watch, dine and laugh together!

It’s so easy today to be on top of the world one minute, and right back at the bottom the next. Never take one second of success for granted. Say “I love you” to each other. This will surely mark a big milestones in your relationships. Don’t let any obstacles cut-off your communication with your family or even your close friends.

If you love someone today, tell them. If there is something you need to change in your life today, start doing it now.

If you have noticed that I seldom post, it’s because I’m spending a lot of my “offline time” with my love ones.

Time is something you will never, ever get back.

I couldn’t believe my luck today when I was able to register a domain name for US$1 only. You’ve read it right.

A client of mine wants to register a domain for their bike tour project. Good thing the domain is still available and I  was able to snagged the promo.

Actually, I renewed my 4 other domains first,  which were all  registered on GoDaddy, and was searching for the right coupons. I’ve tried a couple, and the coupon that gives me the highest discount is the wallet412_. I was able to get a total savings of $9.02 from S42.22. I paid $33.20 only using my Paypal account. So if you’re domains are up for renewal you may use the coupon code wallet412_ which will give you a substantial discount. By the way, I included the ICANN fee on the computation.

To get the US$1 domain name, you may use the coupon code GETFIT.  I’ve tried this coupon today and it worked like a charm. You may use it for registering any available  .COM, .US, .MOBI, .BIZ, .NET, .ORG, .CA, .CO.UK and .IN domain. I don’t have any idea on the expiration of this code but If I were you, I grabbed this opportunity to register your dream domain now.

See my transaction below.

By the way, this  won’t work on Paypal. Either you have to pay via credit card or check.

PS : I just want to remind everybody that today is the first day of the month, and it’s Blog Backup Day! So please, don’t forget to backup your blog. You won’t appreciate having a monthly backup unless something drastic happens to your blog.

I’m just here to remind and it’s up to you to act on it.

PSS : If you are looking for a good hosting company, I would highly suggest Hostgator.

I just came back from a long weekend holiday, again. I did not check my emails during the vacation because I wanted to  dedicate my whole time to my family.

When we arrived home last night, I’d checked my emails and one subject line,  “Are Meta Keywords Dead”?, caught my attention. I thought it was a spam since it was Halloween the previous day.  However, the email that I received came from a fellow blogger, who is starting to tweak her blog  for search engine optimization purposes. Additionally, she asked me  how important meta keywords are and if they are still relevant since most of the websites and blogs are still using it.

In September 2009, Google announced that they don’t use meta keywords tag anymore in their web search. Barely, less than a month Yahoo announced that meta keywords tag receives the lowest ranking signal in their algorithm. Words that appear in the body, title, description are more valuable in ranking a specific page.

Bing, the Microsoft search engine, on the other hand is still using the meta keywords tag but not for ranking purposes. According to Duane Forrester, a Senior Product Manager for Bing, they are using meta keywords tag to as a signal for finding spammers.

If Google is not using meta keywords tag anymore, while Yahoo sometimes is using it if other signals are not present, and Bing is using it as part of their signal in looking for spammers, then the question remains — is it safe to use meta keywords tag? And if it is safe, what is the most appropriate format? What if you have already in your blog or website,  will you panic and get rid of it?

We cannot deny the fact that Google, Yahoo and Bing are the top 3 major search engines out there. We must listen to what they say. And since, no one from these three mentioned the use of meta keywords tag will get your site banned, then it is safe to conclude that yes you can still use meta keywords tag. What they really don’t like is “stuffing” your blog with keywords, specially those not related to the content of your page.

One of the search engine optimization techniques that I’ve learned when it comes to meta keywords tag is to use the tag itself within the content or body of the page. If you plan to keep using keywords, use it only once on the meta keywords tag and use the same keyword on the first paragraph of your  content, in the middle of the body and at the last paragraph.  One more thing, limit the keywords to not more than 10.

So are you still going to use meta keywords tag? Let me know your thoughts on this subject.

After arriving from our 10-day vacation, I saw myself running to and fro from all sorts of activities.

We arrived slightly right after midnight  of  Saturday and just less than 2 hours of sleep later on, I ran with my wife and son for the 5KM race of Adidas King of the Road. It was supposed to be a race but it turned out to be a fun run for all of us because we ran following our son’s phase.

Last Tuesday, my wife and I watched the concert of Black Eyed Peas. I almost lost my voice in singing and shouting with the crowds. From a quiet blogger, I was converted into a party animal in just few hours. It’s was also my wife’s birthday so the concert was sort of a treat for her. We both enjoyed the concerts together with some of our friends.

And last night, Wednesday, my whole family rushed to Alaminos, Pangasinan (250KM from Manila) to attend to our friend’s wake. He died of stroke at a young age of 43. We left Manila by 6PM, and reached Alaminos by 12:30AM after traveling for more than 6 hours. Alaminos is the home of the famous Hundred Islands. We only stayed on the wake for 2 hours and left by 3:30AM to be on time in my work at 9AM.

I’ve spent the whole day trying to finish a project and at the same time getting in touch with different resorts near Hundred Island where we will spend the long weekend next week. Actually our long weekend will start on early morning of Sunday until Tuesday because we also have a scheduled Mask-A-Ride – a bike fun ride where bikers are don with different colorful costumes and their bikes decorated with different lights and other bling-bling.

I think you can already imagine how busy I am including my family as well. And so tonight, my wife called for a message therapist so we can have a home message which both of us badly needed.

Please bear with me if I can’t post regularly. I hope I can go back to my regular programming by next week, but I’ll do my best to write one post by tomorrow about SEO. Some of our sites and blogs were slapped by Google Panda recently and I’ll tell you on how to avoid being a victim or how to recover from it.

Until then.

Do you really want to have more interaction in your blog? Then don’t push or shove your readers away from your site! All you need is just a simple change of settings in your blog.

What do I mean pushing away?

One of the ways to engage your reader to your post is by enabling the comment box, right? Unfortunately, I’ve seen some blogs specially those who are using Blogspot, who are putting too much restriction on their comment box. I see this restriction also to some of those who are using third party comment plugin such as Disqus.

What do I mean too much restriction?

Well, it’s actually very obvious. It’s those blogs that doesn’t have “Name/URL”, “Anonymous”  as one of the choices for Blogspot and “Guest” for Disqus. Personally, whenever a blog that  doesn’t have one these choices in their comment box, I tend to shy away from them.

Let’s face the reality. There are readers out there who are loyal to their personal email account,  perhaps Yahoo  and doesn’t have one from Gmail. How about those readers who doesn’t even have an OpenID account. What if they want to leave a message in your blog but doesn’t want to open anymore an account on either GMail or OpenID . Will you force them to open an account first before letting them in?  What will you do?

Check the image above and see what I mean.

If you really want to engage your readers to be more interactive to your site, then give them more choices. If you are worrying about spam, then just enable the Captcha or word verification.

Speaking of word verification, I also suggest that you enable the word verification on the same page where your comment box is and not on another page. Looking again on our sample image, you can’t see the word verification on the same page or window, unlike the sample below where it’s already showing.

The reason you need to put them on the same page is because there are readers who doesn’t check anymore if there is a word verification after publishing their comment. You will loose a comment if the reader didn’t see the second window. Make it easy for your readers, show the word verification right away.

Below is the perfect (at least for me) comment box with complete choices and word verification on the same page.

For those who doesn’t have the choices above, I encourage you to change your settings…now! Don’t push your readers away from  the post where you’ve spent blood and sweat already in writing it. All you need is just a simple switch on your settings.

To be honest, I’m a Dropbox addict man. But with the free 5GB  initial offering, and being able to sync and backup any folder on my computer, I got hooked with Sugarsync.

And yes, the sending of files of any size to anyone and anytime is also a plus factor for me.

If you are not a Sugarsync user yet, you’ve better be in now and be amazed with the features unheard of from other competitors.

Here are the Top 10 Powerful Ways You can Use Sugarync

1. Back up and secure your data (you never know when your computer will crash)
2. Access all of your files on the go (from any browser or mobile phone)
3. Share entire folders and collaborate on projects
4. Send large files you usually (try to) email or FTP
5. Share high res photo galleries with friends and families
6. Stream your entire music collection
7. Take pictures with your iPhone, auto-sync them to your computer
8. Open, edit and save office docs with your Blackberry
9. Work from home, without having to lug around your work computer
10. Restore all your data if your computer crashes or is stolen

You can also share your pictures from SugarSync to Facebook! Some bloggers are even using their account as an extension of their web server. They upload their images on Sugarsync and hot link it to their existing web host.

I was not able to remind all bloggers yesterday about our Backup Day (1st day of the month) because I was  busy troubleshooting a client from Europe regarding their  Windows 2003 problem. When I get home, I tutored my youngest son so I don’t have the time anymore to write a post about backing up blogs.

Today, I want to share to you two FREE Backup software that you can use for your files. I’ve been using these two apps for the past two months already and I’ve found them very reliable and of course they are free.

SugarSync and DropBox applications are  using “cloud computing”. They were actually designed to synchronize your data. In short, your data will be available online and offline.While writing this post here at home, I’m actually uploading  my source code on DropBox which is  in our office through remote desktop. In few minutes, this source code will be available here on my laptop and my other PC where I installed Dropbox.

There is a lot in common between DropBox and SugarSync features. I  won’t list them here anymore because I want you to try them both and choose which is best for your needs.

In summary:

• Free storage – SugarSync: 5 GB, DropBox: 2 GB. If you want more, get their business plan.
• Free version of SugarSync has a 25 MB limit for public file sharing while DropBox has none.
• SugarSync lets you sync to any folder while Dropbox restricts you to one folder and it’s subfolders only.
• DropBox works with Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry while SugarSync works with  iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian devices

If you want to backup your  whole WordPress blog including widgets, themes, plugins, and SQL database, you may use Backup Buddy which has full integration with DropBox.

Wow…my long weekend was a blast. It’s long because Monday and Tuesday were holidays so in short I’ve got 4 days of vacation including Saturday and Sunday.

So what did I do on this loonnng 4 days? Well, I did not just used it surfing the internet nor keeping up with my blogs. Instead I used it  in a very productive and healthy activities which I think are either physically, mentally, spiritually and psychologically beneficial

To start with, I spent the Friday nights to Sunday morning in Tagaytay Highlands together with some of our closest friends. Of course spending time with friends is not complete without sumptuous food! We also had special meal at Bag of Beans. It’s special because there was a strong storm while having our dinner. The hut where we reserved for our dinner was soaking wet so we transferred to their main dining hall.

View from the clubhouse in Tagaytay Highlands

Saturday morning, we attended our church service and went back to Tagaytay Highlands afterwards. We pigged out during dinner and once again, a never ending chat with our friends until wee hours of the morning.

Sunday, we went to Splash Island in Binan, Laguna because it’s our  company’s first ever outing. We enjoyed swimming with my family and my office mates together with their family in the Wave swimming pool. In the afternoon we played paint ball. It’s my first time to play this game.  I’ve got sore in my right leg because of the hit of the paint ball bullet. We enjoyed the game so much that we were still playing it even if it was raining hard already.

People enjoying the wave pool, with zip-line on top

Monday…what a Monday! My bike buddy Arnel ( my brother-in-law) and I, together with 4 bikers from our town hit the road (and trails) what we call Batangas/Taal loop. It’s a 145-KM bike ride with 36KMs uphill! We started the ride at 7AM and got home at 9PM. It’s a 14-hour fun-filled, butt-shattering ride . I ended up drinking 4-liters of water and 1.5 liters of Gatorade. My body is still aching but I’m not complaining because it’s one of my dream bike ride.

My bike buddy with his folding bike along a muddy trail

And Tuesday, although I was with my family when we went to Tagaytay Highlands and Splash Island, my wife and I decided to spend the day with our kids. This day was supposed to be a biking day for my two kids but my youngest son was not feeling well the previous night.  So after my wife’s scheduled badminton in the morning, we watched the movie Cars 2 in the cinema.

Food, family, faith, friends and fun in four days! This is what I call life!!! How I wish this is how life be spent all the time.

Our company president just arrived this week after a month long of vacation in Europe. It’s actually not just a vacation only but a lot of business trips as well. He informed us that our company is invited to a maritime event in Netherlands which will be held on November 08-11, 2011. This maritime event is considered as one of the largest maritime exhibitions worldwide and offers the ultimate platform in showing the latest and advanced technology in the industry.

Since our company develops various software and application for the maritime industry, our president gave us the task to update our software for the event and to make sure the design of our booth is one of the best.

My architect brother-in-law was assigned to design the booths,  although we will outsource the building of it from another company. During our meeting this week, we informed my brother-in-law that we want to have a pop up booths similar to pop up trade show displays being used in some major events.

Pop up displays are portable and can easily be packed. Our president and our marketing officer in Europe will manned will represent our company in this event,  so the  pop up  booths must be of lightweight. My brother-in-law is planning to use velcro receptive fabric, a kind of fabric that can easily be detached, sort of a “skin”.  If you visit an event either in SMX Convention or Megatrade Hall, you will see a lot of booths using graphic murals or graphic “skins” for their trade show pop up displays.

On the other hand, I was tasked to update our software and other applications in time for the maritime event in Europe. We are actually finished with the major components of our software and we’re just adding more whistles and bells to make it more attractive to the users. For the next few weeks, we will be busy in testing all the features that we’ve added. Unfortunately, due to NDA or confidentiality agreement that I’ve signed, I cannot disclose the software that we have developed.

So please bear with me if I’ll be busy again. Rest assured that I’ll do my best to update my blog at least once or twice every week.

Detour
noun

1. a roundabout way; deviation from a direct way
2. a route used when the direct or regular route is closed to traffic
3. departure from an established ideology or party line

Yes, my dear readers, BlogDeManila is deviating from it’s mission.

BlogDeManila was established on September 2008. After 3 long years of” blogging for bloggers,” I decided to deviate from it’s original mission of “helping other people blog smartly”. It has been a journey of ups and downs, full of adventure quests.

I personally  believe (unless you will disagree with me), that I’ve been successful in the mission that I’d planned to accomplish 3 year ago. I shared my knowledge to my loyal readers and in return I’ve learned a lot from them as well.

I’ve told my wife that I want to put a personal blog. A different one from the way I’m presenting my posts here at BlogDeManila. Unfortunately, she did not agree  on my plan. She told me that I’m already managing different niches of blogs and I don’t have the time anymore to put up a personal blog. Instead, she told me to turn BlogDeManila into a personal blog. I don’t want to argue with her so I agreed on her plan. I think she’s right. All I have to do is to write more personal post here instead of putting another blog.

And so, I decided (no, my wife decided for me) to inject  more post with personal touch  here. Note that BlogDeManil is only on a detour and not a complete turn around. I’m still going to write post blog for bloggers like SEO, make money online, web hosting, affiliate marketing, adsense, wordpress and more. I also decided to put additional monetizing methods here, perhaps pay per post or Adsense. I hope you don’t mind me earning from my post,do you?

Please continue to support me in this adventure. Give me a big clap if you agree on my new route or frown if you don’t agree.