Jansport celebrates its hippie heritage with Indie Art and Music

I was invited to attend Jansport’s 40th year celebration which was held at Mag:Net café at the Bonifacio High Street last thursday. It was an interesting event, visual artists are scattered all over the place creating doodles and designing bags using paint airbrush. Some participants went against the flow by getting inked courtesy of the Philippine Tattoo Artists Guild (PhilTag).

Jansport bags was introduced 40 years ago in a small hippie store in Seattle and now Jansport is a multimillion dollar company that produces and sells several million of bags per year.

What the hell is Indie?

According to Wikipedia, Indie rock is an umbrella term to reference rock artists that are or were unsigned (no record label contract), or have signed to independent record labels, rather than major record labels. Originally the term was not a reference to a specific genre of rock music; however, it has come to be used often to reference the sound of particular bands and the bands they have influenced. “Indie rock” is used as an umbrella term covering a wide range of artists and styles close to rock music, connected by some degree of allegiance to the values of underground culture and counterculture.

Genres or subgenres often associated with indie rock include lo-fi, post-rock, sadcore, C86, and math rock, to list but a few; other related (and sometimes overlapping) categories include shoegazing and indie pop.

Rock artists place a premium on maintaining complete control of their music and careers, releasing albums on independent record labels (sometimes their own) and relying on touring, word-of-mouth, and airplay on independent or college radio stations for promotion. Some end up moving to major labels, often on favorable terms won by their prior independent success.

To pay tribute to its indie heritage, Jansport is releasing a Graphic Remix line of bags inspired by this generation’s most definitive counterculture which is the Pinoy Indie Community.

The Graphic Remix line’s quirky and anti-conformist designs like graffiti, doodles, pop art and calligraphy fits the indie community’s passion for creativity, originality and individuality.

Along with TV and Print Media, Bloggers also joined in Jansport’s 40th year celebration. Spotted Bloggers who attended the event are Nina of Justwandering.org, Eric of Byahilo.com, Noemi of Nimrodel.net, Aj of Baklaako.com, Poytee of tanggera.com, Anton Diaz of Our Awesome Planet,  Juned of Baratillo.net and Arpee of Arpeelazaro.com.

The artwork on the Kombi Jansport Van was rendered by Abi Dayacap and Rommel Joson of Osomundo. Jansport Graphic Remix is available in all Bratpack shops nationwide.

Bratpack is a member of the Primer Group that carries global brands that makes for a practical and personal billboard of expression for urban dwellers, promoted through collaborations with the indie art and music scenes’ finest. Inspire. Interpret. Express. For inquiries email bratpack@primergrp.com or visit their website at http://www.bratpack.ph .

Bratpack has branches at Robinsons Place Manila, Robinsons Galleria, SM Cagayan de Oro, SM Davao, SM The Block, SM Pampanga, SM Southmall and Ayala Cebu .

Manila Freelancer is joining WordCamp Philippines 2008

Finally, I decided to join the first ever WordCamp Philippines.  I’ve been blogging using the WordPress CMS for almost three years now but I still have a lot of questions about Wordpress. 

Seing a lot of popular and successful bloggers using Wordpress made me decide to use WordPress over other CMS and blogging platforms.

The WordCamp will be on September 6, 2008 Saturday at the College of St. Benilde in Taft Avenue, Manila Philippines.

Talks and presentations will be segregated into two simultaneous tracks: Deployment and Development. There will also be a couple of plenary sessions. The following are topics that we’re considering:

For those WordPress users who wants to join WordCamp , you can signup anytime @ WordCamp Philippines 2008 website for free.  In excange of this free registration, all participants are required to creat a blog post containing links and information provided after registration. After your successful registration, the organizers will need to verify your blog entry and you will get a confirmation email which will serve as your ticket to the event.

WordCamp Philippines 2008 was organized by Mindanao Bloggers and made possible by the following sponsors:

 

Tips on how to avoid Stress for Busy Freelancers

Stress is the curse of living in modern times. Each one of us suffers stress and the stress we suffer takes a serious toll on our bodies, emotions and minds.

Feeling stressed out, exhausted by fatigue or having a miserable day, the best thing to do is relax.

Watching television may be a form of relaxation for some, but is not a recommended method by experts. When we watch TV we are bombarded with commercials, ads, sounds and images. So how do we achieve relaxation? If there are thousands of ways we can get stressed, one of them is not meeting deadlines, and there are also many ways we can relax.

In recent studies, experts have determined that heart disease is linked to anger and irritability is linked to mental stress. Too much stress brings about ischemia that can cause a heart attack. Relaxation takes on added importance in light of this matter. Managing your anger and attitude is significant to heart health, and relaxation can help you manage stress.

Transcendental meditation is one way of relaxation. Studies have also shown that this method might reduce artery blockage, which is a major cause for heart attack and stroke. People practice transcendental meditation by repeating uttering soothing sounds while meditating; this is to achieve total relaxation. The researchers found that practitioners of transcendental meditation significantly reduced the thickness of their arterial wall compared with those who didn’t practice transcendental meditation.

Another study on another method of relaxation, acupuncture, seems to reduce high blood pressure by initiating several body functions for the brain to release chemical compounds known as endorphins. Endorphin helps to relax muscles, ease panic, decrease pain, and reduce anxiety.

Another technique for relaxation and may also have similar effects like acupuncture is Yoga. In another study, participants were subjected to several minutes of mental stress. Then they were subjected to various relaxation techniques, such as listening to nature sounds or classical music. Only those who did Yoga significantly reduced the time it took for their blood pressures to go back to normal. Yoga is a form of progressive relaxation.

Breathing is one of the easiest methods to relax. Breathing influences almost all aspects of us, it affects our mind, our moods and our body. Simply focus on your breathing, after some time you can feel its effects right away.

There are several breathing techniques that can help you reduce stress.

Another easy way to achieve relaxation is exercise. If you feel irritated a simple half-hour of exercise will often settle things down. Although exercise is a big help to lose weight, it does not show you how to manage stress appropriately. Exercise should also be used in conjunction with other exercise method.

One great way of relaxation is getting a massage. To gain full relaxation, you need to totally surrender to the handling and touch of a professional therapist.

There are several types of massages that also give different levels of relaxation.

Another method of relaxation is Biofeedback. The usual biofeedback-training program includes a 10-hour sessions that is often spaced one week apart.

Hypnosis is one controversial relaxation technique. It is a good alternative for people who think that they have no idea what it feels like to be relaxed. It is also a good alternative for people with stress related health problems.

Drugs are extreme alternatives to relaxation. They are sometimes not safe and are not effective like the other relaxation methods. This method is only used by trained medical professionals on their patients.

These relaxation techniques are just some of the ways you can achieve relaxation. Another reason why we need to relax, aside from lowering blood pressure in people and decreasing the chances of a stroke or a heart attack, is because stress produces hormones that suppress the immune system, relaxation gives the immune system time to recover and in doing so function more efficiently.

Relaxation lowers the activities within the brains’ limbic system; this is the emotional center of our brain.  Furthermore, the brain has a periodic need for a more pronounced activity on the right-hemisphere. Relaxation is one way of achieving this.

Relaxation can really be of good use once a relaxation technique is regularly built into your lifestyle.

Tools for Online Reputation Monitoring

Online reputation management is a developing field that encompasses public relations and search engine optimization to ensure that positive information about you, your company and or brands filters to the top of the search engines while negative information is pushed backwards in search results.

If your company’s reputation’s good, it can easily translate to more sales or if you’re a consultant and your reputation is in excellent status, it can mean more projects for you. So how do you keep it that way?

Your top priority should be to keep accomplishing your project well if you are providing services. If you sell goods, keep your customers satisfied with your products. But what if there are some uncontrollable circumstances that you’re afraid might ruin your reputation, especially you’re online reputation? Here are some tools that might help you keep track of your online reputation to be able to quickly solve any problem that may arise:

RSS - you can use any RSS feed services like BlogLines, NetVibes, Google Reader to keep track of news information about your company or business. You just have to search for the company name or your name and set up an RSS alert using any of the abovementioned services.

Google Alerts - this is one of the free services offered by Google for those who’d like to be alerted on news information about certain products, companies or even personalities. One who wishes to be updated about the buzz around his or her company or name can make use of this just by setting up an email alert.

Other online identity tracking services or tools include:

Trackur.com - Trackur allows users to submit multiple keywords–such as their name, products, and brands–and automatically monitor news, blogs, images, video, and other social media for any mention of those keywords.

BrandsEye - Online Reputation Monitoring (ORM) software. Gives you the power to monitor and protect your online reputation.

African Sunrise soon in Manila

A couple of days ago, i was invited to attend the soft launch of African Sunrise from The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf’s famed tea line. I’m a coffeeholic and not really an avid tea drinker but i still decided to attend not only to try their newest product but also to meet and greet fellow Bloggers and Plurkistas. Much has been written and said about the amazing health benefits of tea but i just keep on ignoring them (LOL).

African Sunrise in Manila?

African Sunrise Tea is made from loose leaves which has more antioxidants than the usual tea bags. This full bodied, red herbal infusion uses African honeybush exclusively grown on a farm between the mountains of Riversdal in the Western Cape of South Africa. Its exceptional fusion of flavor and aroma comes from the sharp tangy taste of orange peel, the characteristic sweet honey scent of honeybush flowers and beautiful mallow flowers. African Sunrise comes in three variants - hot, iced and latte. I have tried the three variants and I personally love the African Sunrise Latte right after the first sip.

The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf is located at TriNoMa, SM The Block, Gateway, Ortigas Park, Paseo Center, Bonifacio High Street, Mall of Asia, Convergys Ayala Avenue, Salcedo Village, Alabang Town Center, Rockwell, Robinson’s Ermita, Grreenhills Promenade, Robinson’s Galleria, Eastwood, Tomas Morato and 2 more branches in Cebu. Visit their website at http://www.coffeebean.com.ph for more information.

Bloggers Review :
http://food.baklaako.com : http://abuggedlife.com/ : http://pinoyfood.nimrodel.net/ : http://passthesauce.net/ : http://kainpinoy.com/ : Travel and Tourism News

 

Legalities of Freelancing – 3 Basic Elements

Whether you are the freelancer or the one who hires the services of a freelancer, it is important to learn the legalities of freelancing to make it easier for you and the other party to do business. Even if it may be easy to trust people you work with, the agreement between and among those who are involved in the business must be legally protected.

By conforming to the legalities of freelancing, everything involved in the business, including legal privileges to the work that has been established and all the entities will be protected. Some people may not easily understand the importance of creating legal agreement or contract in freelancing. Nevertheless, it is still essential based on 3 basic elements:

1. Money

Freelancing is one form of business. And where there is business, there is money. In order to protect and preserve any form of money matter, you need to create a binding agreement that both parties will adhere to. This is especially important when you need to specify the amount of payment the other party will receive upon completion of the work or services rendered in a particular project. In this way, nobody gets abused or has the chance to get advantage over the other.

2. Transparency

Verbal agreement can be good, but never for business. It is important to set everything in black and white. In this way, there is a clear understanding of all the things expected by each party.

3. Rights

Since your freelance job is a strategic asset, every right established therein must be legally protected. All official work or services rendered by your freelancer must be protected by copyright. This should be made clear to the other party before rendering such services. The primary purpose of establishing copyright is to protect you from any malicious act such as claim for violation of copyright. If this matter is clearly stipulated in your contract, you will never lose in a legal clash in the future.

These three embrace the overall nature of the legalities of freelancing. Keep in mind that every money matter must be legally protected to avoid any form of dispute.

WidgetBucks Publishers Can Now Earn from European Traffic

WidgetBucks is expanding its cost-per-click (CPC) network, giving publishers and bloggers two ways to make more money from their Western European traffic. The expansion begins today in the United Kingdom, with Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Belgium coming online over the next two weeks.

When publishers serve WidgetBucks ad widgets on their sites, users based in the UK (for example) will now see a short-duration CPM display ad followed by a CPC shopping widget featuring UK-based merchants and products, listed in British pounds. The CPM-CPC hybrid gives publishers two revenue streams from the same ad widget instance. Before today, only CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) ads were served to visitors outside the U.S. and Canada.

From a reporting standpoint, this CPC expansion is seamless. In addition to current CPM impressions, additional impressions will simply and automatically be tallied into CPC roll-up and daily totals, as well as resulting revenue. At this time, we are not breaking out by-country CPC impressions and earnings.

Independent Contractor’s Must Have’s : Benefits Indipendent Contractors Should Know About

Being an independent contractor or freelancer requires skills. It is somewhat a career most especially for freelance writers where they use their writing prowess to earn extra or even make a living out of it. But what happens when a writer gets sick? Sure everything’s case to case basis but it’s always good to know the benefits you should have.

Freelancers are entitled to vacations, they need them. One of the cool things about being a freelancer is that you can set your own time at your own pace. That means you can take vacations or even plan for it. While away, you may even find the drive to write some more or and that’s good news for a freelance writer.

However, before taking your vacation, you should make sure you have a clean slate of schedule and no work will be affected by it.

Freelancers who work for other people’s regular jobs most of the time get paid for sick time. Unfortunately as freelance writers, we do not. This is one of the reasons why some recommend a six month’s worth of money savings. That gives you an alternative way to cover yourself just in case you can’t work for a day or two

In US, it is obvious that they have major problems when it comes to health insurance. If someone has a spouse, one could actually get the health insurance in that manner. Participating in a group, like for example the National Writers Union, is another way to make sure health insurance is more affordable.

3 Culprits of Low AdSense Earnings

Although many are against the fact of making AdSense as one’s main source of income, it’s hard to convince those that have experienced success in publishing sites and earning from AdSense that they should not put all of their eggs in one basket.

So what if you’re one of those who thinks making AdSense as a major, if not the only, source of income? How do you make the chances of profiting from it more feasible?

Here are some causes of low AdSense earnings that you should prepare for:

Hacked Site
This is especially useful for those who are using open source content management systems like WordPress. Many are complaining about their blogs having codes that they never placed or texts that violate AdSense TOS. It won’t only cause your earnings to decrease, it might cause it to totally disappear. Scary, eh?

Solutions - Always update your CMS’ version and don’t ever give out your password to anyone.

Underoptimized and Overoptimized Site

This is one of the most common reasons why one site can’t get the maximum AdSense earnings it can get. Either your AdSense ads are not relevant to your site’s content or your ads are somewhere no one can see them. However, make sure that you don’t overoptimize your site either because this might also backfire causing your traffic to go away instead of staying to enjoy your site and click some ads.

Solution - Experiment and see how your earnings AND traffic go up and down while you optimize your ads

No One Knows about Your Site

A fairly new site can out-earn an old site. How’s that possible? If the new site has more traffic, logically, it will earn more especially if it’s optimized enough. If your site is old and unpopular, what can you expect?

Solution - Use SEO techniques such as writing quality content, submitting it to social bookmarking sites and applying link building methods.

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