The life of Philippines more known broadcaster, Ted Failon’s wife has finally put to an end. And the moment that we are hoping for - for her to be able to survive and finally point out on what’s the real score behind the crime or suicide claim makes it very difficult for police officials to solve the issue.

Trina Failon was found lying on their toilet with a shot in the temple last Wedenesday. One of the biggest questions though was that Ted, being a veteran broadcast journalist allowed their house helpers to clean up the mess. Ergo, evidences are also cleaned out. Most notably, he was the one who handed out the gun to the police found at the scene.

OF course this is big trouble for the investigators because all evidences were already manipulated. That is where the angle worth looking of Ted’s invovlement in the crime. Yes, you can point out those around at home as the suspects and truly they had undergone Gunshot Residue Test from their family driver to I think about two or even three helpers and a sister-in-law.

All but the sister-in-law allowed themselves to undergo GRT test. But who are the officials to judge the sister-in-law without due evidence? After all, some people knowing that they don’t have any involvement in the crime definitely would not allow to undergo. What if it goes positive? Remember GRT is not 100 consistent and someone who fired a gun can be negative while someone who did not fire a gun can go positive.

But whether family’s claim that Trina had indeed comitted suicide or there was a foul play one incident was clear… that the bulletcame through FROM the left temple passing on to the right. But the gun was laid on the right? Confusing… isn’t it? Seems like a foul play?

Athough it might be really hard at this point in time to convict or vindicate as to who’s who. And we do understand that we are not CSI: Miami, they have to go all through angles to finally give justice to this. This issue shall not be something huge provided personalities involved are not famous but a news is a news after all. And a crime is a crime worth resolving.

But one thing though to the police officials, you do not have the right to arrest people treating them like animals like you did in one of the family’s in-law on televised show IN A PUBLIC HOSPITAL. After all a suspect is just a suspect if they are not yet convicted!

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It has been a while, so let me start sharing to you some funny incidents that I had personally encountered while watching news as well as reading the papers. And it just made say - is this really life? First, a prostitute on televised news show went to the police claiming that two customers were short fifty pesos, about $1, of their pay. And the whore’s boyfriend came to the precinct seemingly nothing happened. 

Second, is an incident that happened somewhere in the provincial part of the country. A house owner was so mad at his helper. So they tied the helper up and forcibly let a male dog have sex with her. Really sounds ridiculous. But whether this is true or not, again, it made me ask - is this really the world we lived in the present?

And of course who could ever forget the nanny who was kept in the house dungeon for more than a decade. The latest suicidal attempt of a California woman who needs to announce it first before slashing her wrist, which Demi Moore saved in Twitter, the latest microblogging technology tool. Moreover, Twitter has kept the world smaller allowing us to easily communicate even with our favorite stars. As they say, everyone is just a twit away.

Well, life is really funny. Continue to discover some incidents like this and have fun; laught it out.

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Now finally I had found one concrete solution to stop all my spamming problems - the Recaptcha Tool. And with it, I think they deserve a free review on how I see their service. First off, and as always a plugin needs to be installed. No problems with the plugin, installing it on your blog plugin folder just takes a couple of seconds.

Registering either only takes a few seconds. One of the downside I witness was that the challenge words are a bit too difficult to understand.  You would not know whether to type in the challenge words for only one word or two words.  However, the single click button to ask for a new challenge compensates its downside. So nothing really to worry about.

Now after registering it is now time to get the API keys needed to activate the tool. After making it work on my blog, truly indeed it solves 100% of my spamming problems. The Recaptcha tool is definitely highly recommended, although there was one spambot that passed through the process. I really do not know how that happened. Because as I see it, it seems really impossible. Maybe it was just some sore of a delay in posting by the spambot? To murder all spams, you can get the tool working here at Recaptcha.

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Categories: Reviews, Technology 1 Comment »

Here is my third speech with Toastmasters. The objective is get to the point. Well, I guess my point is very clear and that is urging everyone to listen.

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There is a famous anonymous quote that says, “Do not speak until you can improve your listening.”

In line with that quote stated let me share to you a story. A couple of years back when I was in high school, I usually spend my free time helping at the family business. There, I experienced how my father dealt with salesmen from our principals negotiating what products to buy. During those times, I noticed how a salesman works; they do a lot of talking without bothering to listen to their client’s concern. And in the present, I had just learned that the particular salesman is already jobless.

On my own analysis, I feel that it happened because he failed to update his knowledge. The knowledge that talking so much is no longer applicable these days. Why? Because people, day after day are getting more knowledgeable and are not easily persuaded by sales talk.

So how exactly do you sell? In the present the best way to sell is through the consultative approach and the pre requisite – it’s “listening.” In this approach you are required to listen to your client’s concerns such as what are the current problems the company is facing right now. And by carefully analyzing, you offer to him a solution as such you would be able to sell. Thus, allowing you to sell through listening.

Moving further, an aspect worth taking a look at is how listening works on life. 

Everyday on our life we encounter listening issues, say for instance a professor his telling students “Class, please get one fourth sheet of paper for the exams” and suddenly a student responds “Is it one fourth Sir?” Clearly the student is not listening.

Everyday of our life we converse with someone be it family members, friends or colleagues.  During the course of the conversation you noticed that the person you are talking to seems to be daydreaming and their eyes seems to be everywhere but you. 

And with that two instances allow me to ask you a propelling question, “How do you feel when you are not being listened to?” You would probably feel betrayed, awkward or unappreciated.  So do listen, because with listening you make someone feel that they are being taken cared of. And who knows, that listening is the lone solution for world crisis, probably some people might not have been listened all their life and just needs this one shot to be listened.

Much more it is most important to realize that listening is not merely doing what a person wants but a decision to respect one’s opinion and most of all a decision to give an undivided attention when someone is talking.

No wonder why listening is a vital cog to becoming a competent leader, role model, or family person. Because it is through listening that we learn and when we learn we move forward to our life. And by moving forward we come a step closer to reaching our goals. I do urge everyone to please do listen because listening do not just sell but it solves half of the problem.

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Categories: Business and Entrep, Ramblings 2 Comments »

Sometimes you find yourself stucked in your company as you had several product lines. Other products moving quite fast, while others do not. Most importantly it denotes products moving fast has a good number of customer base, while the slow moving products doesn’t have enough.

Normally what a could company would do for the slow moving products is gather and create new base for it to sold. But strongly agrees, that the best way for it to make it sellable is to use the power of cross selling. Cross sell is the term given when you sell one of your product lines to a customer and in return sell another of your product lines to them.  

A case in point is when you are selling a system or a solution say accounting and payroll system perhaps. Since accounting system has  been with your company long enough it has a good amount of client base. And by the time you are launching your payroll system that is relatively new, the best way for it to sell is through your client base with accounting, rather than creating new ones.

Doing this gives you several benefits as a company. First, it allows you to maintain good relationship with your client that is longer and closer since you are able to work with him on two projects now. And second if you had this in mind in the first place, you would be able to make sure that he would be one of your reference and happy account in the beginning so he would continually do business with you.

Likewise, this is applicable to almost any industry type, be it in information technology, distribution, manufacturing among others. As you can see, companies under in this category have several lines of businesses take a school for instance. One school offers high school and college courses, then the best way for the school to generate a good number of enrollees in college is to cross sell to high school students about their college offering.

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Talk about call centers, graphics designing, email support, these are probably what comes on to your mind when you hear of outsourcing. But in reality, outsourcing is such a broad area of study and undeniably, in the present almost all task are being outsourced. Take a look at recruitment, payroll, bookkeeping almost everything.

But some areas of outsourcing that has not been exploited and is worth taking a look at and may increase in demand in the future can be:

Copywriting

Although these are considered by many as spam articles. The goal of this is to be able to write an article of a specified keyword with x amount of keyword density. These articles then are submitted to directories. It is written to promote a product or a site, then making the articles a tool to make readers land of the promoted site. Since the keyword are being linked to the promoted site of course.

Personal or Virtual Assitance

Some executives might be too busy to manage paper works or administrative tasks, so they might need to outsource these tasks. Some of these task inlcudes updating websites, managing daily schedules or perhaps help set appointments with client.

Blog Administration

This one is interesting, of about millions of blog around worldwide some might not have time to update or write articles to it, so they outsource it to blog adminstrators.  Some of these blogs are about a certain product in which in turn to help get traffic for marketing purposes probably readers might click on a link and buy the product as he reads the blog review. The site owner of course earns certain commissions.

Wiki Administration

Wiki is fun, though it might need certain skills as a wiki uses different platform but is similar to tagging of html. Your job is basically to help maintain pages to be of good quality and catch spammers. You help improved and edit pages. And since we are talking about outsourcing, of course look for a paid wiki administration job.

Transcribing

I had read several free training manuals on the web about medical transcribing and to tell you frankly I feel I can do it without enrolling into an academe.  It is really easy why not you give it a try too yourself? Transcribing is typing a document based on what the audio file are talking about. And you money is good here, you are being paid about a dollar per minute or so.

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Categories: Business and Entrep, Technology 3 Comments »

Your role in the business would probably to choose an employee whether who suits best for the job. All has great qualifications probably a few graduated with honors and a few with some academic and leadership awards. But the biggest question is not whether who has the best qualification, but probably who among the crops can you rely? Or whether can they be trusted? Or can all these guys get the job done?

As a human resources practitioner and a department head of the business in the present, I had documented several type of people that you cannot get to know during interviews and qualification examinations. Who wouldn’t choose the best answer to a question and exams after all?

These are interesting, and if I were to choose I would choose it would probably take time and make a hundred and thousand thinks before settling down who to hire or who to retain.

The Intelligent and Wise

Though he might be good in the beginning, you must understand that as time goes by an intelligent and wise person goes on to betray you. He might work really well and smoothly but only to realize that your customers had transferred in a business he put up similar as yours. More and more your customers are getting less than usual. And gotcha! Just one absent or leave he is caught! Because if he is on leave, you have no other choice but to man the store personally perhaps. And phone calls from customers you haven’t heard of starts making the phone busy telling you they are an existing one. Existing, indeed of the business the intelligent and wise guy’s put up similar as yours! Bad, isn’t it?

The Intelligent and Slow

Intelligent people doesn’t necessarily mean that they can get the job done.  And individuals who graduated with honors doesn’t guarantee that they have high IQ or could understand instructions well.  They may be intelligent and could solve issues but only to find out how much time has consumed causing you to loose so much. Depending upon your needs, sometimes having this type of individual works.

The Slow and Reliable

This type of person doesn’t understand instructions well.  And starts to do thing on his own without proper evaluation whether what good it possibly brings to the company.  But on a positive note, what is nice about these people is they can be trusted and you can rely upon him.  Place an uncounted money on your table and you still could trust to him that after a few so years that amount of money would still be intact.  You can trust these individuals in terms of loyalty, money, and honesty.

The Fast, Intelligent But Lax

Very intelligent individual who could get things done whenever being asked to.  He gives good results to his job order by doing it on time.  But on a dark note, since the volume of job might be not too heavy for him he spends most of his time going to the toilet, and drinking coffee perhaps.  Or during office hours, he has so much idle time due to his ability so quick and intelligent, BUT spends most of his idle time surfing senseless stuff on the internet.

The Intelligent,  Lax and Storyteller

He tells story so much about a thousand words but only to realize all stuffs he said can just be summarize in 20 or so words.  He either produces results or do not produce any results at all.  But keeps on answering back for reasons on why he did not make it.  And if the result is good, boast so much that only to realize that the result was accidental!

By now, I am sure that you had probably smiled after reading this and try to pin point whether who amongst your employee belongs to either one of the category above. There are actually a whole of different people at workplace and would love to hear that from you. Please share it with us through the comments button.

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Google had finally launches their own Web Browser, the Google Chrome.  Finally a dream of giving Internet Explorer of Microsoft and Firefox of Mozilla a run for their money had been achieved.  As the platform relies on the most important aspect which is the speed making internet browsing faster than a millisecond, it makes a big difference on people’s life.

This is not a testiomonial though, but here are the things that I can say after trying to use Google Chrome browsing.

Fast indeed, I knew this from the very start when I had just downloaded the installer.  The download took just a couple of minutes and the installation and set up also took only a few minutes.  This, when I was even just using a dial up internet connection (as sometimes I use dial up to consume free hours).

The browser is really fast making browsing faster than a millisecond compare to other browsers.  Although it still doesn’t work properly well to some sites but I bet it must work well to at least 80 to 90 percent of your frequently visited sites? Right? Afterall, that is the goal of technology - to solve 75 to 85 percent of the problem and we are fine.

The simple interface makes it user friendly.   Afterall, those buttons and functionality that you normally use in IE and MF still you can find in Google Chrome. Google Chrome got rid off those unnecessary buttons. And i think, Google Chrome is less vulnerable to virus having lesser pop ups, etc.

In general, Google Chrome shall possess a long term threat for IE and MF at least for now, that is why both are currently developing a new version.

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Categories: Reviews, Technology 3 Comments »

I bet at least once or even twice and more when you go around to forums or update your social networking profile such as Facebook, Friendster, MySpace, or the likes of twitter you must have encountered one common problem or issue - that is if you are posting a URL when so long it will cut itself that cause the link to be broken.

Say for instance, when you have a URL like this http://www.ericgo.net/2008/08/03/reflecting-mandelas-8-leadership-lessons/ and you post it on a social network shoutbox perhaps.  It will cut the URL short to just simply http://www.ericgo.net/2008/08/03/refl for instance causing the link the broken. This is so because of some formatting on forms that only allows URL to be posted on one single line.

I found an interesting solution to that which is the TinyURL. What this technology can do is to shorten your url like that above when using the tool the new URL would be as simple as http://tinyurl.com/5k7ac4.

And the good thing? The link is forever and doesn’t get broken.  You even have the option to customize that URL. You now have to stop worrying about long URL’s to be broken.

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Categories: Reviews, Technology 2 Comments »

I had just finished setting up our company Cebu Lucky Machinery, Inc. a blog. From now on all company updates will be posted regarding updates and news on the company and construction industry on my home town.

It might not be a perfect niche as one company executive said:

It will be tough since our market or potential clients seldom go online unlike that of a technology business where people spends time going to forum asking for support and clarifications. Or much more, this market of ours have only a limited internet access.

But on a positive sight, what we are looking at is for the long term business goal, say 5 or 10 years from now or even 20 years from now, the primary mode of communication might be through online may be a blog like this or something like twitter. As such, by then we will already have our presence.

If you chance upon the site, I hope you will visit and help us grow the company blog.

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