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Don’t you just love Yahoo! Widgets? Formerly known as Konfabulator before Yahoo! acquired Konfabulator developer Pixoria last year, these quirky little apps for your desktop are quite fun to use.

Right now I’m using Picture Frame to show Sam’s Flickr pics, Honda Fit Top Video to display Yahoo! Music’s top 10 music videos, Ultimate 80’s Net Radio, the YouTube Widget, and, just for kicks, the Master Chief Victory Dance, LOL!

Head on over to the Yahoo! Widgets page to find out more about these quirky apps and download the Yahoo! Widget Engine for Windows or Mac OS X. Apart from the Widgets Yahoo! has created, you can check out thousands of user-generated ones at the Yahoo! Widgets Gallery.

Microsoft has its own version called Gadgets for Windows Vista, while Apple has Dashboard. Of course, you can also find other widgets or windows skinning software, such as Stardock’s DesktopX and Shellscape Software’s Kapsules.

Check out my latest CNET Asia tech blog entry.

Check out my story on the changing role of CIOs.

PULAI DESARU BEACH, Malaysia — Now that more companies are recognizing the changing role of information and communications technology within the organization, the chief information officer must step up and become more of a leader.

This was stressed by Karl Verhulst, Director of Marketing for Asia South of CA (the company was formerly known as Computer Associates but has officially renamed iself to simply CA), as he stressed that CIOs are no longer called upon to manage internal IT operations, but also to enable new business revenues through strategic allocation of tech resources for the company and its partners.

Got this from fellow tech journalist Jing Garcia, the editor of Manila Times’ TechTimes IT section. This announcement will also come out in YOU but figured I’d also plug it here.

S.A.B.A.W., a non-profit sound art collective, will release its first anthology album on July 22, 9 p.m. at Future Prospects in Cubao X.

Dubbed as “S.A.B.A.W. An anthology of Noise, Electronic and Experimental Music 2006,” the anthology album is the result of existing material collected from experimental musicians/sound artists who had been working in the Philippine underground (read: underappreciated and under-funded) scene for the last 20 years.

The launch will be held at Cubao X, the area of Marikina Shoe Expo that has been transformed into a haven for indie music and art. The venue is Future Prospects, Shop 62-63, Marikina Shoe Expo, Cubao, Quezon City. Admission is free.

The project–conceived with the intention of not just publishing but also promoting innovations and experiments in music, is an attempt to fill a gap made real by the lack of critical appreciation and inaccessibility of sound art and experimental music for the past two decades.

The artists here represent but a cross section of a much larger body of musicians and artists from all over the archipelago. (Taken from the album liner notes)

Featuring:

Arvie Bartolome
Ascaris
Autoceremony
Blend:er
Blums Borres
Children of Cathode Ray
Conscript
EAT TAE
Elemento
Foodshelter&Clothing
Inconnu ictu
Insomnia
Nasal Police
Pow Martinez
Tengal
Teresa Barrozo

The two-disc album also includes liner notes (including the bio of each artist), and the artwork of artist Poklong Anading.

It will be sold for 150 pesos and is packed in a sealed jewel case.

This Saturday’s event will have live performances by experimental musicians/sound artists: Elemento, Inconnu ictu, Nasal Police (Pow Martinez and Ria Muñoz), Arvie Bartolome, and Tengal.

In addition to the anthology, three other albums will be released this Saturday, “Head Ego” by Arvie Bartolome, “Drones for the Bored” by Tengal, and “ZPE” (Zero-point energy) by Elemento mastermind, Lirio Salvador.

Head Ego

“Head Ego” is a three-part album: Head Ego (Lost Tapes), Altego, and the scratch tracks.

Altego and the scratch tracks were created during the summer of 2006 and include a remix track of “Only” by NIN. Head Ego (Lost Tapes) is collection of Arvie’s most personal works that have been lost for almost seven years. The original tracks were deleted and only after seven years a tape was discovered.

Now remastered and reedited by Arvie himself, “Head Ego” is his first-time release.

URL: http://www.myspace.com/arviebartolome

50 pesos each.

Packaged in a cardboard jacket.

Drones for the Bored

“Drones for the Bored” is the first album of Tengal’s Sequential Boredom Series (SBS), a series of albums inspired by boredom.

From electronic soundscapes, dronology, to psycho-acoustic “ear-dances,” “Drones for the Bored” features four massive tracks for solo synthesizer, prepared electric fan, mixer feedback and reprocessed tape.

Spectacular acoustical effects take you to expansive worlds of dancing difference tones and psychedelic sonorities. Tengal has stirred boredom to come to life.

Limited to nine copies. Double-disc with almost two hours of music.

120 pesos each.

Packaged in a jewel case.

ZPE

If you are a science fiction fan, you might have heard of ZPE.The concept of zero-point energy, and the hint of a possibility of extracting “free energy” from the vacuum, has attracted the attention of amateur inventors.

Taking the zero-point energy theory from physics, Lirio has applied it to generating sound from steady electromagnetic coils found in household appliances.

An album made up entirely of sound explorations of the insides of household appliances, Lirio Salvador is definitely the mad scientist of electronic sound art.

All the albums will be sold at the event.

For album orders and reservations, questions and feedback please contact Tengal at +639206045559 or e-mail tengald@gmail.com for more details.

For more information, visit www.groups.yahoo.com/groups/sabaw

While fellow tech journalist Lawrence Casiraya (Computerworld Philippines) and I were in Bangkok last week, we stumbled upon a Filipino restaurant called Mabuhay. You can read more about Mabuhay in my Babelmachine blog post.

We discovered that in Bangkok, they have huge bottles of San Mig Light, the better to compete with local brands that come in that size, such as Leo. I knew San Miguel had a brewery in Thailand, but I had no idea they had this version of San Mig Light, heh.

Oh. My. God.

SPOILER ALERT.

Have you seen the previews on Newsarama of the Jim Lee and George Perez covers for Infinite Crisis #7? They're not in color yet, but who cares?

Check them out. But warning: they're SPOILERS, OK, if you don't visit comic book sites and have no idea at all what's in store for the final issue, or haven't read Infinite Crisis yet. You've been warned. 

Green Lantern fans will especially love the Jim Lee cover, heh. I love it — in fact, I love both. Villains of the world, unite!

Oh. My. God.

I have a soft spot for Cameron Crowe’s excellent “Jerry Maguire” flick (and Cameron’s “Almost Famous,” for that matter, among others) — so sue me. And lately it seems a lot of the quotes from that movie sum up how I feel about some parts of my life right now, particularly a certain venture.

Since I can’t remember some of the quotes verbatim, I consulted Wikiquote (so blame them if these aren’t the exact quotes either, heh, I don’t want to dig up my copy of “Jerry Maguire” right now).

Here you go.

Jerry’s quotes:

“…there is such a thing as manners. A way of treating people… These fish have manners! They have manners. In fact, they’re coming with me!”

“I’m still sort of moved by your ‘My word is stronger than oak’ thing.”

Dicky Fox’s quote:

“Hey… I don’t have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I have failed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my life. I love my wife. And I wish you my kind of success.”

And of course, this classic from Rod Tidwell (and well, Jerry was shouting it, hehe):

“Show me the money!”

Talk about six degrees of separation.

Got an e-mail from Evert, a former officemate of my wife at the telco where Ellen used to work. Evert is now a business unit manager at GMA New Media, which of course is a subsidiary of one of INQ7.net’s mother companies, GMA Network.

Anyway, GMA New Media is looking for a few good Symbian C++ programmers. If you’re interested and qualified, or know someone who is, just drop me a line at joeyalarilla@gmail.com and give your contact details so I could forward your e-mail to the GMA New Media people. I’m not the one hiring, OK, nor is it INQ7.net — I’ll just be forwarding your message to GMA New Media.

Good luck!

Here’s a music video of Sam which I created using Windows Movie Maker.

I’m really having fun fooling around with video editing software. Pardon the poor quality of the video because I had to convert the 3GP files from my mobile phone to MPEG using shareware software before I could import them to Movie Maker.

As usual, I uploaded the video clip to vidiLife, which offers free video streaming, video hosting and video blog services. Registration is free, so check out this growing online community today.

Hope you like this “Hey Sammy!” vid, which of course makes use of Toni Basil’s immortal hit.

Free video hosting, video codes at www.vidiLife.com