[Philippines] Lola Techie

Funny Grandma Lola Techie Uses Internet

Pardon the lack of subtitles for non-Filipino Geeky Guide readers.

I all started with that video. At first it seemed like yet another weird viral video feature - well, up until you see the Bayantel DSL logo at the end and the statement of how much their DSL service is. And that's probably the brilliance - the concept of a grandmother who is internet-savvy is a novel concept, but not one that's too far-fetched. It's not even a new concept - there have been countless jokes and parodies about elderly people being proficient with the internet and high technology, but this one as executed so well.

Viral marketing isn't all that new even in the Philippines, but this is probably one of the most successful and most interactive campaigns ever. While I can't determine if this advertising campaign has actually resulted in significant sign-ups for Bayantel's residential DSL service, I can talk about just how popular "Lola Techie" has become and what a great branding campaign this has become for Bayantel.

She's not only active on YouTube in order to release her new videos, but she's also on other social networking services like Twitter, Plurk, Multiply and naturally Facebook. Yes, she will add you as a friend and you can play games like Mafia Wars together. Of course she has her own website at http://www.lolatechie.com/ (which is really just a redirect URL), which acts as the central hub of the marketing efforts and naturally where you can sign up for their services as well.

It's such a simple concept yet so well-executed and I can see Bayantel pushing this campaign indefinitely. Lola Techie has pretty much become the new spokesperson for their brand and a pretty effective one, one that really triggers name recall and brand awareness. Plus she's a heck of a lot of fun too. Even though we all know she's not a real person, the people behind her certainly make it feel that she is real and someone we'd all wish to have in our families. Who wouldn't want a high-tech granny who can troubleshoot your net connection issues, right?

I'll leave you all with her second YouTube video, thankfully one with subtitles this time. Just wait for the flash bang grenades, haha. Enjoy!


Funny Grandma Lola Techie Plays Online Game

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[Games] Katamari Damacy (PS2)

The Japanese are notorious for some pretty bizarre concepts, hence the world's fascination with the kinds of game shows they come up with or the things they end up singing or writing about. It has certainly made for a very unique culture that's totally different from the rest of the global community, and wonderfully so.

I'm totally into Japan in a big way, and I suppose most other geeks tend to at least develop an appreciation if not outright love of their quirky culture. Every now and then there are certain cultural icons that just somehow best embody or personify Japanese identity in terms of their bold creativity, and one of the best venues for that has always been game development.

After the longest time of wanting to try it out, I finally got to play Katamari Damacy on the PlayStation 2. I know the game is rather dated by now, but it's still a really enjoyable game that anyone can pick up if they so desire.

The story is simple enough. Apparently one drunken night, the King of All Cosmos accidentally destroys all the stars and celestial bodies. Thus it becomes the mission of his son, the Prince (more or less you) to undo the damage. To aid you in your quest, you're given a Katamari, which is pretty much a highly adhesive ball that you use to "roll up" objects in order to make your Katamari even bigger. This goes on until you've made it big enough to replace one of the missing stars or whatever.

Okay, so maybe "simple" isn't the best term for it, but it doesn't mean that it's not a great game.

The game is amazing for its simplicity and addictiveness - who would have thought that rolling objects into giant balls would be so fun? I guess there's just something about the rush you feel when you get your Katamari to be big enough to capture your first cat, cow or oil tanker.

Image by gin_e via Flickr

The game isn't even just about how complex it is (which it isn't) - you can probably finish all the stages in a day if you really work on it. But the fun doesn't end there. The game is highly replayable and you'll find yourself wanting to try to make larger and larger Katamari's as fast as possible in order to beat your old scores to to try and find all the game secrets such as presents from the King or even your fellow royal cousins.

Plus the whole experience is rounded out by the highly original and addictive music that plays in the background. For the most part, the game sticks to one central theme with so many variations. Add in the highly unusual setting of the game and the very surreal and often illogical dialog and imagery and you get one amazing mind trip of a game.

I fully understand now why Katamari has developed such a global following and how it's triggered so many sequels. Now I need to go and try to find myself a working copy of We Love Katamari so I can play that one too, haha.

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[Movies] District 9 Trailer 2

I'm not sure what got people so excited about the number 9 this year, but it's clear that we have to major movies with science fiction overtones related to the number, and personally I'm pretty excited for both of them. On the one hand is the animated film "9", based on a short film released some time ago by Shane Acker and somehow involving Elijah Wood. The other is a larger-scale production called District 9, that really promises to knock your socks off. Then again, this film is being produced by Peter Jackson, so that does indicate some pretty heavy guns behind the scenes.

District 9 is the odd story about an alien race made to live in not-so-great conditions on Earth in some sort of a community / refugee camp called District 9. Of course something is going to happen to disrupt the status quo, but why listen to me? The trailer does a heck of a better job of showing you just how potentially awesome this film could be.

Oh, and did I mention the mecha-style power armor?

#12 - 'District 9' Trailer 2 HD

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[Google] No More Beta and the OS Announcement

It's the middle of the week and already Google has rocked the tech sphere once more with two rather significant announcements. It seems to be par for the course for them - why make only one revelation in a week when you can assault the world with several across the span of a few days. Seriously, at times it feels like a military engagement.

While some might argue that pretty much anything that Google says or does tends to be perceived to be significant or perhaps somehow "game-changing", I think that this week's press releases are of a different degree entirely.

Tuesday in the US, Google announced that Google Apps is finally out of beta. Now this may not seem to be significant news since it doesn't translate into anything radically new in terms of the affected services - Gmail, Docs, Calendar and Google Talk. However the reason for the change relates more to how business truly perceive the "beta" tag for what it originally stood for - a piece of software still in development and being tested with a limited audience.

Google's definition of the "beta" tag had more to do with the desire to continually innovate and improve these applications in order to make them better over time, never settling for a "finished" product or thinking that they had successfully done their jobs. It was a nice sort of idealistic notion, but not one Google consistently followed. The best example would definitely have to be how soon Google Chrome was announced to be out of beta (even though there's always a "beta" version of the browser with the latest tweaks and improvements.

We all know what this really means - a serious push to promote Google Apps as a business solution for small and medium companies. Naturally business are more familiar with what "beta" is supposed to represent and probably the Google Apps sales teams have had trouble convincing larger clients to adopt the application suite given it's supposedly still in the testing phase. To the average user, this probably won't mean much.

Today (as previously predicted numerous times), Google announced the eventual release of Google Chrome OS in mid-2010. People had been speculating about a Google-created operating system for ages now, especially given all the development work they've done in terms of Linux solutions for their data centers and even Android for mobile phones. What exactly Google hopes to achieve with this release is pretty tricky to figure out.

When trying to understand Google's motivation for doing anything, we always go back to their mission - to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. A lot of their free solutions are geared towards making information truly more accessible, may it be hidden emails from years ago, photos you need across various websites, driving directions to the nearest supermarket or obscure files on your hard drive.

An OS has always been considered to be well within this plan since it gives Google access to everything on a person's computer outside of the scope of Google Desktop Search. When people first saw Google Chrome, it already seemed like just few steps away from a full OS. As a browser, it was designed to work well with Google's cloud computing philosophy and benefited the more online user of today. Based on the initial blog report, it seems they're trying to position their new OS the same way, still using the Google Chrome brand.

It's primarily being positioned as an alternative netbook OS, competing in the same area as other Linux flavors and the various iterations of Windows (not counting Vista, seriously). It'll be open source, which is always a good thing since there's pretty much a whole world willing to slave themselves for the betterment of Google for free.

Like Chrome, they're claiming to want to rethink the OS from the ground up with the philosophy that it needs to be an OS truly designed to help the user get connected to the internet a fast as possible. It's a bold idea, but one that traditional OS makers may not appreciate since it's trying to encourage the user to bypass desktop software entirely in order to focus more on online solutions. Given the number of software developers well nested in the traditional OS environment, a radial shift like this may or may not affect their business negatively. It's too early to tell at this point.

For now, all we know is that Google is stepping up its game as it always does but making sure that the bulk of their applications remains free. It'll be interesting to see how this develops over time and how US anti-trust investigators will interpret this continued branching out into new areas given the lack of a clear revenue model.

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[Videos] Usavich

Here's something a friend of mine shared with my via Facebook - some odd Japanese web series called Usavich, apparently some MTV Japan animated series about two rabbits in prison. Then again, when you watch the videos, you'll understand that only the Japanese could think of something like this.

I'm not sure what appeals to me about this series - the stupid dance the green bunny does all the time or the constantly building library of characters - whatever it is, it's certainly entertaining.

Here's the first 20 episodes for your viewing enjoyment (most have been placed under a cut to save space on the main page)

ウサビッチ usavich 1~5話


ウサビッチ usavich 6~10話


우사비치ウサビッチUsavich 11~15


우사비치ウサビッチUsavich 16~20

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