I mostly use Markdown, but I have also been considering learning Org-mode. Other than Markdown, Org-mode, and good old plaintext—which is not a markup language per se—there are also AsciiDoc and LaTeX, to mention two. I was curious if it is worth learning a new markup language, and what other people use. Was it easy for them to learn a new markup language? Are they using it for writing research papers, blogging, emails, and taking down notes?

No better way to find out other than by making a poll and asking the fediverse community!

Polls

Meta

• Duration: 7 days
• Date: 2023-04-02 to 2023-04-09
• Total votes: 83
• Total voters: 53
• The poll

Results

What are people saying?

For Fell’s thesis, LaTeX is the markup language of choice, but in all other cases, good old plaintext is more than enough because it is compatible with everything.

I agree. Plaintext is plaintext. It is the easiest and fastest way to take down notes. You do not have to worry about converting a particular file from one markup language to another.

However, for Nick Anderson, Org-mode is life. Nick uses Org-mode for everything: knowledge management, writing email, blogging, presentations, tracking time, Jira ticketing, and more. Nick’s entire workflow and daily routine, you can guarantee Org-mode is there.

I checked the articles Nick shared, and after going through Nick’s experience and process, I can imagine how it made Nick’s daily workflow faster and easier. This is a good thing, as I have mentioned I have been considering learning Org-mode and integrating it into my daily routine.

For Evan Keeton, the answers are LaTeX and Markdown markup languages. Evan shared that for anything mathematics related, LaTeX is the one to use. This is true, LaTeX is the choice in publishing scientific documents ¹. If you plan to publish a research paper, it is a good idea to master LaTeX.

However, for things like note-taking, Evan said that Markdown fits perfectly. For Evan, Markdown is easy to read even without a proper renderer. I can attest to that. As a long-time Markdown user, my mind processes a Markdown document as if my brain is a Markdown renderer. It flows naturally, I do not have to consciously think about the markups in the document.

Potung Thul shares the same view as Fell, plaintext is the most compatible format of all the choices in the poll. Vim is also Potung’s go to cross-platform software for editing texts.

Closing

From the above poll, while not conclusive, it gave a general overview on which format, or markup language, fediverse citizens use. The top two are: Markdown and Org-mode, followed by plaintext. While LaTeX is the de facto choice for scientific publications and in other fields ¹.

I have heard good things about AsciiDoc, though it only received a few votes in this poll, it is a markup language that one should consider. It may be easier for you compared to the other popular choices.

Should you try one of these markup languages? Yes, you definitely should. Markdown is common in software development, for example, it is the markup language used by web repository services like Codeberg ². It is also the default in many static-site generators like Hugo ³. There are also forum software which allow Markdown editing other than the old BBcode format.

And as was mentioned, LaTeX is the de facto standard in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) publishing. Authors can submit their papers as a LaTeX document, and the publishers converts it to their own preferred format without losing any text information, like bold, italics, images, and footnotes. Compare that to submitting PDF, ODF, and DOCX documents, more likely than not the publisher will have to check if the conversion was accurate. Or, the authors of the paper have to spend more time on these things when they can better spend it doing research and experiments.

Of course, plaintext is as good as any. If presentation is not important, like bold and italics, plaintext can fill our everyday needs in documentation and note-taking. Even before the age of computers, that is what we were already doing… writing down in plaintext.

Links and more information

For more information about the various markup languages mentioned, check these useful links:

• LaTeX
• Org-mode
• Markdown: CommonMark
• AsciiDoctor
• AsciiDoc
• Wikipedia: List of document markup languages

In the early days of the World Wide Web (mid to late 90s) all the way to 2010 or 2012, linklists or blogrolls were not only popular but a standard part of webdesign. One fine morning it disappeared and no longer relevant. But is it really dead?

What is a linklist or blogroll?

A linklist or blogroll is a collection of recommend links a website owner or blogger collected and displays on the site’s sidebar or in a dedicated page. It could be blog links of family and friends, or links to interesting websites.

Back in the early days of website building and blogging, socialising and creating a network of blogs was important. It was not because of search engine optimizations (SEO)—although later it became the focus—rather it was to help each other get discovered by visitors. One day everybody were creating their blogrolls, the next day it was all gone.

Websites were no longer “socially connected”. Any connection between websites turned into a business or a marketing. A link to another website was primarily because it was cited in an article and not because one found it worthy to be discovered by their own readers.

That was then. Today, we are bringing it back!

But why?

Since I started migrating my blogs from WordPress to Hugo, a linklist or blogroll has always been in my ToDo list. It is a way for me to recommended websites and bloggers I find worthy of constant mention instead of finding an article to cite. It is also a recommendation for the website itself and the author as compared to linking to a single article.

However, I kept on pushing it back. There are too many websites and bloggers I want to recommend, just thinking about the work in curating and maintaining the list is tiring already. Until now, I found a very good way and reason to do this in a small scale.

👉🏽 And here is the YourOnly.One Linklist! 👈🏽

(If we know each other and your blog is not listed, more likely than not it was because you are ranking in searches already. I might create a separate list for family and friends in the future and I’m hoping you will recommend me back.)

FAQ

Q: Is there a penalty?

No. By adding a website in your linklist or blogroll you are endorsing it, or to put it another way, you are recommending it. rel=nofollow is used only for links which you can not endorse such as but is not limited to: paid links, links in comments and forums, and yes, third-party theme footer credits (be sure to update those links).

To add a link to techmagus:

1	<a href="https://im.youronly.one/techmagus/" rel="noopener external">techmagusa>

If you want to link to my linklist:

1	<a href="https://im.youronly.one/p/linklist/" rel="noopener external">YourOnly.One Linklista>

It’s that simple!

Q: I know what rel=nofollow is but what are noopener and external?

I’ll let the Mozilla Developer Network answer that.

rel=noopener:

Instructs the browser to open the link without granting the new browsing context access to the document that opened it — by not setting the Window.opener property on the opened window (it returns null).

This is especially useful when opening untrusted links, in order to ensure they cannot tamper with the originating document via the Window.opener property (see About rel=noopener for more details), while still providing the Referer HTTP header (unless noreferrer is used as well).

Note that when noopener is used, nonempty target names other than _top, _self, and _parent are all treated like _blank in terms of deciding whether to open a new window/tab.¹

rel=external:

Indicates that the hyperlink leads to a resource outside the site of the current page; that is, following the link will make the user leave the site.¹

Share yours

Have you created your own curated bookmark list or blogroll? Share your link in the comments below and I will also add you in YourOnly.One Linklist. It is all about sharing trusted links and interlinking our linklists.

Shalom!

The longest downtime in the history of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, should have had triggered meetings in many companies on business continuity and the importance of having a Plan B and a Plan C. This will also be remembered and used in schools and studies as the number one example on how not to setup security systems.

Yet main are asking: what else is there other than Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp? They cornered the market and are as good as a monopoly. They are the Internet. They are the social web. Right?

NO and no.

It was around 15:40 UTC when trouble began which led to Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, to disappear from the Internet.¹ It was only by 21:28 UTC that their services were reconnected to the Internet¹, six hours of downtime for four services millions, if not billions, of people rely on.

There are a lot of factors which contributed to the longest downtime of Facebook and its services, one such is even Facebook relies on their own network to be connected to the Internet.²

But how about you? Do you have an online service which relies on Facebook as your customer’s login method? Or, maybe you have an online business and your only platform is Facebook and Instagram? How about communicating with your family, are you only relying on Messenger? There are also those who are using WhatsApp as a communication platform for their critical services, like say emergency response, what happens then if there is another major downtime?

Lessons Learnt

It is not only Facebook who should learn from #FacebookDown, #InstagramDown, #MessengerDown, and #WhatsAppDown, all of us should learn from this. Here are some that I think we should all take into consideration.

1. If your online service only offers Facebook as account creation and login method, it is time to add another login method including the traditional username and password.
2. If your online service separate accounts created with Facebook, it is time to give your customers an option to add another login method including setting up a password.
3. If you are part of a critical/emergency response group and WhatsApp is your only communication platform, it is time to look for alternatives, at least as a backup. What is important is the need for the backup service readily available instead of suddenly going through account creation, searching, adding, and learning how to use the app and service.
4. If you have an online business, or you earn through your channels in Facebook and Instagram, it is time to find another platform where your fans can continue to follow you in case another major downtime occurs.
5. If socializing online is the air you breath, better join other platforms lest something happens to you.

There are other lessons we can list but will probably fall in one or two with what we’ve already listed above. As end-users of someone else’s platform and/or service, we should never rely on it solely, we need to be ready when it disappears for whatever reason.

Do I have recommendations? I sure do.

Federated social media and social network services

Us, and our family and friends, signed up in the same social media and social network platforms because there is no way to communicate with each other if we are on different services. But did you know that this is an outdated model and it already is possible to be on different platforms and services and yet socialize with each other? Yes, this is called “federation” and these federated platforms and services are collectively called as the “fediverse”.

If you think that this is new, surprise! Federation has been around since 2008, and for communication or messengers, it has been around since 1999 (called “XMPP” or formerly “Jabber”). With that said, here are some of the services I personally recommend.

Friendica

Friendica, formerly known as Friendika, with project name Mistpark), is a distributed and federated social network. It was one of the very first software which started the fediverse.

Features

• Post “status updates”
• photos, albums
• hashtags
• privacy
• military encryption
• Calendar
• Show different “profiles” to different people and communities
• follow other profiles and hashtags
• different themes and addons
• can connect with those in: Diaspora, Mastodon, Pleroma, Hubzilla, WordPress, Nextcloud, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Twitter, and more.

If you want to give it a spin, choose one of the servers available here. Remember, it does not matter which server you choose, you can connect with everyone in the fediverse.

Hubzilla

Hubzilla is similar to Friendica in that it was started by the same developer, Mike Macgirvin. Macgirvin is a man of vision and a strong advocate and proponent of freedom of choice, decentralization, federation, and anti-censorship. With Hubzilla, he developed a unique feature that no other fediverse platform (other than Zap) have to this very day: nomadic identity and cloning.

What is nomadic identity and cloning

Nomadic identity means true ownership of online identity. With Hubzilla, you don’t have an account on a server, you own an identity that you can take with you across the grid. You can clone a channel across multiple hubs for resilience against network failures or censorship, or you can completely move a channel from one hub to another, taking your data and connections with you.³

You can have a channel in example.com and then clone it in example.net. While it appears that these are two separate accounts because these are on two different servers, they are actually one and the same. Any platform which understands the underlying technology of nomadic identity will treat both as a single channel, if you login via example.net, you will receive the same communication, connections, and be able to send back replies or create new posts/updates as if you logged-in via example.com.

When it comes to features, Hubzilla shares almost the same set with Friendica but by no means the code are identical. But this part? This is good for developers and server operators, as a user, rest assured that you are in good hands. Besides, nomadic identity sure is a great feature that all other platforms should implement, right?

You can sign-up for a Hubzilla channel (or account if you will) in any of the available servers located here.

Zap

Zap povides an experience that is familiar and comfortable to Facebook users, with some additional functionality and with some of the best privacy and anti-abuse features available in the Fediverse today.⁴

Features

• Groups: public, private, and moderated. It works across nearly all fediverse platforms.
• Events: Calendar and attendance; automatic timezone adjustment; birthday notifications for friends
• Permissions: Granular permissions control over each feature
• Cloud storage: built-in network file storage with social networking access/permissions.
• Editor: supports markdown, html, and bbcode
• Lists: sometimes referred to as circles or aspects
• Friend Zoom: set the degree of “closeness” with your connections and then use friend zoom to filter your dashboard stream to show only close friends or everyone.
• Nomad protocol: (see “Nomadic identity” above, under Hubzilla)

If you are ready to jump in and create your online social web identity, choose any server here.

Misskey

Misskey is a decentralized microblogging platform. It exists within the Fediverse and is mutually linked with other social media platforms.⁵ It was started by しゅいろ (syuilo), a Japanese developer, and were joined by other contributors. Misskey is the platform of choice in Japan when it comes to the fediverse.

Features

• posting or status updates
• reactions
• different UI options
• Misskey Drive
• chat
• photo gallery
• groups
• pages
• private messages
• lists
• channels
• antennas
• Misskey Games

You can find a Misskey community which perfectly fits you here.

Pixelfed

Pixelfed is a federated, privacy-focused, photo sharing platform part of the fediverse. The user interface of Pixelfed today should be very familiar with fans of Instagram which means it should be a no-brainer to use Pixelfed as a photo sharing platform.⁶

Features

• ad-free: no ads in timelines or anywhere
• chronological: timelines properly ordered, no algorithms
• discover: explore new content and creators
• filters: add optional filters to your photos
• photo albums: share your photos, one post at a time
• privacy focused: no third-party analytics or tracking included
• two-factor authentication: secure your account
• content warnings: auto-detection if a photo and/or comment is possibly sensitive and automatically blur/hide it
• disable comments: ability to turn-off comments per post
• license declaration: include photo license information
• hide follower and following count
• mute accounts
• private accounts
• private posts
• unlisted posts: public posts but are not listed in the global public timeline/stream

You can start uploading your photos into the fediverse today by joining any Pixelfed instance.

Mastodon

Mastodon is a network of thousands of communities operated by different organizations and individuals that provide a seamless social media experience.⁷ It can also connect to other platforms like Friendica, Hubzilla, Zap, Misskey, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Write.as, and any that is connected to the social web standard, ActivityPub, a decentralized social networking protocol.

Features

• effective anti-abuse tools
• moderators
• 500 characters or more
• emojis and custom emojis
• spoiler tags
• content warning
• status updates

If you are regularly use Twitter and you like its flow, Mastodon is the right platform for you. Join Mastodon today and connect with everyone in the fediverse.

PeerTube

PeerTube, developed by Framasoft, is a free and decentralized alternative to video platforms, providing over 400,000 videos published by 60,000 users, viewed over 15 million times⁸, from all over the fediverse.

PeerTube is not meant to be come a huge platform that would centralize videos from all around the world. Rather, it is a network of inter-connected small videos hosters. Users can still watch videos hosted from another server and their own uploaded videos can be seen in other PeerTube servers.

And because PeerTube is part of the fediverse, anyone from the fediverse can leave a comment on a PeerTube-hosted video directly from their own platform.

Features

• import videos from other platforms
• license information
• hashtags
• channels
• ad-free
• tracker free
• whenever necessary, it can use peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol to broadcast viral videos
• history
• subscriptions
• playlists

Ready to upload your videos and be seen by countless of fediverse citizens? Find the best server that suits your needs in this page.

Communication platforms

Keybase

Keybase is most secured platform and service for messaging, file-sharing, file hosting, web hosting, file encryption, and text encryption. On top of that, Keybase is the easiest way to verify your online accounts and PGP keys.⁹

Keybase Teams which offers 100 GB of storage per team and if you choose to host your files and website on your personal account, you will get a whopping free 250 GB cloud storage. If you know how to use git, you can use Keybase git and use it as your source file for hosting, like this blog.

Features

• Online identity verification

• End-to-end encrypted chat: direct chatting, private group, and public chatrooms

• Files for both Personal and Teams

• Teams and sub-teams, each with separate end-to-end encrypted chat channels

• Sites or Keybase hosting

• Keybase git: for both Personal and Teams; can also be used to host your website

• Wallet: to store your Stellar Lumens (XLM)

• Encrypt, decrypt, sign, and verify files and text manually. Here are examples:

  • Text encryption (decrypt this using Keybase)

    BEGIN KEYBASE SALTPACK ENCRYPTED MESSAGE. kiPgBwdlv6bV9N8 dSkCcFVY51MqZ0Z jBhax0vmrFJnfxR fKGP8dQPl4QGdca VXX0fJ5dPQd8LPt fVZZHeiosRH3G2G aHISVcOaSDzkxGO Jzc473w8jfROHLB qjnBybJ7v1lPl2A ahivzqJlEVbdUqF xyOmsy2gw73KGak OLKpm2gHTOSlRA4 lN8JL1hDAoA0zww J6p17kYapfilkG9 0oPJQbYBddvW2oe 8h60aYtaXFkZtuw Upe8JRMEWA8rb9k yGq1rrR1iRZRHqQ N1DNsDkkwYcnOBG 1jVo6qC5s119yei OI0iZzxn0QIonnq EZT1BTXfNV8jLdt LlWUetCYjZX97IV W2WqklHqoCfJckJ 21gyWTDUDVyULET IhTtq6TWebof3zs K45laDdgfMMk8pO hxegpPToTMz0flR DS5D5WQv0scyHyH OlsphN9yzcmp5E4 AsU1hXMQYyeg1g5 k3AaSPpKAKBr1QB nMLA5nKVYMhGRic 0RWgfO1Ka988tVT 2DocXdLvAJhN1W4 o1tE46l2nt9mdPi B0o1fVKJ1ZFv6Pj Sj9HcoTtrwX4Yc1 x4H1vrYn8Iy1ixK m3jvocnQlF4XhLO 0eaeXI4LKh2gRqv aKOzVuQ6d2Tpt1g Y20j1yj8CFFg5Vq EplbHmaVxMDPvZ7 7T6HDZGjZ6MPcIE M9qGktljj3Gtv7a rz4GqOoCAbS733m J6N0gzRCuyKGFqc 15liiR8iPro0HJa QBGFHOTQArzJoNH 3kY7PfX00wJcyGt JC80YSp. END KEYBASE SALTPACK ENCRYPTED MESSAGE.

  • Text signing (confirm I wrote this message by verifying the signature in Keybase)

    To Amyrei,

    I’m just a boy, standing in front of a girl, asking her to love him.

    From your secret admirer,

    I’M YourOnly.One

    BEGIN KEYBASE SALTPACK SIGNED MESSAGE. kXR7VktZdyH7rvq v5weRa0zkP4VNyC 8WftM9nW4fgPe6n Zl3jKJsRhCjvlTD OXqz3yNPCDKpvKy Rj1fKVuc1iEn5x6 QyFOb76HQvVRy3B wF50Os0vkSv2Wgz U5nB6WXpanovzVT 5GWjzdQQASbv8O4 h6dPaDRzjtP80eU Uax3jtDZh71OSF3 icWhpVQLYL8QjLm MDDWN19aCn9ICr0 kpt457g7TpuOke7 fnrcIovfAAhGt7l yFfYHtgMMTVrolv DdaPeMRcJCIKh31 DBHqNkdGzeSTKOa dqY6QqKF9wDUHWT l7hRNKprld1GNBd Rng7c9gB2NPny70 yY2CSUBViAf1Pb2 ILvVGpGmz. END KEYBASE SALTPACK SIGNED MESSAGE.

Get started with Keybase

• How-To create a Keybase account

• Why you should verify your accounts through Keybase

Matrix

Matrix is a secure, decentralised, real-time communication platform. Conversations in Matrix are replicated over all the servers participating in, there are no single point of control or failure. It also provides state-of-the-art end-to-end encryption which ensures that only the intended recipients can ever decrypt your messages, while giving a warning if any unexpected devices are added to the conversation.¹⁰

While there is far more to Matrix than what were mentioned, those great features only concerns the developers and server hosts. If your company is looking for a communication platform and you would like to know more about Matrix, visit their official website.

Features

• Apps available in Android
• Apps available in iOS
• Web client
• Desktop clients for Windows, Linux, and Mac
• Commandline clients
• end-to-end encryption
• bridges to other networks

Try Matrix today!

Session

Session is an end-to-end encrypted messenger that minimises sensitive metadata, designed and built for people who want absolute privacy and freedom from any form of surveillance.¹¹

Features

• No phone numbers and email addresses: Session accounts are completely anonymous.
• No data breaches: Session doesn’t collect data so there’s nothing to leak.
• No footprints: Send messages through Session’s onion routing network and leave no trace.
• Censorship resistant: With no central point of failure, it’s harder to shut Session down.
• Open source: Session’s code has nothing to hide. Anyone can view, audit, and contribute.
• Group chats: private and open groups
• Voice messages
• Attachments: don’t upload those documents in unencrypted services. Send all your files, images, and attachments through a network that takes your privacy seriously.

Download and use Session in your desktop or mobile phone.

Final words

I hope that the above list of platforms and services are more than enough to give you a start in building your backup plan. While many would say that you should migrate, and probably even delete your Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp accounts, here at YourOnly.One I am only suggesting that you should have a backup platform and service. You can keep using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and WhatsApp, but not having a ready alternative or secondary platform and service after the #FacebookDown, #InstagramDown, #MessengerDown, and #WhatsAppDown we had today is a decision you will regret when, not if but when, it happens again.

Last but the most important of all, it is time to embrace fully the decentralization, distribution, and federation of data, platforms, and services. What happened today has proven that this is the only logical step to ensure that the Internet, and the services we rely on, will continue to exist and work.

Enjoy and Shalom!

A friend of mine noticed that Philippine ISPs started to hijack connections to certain websites and they are also using a fake SSL certificate. If a user choose the option to continue despite the warning about an invalid SSL certificate, they will see a Philippine government warning and the related Republic Act explaining why they–our ISPs–are hijacking our connection.

Let’s take a look at an example.

MediaFire is a popular file sharing and cloud storage. A file sharing and/or cloud storage service by itself is not “evil” as most governments, politicians, and the corporate world is painting it to be. Unfortunately, as with all services and technologies, there are people who use it for “evil purposes”. This was the basis for the Philippine government [supposedly] ordering Philippine ISPs to hijack the connection to MediaFire, as shown in the screenshot below.

Based on the message shown in the screengrab above, MediaFire is a suspected child sexual abuse or exploitation material (CSAEM). They then explained that they will initiate decryption of traffic for possible CSAEM content and block access as mandated by Republic Act No. 9775 or the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009. In other words, they admit that your connection to MediaFire was hijacked and their all-seeing eye is watching you closely.

This is a very bad reality. There is now no doubt that all it takes for Philippine ISPs to intercept our Internet connection is an order from the Philippine government suspecting services and websites of CSAEM and/or whatever other laws they can use to justify breaking the privacy and security of the people.

Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox, probably does not have “illegal content” because they can police their users. But you have to ask the question, how? Could it be they can read all the files uploaded to their storage? We will never know but at least one of those mentioned admitted that they do (it’s even in their Terms).

It is understandable why they are doing this, no good person would tolerate child abuse and child pornography, that is a line no sane human being should ever cross. However, the way they are doing this policing is never acceptable, this is a clear violation of the user’s privacy and hijacking connections is a clear act of compromising the user’s security. No one can guarantee what these ISPs will do with the data they can see. They usually can not be held accountable if one of their “trusted” employee leaks confidential information he or she saw while searching for CSAEM materials. It is easy to say they will never do anything else other than to watch out for CSAEM but clearly, all it takes is a government order and we will never know what they are doing with all the other data.

We all know that we can never trust ISPs, government order or not, so let this be a lesson for everyone in the Philippines: encrypt your files before uploading; and use only services which offers end-to-end encryption; and always use Tor (The Onion Router) or better yet a highly reputable VPN. Our privacy and security matters.

MediaFire was also informed and they are looking into addressing this.

Once again congratulations on creating a Keybase account. You have joined a growing number of people worldwide who have taken their privacy and security to the next level.

Keybase offers a lot of features, there is end-to-end encrypted Chat, a free 250 GB File storage, a signed hosting, and the ability to easily sign any text, images, and the usual document files. However, there is one feature usually ignored and this feature was one of the hottest when Keybase first sent invites to testers. That is what I will guide you through today.

What is a Keybase Identity?

A Keybase identity is a secure online representation of someone (a person) or some entity (an organisation). It lists all the verified online assets (social network accounts, domain names, microblog accounts) of the owner of the Keybase account.

By design, it is near impossible to gain an unauthorised access to any Keybase account without an active “device” (see our previous post). This generally give us the assurance that whoever is updating a particular Keybase account is the actual owner.

However, a bad element can simply create their own Keybase account to impersonate someone. This was solved in two ways by Keybase. The first is by adding third-party identities; and the second is by being followed by other verified Keybase users.

What is a “third-party identity”?

A third-party identity is an account well-known to be under the control of the Keybase account owner. This could be a Twitter account, a domain name, a Mastodon account, or any of the different services supported by Keybase.

By adding multiple third-party identities, a Keybase account’s trust factor—if we can call it that—increases. An impersonator will not be able to add the official Twitter account of their target under their fake Keybase account. They can add their own fake Twitter account or if they successfully gained unauthorised access to the official account. It becomes harder for an impersonator to establish trust to their fake Keybase account when the official one also added a well-known Mastodon account or the domain names he or she owns.

It is impossible for a fake Keybase account to acquire the same level of trust the official account have by that point. Check my Keybase account here and count how many third-party identities are listed. An impersonator will need to have access to all of those social media accounts and domain names before they can add it to their fake Keybase account. Unless they put a gun on my head, they will not be able to do it (especially since I also use two-factor authentication in those accounts).

How to add a third-party identity?

It is quite simple, follow these steps.

1. Launch Keybase and go to your profile
2. Click/tap "Prove your Twitter"
3. Enter your Twitter username
4. Copy the text shown exactly as it appears and tweet it; or just click the "Tweet it now" button
5. After tweeting, go back to Keybase if you were not redirected, and click the "Reload profile" button
6. Your Keybase profile should now show your Twitter as a verified third-party identity

See the verication tweet live.

Repeat the process for every third-party account you have which is supported by Keybase. If a third-party service is a shared account, for example domain names or corporate microblogging accounts, it is possible to have multiple Keybase accounts verified. Check the Mastodon account for the Kolverse Worldbuilding and Writing Project, there are two Keybase accounts which verified ownership of it: @VersesSpace@writing.exchange.

Let’s say your Twitter account was hacked or you no longer have access to it. It is imperative to revoke it from your Keybase account. Simple go back to your Keybase profile, click your Twitter account, and revoke it. What it means is you are officially declaring that Twitter account to be no longer yours and any posts from it did not come from you.

It is true there could be a delay to the timestamp when you disavowed your third-party identity to when it was actually compromised, however, remember that by the time we discover our account was compromised it is always after the fact. There is nothing that can be done in that regard other than to revoke it in your Keybase account so you have an official timestamp for record purposes (especially if later you are accused of the content posted by your compromised third-party identity).

Why is being followed important?

When other Keybase users follows your Keybase account, they are automatically signing your profile or Keybase identity. A follower is virtually saying “I verify this account is who s/he claims to be and the third-party identities s/he added as of this date and time I also verified to be owned by this Keybase user”.

Whenever a Keybase user changed anything in their third-part identities, their followers can optionally verify those changes by visiting the account. If they do, they are signing it effectively saying “I have checked the changes in this account’s third-party identities and have confirmed it as valid”. The more Keybase users who follows and/or verify the changes, the higher the trust factor.

Getting your family & friends to follow your Keybase account and verifying changes in your third-party identities makes it very solid that your Keybase account is actually yours and those third-party identities are also actually yours and have full control. An impersonator or fake account will not be able to build this kind of trust level.

Again, what if a third-party identity was compromised? Revoke it. Your Keybase followers can then visit your profile and confirm the change. By doing so, they are signing or adding their Keybase signature into your revocation update. We can probably say they effectively stand as “witnesses” when you revoked your compromise third-party identity.

There you go. Add all those third-party identities into your Keybase account as a “verified identity” and get your family, friends, and followers to verify those changes. The higher the trust factor of your Keybase account, the stronger and more secure your digital identity becomes.

Freedom, anonymity, privacy, & security, are the most important part of our lives, and this is especially true today as we move faster into the digital world. We need to secure our online communications to prevent anyone from listening. We need to prove the identity of the other person we are working with. We need an easy way to use encryption to keep private data from being seen by unauthorised individuals.

There are various software, apps, services, available which offers one, two, or maybe three features mentioned. However, there is one which is largely ignored, that is Keybase.

What is Keybase?

To put it simply, Keybase is a tool which makes it easier for regular users to do encryption and signing. Private stuff stays private. Accounts are secure against spoofing, phishing, and scamming. It also helps in establishing which online accounts are officially owned by a Keybase user, effectively nullifying online attacks through impersonation.

In other words, every person who takes their freedom, anonymity, privacy, & security very seriously must have a Keybase account.

Let’s get you started with Keybase

The first thing to understand is registration through a web browser is not possible by design and for security reasons. New users must download Keybase which is available in GNU/Linux, Android, iOS, and Windows: download Keybase here.

* We’re using Keybase for Android below, the process is the same regardless of platform.

1. Launch Keybase
2. Click the "Create an account" button
3. Pick a username. Mandatory; public; permanent
4. Name this device. Mandatory; public; permanent This can be any name/label useful for you to identify which device (laptop, desktop, server, phone) you logged-in your Keybase account.
5. Phone number. Optional; private Used to help other people find your Keybase account.
6. Email address. Optional; private Used to help other people find your Keybase account.

Congratulations! You have successfully created a Keybase account and have taken your first step in establishing a way for others to prove your online identity beyond any reasonable doubt as well as to chat, share files, collaborate with your team, with a peace of mind everything is automatically end-to-end encrypted and signed.

Create a “Paper Key” for recovery

Establishing a way for others to prove our online identity, chat with family & friends, and collaborate with teams, would be practically useless if we later can not login our account. In Keybase, each [re]-installation is considered a “new device” regardless if it was exactly the same device used.

What is a “device”?

A “device” in Keybase is simply an access point or a “device” where an account is logged-in.

Registering each devices creates another security layer, if a phone was stolen one can simply “Revoke” the device. If for some reason the account was not automatically logged-out, any actions made from the “Revoked” device is automatically invalid.

Let’s create a new paper key.

1. Go to the "Hamburger Menu" (lower-right corner in Android and iOS)
2. Click "Devices"
3. Click "Add a device or paper key"
4. Click "Create a paper key"
5. Wait until the random words (a.k.a. paper key) are generated Write your paper key down and place it somewhere safe and fully secure. This can be in your bank stash where only you can access; or in a 2048-bit encrypted file which only you knows how to decrypt and where the encrypted file is located.

   Never ever leave it where anyone can easily find it. If they know what it is for, then they know how valuable it is.

6. Tap the switch button "Yes, I wrote this down"
7. Click "Done"

What is a “Paper Key” for?

A Keybase paper key is technically a “device”. It’s main purpose is to give the account owner a way to confirm a “new device” if a registered literal device is not or no longer available.

Many new Keybase users skip this step, uninstalls Keybase, and later can no longer login because they are stuck in the “new device” process. Without an existing device logged-in to Keybase you can not confirm a “new device”. A paper key acts as an “existing device” to approve a “new device”. The used paper key can be optionally revoked and a new one created (a very good practice); or create a new paper key every three months (an even better practice).

There is another way to recover a Keybase account if a paper key is not available. The catch with this method is your Keybase account will be reset back to start, all confirmed online accounts, domain names, devices, teams, followers, following, will be removed; it is as if you created a new account. The reason behind this is if you no longer have access to any of your “devices” (including your paper keys if you created any), then it is assumed all of your devices were lost and/or compromised.

Welcome to Keybase! Before you start exploring Keybase, noticed how you were not asked to enter a password/passphrase? It is only used if you want to login via a web browser—which is not advisable—and if you prefer to auto-logout when you close the Keybase app (an added security; if you reinstalled Keybase it will be considered a “new device”). We will discuss this another day.

In Android 7 Nougat, the developers decided to switch to the much better Noto font family. The Noto font family have the necessarily fonts to display the Unicode code points for Baybayin-Buhid, Baybayin-Hanunoó, Baybayin-Tagalog, and Baybayin-Tagbanwa. This allowed Android 7 Nougat users to see Baybayin Unicode characters, however, to be able to type in Baybayin users have to use third-party apps or other methods … until today.

(If you want to jump to the How-To visit how to activate Baybayin in Gboard.)

Google silenty released three new Baybayin layouts for their Gboard (Google Keyboard) app for Android (not yet available in iOS). The Baybayin community first requested support when Android 7 Nougat and Gboard were released a few years back. The wait was worth it, the new layouts were well thought and studied.

For example, in Baybayin-Tagalog, the layout was split in two groups with a space in the middle. If a user taps a Baybayin-Tagalog character, the “a”, “e/i”, “o/u”, and virama diacritical marks will appear in the middle of the keyboard. This is the first time this method was used and seen in any Baybayin related keyboard layouts (mobile or desktop) and is very inspiring. Baybayin-Buhid and Baybayin-Hanunoó could use the same layout feature and hopefully in the future we will see this implemented.

Where is Baybayin-Tagbanwa keyboard layout? Unfortunately it is not yet available in this release. It is possible that the R&D team are still studying how best to create a layout for Tagbanwa especially since it has fewer characters of the four Unicode Baybayin code points.

2019-08-24 update: Baybayin-Tagbanwa is known as “Aborlan” in the Gboard app. Thanks to Ki Wakat for informing us.

The continued Baybayin request by the Baybayin community finally showed results. Our sincerest thanks to all and the Gboard team, especially the unique and inspiring Baybayin-Tagalog layout.

Download the Gboard app from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store (not yet available for iOS).

Check our How-To guide on how to activate Baybayin in Gboard.

Here is a short guide on how to activate and use Baybayin-Buhid, Baybayin-Hanunoó, Baybayin-Tagalog, and Baybayin-Tagbanwa, using Google’s Gboard app.

How to Install

1. Download the Gboard app from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store (not yet available for iOS).

2. Go to the Gboard settings

   • In Android 9 Pie: Settings > System > Languages & Input > Virtual keyboard > Gboard
   • In Android 8 Oreo: Settings > Languages & Input > Keyboard > Gboard

3. Go to Languages

4. Tap the “ADD KEYBOARD” button at the bottom of the screen

5. In the “Add keyboard” page, choose:

   • “Filipino (Baybayin)” – Baybayin-Tagalog
   • “Hanunuo” – Baybayin-Hanunoó (Mangyan)
   • “Buhid” – Baybayin-Buhid (Mangyan)
   • “Aborlan” – Baybayin-Tagbanwa [thank you to Ki Wakat for informing us]

6. Optionally, add:

   • “English (Philippines)”
   • “Filipino (Latin)”

7. Then remove any other keyboard layouts which were automatically added.

Not working? Join the Beta

If you can not find the keyboard layouts mentioned above, one possible reason is your Google Play Store account and/or unit is yet to receive an update push. Until then, joining the beta is the only way.

1. Go to the Gboard app Google Play Store page
2. Scroll-down and tap “Join the Beta”
3. Wait for a few minutes and reopen the Google Play Store app
4. Then follow again the steps in “I. How to Install"

Still no Baybayin related keyboard layouts? The last option is for you to download the latest Gboard APK, which is not advisable. But if it is your cup of tea, then download here. Remember, it may not be compatible with your phone model!

Baybayin in Gboard is now available for everyone.

2019-08-24 Update

It was discovered that the Gboard app is automatically disabling the layouts if there are no font support in the system.

For example, manufacturers Samsung and MyPhone deleted the Noto Tagalog font in their Android 7 and Android 8 models but left Noto Buhid, Noto Hanunoó, and Noto Tagbanwa. This is the reason why Samsung and MyPhone users can not see the “Filipino (Baybayin)” Gboard layout.

The best way to test this is to open this article in your favourite mobile browser and check if you can see the following texts.

• Baybayin-Buhid: ᝀᝁᝂᝃᝄᝅᝆᝇᝈᝉᝊᝋᝌᝍᝎᝏᝐᝑ
• Baybayin-Hanunoó: ᜠᜡᜢᜣᜤᜥᜦᜧᜨᜩᜪᜫᜬᜭᜮᜯᜰᜱ
• Baybayin-Tagalog: ᜃᜄᜅᜆᜇᜈᜉᜊᜋᜌᜎᜏᜀᜁᜂᜐᜑ
• Baybayin-Tagbanwa: ᝣᝤᝥᝦᝧᝨᝩᝪᝫᝬᝮᝯᝠᝡᝢᝰ

If you can not see one of those, then your mobile phone is missing the appropriate Noto font support for that script. This in turn will automatically disable Gboard support for it. It means it is time to switch to an “Android One” model.

How to type in Baybayin after activation

1. Long-tap the “spacebar” to show the “Change Keyboard” menu; or tap the “world” icon
2. Switch between the activated keyboard layouts now available (as shown in the above screeeshot)
3. Type away

The recent announcement by Microsoft giving up on their EdgeHTML browser engine as well as their Microsoft Edge browser frontend marks the end of the Browser Wars 2.0. Their revelation that their next flagship browser will be Chromium-based and thus powered by the Blink browser engine, signals the beginning of Browser Wars III a war to control the Internet through browser engines.

To understand Browser Wars III we need to realise that there are two fronts in this new war: the Browser Frontend and the Browser Engine. Allow me to differentiate these two fronts.

Browser Wars III Front: Browser Frontend

A browser frontend is simply the browser that users see. In this case, we have Chromium and Mozilla’s Firefox [Quantum]. Before there was a Chromium browser (the frontend and the engine), the most forked browser was Firefox. Some of the most popular Firefox-based projects are Pale Moon (also forked the Gecko engine into Goanna), Waterfox, Comodo IceDragon, Tor Browser, and the original Flock browser.

When Chromium arrived in the scene, it slowly gained converts. Flock migrated from being a Firefox-based browser to a Chromium-based browser bringing with them their loyal users (much later though, Flock development has ended). Opera Software, the company behind the Opera Browser, ended development of their browser frontend and its Presto browser engine. From there, they created a new Chromium-based Opera! Exactly what Microsoft has announced they will be doing too.

If that was not enough, fans of the Opera Browser also created their own browser called Otter Browser and Vivaldi (which happens to be far better than the new Chromium-based Opera Browser).

Other Chromium-based browsers are: Yandex Browser; Comodo Dragon; Brave; Epic Browser; and Torch, to mention a few. No one is choosing Firefox any longer!

This brings us to the …

Browser Wars III Front: Browser Engine

The browser engine part of the Browser Wars III is the most important and largely ignored in the past two Browser Wars. Today, articles are interchanging Chromium and Blink. However, Chromium is a browser frontend while Blink is a browser engine.

Not interchangeable

The frontend and engine are not interchangeable. A developer can …

• … use an existing browser frontend but use a different browser engine
• … use an existing browser frontend but add additional browser engines on top of the default
• … use a browser engine but without the browser frontend (usually seen in software with a built-in browsing feature)
• … use a browser engine but develop a browser frontend from scratch

Gecko, the browser engine behind Firefox, had seen a lot of products with the use-cases mentioned above. Blink’s use mainly concentrated on Chromium; after all, why build a browser frontend from scratch when there is already Chromium? Why add a built-in browsing feature when one can use Chromium directly as if it’s part of the software or app in both the desktop and mobile platforms? (I came across software where its browsing experience was locked into Chrome itself even if your default browser was set to Firefox. Chrome is a Chromium-based browser by Google.)

Yet, it does not mean Chromium and Blink are interchangeable, especially when …

It’s the browser engine that counts

When frontend developers design software and websites, they test it against different browsers. The reality is they are testing it against the engine powering these browsers. As long as a product or website has been tested in any browsers powered by Blink, Gecko, and WebKit (Safari and all Apple products), a developer can generally interpret it as the same in any other browsers powered by the same engine (to reiterate, generally, there are other factors involved that may change the result even if the engine and its version is the same). There is no need to install Chromium, Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, Brave, and Yandex, these are all powered by Blink through Chromium.

With everyone choosing Chromium as their underlying browser frontend (developers) or daily browser (end-users) we are heading once again to the days of “this website works best with” and “please download a Blink-powered browser like Google Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, Yandex, and Brave to continue to this website”. In addition, developers and companies who only cares to get a website running and money flowing as fast as possible, will only do tests against Blink now that it has the largest share of the market… today.

It puts an imbalance in the Internet. The Chromium developers, who are also the developers behind Blink, now have more power over how the Internet should be displayed. Not that they will abuse it, hopefully, but there were, are, and will always be decisions within the W3C Consortium (the group that sets Web Standards) based on numbers or how a particular element or attribute should work; or if a new web feature should follow Chromium’s version or Mozilla’s interpretation.

Conclusion

Chromium is just the surface. The browser engine is the real danger here. Chromium is simply the flagship browser of Blink. Since most do not want to start a browser from scratch, they obviously decided to use Chromium and tweaked it to their desired look and added their own features. But no one is stopping anyone from building a browser frontend from scratch and use Blink as their browser engine, Chromium have less count while Blink has a higher count.

It does not matter which browser frontend is the most popular because “this site works best on” and “this website was tested fully on” is all about the browser engine. It is about Blink, Gecko, WebKit, Goanna, and KHTML.

Use Firefox Quantum, yes, but if you do not like Firefox for whatever reason, then use a browser powered by the Gecko Quantum engine. A Chromium-based browser is not the only alternative, there are Firefox-based browsers too. If you are a frontend developer, test your website projects on Gecko Quantum powered browsers too. Let us not put the Internet in danger by letting one particular browser engine have a major gap and dominance in the market.

From my personal experience, Gecko has always been way ahead when it comes to implementing the W3C recommended specifications, always. There are also bugs in Chromium that are always ignored or were repeatedly closed as “not a bug” and/or “working as intended”, for example, in its font fallback mechanism which is affecting some [Asian] scripts but is working perfectly in Gecko-powered browsers!

One final thought. There are two Asian browsers with three browser engines (Trident, Gecko, and Blink): IE-based Avant Browser by a Chinese developer and IE-based Lunascape by a Japanese developer. Yes, there are multi-engine browsers (and extensions in the case of Firefox).

This Browser Wars III clearly is about the browser engines Blink and Gecko, the browser frontends that is Chromium and Firefox are only secondary, we just see them mentioned more because the average Joe and Jane are only familiar with those “names”.

An hour and thirteen minutes after Aseans and China welcomes the New Year 2010, we will be treated with a rare New Year’s Day Blue Moon. No, Earth’s Moon will not turn color Blue, it has nothing to do with color (if it turns color Blue, then it is because of Earth’s atmosphere at that time). What “Blue Moon” means is that it is the second Full Moon in a single month.

This January 2010 Blue Moon is rare because it falls on New Year’s Day (or New Year’s Eve depending on where you are). This type of Blue Moons only occurs every 19 years, the last was in 1990/1991 and the next will be on 2028/2029.

Every year, we only get 12 Full Moons. But since the Gregorian Calendar (a Solar calendar; ie based on the sun) and the Lunar Calendar (based on the Moon) are of different lengths, every 2.7154 years we get a 13th Full Moon. This extra Full Moon is called a “Blue Moon”, now you know where the idiom “once in a blue moon” came from ;)

For us in the Asean region, our Blue Moon will be on January 1, 2010 at exactly 1:13am UTC+0800. This is equivalent to December 31, 2009 5:13pm UTC/GMT, which is probably the one you’ve read in many news portals.

Here is how the sky will look like in Manila, Philippines by then:

Click to enlarge (will open in a new window/tab).

So to my fellow Aseans (meaning Filipinos, Singaporeans, Malaysians, VietNamese, Laotians, Khmerians, Burmese, Indonesians, Bruneians, Thailanders), it looks like 2010 will be a great year for us. At least that’s how I want to interpret this January 1st Blue Moon ;)

Bonus, this is how sky will look like when New Year’s Day strikes.

Happy New Year to everyone!!

Last night between 9:30 and 10:00 in the evening, we were staring at the starry skies in front of SM Mall of Asia while reminiscing the things that happened this year 2009 and the 2000 decade. During our conversation, I noticed a big and bright red star at first I thought that it was some red light from a communication tower or antennæ.

Inspecting closer (my eyes have zooming capabilities :p ) I noticed that it wasn’t what I thought it was and it wasn’t twinkling either. I got excited because I knew then that I was looking at humanity’s dream - Planet Mars!

And it is my personal dream as well to see Planet Mars this big and bright, in my lifetime of course. If you still remember your Astronomy lessons, Planet Earth and Planet Mars have an oblong or elliptical orbit. Secondly, Mars orbit is more elongated than our own planet.

Third, each planet’s orbit rotate through space over thousands of years, it makes the distance between the two planets to never exactly repeat again. This makes it rare for the two planets to see each other as close as possible.

The closest ever that Earth and Mars met was back in August of 2003 which hasn’t occurred for nearly 60,000 years! Unfortunately, it wasn’t as beautiful like yesterday, and will be tonight.

Aodhan has this to say, “This is the best ever I’ve seen of it. It’s a ruby!” This was after I micro-blogged about Mars last night, he added, “Seen it maybe over 5 of its showings, this one is downright awesome.” (read: Plurk Thread)

I agree, Planet Mars is a beautiful ruby gem in the night sky today and you shouldn’t missed it at all! So without further ado here are the details you need to know.

According to Stellarium, Mars tonight will reach -0.53 magnitude. To give you an idea how bright it is, the brightest star in Earth’s night sky - Sirius (part of the constellation Canis Major) will be at magnitude -1.45 tonight. So yes, Mars will be that bright you really can not miss it!

How to spot Planet Mars:

• Go out tonight at around 9:30 or 10:30 in the evening and look for the almost Full Moon
• Once you found Moon, look Eastward until you see a bright red "star"
• If instead you saw a bright blue star, that is Sirius, continue searching until you see a bright red "star". Here's a tip: Planets do not twinkle ;)

That is Planet Mars, the Planet that has fascinated humanity for æons and filled our dreams with establishing a human civilization on the red planet (or nightmares of an unfriendly Martian race). Planet Mars that many ancients attributed as an omen of an upcoming war, whose name itself came from the god of war “Mars”.

Here are some screenshots I took from the Astronomy Free/Libre Open-Source Software Stellarium. Note: These screenshots assume that you are facing South which puts East to your left (where you will find Mars).

Click to enlarge (will open in a new window/tab).

The next one is Sirius “the Dog Star”, the brightest star in the night sky.

Happy New Year 2010 to everyone!!

Last week, the search giant Google launched yet another new service to the public - Google Public DNS (“GoogleDNS”). This new service rocked the Internet and everyone, regardless of his/her location, felt the disturbance in cyberspace.

Immediately, netizens dug it, highly questioned Google’s Privacy Policies (especially the hardcore Google haters), security, and so on (and we are not going to talk about that). It even prompted an article from the world’s number one alternative DNS service OpenDNS (which I stopped using almost a month ago).

The question is, who wins when it comes to speed? GoogleDNS or OpenDNS? The winner is GoogleDNS, I’ll show you why…

While doing some research on running my own caching DNS I stumbled on Google DNS vs OpenDNS: Google Rocks for International Users, and clearly showed that GoogleDNS is the fastest for non-Western countries.

Using the script posted on the blog I tried it out myself. Here’s my result testing from Makati City, Philippines, using Globe Innove (DSL/Broadband).

As you can see above there is a more or less 96ms difference between GoogleDNS and OpenDNS from my location. Is it big? For me it is. The fastest I can reach my choice of Domain Name System (“DNS”), the fastest I will be pointed to the location of the website I want to load. That is what DNS servers are for, it resolves the domain names to an IP address.

This test gives me a clear reason why I should switch to GoogleDNS and suggest it to other people too. As for privacy issues, here’s what Google has to say about it:

There are other reasons like GoogleDNS is being operated based on the standards for DNS operations. Not like OpenDNS, they break the standards by not returning NXDOMAIN (“Non-eXistent Domain”). Instead, if you enter a non-existent domain you are redirected to OpenDNS search page. Some top-level domain owners do that and many ISPs too. Not to mention the reason I stopped using OpenDNS was because someone registered or failed to release a range of dynamic IPs which prevented me from accessing some sites.

Switching is easy, just point your DNS to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. For a more detailed instruction, if you do not know where to do the change, visit Google’s instruction page.

However, the choice is up to you. We differ in our needs and criteria. As I have said earlier, I am researching about running my own DNS which might give better results. Besides, if you really want speed and you do not trust Google or OpenDNS or any other public DNS service, then running your own local DNS is really the only solution. Your desktop or laptop or even your netbook is more than enough to run your own!

Anyway, here is the bash script that you can use to run the test yourself if you have a GNU/Linux or Mac machine.

Further reading:

• Google DNS vs OpenDNS: Google Rocks for International Users
• Introducing Google Public DNS: A new DNS resolver from Google
• Some thoughts on Google DNS
• Google Public DNS

You know the Planet Saturn right? That gas giant in the outer section of our solar system with beautiful rings? Yes, the planet after Jupiter and before Uranus? Good, now you remember. Have you ever wondered what it will be like to live on a planet with rings as beautiful as Saturn’s? Have you ever pictured in your mind how the rings will look like from the perspective of someone standing on that planet?

I did and I still do to this day.

But how about putting those Saturn rings right here on our own Planet Earth? What would the sky be like in our own very familiar world with huge rings above us? How about during the night? Will it be awesome or scary? Earth with rings, hmm…

Imagine waking up every day, when you go out of your home to go to school or your office, there will always be a huge ring above you. Then at night, our only satellite the Moon won’t be lonely anymore, Earth’s rings will guide us through the night, ever shining, keeping monsters away.

Watch this video showing us exactly that - huge and beautiful rings like Saturn’s encircling Planet Earth.

And as danthemango said: … the only thing this is missing are the shots from the Earth, under the ring’s shadows, or the shots at the rings in Earth’s shadow.

Last Saturday, 21^st of November 2009, the new Mozilla Philippines Community held their first event entitled “5 Years of Firefox in Manila!” Regnard Raquedan, the leader of Mozilla Philippines, was already halfway through his presentation when we arrived at the venue.

The venue was sponsored by the good people of Asian Institute of Management (AIM), across from Greenbelt 1, Paseo de Roxas, Makati City, Philippines. Allan Caeg of Ubuntu Philippines was also there as one of the organizers. After Regnard presented the history and growth of Firefox, as well as the official launch of Mozilla Philippines Community website, Globe Telecom followed and presented their latest product - Web2Mobile.

What is Web2Mobile? It is a Filipino-developed Firefox browser extension (or add-on) that will allow one to send text messages (SMS) and multi-media messages (MMS) without leaving their browser window. Cool eh? Maybe not because we have uLink and Chikka for our web-to-mobile needs.

This is how Olive Ruth Dag and J. Allen Santos, the UP students who developed the extension for the Globe Labs Summer of Code program made it stand-out:

• Highlight any text on any website, right-click, and then hit ‘Send’. No need to copy and paste or re-typing everything
• You can also send any images, be it a photo or any graphics from any website. Right-click on the image and simply hit ‘Send’

After the Globe presentation (good thing there was no Q&A session, I would have drilled the presenters with questions about their service), what followed was the raffle. For the first time I won - being unlucky with raffles… I got a Firefox ID lace, now two, which I’ll proudly use and keep.

It is good to be part of Free/Libre Open-Source Software (FLOSS/FOSS) communities. We may not be able to give back code or donate but through these events and communities, we are giving back something even though it is as small as showing our support by being simply being present and spreading the word.

Congratulations to the organizers of Five Years of Firefox in Manila and thank you to Mozilla for the freebies. Of course thanks goes to the sponsors as well - AIM for the venue and wi-fi, Globe Telecom for the food.

Photo gallery on Facebook.

Bloggers who attended:

• Joell Lapitan
• Juned Sonido
• Jane Uymatiao
• Rochelle Sy Chua
• Ia Lucero
• Eugene Alvin Villar
• Marvin Beduya
• JP Manahan
• Regnard Raquedan (organizer)

Give Web2Mobile a try: Download the add-on here.

Visit the official community website at www.mozillaphilippines.org.

The July 22, 2009 Total Solar Eclipse was an experience to treasure - yes, even though from where I am it was only partial, about 49.5% here in Megapolitan Manila.

This is technically the first Solar Eclipse I was able to observe, the previous solar eclipses that occured here in the Philippines were, sadly, covered by clouds (and even raining). One of it was the Total Solar Eclipse that was visible in Cebu (Manila got up to 96% at that time if I remember correctly).

Here are my select photos of today’s record-breaking eclipse - longest Total Solar Eclipse at its maximum - 6 minutes and 39 seconds. Oh, you’re in for a treat, 5 video coverage of the Total Solar Eclipse in India, China, and Japan, you’ll even see the firey fires of the sun ;)

• Camera: Canon PowerShot A460 (5 Megapixels)

• Setting: Manual; ISO400; Custom White Balance (directed at the sky); Vivid; 640x480

• Tripod: None

• Filter: 4 layers of used X-Ray film

• Vantage Point: Makati City, Philippines

• Latitude: N 14° 37’ 12.00"

• Longitude: E 120° 58’ 12.00"

Coverage of my Friends

• Azrael

• Ronald Guanzon

  • Photo #1
  • Photo #2
  • Photo #3
  • Photo #4
  • Photo #5

Video Coverage from India and China

Last night, I searched if there were fonts updated to include the Philippine Peso currency sign which has been added in Unicode since version 3.2 release. The Unicode position of the Peso sign is at point 20B1 if you want to check it out for yourself.

I was planning on creating a Peso font if I can not find one, this was after the availability of the Peso sign was discussed during the [Event] Philippine Ubuntu 9.04 release party. My search turned-out positive, there’s not just one but countless of fonts with the Peso sign already included.

This is the real Peso sign: ₱ – it is not an uppercase strike-through P. Here’s a comparison:

If you can not see the Peso sign above, then you do not have an updated font, or any font for that matter, with a Peso sign included. This also means that your fonts are possibly non-Unicode compliant. Time to update.

Let’s Start Typing the Peso Sign

• For Microsoft® Office (2002+) and WordPad, there are two ways to do this:
  1. Simply Copy & Paste the Peso sign above to your document; or
  2. Type in your document the hexadecimal value of the Peso sign: 20B1 or U+20B1. Then press Alt+X (do not put a space after the hexadecimal code)
• For Firefox users, install the Unicode Input Tool/Converter extension. Then just type "Peso" in the field "Search by character name".

Let’s Put A Peso Sign In Your Computer

Here are some of the free-of-charge fonts that you can freely download and install, which already have the Peso sign included (U+20B1).

• Code2000
• DejaVu family
• Gentium family
• Linux Libertine family
• Unicode BMP Fallback SIL

Start typing those Peso signs, the correct way!

Update 2010-11-14: You can now type the ₱eso sign directly from your keyboard simply by pressing RightAlt+P or AltGr+P.  But before you can do that, you need to add the Philippines Unicode Keyboard Layout which is now available in both GNU/Linux and Windows®.

Today was the Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope Release Party for the Philippine Local Community (LoCo).  The Filipino Linux and Ubuntu enthusiasts gathered together for three hours and discussed different topics about Ubuntu and Linux!

It was fun and a memorable one for me since this was my first Ubuntu Release Party.  I met interesting people, from KDE lovers (I’m a GNOME, yes, a Gnome! :p ) to programmers (developing Ruby-on-Rails applications using Ubuntu not Mac) to writers (we might show up in a major publication, watch out for it).

Of course, the plans for the Philippine LoCo team were also discussed, including the changes in the translation from “Tagalog” to “Filipino” (which is the appropriate one in my opinion).  Not to mention h ow much we all hate Microsoft® Windows… okay, just kidding.

There were also off-the-record statements like censored and censored and how this is sooooo that.  ;)

Anyway, the next LoCo Release Party will be six months from now, when Ubuntu 9.10 goes live.  By then, to all those who weren’t able to join us (especially those who are using Plurk, I’ve been inviting over and over again), please do come next time.

Here are 16 photos I took.

Finally, you are invited to join us in the official forums and online chat irc.libera.chat:6697 #ubuntu-ph. With that said, good night everyone.

I forgot to mention the two huge pizzas dubbed 64-bit (64 slices) and “Laser Disc” (it’s actually bigger than that).

Thanks to Johann Tagle for sponsoring the event.  And thanks to Mr. Chin Wong for the media coverage.  A big thanks goes to Dax Solomon Umaming as well for taking the mantle to keep the Philippine LoCo going, of course to all who joined and I met today, thank you.

Blog and Photo Coverage

• Dax Solomon Umaming: Ubuntu Philippine Team Release Party

• Professor Manalastas: Ubuntu-PH Jaunty Launch Party

• Mr. Chin Wong: Linux for Real People

• Jay’s Flickr: Philippine Team Jaunty Release Party

Finally someone took the job in establishing a group in the Philippines to be “web standard” compliant. With the sudden influx of Filipino sites (thanks to blogging), many Filipinos are venturing into website creation. However, most learned from the not-so-good resources, usually from other people who also are not knowledgeable enough about the importance of being compliant to current web standards.

What exactly is a “web standard”? Simple, following the recommended specifications of the World Wide Web Consortium. The common ones are HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, XHTML 1.1, DOM, CSS Level 2 (CSS2). Example, it is no longer allowed to do this:

1

<marquee><font>Hello world!font>marquee>

What is the difference? For now, you will not see any major difference using deprecated elements and attributes, as browsers are still backwards compatible. But, the day will come when all deprecated elements and attributes will be removed. When that day arrives, your website will not show as you originally intended it to be.

Additionally, since these elements and attributes were deprecated, expect no further developments for those.  You may for example see that using marquee only works for IE-based browsers only.  Some say that creativity will be limited, to tell you the truth, the marquee effect can be achieved via CSS 2, and to tease you further, it is continually evolving and is better in CSS 3 (which is still under development).

In other words, by following or being compliant with the W3C web standards, you are simply:

• Guaranteeing to your loyal visitors that your site will appear as you intended it to be 10 years from now
• Securing your site to be viewable in all browsers, including without limitation, our disabled friends (e.g. visually-impaired)
• Giving yourself more room to do neat tricks than you would if you are non-compliant - in other words, more possibilities and creativity
• You are learning how to be a webmaster in its truest sense
• You are helping the internet further develop

So if you are interested, read this blog post from Shari Cruz entitled: Towards a Standards Compliant Web.

Oh, don’t get frustrated with the validation tools, when you are using applications like a CMS or blog software, or into downloading themes/skins/templtes, always remember that it will faill the HTML/XHTML/CSS validation tools, unless otherwise the developer of your software and/or theme is following the current web standards.

But that is not a reason for you not to learn how to create a website compliant with the current web standards.