Update: HP has already released the list of winners.

You can watch the Tech Conclave video or read the article here.

The video entry I submitted is included in the HP contest in YouTube’s Week #6 as an eligible entry. Watch my video here.

Unfortunately, the chances of winning for the major prizes are getting slimmer each day since September 1 because I have not received any notifications yet that my video is included in the Semi Finals. However, there’s still a way for you to help me bag a prize and you can do this by voting for my entry for the Community Award. Please vote for me and my video… It takes only 3 minutes of your time.

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Wow, I couldn’t believe that I’ve been a blogger for a year and today, I celebrate the birthday of this blog (supposed to be on December 16)– so congratulate me for keeping up the good work!

From what it seems like a computer and technology-only blog, in the recent months my writings have been shifting into more personalized topics surrounding my day-to-day life (and somehow I am beginning to like this kind of style).

It has been very difficult to write for this blog in the past weeks because I’m so preoccupied (and still am!) with lots of web development work, technical and customer sales support, and as a freelance Internet marketer and writer for several Web-based companies. Additionally, there have been emotional struggles since November because I’ve recently made a irrevocable conclusion about my identity. I believe it is highly necessary for me to be able to do what I want, to be able to become who I want to be, and to be able to live a life with no more denials with what I feel. Now, this is too much information, so I’ll reserve the rest of story in my future posts. For now, be intrigued.

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Update: Folks, I didn’t win. The chance was slim because the winners are picked randomly. Meaning to say, even if you have the greatest sob story in the world, that will not help you in anyway for this contest. Likewise, win or lose, I believe my efforts to express my good intentions are good feats!

Recently, I entered HP Magic Giveaway Contest for simple reasons: it gives me opportunity to change my life and share the magic to others. Here’s my entry and video:

I am John Raul Joven II, 21 years old, and I am web developer trying-to-be-geek here in the southernmost city of the Philippines called Davao (do a Google Map search). Actually, I lived in the outskirts of the city so it’s more like I’m a geek living in the middle of the jungle than surrounded by buildings. Here many people don’t know how to use computers and most things are still done manually.

I participated the HP Magic Giveaway because some of the prizes can change my life and the lives of the people who need the prestigious computer resources.

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Nearly three months after it first acquired a PageRank (PR) score of three last April, this blog’s home page again improved its worldwide importance in the eyes of Google during its third quarter PR update of 2008 with an increase of additional one point, resulting a groundbreaking score of PR4. Online marketers, especially bloggers, commonly see this as a significant increase of popularity and advertising value. Now, as the owner of John Raul Dot Com blog, I would like to tell some points to help if you are still struggling on getting a good PageRank.

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It always feels good when hard work pays off. In my case, I’ve been running this blog for almost five months now and today for the first time, Google’s second quarter PageRank (PR) update for 2008 finally brought PR3 to this blog. PageRank is Google’s view of how important the pages of my blog are and they somehow influence advertisers with their own Web standards.The PageRank gauge can be seen when you install Google Toolbar on your web browser.

Wikipedia defines PageRank (PR) as:

…a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references.

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I’m proud to present to you the first teaser video of this blog, John Raul dot Com. I made it myself using 3ds Max, Photoshop, Swish Max, Flash and Sony Vegas. It took me one whole day to render them from 3D to video format as my machine only runs at 1.6 GHz.

Chris Morris, a tech geek from Melbourne, Australia, broadcast the video below twice during his live webcast show event that took place last March 22, 2008. He is also planning to include it to his podcast. (Thanks, Chris )

So watch, have fun and don’t forget to leave your comments! Thank you!

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It has been weeks since I had a comprehensive interview about Top Hosting Center’s (THC) Rudolf hosting plan. Well, just recently, I visited THC and I noticed some changes on their website: the Top Hosting Special and the Rudolf hosting plans are gone (I assume that the 1000th plan has been sold). The thing that drew my attention most was their new shared hosting plan dubbed as “Speedy.” Their banner for Speedy is kind of fancy, but I was silenced when I saw its features.

THC’s Speedy hosting plan presents a fresh and bountiful pool of resources for Web enthusiasts and entrepreneurs. At THC’s web hosting blog, a Speedy-related post mentioned that it was “the company’s greatest standard hosting plan offer they’ve done to date.” For me, it sounds exciting, but a little intriguing as well knowing that their previous Rudolf hosting plan was good enough.

Among its standard hosting features, here are outstanding figures that comprise THC’s Speedy hosting plan:

• FREE Dedicated IP Address – usually this is an add-on to other hosting companies, normally costs at least $2.50 per month. THC had it free for Speedy, which is really good.
• 33 000 GB Monthly Bandwidth – I remember THC offering only 3000 GB bandwidth with their previous hosting plans (including Rudolf).
• 1000 GB Disk Space – Self-explanatory, but great hands down. Previous hosting plans only featured 250 GB, which definitely was a history.
• Free Domain Name – it’s awful to know some hosts (not THC) don’t include a domain name in their hosting plans. They do it usually to look their plans cheaper against their competitors.
• Aggressive Pricing – At THC’s Speedy comparison page, the hosting plan costs as low as $6.75 / month. Commonly, the pricing is dependent to the billing cycle of the hosting plan. I found out that THC had Speedy aggressively-priced, beating all matching hosting packages from other hosting companies such as Host Monster, Dreamhost, Bluehost, Go Daddy and Host Gator. I checked their competitors’ sites and their price comparison was rather true. However, I will have to verify its features further. Sometimes, companies are biased to their own products. I will go find out the truthfulness of their page and whistle blow if I found something fishy.

According to their live chat representatives, their existing Rudolf customers can upgrade to Speedy hosting plan. Honestly, I don’t see so much point about that since Rudolf is already a lifetime plan with just one-time fee. However, I couldn’t blame seeing people moving towards Speedy from Rudolf since it comes with a free dedicated IP address, a terabyte disk space, a jaw-dropping 33,000 GB monthly bandwidth, and other features. Those figures are enough to convince them, as it did to me.

Yes, this blog now runs under Speedy hosting plan. I’m currently assessing the experience and I will write a comprehensive review soon whether it’s really hot or not. Initially I have a positive impression with it, especially knowing that this blog now runs over a dedicated IP address. If you are not aware, having a site running over a dedicated IP address will absolutely favor search engine optimization (SEO), plus it is very good in building legitimate business identity on the Internet, and certainly unleashes extra FTP functionality as well. I will explain in my future post why having a dedicated IP is important especially for online entrepreneurs.

It is very futuristic and has a very competitive lineup of hosting features that will break your worries on hosting.

I recommend that you check THC’s Speedy hosting plan. It is very futuristic and has a very competitive lineup of hosting features that will break your worries on hosting. By the way, if you sign-up for it, I recommend getting a 24-month plan for you to get huge discount – that’s what I got and it was very affordable for me. At least, the setup fee was waived, which would have cost me additional $25 if I got a one-month, 3-month, or 6-month plan.

So enough talk here, I will continue my observation in the back scene and assess this hosting plan for a week. I hope to bring good news from it.

By the way, if you have a product, service, or website related to this blog and you want it to be reviewed by me, check out this post. Let’s have some good time.

Wow! How long has it been since the previous years’ holidays? It feels like yesterday. First, I want to greet a happy new year to everyone who reads this post.

This website just breathed to life and started barren on the Web last December 16. In my spare times I have worked on writing and posting blog articles that would express my mind and heart. Now, this is my eighth blog post and more yet to come.

In the Year of the Earth Rat (2008), this website aims primarily to be productive in whatever ways it could – productive in a sense that it would benefit, invoke and entertain a greater number of readers including myself. Secondly, I want this site to monetize and find out what online money-making fuss is all about. I know it is true; I just want to experience it.

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