My friend Gerardo from Alhambra, California, USA, informed me about another cool HP contest. This time the contest takes place in YouTube with the title "You On You" where entrants create videos featuring themselves in a creative way for one minute without exposing a face. I decided to join the contest because I strongly believe I have a good story that may motivate some people in the world. Here’s my entry and the full script:

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Just a few weeks ago a guy named Brad from Melbourne, Australia, popped up on my channel’s chat page while I was broadcasting on Justin dot TV. Since then, we got in touch and shared thoughts about blogging, traffic building, computers, and lifestyle differences between our countries. It’s always cool to have some new friends from different cultures and learning from them. Just today, Brad invited me for a YouTube interview I never had yet ever since — so he made a new record for me.

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Becoming a blogger is a good thing. First, you’ll start learning how to write articles properly, then you’ll begin to appreciate doing research that you never really liked when you were still at school. You’ll learn how to promote your blog to various social networks, and then finally decide to monetize it at the same time. The difficult part is, when you immerse into blogging, you can hardly stop.

One thing about blogging is that is it very time-consuming but very satisfying when your published articles are able to make good traffic to your sites and clicks on your affiliate advertisements. Blogging is very addicting indeed. The bonus is that you also get to know with new people from anywhere in the world and befriend them simply because of a popular blog post you submitted on Digg or get stumbled in Stumbled Upon by other users.

Today, to celebrate the Fool’s Day, I’m going to show you the first craziest video I ever did in my whole life that was uploaded in YouTube. I did not make it for nothing, it is for this blog and for other bloggers. The video actually tells bloggers to take a while and get a break from writing or doing tasks related to blogging. And if you want to know what bloggers should do during breaks — well, just do the locomotion!

If you are a blogger and you want to join the “locomotion” phenomena, then just download that song, get your webcam to record a video, and use that dance step. Send it to me after and I’ll weave all our videos to become a global blogger locomotion.

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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Last December 5, 2007, online crowds who own Windows Vista was delighted when Yahoo’s Senior Product Manager, Josh Jacobson, announced the preview version (pre-beta) release of their long-awaited Yahoo! Messenger for Vista through its official blog.

As we all know, Yahoo Messenger (YM) is one of the most popular messengers in the world (other important messengers include MSN Messenger or Windows Live Messenger, Skype, Google Talk, etc).

Many YM users who own Vista have been waiting for quite some time. Lots of people dropped their emails through email subscription page provided by Yahoo to acquire the news as soon as it becomes available. I was one of them and I expected a lot.

By first impression, the Yahoo! Messenger for Vista preview version release looks good. Installation is smooth and easy – as usual. When I run the new messenger for the first time, it looks very modern and “Vista.” Yes, it exactly boasts a fresh-looking transparent interface, taking advantage of Windows Vista’s graphics subsystem, the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). YM for Vista lets you customize the window theme and list appearance as you desire. It looks pretty much like a widget, which is great. Soon, programs meant for Vista will follow this interface trend.

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Melodies of Life is an original soundtrack of Squaresoft’s (now Square-Enix) Final Fantasy IX PlayStation game. This song is sung by Emiko Shiratori. The video below is edited by me. I did that because I want to give tribute to my favorite game of all time, as an avid Final Fantasy fan and what else, the song got great melodies and lyrics — truly, the melodies of life.

Alone for awhile
I’ve been searching through the dark
For traces of the love you left
Inside my wounded heart
To weave, by picking up the pieces that remained
Melodies of life, love’s lost refrain

Our paths they did cross
Though I cannot say just why
We met, we left, we held of fast
And then we said goodbye
And who’ll hear the echoes of stories never told
Let them ring out loud
Till they unfold

In my dearest memories
I see you reaching out to me
Though you’re gone
I still believe that you can call out my name

A voice from the past, joining yours and mine.
Adding up the layers of harmony.
And so it goes, on and on.
Melodies of life.
To the sky beyond the flying birds – forever and beyond.

So far and away, see the bird as it flies by,
Gliding through the shadows of the clouds up in the sky,
I’ve laid my memories and dreams upon those wings.
Leave them now and see what tomorrow brings.

In your dearest memories, do you remember loving me?
Was it fate that brought us close and now leaves me behind?

A voice from the past, joining yours and mine.
Adding up the layers of harmony.
And so it goes, on and on.
Melodies of life.
To the sky beyond the flying birds – forever and beyond.

If I should leave this lonely world behind.
Your voice will still remember our melody.
Now I know we’ll carry on.
Melodies of life.
Come circle round and grow deep in our hearts,
as long as we remember

The night is dark, the stars are falling
I’m here in the darkness, thinking of you
My dreams are great but the heart is dying
You seem not to understand
I did all those things for you

I don’t understand
This is not the plan at all
Why did I fall?
Do you understand?
You can barely remember
You can barely recall the things we shared

Now I see you here — it’s uncertain
We both know there’s an end of this
I hope I’ll be missed
It’s so painful in this loving
You know what I really feel
But I am ignored and killed

I don’t understand
This is not the plan at all
Why did I fall?
Do you understand?
You can barely remember
You can barely recall the things we shared

But even though I’m hurt this time
But even though my heart was completely ignored
But even though I’m waiting for nothing
I want you to know that still I love you so

I don’t understand
This is not the plan at all
Why did I fall?
Do you understand?
You can barely remember
You can barely recall the things

You can barely remember
You can barely recall the things we shared