The Mike Abundo Effect

Google Buzz: FriendFeed in Gmail

Mike Abundo — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:01:23 +0000

Google Buzz strikes me as a lightweight clone of FriendFeed integrated into Gmail. That’s not surprising when you consider FriendFeed’s origins: the founders are all former Google employees. While FriendFeed remains a marvelous service — it was recently acquired by Facebook — it never saw much adoption beyond the geek set. Mainstream Internet users have yet to wrap their brains around the concept introduced by FriendFeed in 2007: social media aggregation.

Google Buzz could finally bridge that conceptual chasm, racing out the gate with a combination of four very powerful advantages:

1) Preinstalled userbase: Gmail is the world’s third most popular email service. Google Buzz sits right under the inbox tab in Gmail. That immediately puts Buzz right in front of 146 million active Gmail users. For comparison, that’s over a third of Facebook’s entire population. While Facebook took six years to sign up 400 million people, Buzz just got 146 million people practically overnight.

2) Preinstalled social graphs: Google Buzz gives you a set of people to follow immediately upon activation, based on the people you correspond with most on Gmail. While this does raise a small privacy caveat if you don’t want your email buddies revealed to the world, Buzz accurately maps your social graph right out of the box.

3) Preinstalled content sources: If you have a Google Profile and you post a lot of stuff across the Web, chances are Google already knows most of the places on the Web where you post stuff. Upon activation, Buzz immediately offers to aggregate your content from those places.

4) Workflow integration: For most people, email and social networking are accomplished through different services with different interfaces in different browser tabs. Buzz fits right into a Gmail user’s communication workflow. In fact, it fits almost too well: if you’re not careful, the shortform public chatter of Buzz could easily pull you away from the longform private business of email. You wouldn’t even notice you’re being pulled away, because you’d still be in the same browser tab.

The aforementioned advantages have given Google Buzz a stunning headstart. The service saw nine million posts and comments within two days of launch. Lest anyone think all those posts come from mere passive aggregation, Buzz gets 200 posts per minute from mobile phones.

The first release of Google Buzz isn’t nearly as feature-rich as FriendFeed, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that the service is rapidly gaining critical mass. Google can roll out more features later, as people get used to Buzzing. In fact, expect many of the features of Google Wave to gradually make their way into Google Buzz.

Whenever I tell my nontechnical friends about new social networking services, their biggest complaints are always the quadruple hassles of signing up for a new account, adding their friends all over again, setting up their profiles, and learning a new interface. For 146 million existing Gmail users, Google Buzz annihilates all those hassles.

Related Posts:

Filipina-German Cosplayer Jessica Ouano

Mike Abundo — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:24:32 +0000

[[Show as slideshow]]

Alodia Gosiengfiao isn’t the only Filipina cosplayer rising to international fame. The upcoming photobook Otacool 2: Worldwide Cosplayers features not one, but two Filipinas on the cover. Joining Alodia on the cover is Filipina-German cosplayer Jessica Ouano.

Cosplay is a portmanteau combining two words: costume and roleplay. Hailing from the island of Cebu, home of many a beautiful Filipina, fifteen-year-old Jessica shows great promise as a cosplayer with her amazing costumes and captivating portrayals.

As with many anime and game cosplayers, Jessica’s immersion in otaku culture adds to the enthusiasm of her portrayals. She counts Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection among her favorite games, and Gundam Seed’s Lacus Clyne among her anime idols.

Check out Jessica’s renditions of fictional characters both modern and classic: Sheryl Nome from the anime Macross Frontier, Gwendolyn from the role-playing game Odin Sphere, and Alice from the novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. She even reprises Alodia’s portrayal of Haruhi from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

Related Posts:

Otacool 2 Cover Cosplayers Revealed

Mike Abundo — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 10:33:09 +0000

When top otaku culture blogger Danny Choo needed cosplayers for his upcoming photobook, Otacool 2: Worldwide Cosplayers, he didn’t seek them out in the traditional way. He didn’t set up geographically limited auditions or prohibitively expensive photoshoots. He didn’t fly in cosplayers from around the world or conduct time-consuming local contests in various countries. No, he didn’t indulge in any such offline prefiltering.

Being a tech industry veteran who’s worked with the likes of Microsoft and Amazon, Danny did something smarter, something more scalable, something more disintermediated, something that completely bypassed geographic cosplay cliques. He leveraged the Internet for crowdsourcing.

Danny made a public call for cosplayers to post photo entries on his hobby site, Figure.fm. Thanks to Danny’s considerable fame within his niche, hundreds of entries piled up in a matter of weeks. Some of the world’s top cosplayers even contributed to the blogger’s book project.

Twenty-four lucky cosplayers even get their headshots on the cover. Most unsurprising of all is the cover appearance of Filipina cosplay queen Alodia Gosiengfiao, whose toy collection graced the pages of Danny’s previous photobook, Otacool: Worldwide Otaku Rooms. As expected, top Western cosplayers like Francesca Dani and Yaya Han also made the cover.

Popular Japanese cosplayer Kaname, who served as a judge at last year’s Regional Cosplay Championship, lends his Final Fantasy VII Cloud cosplay to the cover mix. Topping off the prestigious list is Danny himself, whose Tokyo Dance Trooper antics have been featured by CNN.

Note that the application period for Otacool 2 started less than a month ago. In fact, it’s still ongoing: cosplayers who want to appear on the inside pages have until Valentine’s Day to submit entries.

Congratulations to Danny on his incredibly efficient approach to this photobook project. To rally so many players from around the world in so little time is truly a triumph of niche online crowdsourcing.

Related Posts:

The iPad is a Giant iPhone

Mike Abundo — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:54:36 +0000

By now, you’ve already heard about Apple’s new tablet device, the iPad. You know it’ll run the iPhone OS, it’ll have a 9.7 inch multitouch LCD screen, it’ll have a ten-hour battery life, and it’ll cost $499 up. Like the iPhone, it’ll be locked into the iTunes app store, and it won’t support Adobe Flash. Unlike the iPhone, it has no camera. You can check out Apple’s iPad product page for the rest of the specs.

As I watched Apple CEO Steve Jobs reveal the iPad yesterday, I felt like I was watching a parody video straight out of College Humor. He used words like “magical” and “revolutionary” to announce something that, stripped of such hyperbole, looks patently ridiculous: a giant iPhone. What’s more, this larger device actually lacks the camera of its smaller twin.

A Giant Leap Backwards

Steve hails the iPad as Apple’s most advanced technology ever. That’s funny; you’d think deminiaturizing a cellphone and taking away one of its biggest features would actually constitute a technological step backwards. For all intents and purposes, the iPhone 3G may as well be the iPad Nano.

Steve also boasts that 43 million iPhone owners will already know how to use the iPad. What he doesn’t address is why iPhone owners would want to buy a second cellular data plan for what is essentially a second, bigger iPhone. Sure, people get separate data plans for their laptops, but that’s because laptops are more flexible than cellphones. The iPad has all the restrictions of the iPhone, without the convenience or the camera.

As if this giant iPhone weren’t illogical enough, it uses an exotic micro SIM. iPhones use regular SIMs. Why a larger device would require a smaller SIM simply eludes common sense.

An Insult to Your Intelligence

The first official advertisement for the iPad itself sounds like a parody. The opening line would be a joke if it weren’t so insulting to your intelligence: “When something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical.” Oh look, we can now browse the Web on a big screen! That far exceeds my puny ability to understand how things work! What a magical concept!

The iPad could easily have become so much more than a giant iPhone. It could have bundled a slim, multitouch version of Mac OS X. It could have been hailed as a really cool Mac tablet. The fact that Apple chose to put the iPhone OS on the iPad hints at something far more sinister than a mere lack of creativity.

Related Posts:

Alodia to Serve at Ozine Maid Cafe

Mike Abundo — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:30:00 +0000

“The greatest among you will be your servant.” — Matthew 23:11.

Maid cafes are a particularly popular class of cosplay restaurants, where waitresses dressed in fanciful maid costumes soothe the hyperactive minds of otaku patrons. Through a combination of endearingly deferential customer service and aesthetically pleasing service outfits, these establishments provide a unique kind of mental wellness for tired geeks.

The world could clearly use this cutesy sort of soothing: since the first maid cafe sprung up in Akihabara in 2001, the phenomenon has spread as far afield as China and the United States.

Permanent maid cafes have yet to rise in the Philippines, but temporary maid cafes have emerged at Philippine anime events. The Ozine Maid Cafe this weekend, an activity at Otaku Expo 2010, ups the ante with a special guest maid: Filipina cosplay queen Alodia Gosiengfiao.

If you’re in Manila this weekend, kick back and relax while being served by fantasy maids at Megatrade Hall 2, SM Megamall, Ortigas Center, Pasig City. Alodia herself will serve patrons from 12:00nn to 3:00pm Sunday, GMT+8.

One of the maids on the roster, Filipina gamer-cosplayer Charmaine Akari, has previously been featured on this blog. If you get her as your maid, have her smile like Konata Koizumi from the anime Lucky Star. Charmaine’s rendition is not only incredibly accurate, it’s absolutely adorable. :3

Related Posts:

Philippine Online Video Site Holds Auditions

Mike Abundo — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 14:30:10 +0000

Wanna be Web-famous in the Philippines? Manila-based online video production company Flippish is looking for new talent.

YouTube has been huge in the Philippines for years, and one of the biggest stars on YouTube is Filipina. Filipinos clearly love online video, and Flippish hopes to tap into that passion by offering content uniquely tailored to Filipino tastes.

If you think you’ve got what it takes to build the next Revision3 in Southeast Asia, if you’re up to the challenge of engaging audiences through a new medium in an emerging market, come to 1101 Pacific Center Building, San Miguel Avenue, Ortigas Center, Pasig City, Metro Manila, Philippines from 10am to 5pm on February 5, 2010 (GMT+8).

Flippish is a young startup targeting consumers in a developing nation, so don’t expect to make a million bucks like Leo Laporte. As you can see from the video above, Flippish star Kring Elenzano is seriously overworked. She could use some help.

Related Posts:

Top Cosplayers Vie for Otacool 2 Cover Spots

Mike Abundo — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 13:37:51 +0000

UPDATE: Yaya Han, the third cosplayer in this post, makes it clear in a comment that her application was not motivated by competitive spirit:

No one is competing for the cover. We are just submitting because we love cosplay and this seems like a great book to be a part of because it allows cosplayers from all over the world to submit.

No one was surprised to see Filipina cosplay princess Alodia Gosiengfiao apply for inclusion on the cover of Otacool 2: Worldwide Cosplayers, the upcoming cosplay photobook from Japan-based otaku culture blogger Danny Choo. After all, Alodia’s toy collection was featured in the previous photobook, Otacool: Worldwide Otaku Rooms.

What surprised me, however, were applications from two other very famous cosplayers — neither of whom were involved in the first Otacool project, and neither of whom live in Asia.

Italian cosplayer Francesca Dani won the World Cosplay Summit in 2005. A twelve-year veteran of the cosplay industry, Francesca was among the first cosplayers in the world to directly monetize her passion, by charging subscription fees for premium content on her web site.

US-based Chinese cosplayer Yaya Han is famous for her exquisite costumes, elaborate skits, and musical performances. This ten-year career cosplayer is often a guest of honor at anime-themed events.

With big names from around the world throwing their hats (and costumes) into the ring, Otacool 2 is shaping up to become the hottest thing in the global cosplay scene. It’s certainly a testament to the power of disintermediation, self-selection, and crowdsourcing that one blogger’s book project could attract direct contributions from top talent across three continents, all in a matter of weeks.

The submission process involves no talent scouts, no go-sees, no local contests, no committee meetings, no inefficient prefilters of any kind — just online postings by enterprising individuals. It’s the sort collaboration case study you’d read in the bestselling business book Wikinomics.

If you’re a cosplayer, click here for the application requirements. You’ll be publicly posting your application on Danny Choo’s hobby site Figure.fm. Even if you don’t make the cover of Otacool 2, you’ll be putting your work in front of Danny’s many, many readers. Submissions will be open until mid-February, so start digging up your best cosplay photos.

Related Posts:

Lego Universe First Official Trailer and CES 2010 Screenshots

Mike Abundo — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 13:20:37 +0000

I loved playing with Lego toys as a kid, but even I don’t remember my favorite childhood building blocks being this action-packed. Check out the first official trailer for the upcoming (and long-delayed) Lego MMOG from developer NetDevil: Lego Universe.

As you can see from the reflection effects in the following screenshots shown at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Lego Universe is going for a look that’s both cutesy and glossy all at once.

Related Posts:

LEGO MMOG Coming 2008
LEGO City Commemorates Olympics
Street Fighter IV: Akuma Vs. Gouken!
Guild Wars: Eye of the North Trailer
Wii Sims Trailer and Screenshots

IDG Interviews Alodia

Mike Abundo — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:45:55 +0000

Since you’re reading a tech blog, you probably already know that International Data Group (IDG) is a leading trendspotter in the technology industry. From research to media to events to investments, all of IDG’s businesses revolve around successful trendspotting.

The whole thing started when a UNIVAC executive complained about the lack of market research on the then-nascent computer industry. Yes, that UNIVAC, America’s first commercially available computer. IDG has been playing the trendspotting game since 1964.

Someone at IDG Japan has spotted one particularly interesting trend, a trend uniquely enabled by the connective power of the Internet: the meteoritic rise of Filipina cosplayer Alodia Gosiengfiao. Akibatteru, an IDG-produced Web show, recently caught up with Alodia and her sister Ashley during their performance at Anime Festival Asia 2009 in Singapore. They even threw in a peek at Alodia’s room back home, toys and all, as it appears in the photobook Otacool: Worldwide Otaku Rooms.

It’s one thing when Animax says you’re popular. It’s another thing when International Data Group says you’re popular.

Related Posts:

Alodia and Ashley Interviewed at Anime Festival Asia

Mike Abundo — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:39:38 +0000

Online interview show Why You Do What You Do recently caught up with Filipina cosplayers Alodia and Ashley Gosiengfiao during their performance at Anime Festival Asia 2009 in Singapore.

Cosplay is a niche performance art, and the best way to address niches is on the Internet. The Gosiengfiao sisters clearly understand that, as they talk about sharing their art online. For a twenty-one-year-old fresh graduate who happens to be one of the most influential women in the Philippines, Alodia certainly dishes out solid career advice: do what you love.

Related Posts: