By Annalyn S. Jusay (now blogging at www.annalyn.net)
Although he’s in the tech field, the main appeal of Anton Diaz’s blog are the reviews of the many interesting places and restaurants he visits. In fact, we think that if he wasn’t an IT executive by day, he could have been a gourmand, a chef or travel writer. In any case, his growing number of readers are the ones who benefit since the entries come complete with routes on how to go to a certain destination, the attractions to be found , recommendations on what dishes to order and other goldmine of behind-the-scenes information. Our impression is that while this blogger loves his family, travel, food and all the fine things in life, he now pursues all these with greater passion since he’s compelled to share it with the rest of the world. Design-wise, Anton’s blog is easily identifiable because of the personal photos that dot his web space. If one is looking for data on gadgets and web publishing software, this is also the place to go.
More about our featured blogger for the week in the following interview:
Q. Please tell us something about yourself.
A. Currently, I'm the IT country manager for a multinational consumer goods company and I've worked for P&G for 10 years. My passion includes exploring the beauty of the Philippines, photo-blogging life's blessings and surprises, playing competitive badminton, and cheering for the Green Archers. I value integrity, honesty and positive thinking. I love adventure and discovering culinary treats :)
Q. How did you start to blog? What were your objectives in putting up your blog?
A. I started my blog this year January, and my primary driver is really to document our family's life as my wife gave birth to our first born son last Jan. 19. Then later I realized that blogs have a power on its own, that some people are listening to my voice, and I was inspired to use it to promote the Philippines by documenting my adventures/ travels/ eating escapades.
Q. Why the title "Awesome Planet?"
A. I truly believe that life is soo great, and we just have to open our eyes to appreciate these blessings. The title is an evolution from the lonely planet, and someday I'm hoping to write my life's adventures in a book called Awesome Planet: Philippines edition.
Q. What do you like about blogging as a personal activity? What are blogging's other uses as you see it in others?
A. Blogging is a stress reliever for me and it's an artistic expression of my view points in life. I've been an explorer and culinary adventurer for years now, and I can't remember all of them. With my blog, I can revisit them, share it to the world and most importantly share it with my son Aidan , who is nine month old, when he grows up.
Now, I'm exploring two uses for blogging:
- Group Blogging. Networking with fellow bloggers and creating synergy with the collective thoughts.
- Earning six-figures from blogs! Now, I admire people for leveraging on blogs to earn additional income via Ads. There is a fine line though on how you should approach this but this is definitely worth exploring.
- Internally, in our company, I wanted to chance the way we communicate internally and blogs can provide that self expression that would be conversational and insightful.
Q. Please tell us something about your blog (s) and describe. How did you set up your website? What CMS are you using?
A. I regularly update two blogs: Our Awesome Planet (http://anton.blogs.com/) and Aidanacio.us (http://aidanacio.us) . The latter one is a photoblog about the life of my baby Aidan. I'm using Six part's Tpepad service and really I was stuck to it because I love the url of anton.blogs.com. I was able to get my nickname Anton which is difficult to register these days and blogs.com <http://blogs.com/> are owned by Mena's typepad's service. I kinda designed it myself using web services from other sites to complete the website experience.
Q. I've noticed that you've also put a lot of add-ons in your site. What are these? Can you specifically expound on the benefits of Flickr?
A. As you can see I love Flickr. The power of Flickr is not only as a very nicely designed photo sharing site but a blogger's photo storage system. It offers a lot of web services like the Zietgiest, 10 photostreams with random pictures, and hotlinking of photos for your blog posts.
Basically, Flickr is a one-stop-shop for your online photo services which would include:
a. Sharing of your photos via your own personalized URL and ability for commenting.
b. Storing and hotlinking of your photos for your blog or website with unlimited storage and huge bandwidth.
c. Creating different designs and tricks to enhance your photo's like Flagrant Disregard's Flickr tools (calendar, badge, photo frames, mosaic)
d. online community of photo artists all around the world and amateurs.
e. printing mosaics or books about your photos
Q. And your online/blogging habits?
A. I blog about things that make me happy. I normally blog in the morning where the thoughts just keep on flowing. I now use an ecto blogging client for my blog and group blogging posts. I read 100+ feeds and get inspiration from bloggers on how to develop the conversational style.
Q. Where do you think is blogging headed in the future? What's its potential in the Philippines?
A. Blogging would evolve into a multimedia expression of our artistic view of life. The only barrier in the Philippines is the internet penetration and would continue to cater to less than 10% of the population. Mobile still has a higher penetration rate and blogging using this platform will enable more Filipinos (to go into blogging).
Q. What do you think are the qualities of a good blogger?
A. Integrity is critical. A good blogger must have mastered the art of conversational writing and imbibe a social role in the blogosphere. ( a Microsoft evangelist, a self-development guru, a problogger teacher, etc.)
Q. Any other plans for your blogs?
A. I plan to redesign my site to have Families as a target audience. Learn the art of Search Engine Optimization from the pros. Network with fellow bloggers in the Philippines.
(For comments and inquiries, email annalyn.jusay@gmail.com)
