Tuslob Buwa® and HTML entities

“How do I add ® to my post?” an acquaintance posted on Facebook as everyone piled up on Azul for trademarking Tuslob Buwa by posting their own versions of trademarking Cebu products and delicacies.

It’s so much easier now. You can just copy and paste special characters, including the registered, trademarked, and copyrighted signs, and even emojis. Most phones also have an option for an additional keyboard that will allow you to enter emojis, clipart, and GIFs.

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Eau de toilet

It’s a tester stock, the Lazada seller explained. I’ve heard that explanation before-from the owner of a perfume shop in Parkmall that also sells “tester” stocks.

It’s the real deal – in this case, a genuine CK One, the seller said. Perfume makers release a special batch for promotions and to serve as testers, the seller explained.

The Parkmall shop ran out of it. It was selling at abut P1,800. The actual price of the bottle is P2,500, on sale in Rustans.

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Interactive history

Every day, thousands of tourists visiting the Magellan’s Cross are told that the cross you see there “Encases the Original Cross Planted By Ferdinand Magellan On This Very Site.”

That’s not true. But that’s what tourists are told by guides and that’s what they read on the sign.

We just installed our interactive tourism markers at the site as part of our Digital Tourism initiative geared toward the 2021 commemoration of the introduction of Christianity into the country.

The markers are installed at the cross and at the nearby Basilica Minore del Sto. Niño. If you have an iPhone or an Android device that supports it, all you need to do is open your camera, point it at the marker and make sure the viewfinder covers the entire code. You will then get a prompt to open the information about the Magellan’s Cross.

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I have suffered. But there’s a Bosendorfer here so let’s see what happens.

Late in her life when she was broke and reduced to hiring men for sex and the affections she craved, Nina Simone performed My Baby Just Cares For Me in Montreux. The song was used in commercials for Chanel No. 5 “unfortunately of which I have none,” Simone said before she started her performance.

She then said she wished she was as wise (financially) when she made the album with the song as “I have become now.”

“I have suffered,” she said. “But there’s a Bosendorfer here so let’s see what happens.”

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How AI led me to Carla Bruni

It had to be Edith Piaf, Madeleine Peyroux, or Joan Baez. It could also have been Eva Cassidy, Janis Ian, Sarah Jarosz or Joni Mitchell. More likely, it was my listening to all these artists that led Spotify to recommend Carla Bruni to me earlier this month. I have been listening to her songs since.

Before Spotify, I don’t think I would have listened to Bruni. All I knew before she ended up in my Discover Weekly recommendation was that she was a model married to the former French prime minister Nicolas Sarkozy.

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The case for chatbots

Are you open today? What’s the number of your Ayala branch? Answers to these questions are easy to program as chatbot routines. Instead, here I am, after more than an hour of calling and searching on mobile on my way to and now attending an event, and none the wiser as to whether any of Union Bank’s branches in Cebu are open today and until what time.

Nobody answers the phones of the different branches I called (may be an indicator) and the branch listing on the site is a non-responsive table and text is garbled. I went to the Facebook page to send a message but saw the indicator “typically replies within the day.”

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News: from medium to platform

For the first time ever, US consumers spent more time on applications than watching TV, according to Flurry Analytics, a mobile analytics company owned by Yahoo.

“After putting the desktop web in their rear view mirror, apps now reign supreme as the top media channel in the United States, even without the help of the mobile browser,” said Simon Khalaf, Flurry senior vice president for Product & Engineering, Publisher Products.

Writing “The cable industry faces the perfect storm: apps, app stores and apple,” in the company’s blog last Sept. 10, Khalaf said “fears surrounding the long-term prospects of the cable industry were well warranted.” 

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Have phone, will travel: smartphones and the modern traveler

Smartphones are used extensively throughout the travel process – from getting inspiration on where to go, to planning, booking, actual traveling and even after the trip, according to a study by Google Inc. and Ipsos Media CT. The study, “The 2014 Traveler’s Road to Decision,” is an update to a similar research in 2013 and was released last year.

Mobile is critical at all stages of travel and influences booking decisions, the study said.

According to the study, 67 percent of leisure travelers use smartphones at all stages, 31 percent for getting trip inspiration, 27 percent for research, 14 percent for booking, 50 percent for the actual traveling and 37 percent for post-traveling.

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Formatting articles for apps: Markdown to the rescue

This week, our startup updated the official guide to the International Eucharistic Congress 2016 that will be held in Cebu this January. The update contained new information including the complete schedule, profile of speakers as well as a News sub-section that will contain updates leading to and during the actual event.

Among the new information that went into the update was the basic text of the congress or the “Theological and Pastoral Reflections in Preparation for the 51st International Eucharistic Congress.” It is a lengthy treatise on the Eucharist and the Church’s mission.

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Auto-update convenience: WordPress upgrades itself to fix critical vulnerability

After yesterday’s upgrading of key WordPress plugins to fix a cross site scripting vulnerability, the WordPress team released version 4.1.2, which it described as a critical security release.

“WordPress versions 4.1.1 and earlier are affected by a critical cross-site scripting vulnerability, which could enable anonymous users to compromise a site,” the WordPress team said in a blog post announcing the release. The release also fixed 3 other security issues including an SQL injection vulnerability in some plugins.

I got the notification of the new release at past midnight. Years back, that would have meant that I’d need to stay up very late, download the latest release, upload the files to the server and perform the upgrade for each of the site I’m running.

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