Tag: advocacy

  • An Appeal to Globe Subscribers

    Globe Telecom has raised the UNLIMITXT service charges they require of their subscribers since today. From PHP 10[1] to PHP 20 per day, the rebranded service UNLITXT with the doubled rates frustrated a lot of subscribers given the fact that they weren’t warned even a couple of days before the implementation of such scheme.

    I was one of those frustrated, surprised customers.

    My girlfriend and I have always been registering for the service at almost the same time. Yesterday was the end of our five-day registration last time. Since it was almost midnight, we put off registering for another five days to today. But when we did register during noontime earlier, we were surprised to have received a different response from the service. It wasn’t the type that postpones the registration for later because of server overload. The message so long it could not be contained in a single message looked like the spam they always send us. But, I read it anyway….

    They’ve changed a lot about their service—from UNLIMITXT to just UNLITXT; from 50 Pesos for five days to 80 for just four. And, they added time-based unlimited texting packages such as UNLITXTD or UNLITXTN corresponding to day and night, respectively.

    Now, who the hell is so trustworthy enough that just pops out without warning and tells you to pay more than what you used to? No one. Even Globe shouldn’t be an exception.

    People thought they received just rumors about Globe’s increased rates. But, they weren’t rumors as I told my friends. Please take note that many people changed their numbers to Globe since they put their UNLIMITXT promo to a regular service—count me and my girlfriend in. But we’re dusting our old Sun SIM cards for tomorrow since Globe’s shitful of services are robbing us off of our money.

    I ask of you to do the same. Not only for two to three weeks just like what’s spreading through SMS—they would just wait that off until people start registering again. We should hold them back until they lower their prices again.

    Globe has better signal, thus, better service than Sun. That doesn’t mean they should increase their pricing so surprisingly exorbitant—their prices weren’t even at par with Sun in the first place. Why can’t they keep their prices where they were? I know they know its easier to get a lot more customers with better pricing. But, now that they did with the former prices of their service, they shouldn’t think we’d stay with them now that they increased them so suddenly.

    Now, if you feel the same way, please let people know by posting similar entries to your blogs and commenting on each other’s posts. Petitions could go a long way as long as there are lots of support and publicity.

    Update: I have finally found a petition site for the rollback of Globe’s UNLIMITXT rates. Sign the petition to roll back Globe UNLIMITXT pricing!

    Footnotes:

    1. ^ with the five-day plan worth PHP 50
  • PayPal for Philippines Initialized

    Support Paypal for the Philippines Just two days ago, I’ve signed up for the PayPal Now! advocacy for the availability of PayPal to Filipinos thinking that the widely used online money transfer service would be beneficial to me and all other Filipino Web designers/developers who are into freelancing.

    The guys from PayPal heard us. Now, our wishes came true! Well, partially …

    I’ve just got news from the PayPal Now! Blog that PayPal would be offering a limited send-only service to Philippine customers. That’s a start. But we want more!

    Hmm … might as well erase that first. *scratches off the our wishes came true part*

    Add your signature on the list!

    Note: Read the article from the PayPal Now! Blog (link above) for more information.

  • To lead, you must follow

    I brag a lot about my web site … not about heavy-loading images — I cannot create them; not about flashy scripts — I don’t even want to look at them; and not about colorful design — I KISS. But, I brag about my source code, more than fifty percent of which you cannot see.

    Ok now, here’s more of the bragging part: I use valid markup on all my source code — even the stylesheets. I just can’t figure out why other web designers brag it along with their flashy web sites but after you’ve clicked on their “Valid XHTML” link or button, hundreds of errors come shooting out of the validator saying, “Stop! Please stop!”

    Ok, that was a bit exaggerated. I was the one saying those. 😆

    Practice what you preach.

    I cannot blame those people using pre-made or borrowed templates for having those validation links. But for those who make their own templates full of errors, proprietary tags and tag attributes, please do not tell me or anyone that you know HTML, because you don’t.

    Hey, I’m concerned. The Web wasn’t supposed to be filled with junk as you can see almost everywhere. HTML was supposed to be clean. But, yes, it is not. Now, if you want to participate along with thousands of other web standards advocates, please don’t just tell us you’ve got valid markup, show us.

    A law has been implemented and numerous standards recommendations[1][2][3] have been made but, sadly, it seems that only a few people acknowledge them.

    Ignorance is evident almost everywhere you look or surf. Most of them are personal sites ang blog sites, but even IT or tech sites, which should be promoting these standards are not following them.

    Standards-compliant code must be the standard. It must be a trend. It must be a habit. It doesn’t mean it is good if it just look good.

    True beauty comes from the inside.

    I almost came to linking those web sites I’ve been ranting about all day long (actually, “all entry long”) but I think I’d just have to make them realize it on their own. I really wouldn’t want to hurt anybody — I just want to heal the Web. 🙂

    Please take note that I’ve been ranting about web designers with validation links on their site that is full of errors, and not people who just make web sites they don’t intend to validate.

    Footnotes:

    1. ^ [XHTML1]XHTMLâ„¢ 1.0 The Extensible HyperText Markup Language (Second Edition)
      W3C Recommendation 26 January 2000, revised 1 August 2002
    2. ^ [CSS2]Cascading Style Sheets, level 2
      W3C Recommendation 12 May 1998
    3. ^ [WAI-WCAG]Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
      W3C Recommendation 5 May 1999