Connecting Asians Worldwide

This is a little 30 second promo video I created over at Animoto.com. Just trying to promote the Asian online community a bit more.

We’re just a small, close-knit community of friends, so that above caption might be a bit over dramatic. But, hey… here’s to hoping we get a lot more people to join.

Most of my online time today was spent working on Rice Bowl Journals’ new stomping grounds, a brand spankin’ new social network created on Ning.com.

From Humble Beginnings

For those unfamiliar with Rice Bowl Journals, this has been a project I had started way back in the Fall of 2000. It basically started out as a links page to a few of my favorite Asian diarists on the web. One thing led to another and others wanted to be added to the list. The list grew into a registry and then I began organizing this registry by country, location, etc. And in a few years time it had grown to over 5,000 members.

Becoming A Full-Fledged Community

Then, the site expanded into the realm of an online community with a discussion board being the heart of social interaction. But nowadays, in a world where “social networks” like Facebook, MySpace and Digg command everyone’s attention, a relatively small community like Rice Bowl Journals was bound to get left behind….

Building Upon Social Interaction

And thus, I finally came to my senses this weekend and created a social network for Rice Bowl Journals, one that has similar features like the big giants such as Facebook, that I feel will finally bring the RBJ community up-to-date with Web 2.0.

Come Join Us

So far, I think the members who’ve joined up are liking the new diggs, as there are plenty of opportunities to socialize and connect, more effectively than with the old discussion board…

And, now a new journey begins… and everyone is invited!

Please join us at: http://ricebowljournals.ning.com

This is my contribution to the Rice Bowl Journals August 2008 Collaboration. The topic to write about? Your personal highlights for the Summer of 2008.

Well, if you’ve been reading my blog pretty consistently, you are more than aware that 2008 hasn’t been the best of years for me. But life goes on and I still try to keep a positive attitude and go with the flow…

So, the main highlight was obviously my family’s trip to the Philippines for roughly 3 weeks in June. We basically had to go there to do the funeral arrangements for my father-in-law who passed away on June 3rd, had him cremated per his request, and his ashes were placed in the family mausoleum in Lubao, Pampanga. Read more

A special thank you to Rachel for creating these cool graphic buttons for the Rice Bowl Journals community. Sorry I was late in posting these. They’re very cool indeed!

This entry is part of the Rice Bowl Journals Collaboration Project for July. The idea is to post a review of your experiences during the first half of the current year. So, here goes…

It’s interesting how, when a lot goes on within a given time, one doesn’t remember as much. Too much information coming in, perhaps? Information overload? Read more

Any blogs, journals or online dairies that have been inactive for quite a while will have to be deleted from the RBJ Directory. Volunteers have been helping me flag those sites that match the following criteria:

Efforts To Keep A Faithful Directory

I am pretty dedicated to making the RBJ Directory a valid and “live” directory, and the many abandoned blogs and journals need to be eliminated in order to keep the directory alive.

It’s apparent that many bloggers jumped on the bandwagon a few years back because blogging and online journaling was the rage. But, many of those bloggers have either lost interest or simply aren’t dedicated bloggers like the rest of us.

RBJ has suffered a great loss because of this phenomenon, especially as the 2.0 social networking sites make it easy for interaction. But the problem with social networking is that there is a loss of quality writing. And we at RBJ are dedicated into fostering quality blogs with great content. So, hopefully, the more dedicated writers will stick around and the RBJ directory will dwindle down to the quality writers who are willing to stick it out in the long run.

New Membership Through Recommendation

We at Rice Bowl Journals will stop the registration process, and only accept those serious bloggers and writers who are willing to dedicate the time to their blogs and journals. There’ll no longer be a registration process, actually. But if someone is serious about joining RBJ then he/she can contact me about becoming a member of the directory. Only serious writers with quality content will be considered. This is the exact opposite from social networking sites that are willing to accept anyone and everyone.

Anyone can contact me to recommend a blog or journal as well. And we can invite those blogs and journals that can be a worthy addition to the RBJ Directory.