This year Miccro-Grant program from Rising Voices has been started and the application deadline is June 1, 2008.

Rising Voices, the outreach arm of Global Voices, in collaboration with the Open Society Institute Public Health Program’s Health Media Initiative, is now accepting project proposals for the third round of microgrant funding of up to $5,000 for new media outreach projects focused especially on public health issues involving marginalized populations. Ideal applicants are dynamic NGOs or individuals who:

• Represent the vital voices of communities affected by stigmatized health issues whose stories, viewpoints, and experiences are often marginalized, unheard, or misrepresented in mainstream media. These communities include people living with HIV and AIDS and/or tuberculosis, people with mental illnesses or intellectual disabilities, injecting drug users, sex workers, LGBTI individuals, people in need of palliative care services, and Roma facing discrimination in healthcare settings.
• Are enthusiastic about using new, interactive modes of communication to build relationships and establish dialogue on the important advocacy issues of their community.
• Envision and highly prioritize media and communication strategies to achieve the advocacy goals of their organization.

Rising Voices outreach grants will range from $1,000 to $5,000. Special consideration will be given to proposals from Sub-Saharan Africa and the Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucusus. Please be as thoughtful, specific, and realistic as possible when drafting your budgets. Successful projects will be prominently featured on Global Voices.

Completed applications will be accepted no later than Sunday, June 1st in either English or Russian. Please submit your application on the Rising Voices apply page. Russian-language proposals should be submitted here. All applicants will receive a confirmation email by June 3.

Grantees will be announced on June 28 at the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit in Budapest, Hungary.

You are most welcome to translate the info into Burmese and forward it to relevant organizations. I think the HIM blog and the like should check this out.

I was having lunch and having some random thoughts. I don’t know how exactly but I was thinking about the word “fauna” from “flora fauna”. I forgot what I was thinking but when I realised, I was googling the word “floral fauna”. The first hit I got was this “Floral/Fauna” photoset by sigth on flickr.

It’s floral alright; I’m seeing lots of flower in the set. Everything seems pretty much the usual flower photos should be, but then there is it; this one photo really (…) me that I just have to click and view in detail.

It’s titled “Aroma“, a photo of seven year old girl embracing the roses. It’s so…ok, what’s the word I’m looking for? It’s the way she closed her eyes, her hand posture, the angle of her tilting head, the three roses. Everything about it is so… Captivating, enchanting…no, no I’m looking for the word starts with “Mes” …I keep saying like messimize, maximiz, mezzame and couldn’t get the right word out of it.

So, I asked my bro for help and he goes - immerse?, engrossed?, magnetized? No, not those but it has to start with “Mes”, then he finally said, “Mesmerised“. Yep, that’s the word! Then one of my colleagues asked who’s been mesmerised and he told me that the word is after Dr. Mesmer who specialised in hypnotism. Well, I didn’t know about that, so I quickly look through wiki and there he is - Franz Anton Mesmer.

Franz Anton Mesmer (born Friedrich Anton Mesmer May 23, 1734 – March 5, 1815) discovered what he called magnétisme animal (hypnosis in 1842, his name being the root of the English verb ‘mesmerize’.

Arh like that!, I learn something new. Anyways where was I? Oh yes, the photos; I also checked out the other three photos of the same girl. For some reason, I cannot grab the direct url or save the images. I guess it must be to do with sharing privileges on the photos. Respecting the photographer’s rights, I don’t want to do a screen grab hence just get a small thumbnail of each photos and linked them to the proper page.

The 2nd one “Flower profile“, things that attracted me is her smooth, silky skin – her cheek and neck line and the way she’s looking at the roses.

The 3rd one “Roses” is … ohh soo cute! How so very lovely her face and action on trying to kiss/smell the roses.

The pose in “Brita” is interesting too, but it’s too monochrome compare to other three. Still, it’s very pretty. It says “actress” in the description. Indeed the little actress.

Well, what do you think? Very mesmerising aren’t they?

Alright, I shall continue with my lunch since I’m satisfied, contented, pleased, delighted, thrilled DONE with … what was I searching again? Oh yah, the floral-fauna search, which I somehow ended with mesmerizing the “Aroma”. And why am I posting this bullcraps? Cos’ I WANT TO! Hump!

I’ll be going to Denpasar, Bali next week. I’m taking Sydney - Kuala Lumpur - Denpasar flight route and gonna stay there for 3 days; 2 days on flight so total of 5 days (a week). Have to sleep one night at Kualar Lumpur airport. I want to go out and visit the city but it’s not wise to roam around since I’m travelling alone and I might get lost, so I’m planning to stay in the airport. A good friend of us from Jakarta called yesterday to pay him a visit but I had to decline since I could only get one week of leave from work. I did promised him a visit if I get there next time. He’s a Catholic Fr. who stayed in Fiji for quite a long time before he went back to Indonesia. Very kind and a nice friend. He’s also one of the players in our Badminton group. We made a pretty good team then. I don’t have any contact/friends in Bali. Not sure any Burmese live there or not, but if any Burmese bloggers do live there, plz contact me. Love to have a chat or two. I’m going there to attend a conference. I’m very excited and nervous about it. I hope to do live tweeting from the conference if the net is available. Otherwise I’ll try to blog from the hotel. I’ll see how things go.

I’ve been very, VERY, busy these days so I’m neglecting my dear mayvelous and GV postings. Other day, my GV editor asked for some posts relating US elections and rice/food crisis from mm blogosphere but I couldn’t find/give any. One, I haven’t been following the feeds properly and two, I don’t think any of us care to give a comment on US election as we have our own unresolved election crisis at hand.

Anyhow, I’m keeping my eyes open for this two highlights at the moment; for now let me spread a few words about some of the projects on GV.

Voices without Votes

This is the main highlight at the moment. It features the commentaries/reactions of bloggers around the world regarding the US presidential elections.

Voices Without Votes is a project of Global Voices commissioned by Reuters.

Voices Without Votes highlights conversations in non-American blogs and citizen media, with emphasis on the regions covered by Global Voices:
Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, and the Middle East.

Et cetera, etc…you get the idea; go ahead and find out more at Voices without votes. We are also looking for non-American blog posts and links so if you got one, submit it here and get it featured on the site. Ofcos’ you can also grab these lovely badges and spread the word on your lovely blogs/sites.

Rising Voices
This one encourages a lot on vlogging, podcasting and ofcos blogging from new/remote communities.

Rising Voices, an outreach initiative of Global Voices, aims to help bring new voices from new communities and speaking new languages to the global conversation by providing resources and funding to local groups reaching out to underrepresented communities.

Rising Voices is a global network of people who are knowledgeable and passionate about citizen media and want to see the benefits of self-expression extended to communities that have yet to come across these tools.

We got about 10 very active and interesting projects at the moment. You can watch the videos on how the current projects are doing and also apply for 2008 micro grant which will take place next month and it focuses on public health.

Global Voices Advocacy
This one is mainly about anonymous blogging and protecting uncensored publishing. Ok, I’m not too aware of this project myself so you just have to read through the site to understand more.

seeks to build a global anti-censorship network of bloggers and online activists throughout the developing world that is dedicated to protecting freedom of expression and free access to information online.

There is also “Project Lingua” on GV. If you haven’t notice, now you can read GV in 12 different languages and surely many more to come in the future.

Project Lingua seeks to amplify Global Voices in languages other than English with the help of volunteer translators. It will open lines of communication with non-english speaking bloggers and readers of GV by translating main GV site content into other languages.

Currently GV is seeking hindi translators for the new hindi language page. I’m thinking of putting those lovely Burmese circular characters on GV in the near future. Seeing Zawgyi on GV would be interesting don’t you think so? That’s along way to come; before that I need to spread more GV awareness to Myanmar Blogosphere. Do you know we now got 2 authors for Myanmar section. Ofcos’ it’s ME the great and the sexy cool - YangonThu (Moe Moe). Well, I know both of us are very bad at posting; Moe Moe is more into fashion and modeling with her friends on E-Flash or S-Splash or something and I’m lost in my own world.

Anyhow, GV is pretty cool isn’t it? You get to experience the whole new world GV once you get to involve more with it. Alrite, nothing much, I’m just spreading the word yarr.

I came across this lovely site, “Hsa’ba” (please eat), full of delicious Burmese recipes via another Burmese recipe site. “Hsaba” is in English and is very well organized by Ma Tin Cho Chaw. She’s even publishing a cookbook on Burmese dishes and there are about 100 recipes featured on “Hsaba” site. I find it very interesting to read each ingredient information along with the photos.

My bro reads “Hsa’ba” as “Hi Sha Bah” ဟိုက္ရွားဘား and I have to correct him. There is no “H” sound in “Hsa’ba”, it pronounces like “Sarh Bar”.

So I’m one of certified

• 4,619 (MCTS) .NET Framework 2.0: Distributed Applications
• 14,873 (MCTS) .NET Framework 2.0: Web Applications
• 8,051 (MCTS) .NET Framework 2.0: Windows Applications
• 3,424 (MCPD) Enterprise Application Developer
• 3,346 (MCPD) Web Developer
• 1,085 (MCPD) Windows Developer
  and….
• 2,221,569 Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP)

Worldwide.

Number of Microsoft Certified Professionals Worldwide
The Microsoft Certified Professionals (MCP) program was established in 1992. To date, more than 2 million people have achieved Microsoft Certification worldwide.

This is something interesting to check out. You can access your files and folders from any of your computers remotely.

Keep all your files in sync
Use FolderShare to create a mirrored image of your most important folders - like your Favorites, Pictures, and Documents - so they’re the same on all your computers.

Sharing files is easier than ever
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Get to your files instantly when you’re away from home
Install FolderShare on all your computers, and you can access all your files from any computer on the Internet.

It’s 3 steps installation,
# it will ask you whether you are an invited user or a new user,
# Name your computer,
# if you are new user, this step create an account for you,
Then you are done.

If you’re interested, download and test it out here: FolderShare and visit the site.