Hey guys, I’m spreading the word about our new Global Voices Video channel on You Tube created by our very own, beautiful and talented GVs Video Editor – Ms Jules Rincon. I’m only familiar with her via GV-Authors emails and now I can see her on You Tube videos. This is her welcoming message explaining what’s our channel is about and what it’s aiming to accomplish.

What I would like to request from you is quite quite quite easy: if you have a youtube channel of your own, subscribe to our GVVideo YouTube channel, and let’s share the visits and content. If you don’t have a YouTube account, please just stop by and watch some videos and comment online. Also, if you know someone from your region who is creating awesome citizen media content in video, please contact me, or better yet, tell them to subscribe or send a video response to my vlog posts and I´ll be watching their channels for great content. If you stop by and have any ideas of how to make the channel a better and more inviting place, how to showcase content better, etc, please feel free to write me, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Please subscribe to Video GV if you are interested in GV activities and also the citizen media around the blogosphere.

Just pop in to say, I’m back in Fiji and will be posting about Bali trip soon. For now I’m just resizing the photos and uploading a few on Flickr. Flickr keeps screwing up my uploads, it’s just not uploading well at all. Tried direct upload from the web as well as using the Flickr Uploadr but still not working as it should be. May be their server’s over heated, I’ll try again later.

It was very tiring yet very informational trip for me. Met lots of new faces and enjoyed talking with a few. Some of the discussions in the conference were very heated and too advance for me to understand but it was a good listening and enjoyed taking notes. I took a few videos of the parallel sessions but not sure whether to upload them online or not. May be not.

The conference was not really for me (actually almost none at all) but I’m glad to have attended such event and enjoyed my new found experiences. We couldn’t get to visit anywhere, not even to Bali town, except a day trip to Yogakarta. No shopping nor swimming for me. There are lots of beautiful swimming pools in the resort and the lovely beach in front but I couldn’t even dip my feet in there due to very short stay and very tight/packed schedules. So sad.

Anyhow, now I’m back and catching up news and feeds on my GReader and twitter; a lot happened while I was a way for a week. Gosh I couldn’t even leave my eyes away from you for a bit and now see what happen! There goes Nargis, Nargis, Nargis and Myanmar, Myanmar, Myanmar almost every news feeds (I see Mong done a GREAT job covering the news on GV, many thanks) and now it’s China earthquake, earthquake. Geez the world is such a mess! Alright stay calm, don’t worry, I’m back so everything will be alright and stay tune with mayvelous. (Yah right! hehe) My bad, I shouldn’t be making jokes as serious things happening all over the world, but then laughter is the best medicine sometimes right?

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’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.

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
Sharing with friends, co-workers, and family is easy when you add and update files in a shared library. Large files? Not a problem – FolderShare can sync files up to 2 GBs in size. And it works on both Mac and PC.

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.