Control and Protect Your Online Identity (Part 2)

In part 1 of this post, we talked about why we need to control what we post online. Having active online accounts in social media means you have an online presence. While of course it is not who you are in your entirety in real life, what you do share with the world is what you advertise about yourself. Therefore, it is totally within your control to shape your online profile.

If you haven't read part 1, check it out here now before reading on below.

Let's move on to part 2.


Protect Your Online Profile 

"Using a smartphone without taking the necessary precautions has become riskier than ever," declares Eric Schwartzman, who created Udemy's Mobile Cybersecurity Awareness course. Most of us use our mobile devices nowadays to access our social network via mobile apps, which are generally easy to use. They're sometimes too easy to use, making them also easy to abuse and misuse. We should never dismiss the reality of cybersecurity, especially since protecting ourselves while using online services is actually simple and doesn't take a lot of time to do.

The tips listed below are based largely on the Mobile Cybersecurity Awareness course, and I highly encourage also checking and following these common sense security guidelines.

Control and Protect Your Online Identity (Part 1)

"Is this gonna be seen on the internet? Like, public? Because I'm wondering if I can say negative things." These were my 15-year old son's concerns as he drafted his very first short article for a family blog project. I was pleasantly amused (and mildly proud) because those are exactly what we should all be thinking about before posting anything on the internet.

FutureLearn's short module on "Managing Your Online Identity" says that if you have active social media accounts, then you have an online presence. In my humble opinion, there are two essential aspects about our online presence that we should be mindful of: Controlling what we post (read on below) and Protecting our online profile (discussed in Part 2 of this article).

Art and Analytical Skills

Back when I taught arts and crafts to grade school kids, I noticed how those who really focused on the activities saw opportunities to do more than what was required, thereby ending up with unique and inspired artwork.

I've always believed that art appreciation and arts and crafts should be better leveraged as methods for developing critical thinking skills, instead of just inserting them into an "Art" curriculum to kill time.
This TED video tells us that studying art could improve analytical skills. Granted, I wish the discussion went deeper, but this is a good start. So watch, learn, and share :)

Image source here

posted from Bloggeroid

To Train or Not To Train

A big part of my job is to help design and develop training courseware in various formats. Lately, I've been wondering how much of the training is actually needed and how we'll know for certain that it was effective. I felt that we were creating too many training materials without being entirely sure about the objectives.

Those wonderings led me to finding a course called "Foundations of Instructional Design", which was facilitated by Learning and Performance Partners, Inc. (LPPI). The instructor & LPPI's prez, Armi Treñas, is an established Learning and Development (L&D) specialist who works with various major corporations and organizations in different countries. "Instructional Systems Design" (ISD) seems to be a fairly new concept in the Philippines and, as far as my recent googling has revealed, LPPI is the only ISD practitioner in the country.

In a nutshell, ISD focuses not only on what should be in a training course, but also on how to check that training really is needed; how much and what type of training is needed; and how to ascertain that its objectives have been achieved.

Here are some of my key takeaways from the ISD course:

GrabTaxi

It was midnight on a Sunday when I tried getting a cab through GrabTaxi. I live in a small gated community, so hailing a cab at midnight is almost impossible.

GrabTaxi's FAQs say there's a P70 additional charge to reimburse the driver for gas used to go to my pick-up point. I wasn't sure that's fair, but I let it go because I don't always need cabs at midnight anyway.

The cab came and I got to my destination about 20 minutes later with no issues. But that first experience of GrabTaxi's service convinced me that the P70 charge is fair. Here are some of my reasons why:

- GrabTaxi shows you an estimate of how much your fare (sans the P70) could be

- The service was quick at finding and booking the nearest available cab to your pick-up point. Maybe it was fast for me since I had booked it around midnight. I wonder how it fares at rush hours?

- The app also gives you a time estimate for when the cab will arrive. In my case, it was 2-3 minutes later than forecasted and it made me just a teensy bit disappointed. But the cab eventually arrived anyway and I thought nothing of it anymore. Although, I would've appreciated being called or texted by the driver that he'll be slightly late. The service had my number anyway. But on the other hand...

- The app gives you the option to call the driver (yeah, I should've called huh? :P)

- GrabTaxi also gives you the option to cancel the booking any time before the cab arrives

- The driver I got was very courteous and drove safely. He followed all the traffic rules! And it was midnight! :)) Tell me that's not a rare treat when riding in cabs in Metro Manila. I was so pleased with the driver that I gave him a generous tip.

Based on this first experience, yes, I will use GrabTaxi again. I hope it continues to be reliable!

Disclaimer: I am not a paid endorser of GrabTaxi. This is just my honest personal feedback.

UPDATE: Booked with GrabTaxi again on a Tuesday around lunchtime to go to Makati from Pasig. The driver arrived maybe 10 minutes later than forecasted, but I wasn't in a hurry so it was OK. Having said that, GrabTaxi should improve their ETA forecasting and compensate for delays due to city traffic and other factors. Maybe it would help if their dispatchers could also check with MMDA and other traffic info sources (like those LGU Twitter accounts).

Apart from that, the ride was uneventful (just the way I like it!), and the driver was again neat and courteous.

Coincidentally, the people I met that Tuesday also booked with GrabTaxi. They book cabs there far more often than I do, and they had just the nicest things to say about the service, e.g. "consistent". That's a very good sign :)

Have you booked with GrabTaxi? How was your experience?

posted from Bloggeroid

A Coral that Eats a Coral-Eater!

This is one of the most exciting things I learned this week: a coral that eats a coral-eater!

On the left is a corallimorph (Paracorynactis hoplites) munching on a coral terrorist, the crown-of-thorns sea star (Acanthaster planci). At this link is another photo of this wonderful little critter. These photos were taken by my SPS co-founder Blogie Robillo at Davao Gulf.

Crown-of-Thorns starfish (COTS) can be challenging to control and is considered a pest on coral reefs since it breeds very quickly and ravages coral reefs. Until recently, some believed that the Giant Triton (Charonia tritonis) is the COTS' only natural predator (well, apart from divers who are removing them from time to time). Unfortunately, Giant Tritons are dwindling in numbers due to overharvesting. So the fact that there's another weapon against COTS is very good news. Truly, Nature is always able to balance itself out.

Learn more about Paracorynactis hoplites through this report (only 6 pages) from August 2011 based on a research led by Dr. Arthus R. Bos. The researchers call it a "highly efficient predator". Really quite fascinating! :)

Who Outgrows LEGO?

There's 1 of my transparent LEGO mugs :-)

It was on my 6th birthday (in 1985, the greatest year ever) that I got my very first LEGO set. The parts could be assembled into a two-storey house with a red roof and a patio with a red and white awning (that could be pulled back, woot!). Inside the kitchen, there is a yellow stove with a tiny black frying pan. On the table, you could attach two transparent LEGO mugs. Before being gifted that set, I was content with hand-me-down Duplo bricks from my cousins. So when I got a LEGO set with shapes other than cubes and rectangles, my mind was magnificently blown and something inside me refused to grow up when it comes to anything LEGO.

Scuba diving in the pool?

What is it about LEGO that makes it the most awesome toy ever? Surely its wide array of pieces and accessories egg on that little voice inside our heads that say "What if I do this--?" Imagination + Tools = Dreams come alive!

Board Game Addictus

Sometime in August 2010, we invited our usual "movie night" friends over to our home for "game night". This is more or less the same group of friends we'd been hanging out with for over a decade or so, and it was with this gaggle of geeky rock music-loving artists that we began the new hobby of playing board games. It was supposed to be just another way for us to get together and do stuff we all liked. But, little did we know that it would turn us into...something else.

Carcassonne "meeples"

Truth be told, when it all started, we really just wanted to play simple board games with not a lot of rules, twists, and turns. Plus, game night usually started past 9 P.M. Add to that a lot of food and booze, so our brain cells went to happy hour and almost didn't come back. But, everything changed by the third game night in late November 2010. Our game master came lugging a huge blue box labeled Carcassonne. We tackled it gingerly but eagerly; its numerous and specific rules became better understood as the game progressed. And, as it became clearer to us, it started a new fire in us. It made us crave for more and often. It turned us into, yes, board game addicts.

Interestingly, this new addiction has also tightened our bond even more. It breathed new life into our friendships and drew us to each other with a deeper fondness. In fact, we even set aside an entire weekend in March and practically locked ourselves up in a relative's vacation house in Tagaytay just to play games. We brought so many games that each one of us double-tasked on games, e.g., figuring out how to solve one of the puzzles in the North pole version of Camouflage while playing Carcassonne at the same time.

Our growing tower of Cardus Addictus

Nowadays, some of us hang out and play games almost every week (some of us even do so on a daily basis). Our addiction was "worsened" by the convenience of playing games at almost every place we hang out in, thanks to the discovery of board games in card versions (A.K.A. "Cardus Addictus"). It started with my little boys. The latest craze at their school was playing the Uno card game. They learned it, got their dad to get them a deck, and then the damage was done...to our heads. Soon after getting the Uno cards, a friend introduced us to Monopoly Deal, which we taught to our circle of board game addicts. And, like wildfire, it consumed us all, leading us to discovering Boggle Slam, Cluedo Suspects, Game of Life Adventures, Cranium Cards, Pictureka! cards etc.







Playing board games will always be fun and relevant because they create a playroom where you can be as silly as you want. It's "live", as opposed to a video game. And, for a moment in time, you and a group of like-minded friends adhere to a unique set of rules that do not exist in the real world, which gives you a temporary yet memorable escape from the stress that is real life.

Apples to Apples

Photo acknowledgements to my fellow tabletop game addicts: shot of the Cranium game by Val Gonzales and Carcassonne meeples by Zarah Dominguez

posted from Bloggeroid

Engineers & Technical Writing

Being a Technical Writer/Editor for IT companies has made me realize this: I have a job because most engineers can't write or can't be bothered to do it properly. I guess it's the same excuse I'd use when it comes to crunching numbers: I'm generally bad at math so why bother?

Most writers aren't IT nerds. To be able to translate technical jargon into human language, we have to exert three times the effort to understand the nerdspeak first.

Here are a few things that I wish engineers I work with kept in mind so my job would be a little less brain-draining:

Why Yoda is the Master

Stormtrooper: "Finally! The droids I've been looking for!"

Yoda: "The droids you are seeking, they are not."

Stormtrooper: "Move along."