GOTTA GIVE IT TO THE GIBO WEBSITE: TWO GREEN THUMBS UP!

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The cure for traffic


I'm thinking of hiring Gibo's web team.
Love the site! The green/gold theme is very eye-friendly, and I'm sure it alludes to his La Salle roots.All his video and TVCs (which have improved tremendously with the the pilot metaphors) are on the banner, and his views on virtually all issues are arranged very systematically, like a wiki.

Being an educator, I immediately scrolled to the "Education" section, and found two subsections--"student loan programs" and "preparing our children". When I clicked the "loans" part, I expected to find a treatise, but instead, I found this (quoted from the site):

Student Loan Program

Exhaust all means to give everyone the proper college education--Aside from usual scholarships and state subsidies, creative solutions should also be implemented to give every Filipino the education that is rightfully his.

One specific example for this is a loan system for the less fortunate, but deserving students in the tertiary level. When a student applies for a loan, he will be given a Social Security System (SSS) number. Immediately after he gets his first paycheck, it will register that he is getting a salary and subsequent deductions could be made.


Fiscally, I don't know if that makes sense. There should be infallible stats on student scholars who actually become employed, and thus are given SSS numbers. Does this also apply to graduates who go abroad immediately after receiving their diplomas? I have tons of questions, but I find the idea interesting, something that our country's economists and education experts can do some serious pencil-pushing on.

The other proposal, to add two years of elementary education, is BS, if you ask me. Parents in private schools are already scraping the bottom of their savings barrels just to pay their kids' tuition fees for 6 years of elementary schooling. Another two years will set them back, well, two years, and I'm afraid that in the good intentions of beefing up grade school quality, we might end up with high school dropouts on their 3rd or fourth year of high school. So I don't go with Gibo on that part.

Ok, back to the website: one more cool thing about it is a microsite called
www.gibotalino.ph. So far it's got some youtube videos where Gibo discusses solutions to national problems, i.e. traffic. This, and the whole site, is very youth-friendly, I would say, because text is kept at a minimum, while videos carry much of the candidate's message. Clearly, his niche is the educated sector of Philippine society, with his metaphors and flawless English. I can dig that, but can the kariton-pushing masses?

On the basis of his website, Gibo's got the edge. Personally, he's a presidential candidate who's worth following more. Yup, I just became his facebook fan.

EXPLORING CANDIDATES' WEBSITES SERIES: MANNY VILLAR / NOYNOY AQUINO SITE-BY-SITE

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VERSUS

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I finally got around to checking out two presidential candidates' websites today. My idea was to do a "site-by-site" (a site side-by-side for comparative purposes). That wasn't really so smart, as I needed to minimize one to maximize the other. It was also my idea not to go deep into the sites (i.e. click everything on the screen)--it was 11:42pm after all--but to appraise the look and feel of the sites. I figured, with Noynoy and MV being the current occupants of the presidential leaderboard,I might as well look at the more trivial aspects of these two sites just for the heck of it. I promise to read their individual platforms better, for I subscribe to Joker's infamous question, "Why so serious?". Website-bashing is loads more fun than candidate-bashing, you know.

COLOR
Noynoy stuck to the black and yellow scheme, as expected. This works for him, because it's a constant reminder of how famously yellow his deceased heroic parents were. The yellow ribbon on the upper left side of the header, shaped like a dove, is a surefire hit with Corysters worldwide. I personally would love to have that ribbon on my lapel.
As for Villar, well, we've seen his orange shirts, and there's nothing wrong with them. But to tint the whole website with a papaya-like hue is taking it too far.
For the website color war: Noynoy-1, Villar-0.

HOMEPAGE
Villar's "V" sign is all over the place, and so is his photogenic face. The site's header boasts of flash-enabled images of him on a billboard. The rest of the homepage is very cluttered, with two links marked "OFW" and "HOUSING" that lead to forms that visitors need to fill up to get help and info. I wonder: does anyone even get a response from Villar himself?
Noynoy's header is composed of a medium-shot of him foregrounding what looks to be a scene from his first star-studded commercial. Looks good so far. What disappointed me was the left sidebar with the big black bold letters 'SUPPORT' and 'VOLUNTEER.' It just screams, "Help me! I don't have money to mount a national campaign!" And I go: Didn't Kris volunteer to support you (read: FUND your campaign) and hire a stylist for you?
For the homepage war: Noynoy-0, Villar-1

MEDIA/DOWNLOADS
Just one statement about Noynoy's online media presence: HE AIN'T HIS SISTER KRIS.
Just one word about Villar's online media presence: WOWOWEE
For the Media war: Noynoy-0, Villar-1

Click to view the comedy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aut_chXPML8

Someday I will get around to actually reading their blogs and friending them both on facebook. Till then, here's a public service announcement from Rihanna:

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Exploring Candidates' Websites Series :The Official Website of Mar Roxas

The Offical Website of Mar Roxas

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Hey, I'm not campaigning for Mar Roxas, or for anyone in particular. That is not my style. But what I am is a curious, dubious website aficionado. So today, I wondered, what does a politician's website look like? After all, with the inevitable social networking explosion these days, I'm very sure that candidates' PR departments will maximize the relatively cost-efficient avenues provided by the internet.

Truthfully, I searched "Manny Villar" first. Error there. Mar Roxas' website loaded in .2 seconds (is that a sign?). Then I realized my personal faux pas: Roxas was running for VP, not president. In my mind, he was still a presidentiable (regrets, Korina?). Anyways, the website was waiting for me to be explored explore it.

The site was fairly easy to navigate. It's actually student-friendly, with its down-to-earth, highly readable blogs (by Roxas himself), discussion of issues on education, "murang gamot", agriculture, etc. There are many interesting tidbits for the clueless like me: that Roxas is the "father of call centers and BPO industry", that he was voted senator by 20 million Filipinos (a record, the site says), and that he has 24,586 Facebook fans (as of 2:04pm today), and that he eats leche flan with rice (hmm, shades of the Obamas and their cheeseburger binges).

I can fathom what Roxas' web press team is trying to do: make Roxas a poster boy for new politics, as opposed to the "trapo" stigma that many of his elders and contemporaries are projecting. All of Roxas' pictures on the site show a smiling, laid-back guy, with a good number featuring wife Korina, the two of them in frolicking pictures of marital bliss. The site is littered with tweets of support, testimonials that sing his praises. Even the blue Atenista color helps give him an air of respectability, prestige, and nobility, which aren't exactly the nouns you'd associate with the masses. For some reason, the "Mr. Palengke" monicker is absent from the site, which for me is a smart move, as the website's target audience aren't really the market-going public.

I give the marroxas site a two-thumbs up. Props to the web design team for keeping it simple, compact, and functional. Will Mr. Roxas' political career be just as simple, compact and functional? Wait till the ballots are scanned.

P.S. Just sharing (proudly, ahem) that I was a Gerry Roxas Leadership awardee in 1987...

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