Every year, the Philippines has approximately 20 typhoons enter the PAR (Philippine Area of Responsibility). This year had been a very mild tropical season, occasional rains, but only a couple of very mild storms. All of that changed last Friday night when Tropical Storm Ondoy decided Manila was ready for a visit.

When I hear news about approaching storms, I have a tendancy to start tracking them and watching their progress. I guess I started doing this when I was still young. You see, I am originally from McAlester, Oklahoma, so I am no stranger to severe weather. Oklahoma is famous (or infamous) for another type of severe weather occurrence know as a tornado. Tornados can be very strong and destructive, but normally very brief and sudden. I have seen distant funnel clouds, but never face-to-face with their fury. Typhoons are neither brief, nor sudden.

So, when I heard Ondoy was headed this way, I started following the storm, in hopes that with advanced warning, we could prepare ourselves and at least ensure our children are safe at home with us. This particular Friday, our son Angelo was on his school field trip in Tagatay. So, I was very concerned for their safety, but they arrived safe and sound at around 9 pm, as the storm was first entering land over Polillo Island in the Quezon Province. I monitored the storm awhile longer and we went to bed, sleeping soundly with no idea what would the next day would have in store for us…

Being a Saturday, I slept in a little later than usual. I think I woke up at around 10 am. We were planning to go to the Wave Ballroom for Paulyn’s sister’s lucheon. Her fiance’s family was arriving from Laguna to ask the family for her hand in marriage. This is a Filipino trandition, especially when the family member getting married is a girl.

As soon as I got moving around and had my first cup of coffee (nothing happens until I have my coffee), I asked Paulyn if we were still going, considering the storm. As far as she knew, yes, we were still going. I came to my computer to check the satellite images of the storm and to my surprise, the storm was right on top of the city. So, I went downstairs to ask Jonas, my brother-in-law if he had spoken with Mommy (my mother-in-law) and OMG! water was already coming into the garage.

We called Mommy and asked how she was and to tell her the road was flooded. By the time I could hang up the phone and go downstairs again, water was already starting to enter the 1st floor of the house. Luckily, we live on the 2nd floor, so we were at least dry and safe … for the time being, anyway. Due to electical safety issues, we shut down power to the house and waited upstairs for the rain to stop.

Well, we waited at least 3 hours for the rain to stop! The water level rose up to waist high downstairs and at least 8 ft deep in the street. It was unbelievable…

But, the storm did finally pass, leaving in it’s path at least 100 dead. Today there are reports that there are many, many more dead in Metro Manila alone.

Here are a few images taken by us during the storm. Keep in mind, these are very mild compared to most of the city.

Holy Spirit Drive

Holy Spirit Drive

Holy Spirit Drive

Holy Spirit Drive

Mercury Drugstore

Holy Spirit Drive

If you want to see some very alarming videos, simply go to Youtube and search for “Ondoy”.

At the time of this posting, there are 2 more storms slowly approaching the Philippines. Heaven forbid they make it to Manila…

UPDATE – Here are a few more pictures

I think this is the Marcos Highway in Marikina City

Desperately trying to reach safety

Finding safety in the electrical wires

Everywhere this was the scene...

Streets became rivers in Metro Manila

Knee deep flood waters were the rule in almost the entire city

Their roof became their porch

How do you describe this...

Unbelievable...reminds me of Katrina

Despair...

I hear freelance horror stories on a fairly regular basis… Unanticipated hours spent trying to please a single client that won’t be pleased, countless revisions when the client doesn’t even know what he or she wants, doing all of this after the client argued for a huge discount in the first place.

If you’ve ever been stuck with a client who just won’t be satisfied no matter what you do, then you know exactly how this situation feels. It seems like nothing that you do is right and all of it needs to be redone.

Meanwhile, you can’t devote yourself to new clients because you’re spending all of your time on one or two extremely demanding clients. It’s as though a vampire has come and sucked all of the life out of your freelancing business.

What’s a freelancer to do when one or a few clients take up the majority of his or her energy without providing the majority of his or her income?

 Dealing with Vampire Clients — Realistic Options

Realistically, what can you do about a so-called “vampire” client? Your job as a freelancer is to please your customers, right?

Well, it is true that good customer service is extremely vital to your success as a freelancer. Loyal customers can be an important key to your business success.

However, it’s also true that not everyone will like you, and not everyone is a good client. If you freelance for long enough, eventually you’re going to encounter someone who just doesn’t get along with you.

As a freelancer and a professional are you tied to your vampire clients forever?

I say no.

One of the beautiful things about freelancing is that you can pick and choose which projects you accept and who you will work with. Unlike a traditional job where you may be forced to work in an unpleasant environment for months, years, or even decades, freelancing offers you the opportunity to cut your losses and move on.

Questions to Ask Before Stepping Away from a Client

If you can help it, it’s important not to burn your bridges. If you can’t help it, however, here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Is this client taking a disproportionate amount of my time?
• Have I done everything that I can possibly do?
• Have I exhausted all reasonable resources that I could turn to make this project better?
• Has the scope of this project changed significantly since it began without any changes in compensation or time allotted?

If you answered yes to most of those questions, then you may be dealing with a vampire client situation. It may be time to put an end to the project that is keeping you from being productive.

Actually ending the project or relationship can be tricky, though. Here are a few tips:

How to End Your Relationship With a Vampire Client

You may wonder how you can walk away from a nightmare client and still maintain a positive relationship with them.

Ideally, of course, you want all of your client relationships to be positive. You depend partly on referrals and testimonials from your clients to get future business, so making sure that all of your clients are happy is important.

But, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes it’s just not possible to keep everyone happy. A few people will never be satisfied.

Ending a client relationship is never something to be done lightly. It should only be used as a last resort

If you do have to end a relationship with a client whose project has been taking all of your time and energy, try to do so on a positive note. You might say something like this:

It seems like we’re just not on the same wavelength about XYZ. I thought
that I could do this project, but in retrospect I no longer believe that I’m the best person for the job. You might try contacting John Doe (if possible, name a freelancer who might be able to work with the client).

Will the client be mad at you? Maybe.

Will you get your money? Maybe not, but at least you’ll have your time back and be free to pursue projects that are a better match for your abilities.

Have You Faced a Vampire Client?

Have you ever dealt with a vampire client or project? How did you handle the situation? Without naming names or pointing fingers (we’re not that kind of blog), share your story with everyone in the comments.

Hopefully we can help some freelancers find their way out of a difficult situation.

Reposted from FreelanceFolder.com

My company, DCGWS Internet Solutions has been very busy building over the last six months or so, a highly sophisticated social networking platform that can be easily installed on any server. This project is not based on any pre-existing platform, but contains many of the features seen on very popular websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Features list for Alpha Release: (available for download, by invitation starting the 1st week in November.

• Multiple Home Pages – Business Users, Personal Users, or Both
• Profile Page with advanced privacy settings
• Image Gallery
• Capture Image from Webcam
• Photo Albums
• Image Sharing
• Ajax Chat
• Groups
• Forums
• Blogs
• Real-time Status Updates
• Friends
• Invite Contacts From Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL and send to Facebook Inbox
• many, many more

Our pre-Alpha testers have said this is better than Boonex, and we think so, too. To arrange for an Ioncube encrypted download, please send your invitation requests to david at d-c-g.com

Alpha testing will last approximately 2 months, we’ll spend a month or so going thru the changes and immediately move on to Beta Testing. Our chosen Beta testers will get a completely free copy of the software, of course with a single domain license which is not transferable.

Note, this is not a Clone, this combines the best of the best, with some new features the others don’t have.

I was recently amazed to find out that some U.S. based Search Engine Optimization companies are charging up to $2,500 per month for SEO services. Now, I have to ask myself…why? Is it because, as they say, there are the “only” ones that truly understand search engines? Is it because they are better at optimizing website code than anyone else? That is what they will have you believe…

Now, I’ve read alot on some blogs and forums how they tend to bash Search Engine Optimization specialists who charge less than the U.S market value, saying that we are ruining the value of SEO services.

Why should the client have to pay up to 10 times the normal price just so the provider can have a nice fancy office with a view? I have been proving Rock Solid SEO services at very reasonable rates for several years now. My clients enjoy high SERPs, and almost always give me repeat business.

Almost as sad is the fact that nearly all of SEOs have less than basic knowledge of scripting languages such as PHP, Ruby, etc. So, what happens is that unless you, the client, has a fully static HTML site; which are very few and limited, you will end up either:

a) Missing opportunities that an experienced programmer can see

or

b) Wind up double paying for services that you could have wound up getting in the 1st place, at a fraction of the cost.

So, if you are in the market for Search Engine Optimization services, don’t be naive…shop around and choose wisely and be thrifty. You work hard for your money, don’t throw it away.

The BespeckledSEO

My company, DCGWS Internet Solutions has been very busy building over the last six months or so, a highly sophisticated social networking platform that can be easily installed on any server. This project is not based on any pre-existing platform, but contains many of the features seen on very popular websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Features list for Alpha Release: (available for download, by invitation starting the 1st week in September.

• Multiple Home Pages – Business Users, Personal Users, or Both
• Profile Page with advanced privacy settings
• Image Gallery
• Capture Image from Webcam
• Photo Albums
• Image Sharing
• Ajax Chat
• Groups
• Forums
• Blogs
• Real-time Status Updates
• Friends
• Invite Contacts From Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AOL and send to Facebook Inbox
• many, many more

Our pre-Alpha testers have said this is better than Boonex, and we think so, too. To arrange for an Ioncube encrypted download, please send your invitation requests to david at d-c-g.com

Alpha testing will last approximately 2 months, we’ll spend a month or so going thru the changes and immediately move on to Beta Testing. Our chosen Beta testers will get a completely free copy of the software, of course with a single domain license which is not transferable.

Note, this is not a Clone, this combines the best of the best, with some new features the others don’t have.

Many times, we that work as SEOs and webmasters forget one very important point. Google is not designed or operated to make us money, get us more clients, or to rank us higher. Google is search. As an end-user, if I am searching for the topic "creative web design" using Google (or any other search engine), then my hope is that the #1 position belongs to the most creative web design information on the web. Since I am a busy person, maybe I don’t have time to click through several pages of websites that used black-hat techniques, link-baiting, paid links, or a very high marketing budget to put them on top. I, as an end-user of Google, want the #1 result to be the absolutely most relevant information available on the internet. Maybe that is why Wikipedia has nearly dominated the first page of the results for many keywords. They often have the most relevant, informative content. As an SEO, web designer, and webmaster, I have to think like an end-user. Back to my keyphrase "creative web design". What do I hope to find? Am I correctly targeting my market with my content. What is my content all about? Am I paying someone money to place my link on their website? If so, would they have placed my link there for free? Does my content merit such a link? Yet, we must provide a value to our clients. They are paying us to position them competitively in the SERPs. How can we best provide that value? In my opinion, it is our duty to instruct the client that they must HAVE the most relevant information for that topic. If they only appear (by artificially manupulating the results) as the most relevant, but that relevance is only smoke and mirrors, then what? Who loses? The end-user and, eventually Google also loses it’s market share. Google does not work for us nor for our clients. They work for the end-user of their services. Plain, simple fact. The sooner we SEOs realize that fact, they better job we perform for our client. I always hear webmasters complaining about the SERPs, being penalized for spamming, etc. They are appalled that Google is doing such a thing to their businesses. Google doesn’t care about your business. Google cares about Google and it’s customers. We that believe that have a reponsibility to work for our clients as well. It’s all about  the content.

Since I sat down and added something here. I have been extremely busy with some very lucrative development projects and available time for blogging seems to be non-existent. However, last night I started having minor chest pains and my wife is now insisting that I sit down at least one hour before I start working and give some time to my self. So, here I am.

I will tell you this, I have been working with state-of-the-art development tools and will be sharing with my readers the latest in PHP/Flash programming. Every heard of the PHP extension Ming? Well, it allow the user to create stunning Flash movies without using Flash. It’s all programmed with PHP and it’s wild stuff.

ATTENTION ALL BLOGGERS: BEWARE OF PAYPERPOST!!! You will lose all your hard-earned PageRank!

How to create RSS/XML feeds for Google Base and more…???

All this and more in the coming days!

Please bookmark me again, subscribe to my feeds, etc…

Yesterday I decided to try the new Wikia Search Engine and it was a very dissappointing experience. It has no database to speak of. Very flawed and completely irrelevant.

I can’t even give it a complete review here as I was so unpleased with the website.

Jimmy Wales…please go back and do what you do well and leave the search engines to the professionals.

Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales has brought the Wikipedia ethos to his very own internet search engine. But he insists it will be far more trustworthy than search sites offered by Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft.

Today, Jimbo’s for-profit Wikia operation takes the wraps off a beta version of Wikia Search, a search engine that allows everyone and their brother to control what turns up when you type in a keyword. Users have the power to "rate" search results, and as time goes on, these ratings will be used to tweak results accordingly.

As The New York Times points out, this means that anyone on earth has the power to rig Wikia Search in much the same way they can rig Wikipedia. But – as usual – Jimbo is adamant that if anyone tries to game the system, his minions will "block them, ban them, delete their stuff."

We have no doubt that Wikia will have a field day blocking, banning, and deleting all sorts of people, places, and things. The question is whether Jimbo’s blinkered followers will crack down on their friends in the same way they crack down on those who don’t know the secret handshake.

After all, this is hardly the case at Wikipedia.

Nonetheless, Jimbo insists that his "democratic" model is somehow a better bet than what goes on over at Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft. "I think it is unhealthy for the citizens of the world that so much of our information is controlled by such a small number of players, behind closed doors," he told The New York Times. "We really have no ability to understand and influence that process."

We would argue the opposite: The Wales mentality is far more dangerous simply because Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft don’t go around telling people that everything they do has a "neutral point of view."

Google is also toying with an "editable" search engine. But at least Brin, Page, and company have the good sense to keep it away from the John Q. Public – and to stop short of using edits to influence search results at large.

In any event, Jimbo is intent on making some money from his project, something he’s been unable to do with the Wikipedia, which is run by the officially not-for-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Wikia also serves up Wikipedia-like info on all sorts of random subjects, and according to The New York Times, the company has already raked in $14m in venture capital – with $10m of that coming from Amazon.

Looking for an easy way to sell online. No hassles? Robust hosting? Exceptional software? Look no further…

DCGWS Internet Solutions today finally unveils it’s long waited for E-Commerce website. Whether you are just starting out selling online or a seasoned veteran, we have a solution and add-ons to meet your every need, and at a price you can easily afford.

We Make Selling Online A SNAP!