By Juan Carlos Perez
IDG News Service

Publishers with custom domains hosted on Google‘s Blogger blog-publishing service have been losing traffic for the past week due to a bug affecting how visitors get redirected from the Blogger domain to the publishers’ own domains.

The problem hits when someone tries to visit a blog by going to its Blogspot URL, which follows the format: BlogName.Blogspot.com, instead of going directly to the site’s custom domain.

Ironically, Google is among the publishers affected by the problem, as can be seen by attempting to visit the company’s official blog for its Orkut social network through its Blogspot address. Under normal circumstances, the visitor would be automatically redirected to the custom domain URL, which in the case of the Orkut blog is http://en.blog.orkut.com/.

While the problem is caused by an issue in a Blogger system, its severity varies depending on which browser Web site visitors are using. For example, internal tests at IDG News Service showed that visitors using Firefox 3 or Safari 4 will see a page that warns them they are about to be redirected to a blog that isn’t hosted on Blogger. The page states that the site “has not been checked for spam, viruses and other forms of malware” and gives the user the option to proceed to the page or not. It’s safe to assume that Web surfers with an average sense of caution will not click through to the site, considering the terse warning.

While this is bad enough, the situation gets even worse with Internet Explorer 7, which shows visitors an error page that says the browser can’t display the Web site, giving the sense that the site either doesn’t exist or is offline.

Publishers began reporting the problem on Tuesday of last week in the official Blogger Help discussion forum, and Google acknowledged that it’s working on a solution on Wednesday.

The problem remains unsolved at press time.

Google has announced the push of the second round of Google Map Maker edits generated by local users in the Philippines to Google Maps, Google’s dynamic, collaborative geographic search platform.  Some of the areas that received a virtual facelift in the latest push to Google Maps are Baguio City and Angeles City in the north; Bacolod City and Iloilo City in the Visayas; and Cagayan de Oro City and Koronadal City in Mindanao. Aside from adding street-level details, users have utilized other useful features of Google Map Maker for plotting landmarks and tourist attractions around the country, including the Merville Access Road.

“We are truly amazed at the enthusiastic and passionate response for Google Map Maker in the Philippines which is the number two country in the world for this product. There are now thousands of local users that have contributed hundreds of thousands of edits to Google Map Maker in the past six months,” said Derek Callow, head of marketing, Google Southeast Asia. “On behalf of the millions of people all over the world who can now see and use the improved Google Maps of the Philippines, we’d like to thank all those exceptional Filipino contributors who proudly, selflessly and tirelessly continue to enhance the virtual face of their beautiful country.”

The map of Angeles City, Pampanga, March 2009 ( click image for a larger view )

The updated map after edits have been applied, May 2009 ( click image for a larger view )

Callow added, “We have seen an increase in Map Maker edits for the areas outside of the main cities which indicates the interest among Filipinos across the country to map out their local communities and contribute to this national effort. The next step is to encourage fun community-level activities to accelerate the mapping momentum, so we created a Mapping Party Kit to help Filipinos map their entire country and all 7107 islands, one party at a time.”

Google Map Maker was launched in the Philippines in October 2008 to provide map enthusiasts a fun, easy-to-use web-based tool to personally contribute to the building and updating of online map data for the country. The first batch of local Map Maker edits was pushed to Google Maps in March 2009, covering a substantial part of Metro Manila and provinces such as Rizal, Cebu, Davao, Guimaras and Iloilo.

Mapping the Philippines, one party at a time
Google recently organized an exclusive international Google Map Maker User Conference in Bangalore, India, to recognize and reward Mapping All-Stars from all over the world for their contributions. The top three Map Maker contributors from the Philippines — Dr. Leonel John Foronda, a physician; civil engineer Dante Varias; and Wayne Dell Manuel, a university student studying in Singapore — attended the conference where updates on mapping tools and progress reports were presented to the delegates.

“I was excited to join the conference and proud to be part of this grand project to map the entire world. I am happy that Google recognizes the individual efforts of local mappers like me and our impact on making Google Map Maker an accurate and dynamic reflection of the Philippines. Of course, what makes me even more honored is that my edits to Google Map Maker are now in Google Maps, where they can help many people in the local community in many future ways,” said Foronda.

“It felt good to meet the engineers and product managers responsible for Google Map Maker. It gave me a sense of comfort that there is a dedicated team of Googlers who are constantly improving the product and evaluating contributions from users like me. It was also nice to know from the product development team that they are intensely interested in receiving user feedback and exchanging ideas to make Google Map Maker more useful and relevant for local users,” said Manuel.

Among the highlights of the conference was the launch of the Google Mapping Party Kit, a set of materials that local contributors can use to organize informal meetings with friends, family and other map enthusiasts to spread the fun and value of contributing local geographic knowledge to the world. The kit includes instructions, handouts, presentations, videos, blog posts, photos, testimonials, tips and tricks.  It is accessible online and may be downloaded at https://sites.google.com/site/mapmakeruserhelp/mappingkit.

“It was a great experience to meet other mapping enthusiasts from around the world and to hear their wonderful stories about how their contributions benefit their local community.  One of our main goals as dedicated contributors should be to spread the word about Google Map Maker to other Filipinos as ultimately, mapping the country is a team effort. I am glad that Google’s Mapping Party Kit is available to help contributors like me to encourage more people from our local communities to join in the fun. I am planning to organize my own mapping party using the kit,” said Varias.

CommunicAsia2009 and BroadcastAsia2009 are expected to feature about 2000 exhibiting companies from 65 countries and regions from across the globe, demonstrating the strong demand by companies to expand their footprint in Asia’s emerging markets and the importance of the annual exhibitions as networking and sourcing platforms for the global infocomm and media industries. The shows are set to return from 16-19 June 2009 at the Singapore Expo.

The infocomm industry’s strength is still evident despite the unpredictable conditions in the global economy. Infocomm sectors in many Asian countries are out-performing the rest of the global economy, representing significant opportunities here.

“The global gloom has accentuated the gleaming potential in Asia and increased the urgency in which international companies are moving into the continent,” said Victor Wong, project director at show organizer Singapore Exhibition Services. “CommunicAsia and BroadcastAsia’s established reputation and repeated ability to attract trade professionals from across the Asia Pacific region makes the shows the first choice for exhibiting companies, especially in the current environment of tighter budgets.” Visitors can look forward to exciting displays from market leaders like Blackberry, Google, Harris, Huawei, LG, Navteq, Samsung, Yahoo! and ZTE.

As Web 2.0 technlogies take over the enterprise sector across Asia this year in the goal to streamline customer service and spending, this same development will be mirrored in the Philippines. IDC expects worldwide interoperability for WiMAX in the Philippines to get back into the game in 2009. WiMAX and other fixed wireless subscriptions in the Philippines will skyrocket to $1 billion by 2013, seizing about 5% of the market from the current 1%. A recent Market Research report showed that PLDT‘s wireless broadband service revenues in the first half of 2008 rose by 50% year-on-year.

AS companies are turning to cutting edge technologies to meet the challenges posed by today’s tough economic climate, CommunicAsia2009 will focuse on the latest hot technologies for applications, solutions and hardware. These key techniques, which are already starting to have a huge impact on the way we live, work  and play, include IPTV, mobile entertainment, WiMAX, navigation and LBS, satellite, Femtocell, iGov, wireless technologies, Green IT and mobile Internet.

In response to the buzzing media industry development in Asia, BroadcastAsia2009 will again feature key technologies that draw huge interest and demand from the market. These include broadcast-to-handheld / mobile TV, digital media asset management, high-definition technology, PITV, mobile broadcasting and professional audio technology. Featured for the first time at BroadcastAsia2009 is digital signage which reflects the growing global demands of the retail, hospitality and entertainment industries for a dynamic medium to captivate their audiences. A form of electronic display that is installed in public spaces, digital signage is set to replace the conventional printed posters with state-of-the-art digital panels.

CommunicAsia, BroadcastAsia, CG Overdrive, as well as various inter-government meetings, are part of the Infocomm Media Business Exchange (imbX). It brings together business leaders, companies and industry professionals to showcase their latest innovations, network, exchange ideas and tap new markets.