Aquino believes couples should be educated on birth control and should be free to choose the method they deem most appropriate, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported. Pacquiao, on the other glove, opposes contraception and paraphrased Genesis to defend his stance.

“God said, ‘Go forth and multiply.’ He did not say, ‘Go and have just one or two children,’” the People’s Champ said, according the paper.

Totally agree with Aquino on this one. The Catholic Church has had their hand in this for far too long and all it takes is a trip to the Philippines to see the poverty and the disparity between the have and have nots.

Manny may have used to be a have not but he is a legend now and has more money than bottom capita of all the people in the Philippines combined. He should have used this opportunity to support contraception and the right to choose. It would help make the country a better place in the long.

On top of that been super busy at work, traveling like a mad man and working on lots of little interesting projects. All good – just slammed.

Koprol team been rocking – check the blog.

Been on a string of speaking gigs lately – The Mobile Marketing Conference. Also been lucky to get some nice quotes – Abs-Cbn Article. Hats off to all the hard working yahoo! folks who make it possible for me to enjoy the limelight.

Have another trip to the USA coming and some more speaking gigs – work is just a super fun place right now. Feeling amazingly fortunate.

Just a side note – why does it take me longer to enter America as a US Citizen then it takes to me enter Singapore where all I possess is a lowly employment pass? America needs some help but I feel totally at a loss to decide in which ways I can assist. Singapore might feel small and boring at times but I am stunned by how progressive the place is with the net connectivity, the ease of dealing with taxes and the growth – stunning.

I picked up an iPad in sing just after the iPad 2 was released. My gf is using it like mad now since my bro, @groovemonkey, picked up an iPad 2 for me in SXSW. I hardly used the iPad 1 but I can’t get enough of the iPad 2. Writing this column on it now using iA writer. Love this freaking app. I am also on a plane, in economy, drinking a Jim beam black and ginger ale (sing air rocks for having this booze), but I feel comfortable flipping open my smart cover and banging away on the fake keyboard. I never opened my laptop in economy since it is just too much a pain in the ass.

I have tried the galaxy tab, the xoom (doomed), and some of the clones. Nice if you want the notion of what a cheap pc clone was in the 90′s but just not that elegant. I can’t get emotionally invested.

Apple set the bar high – good luck to the others trying to beat it. Competition is amazing but it stuns me how msft has no play in tablets. Poor Balmer.

And yes – I used to have a newton.

I thought it was amazing.

Peace

As with any large country there is an ecosystem all to its own with nary a care to expanding outside of PH – that is fairly typical of all the large countries in the region. There is a big enough domestic market with high barriers to entry that some companies can just concentrate on the PH market entirely. I would put Sulit in this category – focusing on listings for the PH market. Seems to be taking a fairly dominant share of the c2c category.

Then you have the global players who have fallen from on high to focus on countries or regions where they seem to have taken a large local position, even if by accident, but are going to alter their strategy to focus on a particular regional niche. I would put Multiply in this group. They seem to have a large user base in both Indonesia and the PH market. Seems they are going to focus on ecommerce and primarily b2c. You may recall that both Sulit and Multiply are now majority owned by MIH (Naspers). MIH seems to be focusing on emerging markets ecommerce plays. Time will tell if this pays off but it feels like a sound bet.

If you don’t know who MIH is you can listen to this podcast to get the scoop since these are some heavy hitters.

Recently Multiply announced that Jack Madrid, formerly of Yahoo PH, is joining as the country manager. We will miss Jack and wish him well in his new venture. It will be interesting to see how Multiply heads off in their new direction.

However most of this activity is based on old companies or fairly entrenched ones just maturing and focusing. All good but I am still not seeing anything really exciting when it comes to cool plays in PH. The one company I was really hoping to show the way has chosen to leave Manila and setup shop in Singapore – Insync. They took some money and are moving their HQ to Singers. I can see why but it shows that the funding environment, the employee base and the regulatory/IP environment is probably not a safe bet in the Philippines. This might change but for now in places like Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Philippines – it is probably a safer bet that if you want a regional shot at the champ you are better off heading to Singapore.

Hell even the champ himself see the bennies of taking the fight to Singapore…

and then Startup Digest PH interviews a weirdo…

peace!

Anyway. Lots going on.

First off is a developer event with Globe Labs tomorrow night. Looking forward to meeting people and seeing how I can help. While I was walking through Greenbelt this afternoon I saw this QIR sign for BB users of Globe. I meant to try it but I am not on Globe. Cool to see this type of stuff happening.

Thursday night I will be at roofcamp #6 – looks to be fun. Hope to meet lots of new folks there.

The rest of the week is chock full of meetings.

I have ran into Brian of aloo.ph finally. I was trying to figure out who was behind aloo.ph but it took Mohan over at e27 to make the connection for me. Six degrees of Mohan lately. We had lunch at Myron’s Place in Greenbelt 5. I must say it was a tasty steak and a nice place to chill.

Good call Brian!

Well that is it for now. Gotta get back to work.

Hope to see people at some of the events over the next few days.

cya

I was in Manila for a week and did the rounds. Podcast interview here for all the groupies. Manila was an interesting market since it feels like it should be happening more than it is but the startup scene is very small. I think this has to do with the local domination of telecoms, the lack of an angel network and a quiet hacker scene. Very different from being in Singapore or Malaysia where the Government is throwing money all over the place trying to get things going. I need to dig more in Manila and see if we can help get things like Barcamp going.

Speaking of Barcamp – I am in HCMC right now for Barcamp Saigon. Looks to be a cool event! Hoping to dive a little deeper into the Vietnam scene this weekend.

Since I am in Vietnam let’s talk FaceBook – quite the backlash over the new privacy stuff. It is quite the reversal from what FB originally started as. For me, as the site keeps growing, FB is getting less and less useful. The signal to noise ratio just keeps climbing every month. Everyone is trying to use their personal FB accounts to be the next social marketing star. It gets old fast. I think niche networks might start to get more interesting as FB gets less useful.

Seems simpler plays liek Foursquare and gowalla might get more interesting because they help you with what to do and who to do it with. All this could change of course if FB gets more local and makes location based programming easier but for me – I am starting to delete friends on FB more than I am adding them.

Another possible entrant to the location/review game in Singapore. Will be looking it more soon. Seems similar possibly to Koprol. This is an interesting space since the big guys will focus on Europe and Americas while regional guys will try to build something in their home countries. I am waiting for one of the regional guys to try and take the whole region as a defensive play for when the big boys come to town. Question is will they since getting the local info is not easy.

Another possible biz idea for one of these players is rather than being the end user builder there might be a chance to be the pick and shovel dealer for all the various players trying to build social/location/yelp sites. Someone could be the guy offering all the location data and some sort of promo/ad engine around it. Then the other guys concentrate on building the interfaces, social model and grow the user  base. Right now all these guys are struggling with getting local info and building sites. Might be tough.

I think that is it for now. Gotta bunch of work to do but I need to get better with the blog.

cya

ps. Good to see one of the winners from Open Hack Day with his site up and running. If you are into twitter and Indonesia then you will dig this site: http://twiterus.com/