StarMars Online » Internet

CALA BOCA GALVAO – the truth

StarMars — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 20:33:30 +0000

Cala boca Galvao – Save the Birds Twitter campaign

What is Cala Boca Galvao?

If you came here looking for a short and accurate answer, here it is.

Short answer: “Cala boca Galvao” is a Portuguese phrase that translates to “Shut up, Galvao” in English, addressed to Brazilian sports commentator Galvão Bueno.

If you’re like me who became curious after seeing the phrase become extremely popular on Twitter and did some Google search, here’s my explanation.

Long answer: “Cala boca Galvao” became the top worldwide trending topic on Twitter with tremendous amounts of related tweets coming in every minute. Reading the tweets, I got confused with its real meaning. Some tweets mention Lady Gaga; others, that of a bird. I already know that it’s a foreign language but didn’t know that it was Portuguese. So I did some searching, and found a series of internet pranks directed at Galvao Bueno, a Brazilian football commentator.

Prank 1: that “Cala boca Galvao” is an endangered species of bird

This is probably what drove droves of people tweeting the phrase. It supposedly refers to a rare breed of bird in Brazil and to save it, you only need to make one tweet. “One second to tweet. One second to save a life.” Just watch this video and you’ll see.

Prank 2: that “Cala boca Galvao” is the new Lady Gaga song

Honestly speaking, this one is believable. The song makes use of GaGa-Galvao alliteration, which has a nice catchy tune to it. The song is entirely about the bird though. One plus factor for this prank is how people say that this and that artist will be in Lady Gaga’s Cala boca Galvao music video. Funny!

Lady Gaga’s Cala boca Galvao music video, song

I have some online Brazilian friends so I asked them. “Cala boca Galvao” is indeed popular in Brazil, and it pertains to Galvão Bueno. In light of the 2010 World Cup in which Galvao was a commentator, the phrase got extremely popular when some pranks telling him to shut up sprang up. When I asked my friends why people want the sports caster to shut up, they said that “he was annoying” and that he was “dumb.” I say “aouhiauehou.”

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Flame the Web | Burn websites as you please

StarMars — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 17:58:48 +0000

The website of the How to Train Your Dragon movie lets you Flame the Web. Flame as in fire. Burn your own websites or make fun of others’. No one’s gonna stop you.

This little trick adds some burn patterns to a screenshot of any website. There are four dragons to choose from, each with a different way of burning a website resulting in different burn patterns.

There are three ways of doing this.

Go to the official site http://flameit.howtotrainyourdragon.com/, click the “Flame the Web” at the right and enter the URL of the site. This may not work on some sites.
Use the bookmarklet. Drag the “Drag Me” button to your bookmarks bar. Go to any website and press the bookmarklet.
Just type the direct URL on the address bar. The URL is http://flameit.howtotrainyourdragon.com/?p={full site URL}. For example to burn this blog enter this on the address bar: http://flameit.howtotrainyourdragon.com/?p=http://www.starmarsonline.com/

After playing around, this is how my blog looked like:

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We are the World 25 for Haiti

StarMars — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 00:37:23 +0000

We are the World 25 for Haiti

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Google’s Super Bowl commercial

StarMars — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:28:49 +0000

This is the commercial of Google that was shown during the Super Bowl last night. It is entitled “Parisian Love” and it tells the story of an American that finds love in Paris.

Following the YouTube video below, I noticed that this was actually posted on November 19, 2009 and is just one of 7 (so far) Search Stories, all made by Google. The channel’s About Me says:

Every search is a quest. Every quest is a story. These videos show that anyone can do anything when paired with the power of search.

Telling stories using Google searches – how unique!

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Manny Villar’s online political ads

StarMars — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:55:22 +0000

Manny Villar is everywhere. With the backing of his business empire, he appears in any form of media. We already know his numerous TV ads on any time slot. His online presence is strong too with the use of social media sites and online advertisements. He is wise to use such media.

These are the online political ads of Manny Villar I have seen so far.

Google Adsense

Facebook

YouTube

Yahoo

All the advertisements above point to Manny Villar’s Facebook fan page at http://www.facebook.com/mannyvillar.

How much has he spent in advertisements and endorsements so far? 2 billion pesos from what I’ve read (could be outdated).

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10 Romantic Valentine’s Day ideas

StarMars — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:05:02 +0000

You can never be too cheesy on Valentine’s Day.

Show your lover your mushy side, your hunger for passion, your weakness to your partner’s affection, your desire for love. After all, it’s Valentine’s Day.

This coming Valentine’s Day, show your partner how much you love him/her with these romantic Valentine’s Day ideas.

Order a pizza and ask to have it cut into a heart shape before it is delivered to your home.
When your partner is sitting at a table or desk, come up behind him/her and give her a back, shoulder and head massage. Finish with a gentle kiss on the cheek.
If you are not with your partner on Valentine’s Day, photograph your hand and send it to your partner through e-mail or celphone with the message: “I miss you. Let’s hold hands.”
Prepare the bathtub before your partner takes a bath. Scatter rose petals across the water and let them float. As your partner enjoys the water, serve champagne and chocolates before joining her.
If it rains on Valentine’s Day, go out in the streets with your partner and walk together. Have fun, jump in puddles and get totally saturated. Kiss her and taste the water on her face while you hold her close. When you get back home, have a hot shower then share a warm drink.
On the midnight of Valentine’s Day, arrange your backyard and organize a picnic. Spread a picnic blanket on the ground and get some snacks, chocolates and champagne. Lie down on the blanket with your partner and gaze up at the stars together.
If your partner has to leave the house on Valentine’s Day, pack a small gift into the corner of her bag.
If your partner has long hair, take the time to brush it using long slow strokes. This is particularly effective after she has had a shower or when she is getting ready for bed.
On the night of Valentine’s Day, go inside your bedroom alone. Lock the door and make sure that your partner is not inside. Leave the key on something easily noticeable with a strip of paper wrapped around it saying: “The Key To My Heart.”
Send your partner a Valentine’s Day card with your personalized message. In large fonts, write “I thought of you today, and it made me smile.”

Remember: it doesn’t have to be Valentine’s Day to be extra-romantic to your lover.

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Nerd Venn Diagram

StarMars — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:45:30 +0000

This Nerd Venn Diagram tries to differentiate terms similar to the word “nerd.” Geek, dork, dweeb or nerd? Take it however you want but it’s fun to give it a thought or two.

The three criteria do not need much explanation. Intelligence is how smart a person is. Obsession is the extreme passion for intellectual activities. Social ineptitude pertains to limited social and communication skills.

To be in the diagram, you must possess at least two traits. We would all agree that being intelligent is a good trait. Obsession has a negative connotation but having more knowledge as a result of your obsession is a good thing. Social ineptitude isn’t necessarily bad, but it is stereotyped and perceived as such.

Giving it some thought…

and removing my previously perceived ideas of these words…

A geek is someone who is always on the pursuit of knowledge and has the brains for it. Thus, he learns quickly.

A dork is the kid at the corner, buried in his books. He isn’t noticeably good at anything.

A dweeb is mysterious. You don’t see him study or mingle often but he gets high grades.

A nerd is a smart, talented man. His obsession to learn more leaves him no time to socialize.

For the sake of this post, let’s say that the diagram is true. Which part of the diagram do you belong in? I, myself am at the mid.

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Google Chrome now has extensions

StarMars — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:31:47 +0000

Finally! Google Chrome now has extensions. This one important feature makes Chrome a full-fledged web browser. Extensions allow third-party developers to write their own codes to extend the capabilities of the browser.

And this is what makes Firefox great. Its extensive list of add-ons lets you do many things from within your browser. Google Chrome is open-source like Mozilla Firefox so we can expect lots of add-on development in the future.

The bookmark sync allows you to save your bookmarks on your Google Docs account so you can access it anywhere.

There are already many Google Chrome extensions out. I’ve listed down below the some extensions I find interesting:

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The Hero – a Thank You movie

StarMars — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:21:42 +0000

You or someone you know can be a hero!

This site lets you ‘make a thank you movie’ entitled “The Hero – a movie about you or someone you know.” Upload a picture and watch it being presented in many ways — billboards, national TV, art exhibition, etc.

Trust me. The resulting video is awe-inspiring!

en.tackfilm.se is in Swedish but it has English subtitles. From what I have learned, it was originally made to thank Swedish citizens for paying their TV License fee coz apparently “everyone who owns, rents or borrows a television receiver has to pay for a TV License”.

I came across this site while reading Angel Locsin’s tweets. The video used a picture of her TV character Darna, a local Filipino superhero which is perfect for the video. You can easily guess my reaction after watching it.

Make a Thank You movie of your friend and tell him “I have something great to reveal!”.

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on the Crunchies 2009

StarMars — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 20:25:18 +0000

Techcrunch has recently awarded the winners of the annual Crunchies. Techcrunch is among the top technology blogs and competitions like these not only show the current trends on the web but also give the newcomers much needed publicity.

The winners were determined by online voting – one vote per IP address per day. I don’t know about this but I think there should be a team of professionals whose votes had more weight making the online voting only a percentage of the final tally.

Facebook won in the Best Overall Startup category. No surprises because it is still the leading social network. Twitter came in at second with its many improvements and explosive growth in 2009.

The Best New Product of 2009 is Bing, the search engine of Microsoft. Its launch (or relaunch) last year was big news, being a Microsoft product and all. And the name Bing? It got me wondering why they changed the name from the already recognized Live brand.

Other categories saw popular nominees taking the win.The people awards were executives from other nominees. The most interesting category, at least for me was the Best Time Sink application.

Google and Microsoft products were abundant as well as Facebook-related ones. Farmville won the Best Social App award and Zynga was a finalist in the Best Overall Startup. Mobile applications also dominated some of the categories.

I haven’t heard/seen/read about some of the nominees so I’m glad these new applications were given the spotlight.

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