I attended the Microsoft Bloggers VIP Mix last January 28, 2010 for Tech Exchange and my lifestyle blog Animetric's World. It's my first Microsoft event ever so I didn't have the faintest notion of what I was in for.

Had the vast array of IT-related courses been available during my college years, I probably would have ended up working in the IT industry. I've always loved computers and I'm forever inclined to techie and geeky pursuits like html coding, tinkering with the OS of my son's Sony PSP, and playing video games till the wee hours. Yes, I'm a nerd. But since my series of choices didn't exactly lead me down that road, I'm just happy to be able to try out, write, and blog about a wide array of cool gadgets like the Sony VAIO series.

What is Smilds?

That was the question in my head on the way to the Smilds Connect event last January 19, 2010 held at the Hotel Intercontinental. I was one of the fifty bloggers invited and I had no idea what was in store for me.

The program started around 8pm. The Smilds management briefed us for the next couple of hours and as it turns out, Smilds is a complete online store solution for internet sellers.

To put it plainly, let's say you get the Smilds Lite Pack worth P25,000. You get the following:

I'm a working yet hands-on mom. I help out in the family business, write for several publications, and blog plus I tutor my kids and manage the household.

I've been test driving the BlackBerry Curve 8520 since last December 2009. My previous cellphones were all from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Samsung so I really didn't quite know what to expect.

"The new Friendster seems a lot like Facebook," was the first thing I said to Ben Dunn, Friendster's Vice President for the Philippines and Global Head of Brand Experience. He approached our table right after his presentation at the Friendster Blogger Event held last December 3, 2009. Ben asked us what we thought of the new Friendster that he just showed us on video.

Like most Filipinos online, yes, I have a Friendster account and it was my first attempt at social networking. To be honest though, I have not logged on to my Friendster account in a year. My high school and college friends had all migrated to Facebook, and I found that I could not relate with the Friendster's younger user base.

According to Ben, Friendster's target users are in their mid-teens to their early twenties in terms of age, mostly students, and admittedly younger than the Facebook crowd. Aside from sporting a new green logo, Friendster now has games, gifting, classifieds, and a whole roster of features in addition to its photo sharing, blogging, and messaging capabilities. "The key here is really simplicity -- we're trying to keep things simple," says Ben. "By that we mean making everything easy to understand and use."