Wow! For the third time, Bibi's box is a finalist in the Best Latin American Blog category on the Bloggies! First, I'd like to thank all those who voted for this blog on the Eighth Annual Weblog Awards: The 2008 Bloggies, since I hadn't even annoyed people for votes. I really appreciate your support. It makes me a happy Bibi.

However, now that I am one of the finalist, and I really hope that third time is a charm.I would like to ask all of you who visit, read, or just stopped by for a peek, to vote on the 2008 Bloggies for Bibi's box and, if at all possible, to spread some love on your blog, asking people to vote for me. Specially if you are Brazilian. Think about it, I am the only Brazilian there, and a woman, and I think that is something special.

Thanks again for your vote, love and comments. And don't forget to vote until January, 31.

Posted by Bibi on January 24, 2008 09:25 PM in Blogging, Internet ||

Happy New Year! Feliz Ano Novo! Joyeux Année! ¡ Feliz Año Nuevo !

All my best wishes of a great 2008 to all!

PS.: that was my small homage to a colourful new year. And this is Google new year's image, also celebrating the 25 years of TCP/IP.

Posted by Bibi on January 1, 2008 07:18 PM in Blogging ||

The 31ª Mostra Internacional de Cinema (31st São Paulo International Film Festival) started yesterday, and as it has been happening in the last eight years, I will spend the next two week watching films everyday as if there was no tomorrow. However, before it started, I was already busy writing about it and watching films all the days of the week, since the beginning of October on Cinematógrafo, my Portuguese language blog about cinema.

In other words: I won't blog here until the beginning of November, because in between the 5 or 6 films per day I sleep. Yes, it stupid way to spend time, sleeping, but I do that sometimes. And impressively, I will stay away from my (and any other) computer. That's the effect of this time of year on me: I discover there is life beyond the Internet. Until then explore the archives, visit the links, go read a book or go to the cinema.

I hope that all of you have a great time with Halloween or any other parties, events and, of course, films. If you want to find me, go to Cinematógrafo and maybe try the translator on the top, if you don't speak Portuguese.

See you in November!

Posted by Bibi on October 20, 2007 10:54 AM in Blogging, Cinema, Events, São Paulo ||

Tips for conference bloggers is a six-page illustrated guidebook made by Ethan Zuckerman and Bruno Giussani, veterans in conferences. It's availbale in two PDF versions, 6 pages or 3 pages booklet format, and anyone can freely download and use (it's under a Creative Commons license). (via TEDBlog)

Posted by Bibi on October 1, 2007 07:52 PM in Blogging ||

(Almost) All the cool kids are now using micro-blogging tools to communicate with friends, family and / or readers. I'm using too, because I can't stop joining to social networks and all kind of web2.0 tools and sites. I've joined to Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku and some others that I don't remember now. If you are using any of those sites, fell free to add me.

However, I'm not crazy enough to update all those sites. I'm "officially" using Twitter to "micro-blog", to share links I don't post here, like news about technology, events and some other things. Since its integration with GTalk is easy, I'm using the IM to add new messages. I'm also using it more frequently, because my friends are there, and many blogs and sites are using it to share links, news and content too.

I'm using Pownce more to test its features, for now, than to communicate with other people. The site/tool provides a nearest idea of "micro-blogging" than Twitter, in my humble opinion. It's now accepting sharing files, profiles, videos and photos. I just don't use it more, because I forget to open the site, and I don't want to install the software required in this old computer. By the way, I have ten invitations to Pownce that I would like to donate to the regular readers of this blog. If you want one, just post a comment asking for it.

And Jaiku. Well, I don't use it because I don't remember to do it, and I don't have time enough to keep updating it. For those who never use it: it's easy to create an account, easy to use it, and it has some nice features, like add your feeds and send messages using your IM software. The feeds feature can be great and terrible: it can to keep your friends up-to-date, while it automatically adds new info to your profile, and this can be also means overload them with information.

Posted by Bibi on September 18, 2007 04:37 PM in Blogging, Internet, Social Software, Tools ||

If you love animations, you should be a reader of Videos with Bibi. I have been posting there since February and the video blog (vlog) contains, until now, hundreds of videos. There is a bit of everything: documentaries, silent melodramas, horror films, musicals, avant garde films, action, film-noir, ephemeral videos and much more. But I'm here to sell my fish to those who want to watch cartoons and animations. And I think the best way to convince you is showing a list of good reasons. Here it is my list:

- Alexandre Alexeieff pinscreen animations and Animated Commercials. The commercials aren't so wonderful as his pinscreen animations, but still being too beautiful to be just commercials.

- Betty Boop Cartoons: 1932, 1933, 1934 - 1935, 1936 - 1937 and 1938 - 1939.

- Cheburashka and Krokodil Gena: a classic! Cheburashka is probably the most adorable Russian character of all time. It's impossible not look at him and think "aww so cute".

- Dave and Max Fleischer animations: short animations I, short animations II, short animations III, short animations IV, The Cobweb Hotel and Gulliver's Travels.

- Felix The Cat Cartoons: Felix The Cat Cartoons I, II, III and IV.

- Ivo Caprino Short Stop Motion Animations I and II. The great Norwegian puppet animatior is most know for his adaptations of Peter Christen Asbjørnsen's tales.

- Jan Svankmajer Short Films I, II, III, IV and V. Watch them fast, before all them disappear.

- Jirí Barta Animations: the Czech animator plays with stop-motion, classic animation and experimental animation. Bellow, one of his animations, Riddles for a Candy (8min).

- Jiří Trnka short stop-motion films - I, short stop-motion films - II and The Emperor's Nightingale. The Czech Trnka was a master of stop-motion animation. Must-see.

- Leonid Nosyrev Short Animations and the film Laughter and Grief by the White Sea, also by Leonid. The cartoons are all in Russian, but the dialogues aren't so necessary. The last cartoon, a tale about a tiger and a sunflower, is superb.

- L'Idée: directed by Berthold Bartosch, it's an adaptation for Frans Masereel's Die Idee. Very poetic.

- Norman McLaren short animations I, II, III. McLaren dismiss any presentations, right?

- Superman cartoons: all the superman cartoons already blogged here can be watched directly on four posts.

- The Cat Who Walked by Herself: beautiful Russian film based on Rudyard Kipling's short story "The Cat that Walked by Himself".

- The Tell-Tale Heart: a marvellous Edgar Allan Poe's based cartoon from 1953.

- Warner's Private Snafu Cartoons I and Private Snafu Cartoons II were created as educational films for the soldiers during the WWII.

- Winsor McCay animations: Animations I, Animations II and Dream of a Rarebit Fiend.

- Wladyslaw Starewicz: : short stop-motion films. Those animations are from the first two decades of the 20th century.

- Yuri Norstein's animations: a master of Russian animation. His wonderful animations are like poetry.

Posted by Bibi on September 12, 2007 07:00 AM in Animation, Blogging, Blogs, Video ||

Happy Blog Day to all of you. If you have no idea of what this is, here is a brief explanation:

Blog Day was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On that day Bloggers will recommend other blogs to their blog visitors.
With the goal in mind, on this day every blogger will post a recommendation of 5 new blogs. This way, all blog readers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new, previously unknown blogs.

I have to say that it was tough choosing only 5 blogs, so please don't be sad (or mad) if your blog isn't on this list, I love all the blogs on my feeds blogroll in the same way. Maybe not, but I won't tell the true right now. I chose 5 blogs which I don't blog about as much as I want, that I "discovered" this last year, that weren't "old" daily readings, which don't have a huge number of readers and that had some similarity with the subject of this blog. Anyway, here it is:

- Alberto Montt is a fantastic Chilean illustrator with a daily blog (in Spanish). He was previously "blogged", however, his blog keeps making me laugh. I'm suggesting his blog, because I would like to blog of several of his hilarious cartoons and that makes it a great blog read everyday.

- Children's Illustration is written by Julie, who has an excellent taste for illustrations. The blog is not just about illustration for children. She also links to videos, animations and all kinds of lovely images. It's a great for children of all ages and that's why I chose it.

- Coisas ("Things" / "Stuff" in English) is a Portuguese blog full of neat stuff, as the name says. Ana, the blogger, blogs about design, illustration, art, gadgets, funny things, photography and more, much more interesting things. I love it for obvious reasons: we have a similar taste and it always has pretty things to see, and that makes me happy.

- Mira y Calla, which is on vacation, is a Spanish blog about pop culture. The posts always have catchy images and many links, with some explanation about them. Culture, photography, illustration, videos, art, curiosities, there is a bit of everything on it. The most links come from the blogs on the permant blogroll, and I read many of those, but I'm usually surprised with new cool sites.

- No fat clips!!! is a bilingual blog ( English and Italian) with short videos. The opposite of most videoblogs, this one is a blog, and it doesn't have videos embed. It has links to animations, short films and music videos, some information on who created and produced them, and some extra links. Why do I think it's so good? Well, it always gives links to the real creators (and doesn't try to keep the visitors on his own blog), links are frequently update and it's very fun, since I love videos - specially animations.

More BlogDay2007 on Technorati.

Posted by Bibi on August 31, 2007 02:14 PM in Blogging, Blogs ||

Almost all the blogs I read have RSS and that's why I read them. It's easy, and it saves me time. It would be crazy to open more than 200 blogs everyday and check all the last posts, rolling down the page... Too complicated. That's why I just go to my Bloglines account and read the last updates.

The truth is: I don't read all the text of all the feeds I have there. My focus goes to the title of the post and images. If I like them, I read the whole post. I don't think it's fair that some blogs don't provide the complete post in RSS, or most of it. Do they want more visits? Ok, but surely they are losing some readers. I love visits, but I'm also very glad to have my feed readers, because I'm one of them.

I'm writing this because I discovered that some of you aren't happy, since you don't have images. And since this is basically a blog of images what am I doing? Well, I didn't plan these problems, it just happened. I had to ask to the webmaster block the use of images from my blog in other sites, because there were some hotlinkers using the images from this blog and I pay for the bandwidth, so I thought that wasn't very nice. Not all sites are blocked, some feed reader sites and some others are allowed to show images directly.

However, I don't know all the feed readers available and some you are still without images. So, if you read the RSS feeds from this blog and you can't see the images, please post a comment in this post or send me an email ( bibisbox [at] gmail [dot] com) telling me which feed aggregator / reader do you use, to allow it to show the image. Thanks for your attention.

Posted by Bibi on March 9, 2007 11:34 PM in Blogging ||

Dear Net Serviços,

I would like to thank you for your Internet service. Thanks to you I have much more free time to read books, watch films on theaters and scratch my cats back, since I cannot access any websites or post anything.

It has been going on since sunday.

For you readers, I am sorry for the lack of posts. I will try to post later, if dear Net Virtua allows me.

[Posted by Andre, by request]

Posted by Bibi on March 7, 2007 08:58 PM in Blogging ||

Last call for those of you who haven't yet voted for The 2007 Bloggies yet: have until 10:00PM EST today, Febrary 2nd, to vote for your favorites. Please vote for Bibi's box as Best Latin American Weblog. Thank you!

Posted by Bibi on February 2, 2007 03:24 AM in Blogging ||

The site of Seventh Annual Weblog Awards, The 2007 Bloggies, was finally updated with the finalists and Bibi's box is there! Thank you so much to all of you who voted for this blog. I'm very happy to see that a lot of people enjoy what I'm doing, that I'm on the right track helping people the way that I know.

Now I want to once again abuse your generosity and ask all of you, who were so kind, to vote for Bibi's box for Best Latin American Weblog at 2007 Bloggies. I really appreciate all the kind messages, posts and votes. Voting will close at 10:00 PM EST on Friday, February 2. The winners will be posted on Monday, March 12. So if you enjoy this blog, please cast your vote for it!

Truth is, it's a popularity contest and that's why I'm not ashamed to ask for votes and to ask you to spread the word, if you think that this blog deserves to win. Most of the best blogs aren't there. But there are a few that are finalists and I think are well worth your vote:

- Drawn!: Best Canadian Weblog and Best Topical Weblog.,

- FlickrBlog: Best Photography of a Weblog

- Make: Best Craft Weblog

- Daily Kos: Best Weblog About Politics

- Learning Movable Type: Best Web Development Weblog

- Popgadget, Techcrunch and Lifehacker: Best Computers or Technology Weblog, you chose, they are all great.

- Lifehacker: Best Group Weblog and Weblog of the Year

- Metafilter: Best Community Weblog

- !marty finestone’s activitybook: Best New Weblog

- Slashdot: Lifetime Achievement

And Bibi's box: Best Latin American Weblog.

Posted by Bibi on January 26, 2007 02:34 AM in Blogging, Blogs ||

A short post to remind you that today is the last day to nominate your favourite blogs for the Seventh Annual Weblog Awards, a.k.a. Bloggies 2007. One more time I would like to invite my readers to nominate Bibi's box for the categories Best Latin American Weblog and Best-Kept Secret Weblog. Thanks in advance!

PS.: Drawn asked for nominations at "Best Canadian Blog", "Best Topical Weblog" and "Best Group Weblog" but I can't access the site now to check this. We make money not art didn't ask but the blog fits in many categories, like "Best European Weblog", The Cartoonist didn't ask to, but I suggest it to "Best British or Irish Weblog" and PCL LinkDump for "Best European Weblog" and "Best Group Weblog", maybe "Best Entertainment Weblog". I have more suggestions, butI have to go now. One more time, if you have any doubts check my sidebar.

Posted by Bibi on January 10, 2007 05:49 PM in Blogging ||

Happy New Year! Happy 2007! Cheers!

Image from Old Postcards from Brazil, but the message is in Italian, not Portuguese. BTW, Happy New Year from Google too:

Posted by Bibi on January 1, 2007 06:52 PM in Blogging ||

I wish to all of you a
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Posted by Bibi on December 24, 2006 10:17 PM in Blogging, Events ||

Professional bloggers, or those who want to win something other than "fame" while blogging have a new good option, beyond ad banners: ReviewMe. It's a new web site whose idea is to join bloggers and advertisers to reach their goals.

And how does it work? Well, that's very easy. Go to site of ReviewMe and choose whether you are a blogger or advertiser. The forms are easy to fill out, or at least the blogger's form. If you are an advertiser, just choose one, or more, blogs available in the categories that best fit your product - the reviews pays from $40.00.

However, I know that most readers will want to know how it works for bloggers, so let's do it. First: add your blog or blogs in one of the categories available - unfortunately there is no art category. Ad also up to six tags that best describe your blog. And, if it will be approve, wait for the clients to purchase reviews from you. And you decide to accept the review or not - you don't need to review about something that you don't trust or didn't like.

We do not allow advertisers to require a positive review. The vast majority of reviews are measuredly positive, although many do contain constructive criticism. We view this as a bonus: how else can you quickly and cheaply get feedback on a product or service from influences?

Sounds fair, doesn't it? Now, how much do they pay for a review? Well, all reviews that I wrote until today where for free - and I think that will keep being so for a long time, but I write exactly what I think, not more, not less. So, I have no idea whether their price is fair or not: you tell me. For bloggers the reviews will be paid $20.00 to $200.00 for each completed review that you post on your site. Let me explain how they get the price of the review for each blog: it's an average of your's blog punctuation/position in Alexa, Technorati, RSS and ranking (Google I think). It could be better, because I never liked Alexa, but it could be worst too, like just Alexa.

The idea is good, the site design is pretty and very intuitive. Is this going to work? For now I think that the things are going to be slow, since the two parts must know about it and have trust in it. However, this is a great alternative to connect bloggers and advertisers, and we know that blogs are a new growing media, with a bright future, so I bet in a happy end.

Posted by Bibi on November 12, 2006 11:43 AM in Blogging, Internet ||

Answering some e-mails and comments: I'm fine. I'm really fine. I'm just busy with other stuff, like reading, scratching the cats, reading books and comics, studying French, adding books to virtual library on my page LibraryThing and aNobii, listening a lot of music and cooking. Maybe I will back later this week, probably on Friday, after the French test.

I'm also very busy with orkut, because I have 10 communities and some are them are very big, I mean really big, one of those with more than 300.000 users. Nowadays orkut became a very attractive place for spammers. I want to kill the damn spammers, however I just can delete the messages, report them as bogus and wait for the new spams - that they post all the time. This is consuming my time and I'm not having fun, not at all. But there is hope in the end of the tunnel with some new features there.

So don't worry, I'm fine, and I didn't give up from blogging. I'm just giving a break - a not planned one - of all this stuff, ok? You don't need to worry anymore, ok? See you!

Posted by Bibi on October 3, 2006 02:24 PM in About me, Blogging ||

Saturday this blog completed two years of existence and I didn't remember. I just stopped to think about it a few minutes ago and I don't even remember what remind me of that. Am I having a serious problem of amnesia? Well, I didn't remember, and no one else did it either. So what? Let's keep moving, let's keep blogging!

I didn't plan any especial post about it, and now it's too late. And I'm too worried about other things to think about making something special. Let's see what I can do. I love cats, but it isn't Friday. I love chocolate too, but I didn't have time available to make some brigadeiros. I should have made a selection of my favourite entries no? What do you think? Any other idea?

While you think about it, watch something funny, like the Chaplin short comedy The Kid Auto Race in Venice or the Méliès' classic Le Voyage Dans La Lune. Or download them here and here.

Posted by Bibi on May 31, 2006 04:22 PM in Blogging, Cinema ||

Hi, I'm back. Let's start with the good news. Well, the first one is that I'm back, believe or not I'm. The other good news is: I have many new links to post. And, while I wasn't blogging I was uploading videos in Public Domain at Google Video - but now it is a kind of crazy. There are many silent films, early cinema short films, classics of terror, expressionism, commercials, vintage cartoons, early animation films and not so old films, but in public domain too. I'm going to post about them soon.

And now, the bad news. The first and most obvious is the part where I disappeared. Well, personal problems and other things. Second: if you like of any of the videos that I posted at you Tube, including the collection of 60's and 70's French videos, forget it. No didn't get crazy and deleted everything, was more they deleted everything in just one time. And my old account doesn't work anymore. Unfortunately I won't upload them again, but you can find some of those videos at You Tube, Google Video, Daily Motion and other sites.

Anyway, I just wanted to tell you about the videos, before someone else ask again. All the suggestion of old videos to upload at Google Video are welcome. Just let me know if I'm the only crazy for old films or not.

And one last thing: if you want to know more about me, take a look at the project of Bogbrush, In The Chair. This week the interview is with me, yes Bibi! A very "Bibi" interview, about blogging, my blogs, cinema and life. It was a very nice interview and I didn't kill anyone, don't worry. Now, go back to the posts, before someone kick me.

PS.: I need to say thanks to a wonderful Canadian reader that sent me two very cool books from my wish list at Amazon - and just in time for my birthday that are going to be next week! One is a very interesting book about semiotics, feminism and cinema - yes, I like this kind of thing too - and the other one is a damn cool book full of images of pulp books and phrases, called "Bad Girls of Pulp Fiction". I love them, thank you! I wanted to know if I can say the name of the reader, can I?

Posted by Bibi on May 5, 2006 05:38 PM in About me, Blogging ||

A short note, just in case someone is still there: I'm not dead, and I didn't give up this blog, nor am I planning to delete everything or move country and start a new blog. I just needed a time. I wasn't "in the mood" to post anything. I'm blogging for free, for fun and because I enjoy doing this, but I wasn't happy with many many many things and I couldn't find motivation for this blog stuff. Plus: I had to study for a French test and I was also reactivating my blog about cinema, which kept me busy for a few days.

I'm coming back to the blogosphere later, after my class. Until then, go visit This Is Broken A project to make businesses more aware of their
customer experience, and how to fix it. It's a curious blog of broken things, it's very cool and I couldn't resist to the sign below:

Posted by Bibi on March 21, 2006 03:59 PM in Blogging, Blogs ||

Hi, firstly, I would like to say thank you so much for all the visits and comments. That is what makes me keep on blogging.

Now, may I ask you something from you? Don't worry. It's an easy one. Do you have a blog? Do you read this blog? Well, I suppose that most bloggers that read this blog post similar things and since I'm looking out for new blogs to read, I would like to know what is your blog. I could use Technorati, but it is broken. They put my blog as unclamable and it keeps on "eating up" my links, so I don't know where my links come from. Plus sometimes, people don't list this blog on their blogrolls, but read it. I would really like to know.

I's easy and fast: go to the comments section and complete the fields of name, e-mail and url. You don't even need to write a complex comment. A simple "Hi, that's my blog" is more than enough for me. Don't worry that I won't see your comments if you put then on the URL fields. It is actually easier for me, and my spam filter will block you if you put two or more links on the comments field.

Now, if you are not too busy, I have another question: what do you think of a podcast? I was thinking of doing a podcast version, with a slightly different comment. Maybe on a specific theme every 15 days or so... i was just thinking. Maybe a Portuguese version with culture tips... Just let me know what you think. Thank you!

PS.: new posts later.

Posted by Bibi on March 10, 2006 12:02 PM in Blogging ||