For the better part of Friday, the Philippine online community was buzzing over a blog post on EllaGanda.com lamenting the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s handling of  relief goods donated to typhoon victims. The blog post showed photos of “relief goods rotting in DSWD warehouses”, allegedly still undelivered to victims due to the agency’s lack of manpower.

When the blog became inaccessible, other sites such as Jenni Epperson’s Mabuhaygirl.multiply.com and Gang Badoy’s abashet: what a glorious time to be free reposted the original entry and photos. Filipino Internet users spread the word via social networks and microblogs such as Twitter, Facebook and Plurk, even making DSWD one of the top Trending Topics on Twitter for a time.

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An online petition is now circulating among Filipino Internet users, urging the management of the Philippine Basketball Association team Burger King to donate the lost income of its suspended player, Wynne Arboleda, to the victims of the recent typhoons in the Philippines.

Arboleda has been suspended for the rest of the season in the country’s premiere professional basketball league for attacking a fan who was heckling him. The suspension without pay means 2.73 million Philippine pesos (around 81,540 Singapore dollars) in lost income for the Burger King player.

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Once more attesting to the fact that social media can be used for socially relevant causes, Yahoo! Philippines has tapped Flickr to create an online photo database of missing persons.

This initiative aims to help families find their loved ones who are still missing as a result of the floods spawned by the typhoons that recently devastated the Philippines, Ondoy (international codename: Ketsana) and Pepeng (Parma).

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