Tawad is one letter away from Tawag

There was a time when I got hooked with Globe's Tawad service. Its a mobile bidding program where users bid for a particular item. The lowest and unique bid (no other bid like it) wins the bidding and that's the price to be paid for the item. I have a friend who got himself a Wii for P3.21. My ex being the geek he is came up with a java application in his cellphone to facilitate his "tawad" activities. He would input a range of prices to be sent to Globe en masse and just load P250 every time. It made me wonder if it was already gambling what he/we did. We would rationalize the activity as not being beholden to chance since we would strategize our bids - although they had no basis since we didn't know what the lowest bid was at the moment. It was really a matter of chance, whether or not we would get outbid. I wonder how much Globe made out of that one. Considering people would only find out that there is already a similar bid only after they've sent in a paid bid themselves. I wonder if PCSO should take on a similar business model. :) Considering the number of cellphone users in this country, mobile gambling would definitely be a big hit. Come to think of it, my ex should develop that tawad application and then sell it.