The text reads:

You are invited to test a new Apple iPad! Because of the big hype around the iPad, several companies are giving away iPads for review purposes as soon as they are available.

Yes, you really can get a new iPad, but only for a limited time, so be sure to enter right now!

It’s quick and easy, just follow these 3 simple steps :

Step 1: Become a Fan. Click the button below and Step 2 will be revealed.

Out of curiosity, I clicked on “Become a Fan” and steps 2 and 3 were shown:

IN ORDER TO COMPLETE THE REGISTRATION, the new fan is asked to invite all his/her friends to become fans and to copy a piece of javascript code when doing so. Being skeptical, I refused to disturb my friends and possibly expose them to a scam.

Instead, I simply clicked on the “3″ button and a new window opens:

“Sorry, this offer is unavailable in your country. You are now being redirected to a similar offer that is available in your country.”

In a second or two, I was brought to a site with lots of smiley icons. Before the page could fully load, I closed it.

HOW GULLIBLE CAN PEOPLE GET? As of now, there are over 6,000 fans on that page - an increase of a few hundreds since I first viewed the page. One of its earlier variants iPad Research Center – Test & Keep It had over 240,000 fans. By the way, the “comments”/”testimonies” on the promo page were not real. That’s just an inserted image. And I’ve of course removed myself from being a fan of the page.

Other variations:

• Apple iPad Market Research Testing: Test and keep and iPad today
• Testers Wanted: Test New iPad, Keep It
• iPad Research Program – Test It and Keep It!
• iPad Research Center – Test & Keep It

Beware too of scams galore on Facebook that promise freebies and may end up making you pay (literally) instead. For example, “Walmartstores.com: Gift Card Sponsor Offer Scam“.

As the blogger at blog.thequonk.com put it:

Be discerning. A marketing firm that is truly offering 10,000 free iPads should have enough money in their budget to put together an attractive, well-designed, correctly-functioning website and not rely just on Facebook as a marketing tool. I admit, Facebook is a pretty good place to start but it’s not the only place to go. Why do they not have an external website? Or the more obvious, why is there no company information? Founded in 2010? I don’t know what information it’s asking you for in the ‘Become a Tester’ application but you might want to change your Privacy Settings for future ‘deals’. iPad is the new toy and phishers know that. Read between the lines before you sign your life away for a free iPad. Make sure it is legit then you can sign your life away. =D

I’m in the midst of a really important and urgent project. So, taking a break now.

• A man saw a photo of himself posted on the city Police Department’s Facebook fan site in connection with a robbery he didn’t commit. He went to the police station to correct the problem, and the information he gave police led to the arrest of a 30-year-old man police said they believe is the real robber. — HomeTownAnnapolis.com, 18 October 2009
• A 26-year-old fugitive was caught in Cancun, Mexico after he told his Facebook friends, including a former Justice Department official, that he was living in paradise there. — The Guardian, 14 October 2009
• A 33-year-old clubber who attacked a man with a bottle has been jailed Portsmouth, UK, after his victim tracked him down using the Facebook social networking site. — BBC News, 08 October 2009
• A 26-year-old burglar was caught in Rome, Italy because he logged onto Facebook during the break-in. — Telegraph, 03 October 2009
• A 19-year-old Pennsylvania man was arraigned on a charge of daytime robbery in Berkeley County, USA because he used the victim’s computer to check his Facebook status during the robbery. — The Journal, 16 September 2009
• [Feb 2010 update]:  The Singapore Police Force has a Police Appeal photo album entitled “Police Appeal: Do you know these people?” on Facebook. The photos were apparently added about nine months ago!

What about other social media?

“Boston police using Twitter and Facebook to track down bike thieves” — Mashable, 20th July 2009

“The next time you think about breaking and entering, you might want to consider that police departments are now savvy to social media and will use the power and reach of the web to catch you… the Los Angeles Police Department has just released surveillance video from a break-in that took place at Lindsay Lohan’s Hollywood Hills home on Sunday morning. Their method of conveyance— YouTube.” — Mashable, 26th August 2009

Recognize anyone in the video below?

See Also:

• Use of social networks in investigations on Wikipedia
  

CAUTION:

• Facebook scammers latest trend in cyber thievery — Sunday Gazette Mail, 18th October 2009
• Careless Facebook use can get you robbed too. — Mashable, 27th August 2009

Summary:
1. Structured Web (a.k.a. Structured / Linked Data)
2. Real-Time Web
3. Personalization
4. Mobile Web & Augmented Reality
5. Internet of Things

Top 10 U.S. Sites, July 2009; source: comScore

Top 10 U.S. Sites, July 2008; source: comScore

THE WORD “SOCIAL” in social media says it all. When one participates in SOCIAL media, you’re supposed to be “social” — be sociable or at the very least, ”human”. Being human means having a face, a proper name (or nickname), and not a generic product/service name.

I’m continually amazed by the number of comments posted here that have silly inhuman usernames such as “car dvds”, “security”, “printing”, “jokes”, “teacher”, “attorney”, “liability law”, etc. Many of these commenters also write very inane stuff such as, “nice article thank you for sharing” – which can be posted on any blog and basically says nothing. Haha, very smart and very stupid at the same time. Because this means that you are making zero or even negative impact here, on the blog owner as well as on the other blog visitors. Your so-called “social interaction” or “social presence” neither appeals to the mind nor the heart.

So, HELLO! Please get real and be human here. Otherwise, SHHHHOOOOOO! Go away and good riddance! Inhuman interactions are not welcome here.

See Also: Common Social Media Mistakes

To determine this relationship, the study focused on 100 companies from the 2008 BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands survey and the various social media platforms they used like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, wikis, and forums… After examining the companies and their social media activity levels, the brands were ranked on an “engagement scale” where scores ranged from a high of 127 to a low of 1. Those brands that were the most engaged saw their revenue grow over the past year by 18% while the least engaged brands saw losses of negative 6%.

The study grouped the brands into one of four engagement profiles that related to the number of channels they’re involved in and how deep that involvement is. At the top of the list are “mavens,” the brands heavily engaged in seven or more social media channels – like Starbucks and Dell, for instance. “Butterflies” are like wannabe “mavens,” and are also engaged in seven or more channels but are spread too thin, investing in some channels more so than others. “Selectives” focus on six or fewer channels but engage customers deeply in the ones they’ve chosen. Finally, there are “wallflowers,” or brands engaged in six or fewer channels with below-average engagement; these include companies like McDonalds and BP.

In the Morgan Stanley report (summarized on ReadWriteWeb and available here courtesy of the Financial Times), 15-year-old intern Matthew Robson says today’s teens aren’t into traditional media (think TV, radio, newspapers).  For example, they don’t bother reading “pages and pages of text” (newspapers) when they could instead “watch the news summarized on the internet or TV”.  They watch less TV than ever before, thanks to online streaming services like BBC’s iPlayer. When commercials come on, teens simply change the channel. While they occasionally tune into radio stations, they prefer online sites like Last.fm where they can stream music ad-free and, more importantly, pick the playlist – not some unknown DJ.

Most teens are into the Internet. They use Facebook for social networking, search and research topics with Google, watch videos on YouTube, and download music for their iPods from file-sharing sites. Teens do like viral campaigns but see banner ads and pop-ups as annoying and pointless. They tend to ignore ads entirely and never click through. Teens also tend to use phones simply for talking and texting. They also share music files with friends using Bluetooth, since the service is free and most phones now support it. They do not own smartphones or engage in video messaging or calling, due to cost. They don’t bother with mobile email either.

However, despite interest in new media, most teens see no point in using Twitter. “Most have signed up for the service,” notes Robson, “but then just leave it as they realize that they are not going to update it” apparently because “no one is viewing their profile”. Besides, to update Twitter via text message takes credit (cell phone text plans) and they’d rather use that credit to text their friends. Robson’s report wasn’t based on any sort of statistical analysis, “just good ol’ fashioned teenage honesty”.

ACCORDING TO THE PMN REPORT, conducted in May among 200 Gen Y-ers (people born during the 80s and 90s)—mostly students from Pace University—only 22 percent are using Twitter although 99 percent maintain at least one profile on a social network. Of those who did use Twitter, 85% said they follow friends, 54% follow celebrities, 29% follow family members and 29% follow companies. Of the 99% of respondents who belonged to social-networking sites, 89% said they had installed an application on their profile page. Of the 38% who owned an Apple iPhone or iPod touch, 53% had downloaded games.

PMN co-founder Michael Della Penna said, “If [18-24 year olds] are texting, using social networks, what is the social value of Twitter?” To capitalize on the Gen Y demographic, marketers have to define the benefits of using Twitter, he said, emphasizing how users can make new friends and followers as well as connect with experts (and celebrities, and celebrity experts) “that you normally wouldn’t have the opportunity to meet.”

Meanwhile, a Nielsen Online report said that majority of Twitter users are quitting the service after one month of registration. “Currently, more than 60 percent of U.S. Twitter users fail to return the following month, or in other words, Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent. For most of the past 12 months, pre-Oprah, Twitter has languished below 30 percent retention.”

By contrast, “even when Facebook and MySpace were emerging networks like Twitter is now, their retention rates were twice as high. When they went through their explosive growth phases, that retention only went up, and both sit at nearly 70 percent today.”

Twitter has nearly 14 million new users in March in addition to its other clients. However, Nielsen says that “a retention rate of 40 percent will limit a site’s growth to about a 10 percent reach figure.” With this low retention and low popularity among young users, some communication experts said that Twitter’s fame may be short-lived.

Twitter is a social networking website where people can post messages of up to 140 characters – known as tweets – that can be seen by other users who subscribe to their feed. Its growth has been described as “explosive” and it has become the poster child of social networking sites, particularly among media companies.

7 AUGUST AFTERNOTE: Statistics from Nielsen’s NetView Audience Measurement Service (July 2009) confirmed that “Teens don’t Tweet: Twitter’s Growth Not Fueled by Youth“.

David Armano observed in his blog at Harvard Business Today “a fundamental truth to social media that many organizations underestimate — being social means having real live people who actively participate in your initiatives.  It’s difficult to automate and a challenge to scale, but it can also help move your business forward in ways that produce leveraged outcomes such as new/better products or services.”

He also noted that seeding, feeding, and weeding all take place after any social initiative has been launched:

• Seeding. Investing to grow your effort into a healthy ecosystem that can produce data, insights or even new ideas. People will be required in order to do this.
• Feeding. Feeding the media with a steady stream of content. Some of this can be automated… but there has to be some editorial judgment made for every piece of content and functionality. People are required for that.
• Weeding. A productive social business design will require efforts to prune and weed out material that can inhibit its growth (just like a garden). In some cases, automated moderation services can do this–but in others people will be required to ensure that interactions are productive..

1. You didn’t use your real name. Facebook will find you and spit you out.
2. You joined too many groups. (The maximum limit is 200 groups per user.)
3. You posted too many messages on a wall or in a group. E.g. Guy Kawasaki had his account disabled–in his case for “excessive evangelism.”
4. You posted in too many groups, too many user’s walls. (That’s what spammers do, silly.)
5. You friended too many people. (Not so long ago this was a prime cause of disabled accounts, but Facebook has instituted a maximum of 5000 friends that should protect you from yourself.)
6. Your school/organization affiliation is doubtful.
7. You’re poking too many people. (Beware the odd FB app that pokes on your behalf.)
8. You advertised your app on wall posts.
9. You used duplicate text in multiple messages.
10. You are a cow, dog, or library.
11. You are under 18 years old and not part of a High School group.
12. You wrote offensive content.
13. You scraped information off Facebook. E.g. Facebook bots disabled Robert Scoble’s account.

ACCORDING TO MARI SMITH, here are more possible reasons your account may be deactivated:

1. You send “too many” friend requests in one day/session.
2. You make “too many” wall posts in one day/session – especially with verbatim content and with links.
3. You copy and paste the same friend request message “too many” times.
4. You send too many identical emails to individual friends and/or friend lists*.
5. You message your Group members “too many” times.
6. You message your Event invitees “too many” times.

.
Recommended action steps:

1. Take your time to build up a strategic network of friends on Facebook. Focus on quality, not quantity.
2. Send no more than approximately 20 new friend requests at any one time. Also, be sure to mix up the friend request messages.
3. Use your own opt-in email system.
4. Build out your Facebook Page.
5. Include Facebook in your overall marketing strategy. Don’t put all your social networking “eggs” in one basket. Build up a following on Twitter, FriendFeed, Plaxo, LinkedIn, etc.
6. Remember there was life before Facebook.

.
SEE ALSO:

• Facebook’s official Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.
• Account Disabled discussion on Faceboook.

IN CONTRAST, 9% (not 28% as above) are gay, 3% are mostly gay, 6% are bisexual, 19% mostly straight, 61% straight and 2% others, according to a similar poll by Dave Munger on his “Cognitive Daily” blog:

According to “Sexual Behavior and Selected Health Measures: Men and Women 15-44 Years of Age, United States, 2002” (cited by The Neurocritic but link is broken now):

Sexual orientation

In response to a question that asked, “Do you think of yourself as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or something else?” 90 percent of men 18-44 years of age responded that they think of themselves as heterosexual, 2.3 percent (not 28% or even 9% as above) of men answered homosexual, 1.8 percent bisexual, 3.9 percent “something else,” and 1.8 percent did not answer the question. Percents for women were similar.

Is there a selection bias, as claimed by The Neurocritic (linked above)?

selection bias

Selection bias comes in two flavors: (1) self-selection of individuals to participate in an activity or survey, or as a subject in an experimental study; (2) selection of samples or studies by researchers to support a particular hypothesis.

If so, how much of a bias is there?

Is this also an indication that more gays and bisexuals are active online (as compared to straights), especially on Twitter (a simple microblogging tool), as compared to Cognitive Daily (which carries daily posts on psychology, a ‘heavier’ subject)? 

ANYWAY, HOW RELIABLE ARE ONLINE POLLS? According to Slate, online polls are NOT an accurate measure of public opinion because of the following reasons:

1. Respondents are not randomly selected. Poll organizers mailed ballots to people on a list of names.
2. Socioeconomic bias. Many have criticized online polling because Internet users tend to be wealthier, more educated, and more male than the population at large.
3. Questions and answers are always given in the same order. Pollsters speak of both the “primacy effect” and the “recency effect,” meaning that the first and last choices are more likely to be chosen, particularly when there is a long list of possible answers. In addition, the order in which questions are given can affect the respondents’ answers.

.

Other factors could include:

.

And just two more questions: “How gay is Facebook?” and “How gay is the Internet?”

Hi jktan,

We’ve noticed that your slideshow on SlideShare has been getting a LOT of views in the last 24 hours. Great job … you must be doing something right.

Why don’t you tweet or blog this? Use the hashtag #bestofslideshare so we can track the conversation.

Congratulations,
-SlideShare Team

Upon checking my slideshow on this blog and on SlideShare.net, I found that the views were 50087 views as of today!

On second thoughts though, to receive a message like this on 1 April… Hmmmm…. What do you think?

1. Event schedule :

• Research - Note what you want to see and get a sense of what you might ask and/or decide what the business value of your interaction at the session might be.

2. Google Blogsearch and Technorati :

• Research - Look for event references to the event, company announcements, signs of business opportunity.

3. Google News and Google searches (in addition to 2. above) :

• Research – Look for industry news around the event, to understand what might be impacting the people you’re mingling with.  

4. Web pages & Site Links :

• Research – of the exhibitors and sponsors for the event. Are they a prospective vendor/client for you? Any business value in meeting any of them?

5. Flickr :

• Research - Look for recent pictures of attendees or other people you hope to meet at the event.

6. Blogs :

• Research - of the prospective attendees or business people for ideas of how things are going in their lives or in their businesses…. It’s free intelligence before a meeting.
• Content Prep - Put up a few post-dated posts and have a great post launch on the day of the event.

Consider writing posts that might help you form conversations at the event. For instance, if you’re looking to work with restaurants, write a blog post about how you’d help restaurants improve sales. Another example: blog about people you know who might be at the event that you hope to connect with and write about what you might want to talk with them about. For other examples, see Brogan’s 100 blog topics. This way, people who might investigate your blog ahead of time can know what you’re thinking about.

Consider making a video about something and posting it to your blog. Videos will give people an even better opportunity to observe you and see what you’re about. It might also help with the people recognition factor, as seeing you in motion might improve their chance of seeing you at an event.

Sometimes an event has a blog. It might be neat to see if you can guest post on it. That might up your chance of meeting folks at the event.

7. Facebook/Twitter Searches & Streams :

• Research – See if anyone’s talking about the event you’re attending, to determine if you want to follow them and start conversations ahead of the event. Look for the personal news top of mind of the people you’ll say hi at the conference.
• Content Prep –  If you’re looking to connect at the event, some of your content should be outreach related, via services like Twitter or Facebook. Message the world using the event’s hash tag (if it has one), and/or the city/state (or province, etc) where the event is held. Thus, people using Twitter Search or poking around via Facebook might catch you in a search and engage you.
• Promo - Send message saying that you’ll be visiting ____ conference in ____ (city) and let people know you’re coming. See if you can strike up friendships ahead of time. Maybe mention some of the stuff you’re looking to do, business-wise.

8. LinkedIn :

• Research – Look for the city where you’ll be attending, and/or for any of the speakers’ or exhibitors’ names to see their professional profile.
• Promo – Send some personal emails to people that you might want to meet in the target city. They don’t necessarily have to meet you at the conference, but you might be able to schedule coffee.

Other Prep

1. Business cards - Order fresh ones. Go to somewhere like Overnight Prints and pick up some new cards. Here’s the thing: make the NAME part very large. Make your primary mode of requested contact come first. Make it VERY clear what you do for business. Make sure you add the kind of offering you’re putting out there for the event (or for the next several events, if that makes sense).
2. Laptop – Backup  before you travel. Consider any extra batteries or power supplies you might need to bring with you.
3. If you’re thinking of liveblogging the event, prepare ahead of time (here’s a great article at Web Worker Daily about that).
4. If you’re going to take lots of photos or videos at the event, check your gear to make sure you’ve got everything (charger, media transfer tools, spare whatevers).
5. If you’ve got a business offer to promote at an event, practice and practice and practice how you’re going to talk about it. Make it crisp, clear and easy to say. Practice believing in yourself.
6. Remember that not meeting someone at an event isn’t always the end of the world. There are other chances, other times. Just the same, if it’s the kind of event where people have traveled to be there, take every opportunity to reach out. It’s harder to recreate an opportunity once everyone’s gone home.
7. Remember to give your family a bit of extra love before leaving for the event. Take them out to dinner, and/or give the little ones some extra fun. Make a game of showing where you’ll be via Google Maps, and switch to Satellite or Street View to show them the visuals instead of just the map. Give everyone a chance to connect while you’re on the trip via Skype video, so they can stay in touch. Easily.

In the February 2009 post, Rubel commented:

“Yet many, particularly in PR, still treat ordinary citizens, traditional journalism and branded content as distinct islands of media. Going forward, it’s best to see them as a contiguous archipelago.

“Consider that in 2008 some 58 percent of newspapers featured some form of user-generated content on their sites, according to the Bivings Group. This is up from just 24 percent in 2007. The mix includes: user-generated photos (58 percent), homegrown video (18 percent) and articles (15 percent). Meanwhile, the number of newspaper sites that are allowing readers to comment on articles has more than doubled to 75 percent.

“On the other side of the coin, we’ve seen time and again that social networks like Facebook, Friendfeed and Twitter are now essential sources of news and information for millions.”

This brings us to the social media ethics question. In the October 2008 post, Rubel wrote:

“First, all things social are media and all things media are now social – so I am not sure what “social media” is any more.

“More importantly, social media marketing also implies that social networks, blogs and other like channels are advertising venues. They’re not. They’re public spaces just like our great National Parks. We must respect them as such. Otherwise we’re going to pollute the environment and make them less enjoyable for everyone - especially the citizens who thrive there, just like the amazing ecosystem that thrives in places like Yellowstone…

“Social media marketing works best when it’s integrated into the experience and takes a “win-win” approach.”

As quoted by William Taylor in Fast Company:

The biggest problem with mass-market advertising, Godin says, is that it fights for people’s attention by interrupting them. A 30-second spot interrupts a “Seinfeld” episode. A telemarketing call interrupts a family dinner. A print ad interrupts this article. “The interruption model is extremely effective when there’s not an overflow of interruptions,” Godin says. “But there’s too much going on in our lives for us to enjoy being interrupted anymore.”

The new model, he argues, is built around permission. The challenge for marketers is to persuade consumers to volunteer attention – to “raise their hands” (one of Godin’s favorite phrases) – to agree to learn more about a company and its products. “Permission marketing turns strangers into friends and friends into loyal customers,” he says. “It’s not just about entertainment – it’s about education.”

Finally, as Seth Godin put it in his blog:

Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them… Permission is like dating. You don’t start by asking for the sale at first impression. You earn the right, over time, bit by bit…

In order to get permission, you make a promise. You say, “I will do x, y and z, I hope you will give me permission by listening.” And then, this is the hard part, that’s all you do. You don’t assume you can do more. You don’t sell the list or rent the list or demand more attention. You can promise a newsletter and talk to me for years, you can promise a daily RSS feed and talk to me every three minutes, you can promise a sales pitch every day (the way Woot does). But the promise is the promise until both sides agree to change it. You don’t assume that just because you’re running for President or coming to the end of the quarter or launching a new product that you have the right to break the deal. You don’t.

HOW DID INSTITUTIONS DESIGNED FOR LEARNING become so widely hated by people who love learning? It’s been almost two years (spring 2007) since Dr Michael Wesch of Kansas State University invited the 200 students in his “Introduction to Cultural Anthropology” class to tell the world what they think of their education by helping him script a video for YouTube.

The result was the disheartening portrayal of disengagement below (viewed almost 3 million times worldwide as of today):

LAST OCTOBER, Dr Wesch wrote, “Despite my role in the production of the video, and the thousands of comments supporting it, I recently came to view the video with a sense of uneasiness and even incredulity. Surely it can’t be as bad as the video seems to suggest, I thought… But when I walked into my classroom for the first day of school two weeks ago I was immediately reminded of the real problem now facing education. The problem is not just ‘written on the walls’. It’s built into them.”

The problem

“The video seemed to represent what so many were already feeling, and it became the focal point for many theories… Most blamed technology, though for very different reasons… luddites imagine students to be distracted and superficial while techno-optimists see a new generation of hyper-thinkers bored with old school ways…

“Texting, web-surfing, and iPods are just new versions of passing notes in class, reading novels under the desk, and surreptitiously listening to Walkmans… despite appearances, our classrooms have been fundamentally changed. There is literally something in the air, and it is nothing less than the digital artifacts of over one billion people and computers networked together collectively producing over 2,000 gigabytes of new information per second… Classrooms built to re-enforce the top-down authoritative knowledge of the teacher are now enveloped by a cloud of ubiquitous digital information where knowledge is made, not found, and authority is continuously negotiated through discussion and participation. In short, they tell us that our walls no longer mark the boundaries of our classrooms.

“…The walls have become so prominent that they are even reflected in our language, so that today there is something called “the real world” which is foreign and set apart from our schools. When somebody asks a question that seems irrelevant to this real world, we say that it is “merely academic.” Not surprisingly, our students struggle to find meaning and significance inside these walls. They tune out of class, and log on to Facebook.”

The solution

“Fortunately, the solution is simple. We don’t have to tear the walls down. We just have to stop pretending that the walls separate us from the world, and begin working with students in the pursuit of answers to real and relevant questions…

“We can acknowledge that most of our students have powerful devices on them that give them instant and constant access to this cloud (including almost any answer to almost any multiple choice question you can imagine). We can welcome laptops, cell phones, and iPods into our classrooms, not as distractions, but as powerful learning technologies. We can use them in ways that empower and engage students in real world problems and activities, leveraging the enormous potentials of the digital media environment that now surrounds us. In the process, we allow students to develop much-needed skills in navigating and harnessing this new media environment, including the wisdom to know when to turn it off. When students are engaged in projects that are meaningful and important to them, and that make them feel meaningful and important, they will enthusiastically turn off their cellphones and laptops to grapple with the most difficult texts and take on the most rigorous tasks.”

Do you know that you can turn some (if not all) the notifications off? And that you can also change your privacy settings?

THERE ARE SEVEN THINGS that users like you and I can turn off (or on again) in Facebook:

1. Privacy > Profile: Control who can see your profile and personal information.
2. Privacy > Search: Control who can search for you, and how you can be contacted.
3. Privacy > News Feed and Wall: Control what stories about you get published to your profile and to your friends’ News Feeds.
4. Privacy > Block People: Block specific people (e.g. stalkers) from being able to find you ina Facebook search, see your profile, or interact with you through Facebook channels.
5. Privacy > General Settings for Applications: Control what information is available to applications you use on Facebook.
   
6. Wall Settings for an Application (e.g. Groups): Allow or disallow an app to publish stories automatically on your wall.
7. Profile Settings for an Application (e.g. Groups): Allow only certain people to view specific groups you join on your profile.
   

Which ones do you turn on/off? What do you think are the pros and cons of turning on/off these settings?

(See also: Mari Smith’s “10 Ways to Stay Safe on Facebook“.)

AND NOW (JANUARY 2009), my blog is supposed to be “INTJ – The Scientists”:

SEE ALSO: Willowspillow’s “My Alternate Personality“.

1. Amazon Web Services (AWS): Amazon, which began as a bookseller, has generated such enthusiasm and loyalty in the developer community. Platforms will do well in 2009, though not many will. The platforms market is a race for scale, requiring massively deep pockets.
2. Basecamp: 37Signals, maker of project collaboration app Basecamp, is the favorite start-up of a lot of people (even its competitors). Their “less is more” elegance has become the mantra of developers everywhere. The one issue? It keeps its products separate. You have to choose which one to use.
3. Confluence (Atlassian): RWW expects to see major wiki adoption in the enterprise. Atlassian (and MindTouch below) seems a safe bet for enterprise, having traction and a good breadth of products.
4. DimDim: In a recession, companies travel less, so they use web conferencing more. DimDim’s proposition is incredibly simple: web conferencing for less cost. The one issue? It is still a bit raw, and the company will need deep pockets to satisfy an expected growing demand.
5. Google Apps: The move from PC-based office software to web-based “office tools” accelerated in 2008 and became increasingly mainstream. The one issue? Google’s flagship Gmail is still in beta and suffers from reliability issues, and some modules (such as for spreadsheet) still seem a bit raw compared to those of competitors.
6. Wordpress: RWW expects a big market in the replacement of first-generation content management systems (CMS), with simpler SaaS tools that have blogging at their core. CMS 2.0 will integrate what are currently stand-alone features: social networking, video, and so on. Automattic’s Wordpress is growing in reputation as the platform that delivers this the best, especially in terms of the quality of its continuous innovation.
7. LinkedIn: A controversial pick. RWW sees this as the “contact networking” space, which will be part of next generation CRM. LinkedIn tackled two of the biggest issues for enterprise: acquiring customers and hiring employees. It has a huge networks-effect advantage over its competitors. It could easily create an “internal enterprise LinkedIn.” RWW deliberately avoided the “social networking” label because “Enterprises don’t care about being social: they care about managing contacts to make money.”
8. MindTouch Deki: The other winner in the crowded wiki ++ space. MindTouch and SocialText are banging heads (a close fight). RWW added “++” to “wiki” because the leading vendors are rapidly incorporating micro-blogging, social networking, forums, and other collaboration tools. Integration is key, so RWW sees this market moving towards suites, but with wiki at the core.
9. Force.com (Salesforce): This company defined the SaaS/CRM cloud space with brilliant marketing and relentless focus on making its partner eco-system succeed. The one big issue? Its core CRM market is being undermined by two serious low-cost competors: SugarCRM and Zoho CRM.
10. Zoho: At the beginning of the year, the web office market looked crowded. It now has Zoho (David) vs. Google (Goliath), with Microsoft, as always, not to be counted out. In fact, Zoho has yet another Goliath on its hands because it also competes with Salesforce in the CRM space, which points to its one big issue: it is spread very thin, and some of its products show it from their lack of depth.

1. Business. When Facebook crossed the 100 million member mark last year, I began to explore and experiment with its features (wall, notes, links, photos, tagging, videos, events, groups, pages, etc.) and numerous third-party apps, with the intention of teaching them during my Web 2.0 workshops at NTU’s Center for Continuing Education.
   
   As Mari Simith of WhyFacebook.com put it, it’s a great place for promoting business: “Meet your peers. Find business contacts. Instant gate opener. Build relationships. Raise visibility. Develop your personal brand. Target your niche. Get rapid top Google placement. Place targeted ads. No cost marketing.” (See also: Tom Lindstrom’s Myspace Marketing Tips.)
2. Ease of Use. Its interface is clean and uncluttered. If you know how to use Windows, you would know how to use Facebook. All you need is time (or a quick overview session) to discover its numerous features and third-party apps.
3. Usefulness. Facebook interfaces seamlessly with hundreds (or thousands?) of useful third-party apps. These include popular Web 2.0 apps such as Twitter, Slideshare, Digg, Delicious, and Skype. My current favorite is the Philosophers + Philosophy app developed by Dr John Abbate from the University of Melbourne. It’s a marvellous way to add my favorite quotes and to discover the ideas of a new philosopher everyday.
4. Lost Contacts. I found long-lost friends/colleagues (and they found me) through the “People You May Know” tool.
5. New Contacts. I’ve been connecting online with very interesting people from all over the world. For example, my new online friend today is a Spanish priest in Russia!
   

   Fr Otets Burgos with the Bishop of Moscow and two children.

6. Visibility & Transparency. What I say and do online are visible to my contacts. Likewise, what they say and do online are visible to me. What this means is I can easily introduce ideas/sites/other things to them and vice versa. This means we can co-discover (learn) about one another as well as many many ideas, sites and other things!
7. Social Mission. I can easily create a Group, Page or Cause to get support for ideas that I strongly believe in, e.g. “Faith without reason is blind. Reason without faith is lame.” (See the Faith & Reason (Fides et Ratio) cause.) I can also contribute to causes that others believe in, e.g. Beth’s Birthday cause.

“When we talk about globalisation, we are talking about the way in which we bring different complex operating systems together. It is like the internet. The internet was an ARPA discovery. That by each operating system accepting a certain protocol, TCP/IP, different systems could interconnect even though they have different legacies and different deep programmes. Built upon this, through hyperlinks, we could communicate as if we belonged to a common system….

“The recent financial crisis is a crisis of that hyperlink, or an aspect of that hyperlink. The global imbalance – so much has been written about it, this is not the subject which I am going to talk about tonight. Except that the financial crisis is a problem of the higher system which links us all together….

“If we look at globalisation today, it is really an American construct, the hyperlink – the HTML language, the XML language – is basically an American language. It is expressed in accounting rules, financial rules, the way armies are organised, industrial standards, financial standards and so on. The problem is when the US becomes excessive in this missionary zeal. Political scientists like Kissinger talk about the dual strain in American foreign policy. There is the national interest which defines the foreign policy of all countries, but there is in American foreign policy always an additional strain, a call to an American ideal, a desire to spread the word, to democratise the world. To a point, that is very attractive and to an extent it enables the world to be globalised. But beyond a point, when you start intruding into the deep operating system of particular countries or tribes, it creates problems.

“When America goes into Iraq and tries to democratise Iraqi society as if it has no legacy…

“Coming back to the issue of global governance – America has to lead, but America has to lead in a way which acknowledges the diversity of the human family…

“If we are all the same, something is very wrong. Countries are different, tribes are different, cultures are different, and in global governance, the basic building block must acknowledge that diversity and that difference. But that which binds us all together, that hyperlink, that for a long time will be American in its essence.”

Note: If you’re on Facebook, see his Facebook note and read the comments there.

The group exists as a platform for discussion, advocacy and action to uplift, improve, and perhaps solve Singapore Malay issues using New Media.

For more details on Millennials (a.k.a Generation “We”), check out this thought-provoking American video:

It’s interesting to see how problems (in this case, various crises in the USA such as the 9/11 incident, Hurricane Katrina and the recent subprime financial crisis) can be effective triggers for deeper learning and a firmer resolve to unite and to collaborate among the young. It would be even more interesting to see if a Generation “We” New Media group could be set up across race and religions in Asia, and NOT just for Malays in Singapore. Hey, Hazman, would you be game to do this?

An extract from Sarah Burris’ blog:

GenWe was Greenberg’s project to help the Millennial Generation empower itself against much scrutiny. The book also makes the case that Millennials are:

• Dedicated to improving the common good over individual gain, a sentiment that crosses all racial, ideological and partisan lines.
• Reject fundamental principles of modern conservatism – primary focus on individual rights and trickle down economics.
• Welcome innovation and are eager to establish a new paradigm.

According to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 64% of online teens ages 12-17 (or 59% of all teens) have participated in one or more online content-creating activities, up from 57% of teens in a similar survey at end 2005.

• 39% of teens share online their artistic creations (e.g. artwork, photos, stories, or videos), up from 33% in 2005.
• 33% create or work on webpages or blogs for others, including those for groups they belong to, friends, or school assignments, basically unchanged from 2005 (32%).
• 28% have created own online journal or blog, up from 19% in 2005, with girls leading the charge.
• 27% maintain own personal webpage, up from 22% in 2005.
• 26% remix content found online into own creations, up from 19% in 2005.
• 47% (more girls) have uploaded photos where others can see them and 14% (more boys) have posted videos online; with many restrict access to the photos/videos in some way at least some of the time. Most receive some feedback on the content they post online.
• 55% have created a profile on a social networking site such as Facebook or MySpace.
• In the midst of the digital media mix, the landline is still a lifeline for teen social life.
• Multi-channel teens layer each new communications opportunity on top of pre-existing channels.
• Email continues to lose its luster among teens as texting, instant messaging, and social networking sites facilitate more frequent contact with friends.

(Photo: CC Joshua Davis.)

In particular, the growth in China is the most impressive, growing by 53% (an addition of 73,000 users) since 2007 and yet its penetration rate is only 16 percent. For the others:

• Brazil grew by 17% (7,400) with a penetration rate of 26%. 
• Pakistan grew by 46% (5,500) with a penetration rate of only 11%. 
• Columbia grew by 80% (5,395) with a penetration rate of 25%. 
• India grew by 7% (5,000) with a penetration rate of only 7%. 
• Iran grew by 28% (5,000) with a penetration rate of 32%. 
• Russia grew by 17% (4,311) with a penetration rate of 21%. 
• Germany grew by 10% (3,900) with a penetration rate of 52%.
• France grew by 12% (3,553) with a penetration rate of 55%.
• Vietnam grew by 22% (3,188) with a penetration rate of 21%.

Over the next few weeks, Web 2.0 analyst Dion Hinchcliffe will be posting a series of articles that deeply explore a strategy for using the power of Web 2.0 ideas to move businesses into the 21st century. He’ll begin exploring each quadrant in this diagram (below, taken from Hinchcliffe’s blog), looking at how to use 2.0 to dramatically create growth, transform the customer relationship to drive revenue, drive operational costs down, improve productivity, safely restructure our business models, effect change, and leverage/harnessing innovation.

Among the many useful tips is a post entitled “8 reasons why interviews will spice up your content”. The eight benefits cited are:

1. Interviews can offer a different perspective.
2. Interviews can demonstrate a practical implementation. 
3. Interviews allow you borrow trust and reinforce your argument. 
4. Interviews allow you to borrow brand recognition. 
5. Interviews are a practical solution to your needs. 
6. Interviews inspire you to think more too. 
7. Interviews build contacts and make you smarter. 
8. Interviews enhance the quality of content you deliver. 

For more details, check out his blog.

Lead SiTF members like MediaCorp Pte Ltd, Microsoft, SingTel and ST Electronics (Training & Simulation Systems) have already expressed their interest in project domains such as interactive media, mobile digital media, broadcast, IPTV and open source development etc. SiTF will continue to market this program to gain greater interest from more corporations who see opportunity to partner with start ups. Through support from the industry, the mentorship programme hopes to make available up to $10m worth of project funding and support over a period of five years.

With SiTF, the IDMPO now has a network of 10 incubators to create support structures for the start-ups, including the platforms for regular pitching sessions and finding industry partners. Collectively, the incubators will nurture some 450 start-ups over the next few years. The existing incubators have facilitated the funding of some 90 projects to date, out of which 15 were completed. Thirty per cent of the completed projects have successfully received private investment.

How do these Internet users select their shopping sites? Nielsen’s statistics reveal some interesting facts. Over 30 percent actually bought on sites that they found through “General Surfing”, “Search Engines” and “Special offer I saw”:


MORE KEY FINDINGS: “Globally, more than half of Internet users have made at least one purchase online in the past month… Internet is no longer a niche technology – it is mass media and an utterly integral part of modern life. Almost no aspect of life remains untouched by online media. As our lives become more fractured and cluttered, it isn’t surprising that consumers turn to the unrivalled convenience of the Internet when it comes to researching and buying products,” said Jonathan Carson, President, International, Nielsen Online.

“… Among Internet users, the highest percentage shopping online is found in South Korea, where 99 percent of those with Internet access have used it to shop, followed by the UK (97%), Germany (97%), Japan (97%) with the U.S. eighth, at 94 percent. Additionally, in South Korea, 79 percent of these Internet users have shopped in the past month, followed by the UK (76%) and Switzerland (67%) with the U.S. at 57 percent.

“Globally, the most popular and purchased items over the Internet are Books (41% purchased in the past three months), Clothing/Accessories/Shoes (36%), Videos / DVDs / Games (24%), Airline Tickets (24%) and Electronic Equipment (23%).”

Oct 17 update from reported by TODAYonline.com: “ABOUT SIX IN 10 PEOPLE in Singapore now use the Internet daily and weekly, according to the latest Nielsen Media Index 2008 out yesterday. A fifth of the population used the Internet to listen to music and play online games, while one in 10 said they participated in social networking sites, it added.”

Impact of Blogging on Professional Life


MORE KEY FINDINGS: The average annual blogger revenue is more than $6,000. However, this is skewed by the top 1% of bloggers who earn $200k+. Among active bloggers surveyed, the average income was $75,000 for those who had 100,000 or more unique visitors per month (some of whom had more than one million visitors each month). The median annual income for this group is significantly lower — $22,000.

Bloggers with advertising invest an average of $1,800 annually in their blogs. U.S. bloggers earn an average of $5,000, though bloggers in Asia earn 50% more on average and European bloggers earn an average of 75% more than U.S. bloggers. Again, high revenue bloggers skew the mean revenue. The median revenue for U.S. bloggers is $200 annually (and the median annual investment is only $50).

Blogging has also brought many unique opportunities to these bloggers that otherwise would not have been available. One in four have been invited to participate in an event as a result of their blog, one in five have contributed to a print publication as a result of their blog, and almost as many have found themselves on TV and/or on the radio.

Have you been invited to any of the following as a result of your blog?

VIDEO NOTES BY DR WESCH:
0:00 Introduction, YouTube’s Big Numbers
2:00 Numa Numa and the Celebration of Webcams
5:53 The Machine is Us/ing Us and the New Mediascape
12:16 Introducing our Research Team 
12:56 Who is on YouTube?
13:25 What’s on Youtube? Charlie Bit My Finger, Soulja Boy, etc.
17:04 5% of vids are personal vlogs addressed to the YouTube community, Why?
17:30 YouTube in context. The loss of community and “networked individualism” (Wellman)
18:41 Cultural Inversion: individualism and community
19:15 Understanding new forms of community through Participant Observation
21:18 YouTube as a medium for community
23:00 Our first vlogs
25:00 The webcam: Everybody is watching where nobody is (”context collapse”)
26:05 Re-cognition and new forms of self-awareness (McLuhan)
27:58 The Anonymity of Watching YouTube: Haters and Lovers
29:53 Aesthetic Arrest
30:25 Connection without Constraint
32:35 Free Hugs: A hero for our mediated culture
34:02 YouTube Drama: Striving for popularity
34:55 An early star: emokid21ohio
36:55 YouTube’s Anthenticity Crisis: the story of LonelyGirl15
39:50 Reflections on Authenticity
41:54 Gaming the system / Exposing the System
43:37 Seriously Playful Participatory Media Culture (featuring Us by blimvisible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yxHKg…
47:32 Networked Production: The Collab. MadV’s “The Message” and the message of YouTube
49:29 Poem: The Little Glass Dot, The Eyes of the World
51:15 Conclusion by bnessel1973
52:50 Dedication and Credits (Our Numa Numa dance)

I was reminded by Ephraim that today is the second anniversary of my first blog posting two years ago. It seemed such a long time ago. Blogging and Facebook have become a part of my routine now. They help me communicate with members of a younger generation whom I don’t often meet at house-to-house visits or neighbourood get-togethers.

Writing blogs forces me to organise my thoughts into a few short paragraphs. The blogs also serve as a kind of diary. I am grateful to Ephraim and Harold for having me post on their sites. It saves me the trouble of having to maintain my own blogsite.

Facebook is an interesting new phenomenon. The interactivity gives it a certain intimacy. For those who only read, FB must function also as a kind of reality TV.

The reason? McKinsey’s findings suggest that companies are coming to understand the difficulty of realizing some of Web 2.0’s benefits. “However, fundamental changes are beginning to take place among the satisfied companies… [They] are not only using more technologies but also leveraging them to change management practices and organizational structures. Some are taking steps to open their corporate “ecosystems” by encouraging customers to join them in developing products and by using new tools to tap distributed knowledge.”

Mix of technologies used is changing: Blogs, RSS, wikis, and podcasts are becoming more common, perhaps because companies have a greater understanding of their value for business (Exhibit 1).

More technologies are in use: Overall, the respondents say that their companies are using 3.4 technologies from an expanded list, versus 2.2 in 2007. Companies use Web 2.0 technologies more frequently for internal than for external purposes, and the rate of deployment remains high for almost all kinds of uses (Exhibit 2).

Web services remains highest used: Respondents rate Web services (software that makes it easier to exchange information and conduct transactions) as the most important tool, with Europeans providing the highest marks. Companies in all regions perceive wikis and blogs as fairly important, and the use of both tools has increased over the past year.

Satisfaction varies markedly by geography: The developed countries of the Asia-Pacific region had the largest percentage of respondents expressing the highest level of overall satisfaction with Web 2.0 tools, and Latin America had the lowest (Exhibit 4).

• Privacy & Reputation: The digital reputation of people, especially those who have not opted in to that discussion (or “Conversation”). (Vijay Goel, M.D.)
• Truth & honesty: Firms who misrepresent themselves online, pretending to be a “user” (1) Gaming the SEO system to gain rank, (2) underhanded manipulation of product reviews and comments, (3) the accumulation of friends (and social groups) with the intention of monetizing them OR for promotion of business, political or personal agenda. (Albert Maruggi, SeLiNa and wayzgoose)
• Truth & honesty: Blurring of lines between “edit” and “advertising. (tmarklein)
• Security: Identity theft. (LewisG)
• Safety: Protecting children who widely use social media in ways many parents don’t know how to protect. (runnerkik)
• Spammers! (NancyMarmolejo)
  

Chris Heuer asked a good question: “How do we give bad actors in the ecosystem (exploitative, manipulative, dishonest, rude, etc…) a bad reputation that is more visible for others to know who to take seriously and who to ignore?”

Still, how indeed? Could such a penalty system (if developed and available) backfire and end up penalising the powerless and inept instead?

• 87% (21 million) of U.S. teens aged 12-17 use the internet (online teens), up from 73% (17 m ) in 2000. By contrast, 66% of adults use the internet, up from 56% in 2000.
• 45% of U.S. teens have cell phones and 33% are texting.

Of the 21 million online teens:

• 89% send or read email.
• 84% get information on movies, TV shows, music groups, or sports stars
• 81% play games online (52% growth since 2000), compared to 32% adults.
• 76% seek information on current events (38% growth since 2000), similar to adults.
• 75% send or receive instant messages (IM), compared to 42% adults. Of these, half use IM daily and have included a link to an interesting article or site in an IM; 45% have sent photos or documents; and 31% have sent music or video files.
• 57% seek information on schools they might attend, compared to 45% adults.
• 55% seek information on politics and the presidential campaign.
• 51% go online every day, up from 42% in 2000.
• Half lives in a home with a broadband connection.
• 43% have purchased online (71% growth since 2000), compared to 67% adults.
• 31% seek health information (47% growth since 2000).
• 30% seek job information, compared to 44% adults.
• 26% seek religious or spiritual information.
• Older girls are power communicators and information seekers.
• Asked about communication modes, teens consistently choose instant messaging (IM) over email and viewed email as medium for talking to “old people,” institutions, or sending complex instructions to large groups. However, 51% usually choose the landline telephone when they want to talk with friends.
• Face-to-face time still beats phone and screen time.

(Photo: CC Joshua Davis.)

FOR SOME TIME I’VE BEEN WONDERING: What’re the best ways to encourage comments on one’s blog? And not just any comments, but those that promote meaningful exchange of insights and experiences. I’ve found 10 techniques and 10 plugins through a Google search. Could you add a tip or two here please?

According to usability guru Jakob Nielsen, one needs to:

• Make it easier to contribute. The lower the overhead, the more people will jump through the hoop.
• Make participation a side effect. For example, Amazon’s “people who bought this book, bought these other books” recommendations are a side effect of people buying books.
• Edit, don’t create. Let users build their contributions by modifying existing templates rather than creating complete entities from scratch.
• Reward — but don’t over-reward — participants. Although money is always good, you can also give contributors preferential treatment (such as discounts or advance notice of new stuff), or even just put gold stars on their profiles.
• Promote quality contributors. …give extra prominence to good contributions and to contributions from people who’ve proven their value, as indicated by their reputation ranking.

According to problogger Darren Rowse, one could use these techniques:

• Invite Comments...new readers that are unfamiliar with blogging don’t always know about comments or how to use them.
• Ask Questions. I find that when I include questions in my headings… you set a question in their mind from the first moments of your post.
• Be Open Ended. While you don’t want to purposely leave too many things unsaid there is an art to writing open ended posts that leaves room for your readers to be experts also.
• Interact with comments left. If you’re not willing to use your own comments section why would your readers?
• Set Boundaries. I noticed that shortly after I set the rules for my comments section (with a comments policy) that my comment numbers jumped up a little… and that comment threads generally stay constructive as a result.
• Be humble. I find that readers respond very well to posts that show your own weaknesses, failings and the gaps in your own knowledge rather than those posts where you come across as knowing everything there is to know on a topic.
• Be gracious. There are times where you as the blogger will get something wrong in your posts… spelling or grammar… crux of your argument or some other aspect of your blogging… a graceful approach to comments where you admit where you are wrong and others is right can bring out the lurkers and make them feel a little safer in leaving comments.
• Be controversial? …it doesn’t always work (and I personally avoid it as much as I can these days) – but there’s nothing like controversy to get people commenting on your blog.
• ‘Reward’ Comments. There are many ways… that range from simply including a ‘good comment’ remark through to highlighting them in other posts that you write.
• Make it Easy to Comment. …there is one situation where I rarely leave a comment – even if the post deserves it – blogs that require me to login before making a comment. Keep your comments section as simple and as easy to use as possible.

According to Caroline Middlebrook, we could use some of these WordPress Plugins (comments in [] brackets are mine):

• DoFollow plugin: [I've stopped using this because this attracts visitors who drop in just to add some inane comments and a plug for their sites.]
• Top Commentator plugin: [I'm using this. Useful.]
• CommentLuv plugin: [I've installed and activated this. But it's not working on my blog. Probably incompatible with some existing plugins.]
• Most Commented Posts plugin: [Maybe I'll use this too.]
• Recent Comments plugin: [I'm using this. Useful.]
• Subscribe to Comments plugin: [I'm using this. Useful.]
• Threaded Comments plugin: [Hey! How many plugins does one need to use?]
• Gravatars plugin: [ditto]
• Custom Smileys plugin: [ditto]
• Edit Comments plugin: [ditto]

.

As of today, the Top 20 (most read) posts in Ping.sg (2008) are (tags appended in the list below are my comments):

1. v1.80 is Here: More Community Features | 81 pongs, 408 reads | by uzyn at Ping.sg Blog – community
2. Going into Ping.sg is now so stressful (see picture) | 79 pongs, 248 reads | by simplyjean at Simply Jean – curiosity
3. My Cousin Saw Mas Selamat! | 78 pongs, 399 reads | by jussaemon at The Original Juice – curiosity, piggybacking (post is not there anymore)
4. Xiaxue gets flamed on high-profile USA blog | 76 pongs, 222 reads | by sheylara at Sheylara.com – curiosity, piggybacking
5. Sex blogging can ruin your offline reputation | 75 pongs, 554 reads | by themediaslut at the(new)mediaslut – sex, advice
6. 15yrs old girl had sex for 300 times.. | 74 pongs, 466 reads | by ylva 2 at missYLva =D – sex
7. EDISON CHEN SEX PHOTOS: Another 200 are leaked online, with possibly more to come | 73 pongs, 1666 reads | by publiceducator on February 10, 2008 at Public Education – sex
8. Tammy NYP – Sex Scandal That Would Not Die. | 73 pongs, 597 reads | by ahpek at Malaysian Blogger – sex
9. Last blog entry | 73 pongs, 274 reads | by dk99 at Decay On Net – curiosity
10. [Living in Sin] Maia Lee is Fucked | 72 pongs, 274 reads | by nocturne at fruit of the poisonous tree – sex
11. Going to Geylang with DK… and he went too far! | 67 pongs, 462 reads | by simplyjean at Simply Jean – “sex”, curiosity
12. How to Pong Cheat Properly? | 67 pongs, 314 reads | by hendribudi at A Better Title – humor, curiosity
13. Something FISHY outside LT10, NUS. POLICE TAKING PICS. | 67 pongs, 309 reads | by estee at Geek Goddess – curiosity
14. Edison Chen sex photo scandals – latest blowjob photo leaked! | 66 pongs, 3683 reads | by jialat at Jialat dot Com – sex
15. My new girlfriend | 66 pongs, 358 reads | by adamzhang at AdamZhang.com – sex appeal
16. UPDATES on POLICE outside NUS LT10 | 66 pongs, 254 reads | by estee at Geek Goddess – curiosity
17. Very awkward Ping.sg gathering? | 65 pongs, 193 reads | by simplyjean at Simply Jean – community
18. Top 10 Singapore Babes in 2007 | 63 pongs, 899 reads | by chioeves at ChioBlog – sex appeal
19. Straits Times boo boo | pongs, 588 reads | by simplyjean at Simply Jean – curiosity, controversy
20. cute ntu girl: “oh my god” | 63 pongs, 448 reads | by chillycraps at department of crappy engineering – sex appeal

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ON THE OTHER HAND, the Top 20 posts in Tomorrow.sg (2008) are (tags appended in the list below are my comments):

1. Oppositions to be blamed for Mas Selamat’s escape | 6721 reads | by Lucky Tan – piggybacking (current issue of interest), controversy, politics, sarcasm
2. Local Comedian, MC King (???) is dead! | 5531 reads | by Alvinology – piggybacking, minor celebrity, death
3. Singapore JI terrorist leader escape = Black magic? | 3841 reads | by Slutty – piggybacking, controversy, safety
4. Singaporean girl sells her used lingerie on her website | 2944 reads | by IZ Reloaded – sex
5. Maid Abuse of 2 month old baby in Singapore! | 2856 reads | at YouTube – controversy
6. Possible Appearances of JI Fugitive Mas Selamat Kastari | 1559 reads | by AEN – piggybacking, controversy, curiosity
7. I won a battle against Nokia | 1550 reads | by xiaoyun – controversy, individual against organization
8. Ah Meng died this morning | 1535 reads | by Alvinology – piggybacking
9. My Last Post as an NSF… | 1412 reads | by farter – farewell, NS
10. MC King (???)’s Funeral Video | 1362 reads | by Alvinology – piggybacking, death, video
11. Singapore team wins Amazing Race Asia 2 | 1205 reads | at AXN Asia’s Amazing Race site – Singapore vs the world, news (community)
12. Chinese New Year exodus exposes Singapore generation gap | 1155 reads | at Reuters – Singapore vs the world, news (community)
13. size 8 – 10 = fat | 1124 reads | by sg_ljers at ST Life Forums – beauty, friendship, community (dumped for being fat)
14. Taiwanese poking fun at Singaporean English | 1010 reads | by Xiong – Singapore vs Taiwan, news (community)
15. Singapore’s Better Kept Secret – A North Korean Embassy | 994 reads | by Oikono
16. Quan Yi Feng slapped husband in public? | 978 reads | by Alvinology – local celebrity, controversy
17. Rich foreigner complains ERP is still too low | 962 reads | at ST Forum, flagged by Pavin Limanont – community, money
18. Comfort Cab – Yishun to Tanjong Pagar = $40.60!!!!!!! | 951 reads | by my secret garden – community, money
19. Singapore Toy & Comic Convention 2008 | 932 reads | by One – Singapore, toys, comics
20. Blatant discrimination in advertisements in SG | 921 reads | by Ridzwan – community, controversy, money

.

Note: Like last year, finding the Top 20 posts for 2008 in Tomorrow.sg took some effort because:

• Unlike Ping.sg, Tomorrow.sg has an archive but not a Top Posts for the Year (or Month, Week, Day) page.
• Only five 2008 posts are displayed under the Popular section on the main page. It’s curious how three posts with low reads (not any of the above 20 top posts) are displayed: namely, “First Lungless Frog” (39 reads), “scammers pick on the wrong person” (238 reads), and “NUS Hostel Problem” (315 reads).
• Two 2007 posts (”Comparison between Singapore’s and Malaysia’s Ministers”, “Singapore Escort Ads on Yellow Pages”), one 2006 post (”Swingers swap sex partners in prudish Singapore”) and two 2005 posts (”Singapore Sex Scene”, “Taking upskirt photos – and tio caught!”) are still displayed under the Popular section on the main page.
• If honesty matters, the Popular section should be renamed Featured instead.

Related Articles:

• Top Posts in Ping.sg & Tomorrow.sg (2007)
• Alexa Ranks Ping.sg Above Tomorrow.sg (2007)
• Uzyn, The Next Kevin Rose?

Last month (March 25), in a report entitled My Biggest Mistake, TodayOnline reported that Malaysia’s Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi admitted making the biggest mistake in thinking that the Internet was not important. The PM’s ruling coalition suffered its worst results ever in March 8 polls that left five states and a third of parliamentary seats in opposition hands.

Among them was 67-year-old opposition Democratic Action Party chairman Lim Kit Siang who won a parliamentary seat in Ipoh Timor. He ran three blogs, which were meticulously updated with multiple posts every day. Long-time blogger Jeff Ooi, 52, also won as a DAP candidate in Penang. Like many other opposition leaders, they were able to reach out to young urban and educated people, many who were voting for the first time. Mr Ooi added that Web users are not limited by age. “We attract many citizens above 45 years old and these are the people who are more interested in politics and the oppositions’ viewpoint.”

In March last year, PR, market & biz dev coordinator Jonathan Dunn reported:

YouTube has launched a channel that will broadcast videos submitted by ‘08 U.S. Presidential nominees. The goal is for the channel to act as an information hub for the hopefuls and, one supposes, offer a way to counter unauthorized, potentially damaging, videos that may be posted by other users….

So far Rudy Giuliani, Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, John McCain, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, Mitt Romney and Joe Biden are on board. The videos seem to be a mix of carefully scripted campaign stops and the usual ‘on the trail/vote for me’ rhetoric. A click on the candidate’s videos on the channel home page (or on the candidate’s names above) takes you to a profile page for each candidate where other videos and info are hosted.

A few months later, in June, CBC News Today host Nancy Wilson interviewed broadcaster, researcher, and Internet evangelist Jesse Hirsh regarding the role and influence of social media on the 2008 US Presidential Election, e.g. “Why would candidates want to figure prominently on Facebook?”, intimacy on social media, dirty campaign tricks, blogging vs mainstream media, level playing field, etc.

By now, only three presidential candidates are featured on YouChoose 08: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democrats and John McCain for the Republicans.

Will the US Elections voting patterns correlate closely with the subscription, viewership and interaction patterns on YouChoose 08 (on YouTube) and other social media such as Facebook?

Related Articles:

• YouTube: US “presidents”, UK queen & now Jap PM

1. Amazon.com – a great place to shop for virtually anything (Zappos.com)
2. BBC.co.uk – World news, sports, radio, articles and audio in 33 languages (PBS.org)
3. CitySearch.com – find the right restuarants, bars, nightclubs, hotels and spas in dozens of cities, with editors’ picks and user reviews, and a Yellow Pages directory
4. Craigslist.org – free classified ads in every category organized by locale
5. Del.icio.us – popular social bookmarking system which can be tagged and searched by keywords
6. Digg.com – leader in social news, where users determine what’s important and interesting by “digging” it and posting a comment.
7. Ebay.com – online auction powerhouse
8. ESPN.com – everything a sports fanatic needs.
9. Facebook.com – popular social network not yet corrupted by marketers and fake friends, dozens of third-party apps
10. FastCheck.org – independent, nonpartisan effort to check speeches, TV ads, news releases and other public statements for accuracy, and provide clarification and context
11. Flickr.com – over half a billion images, superbly designed sharing platform and social network for photo enthusiasts (Shutterfly.com)
12. Google.com – world’s leading Web search engine, wide range of useful Web tools and services (e.g. gmail, Picasa, Maps)
13. HowStuffWorks.com – Easy-to-read explanations of how things work. Users can upload supplementary photos and video.
14. IMDB.com – The Internet Movie Database with an extensive directory of films and TV shows of the past, present and future, plus dialogue, trivia and favorite flicks of film buffs (RottenTomatoes.com)
15. YouTube.com – monster video-sharing hub
16. Kayak.com – Trip planner. Search engine scours hundreds of travel sites to find the best airfares. (TripAdvisor.com)
17. NationalGeographic.com – great content (about animals, world adventures, environment, sciences, space) and educational stuff. (MyWonderfulWorld.com)
18. Netflix.com – Digital movie downloads
19. Technorati.com – search engine for blogs and other social media (photos, video and music) posted on online sharing sites. Tag cloud lists hot topics of the day. (BlogStorm.co.uk)
20. TMZ.com – best for celebrity and entertainment news
21. USA.gov – The official Web portal for the U.S. government, with links to every agency involved in federal business, plus reports, guides, reference material and other resources
22. TelevisionWithoutPity.com – Bitingly funny recaps of dozens of popular TV shows, plus forums for further discussion.
23. WebMD.com – portal packed with information about health and related issues.
24. Wikipedia.org – the people’s encyclopedia, with millions of articles written in hundreds of languages. It’s free, and anyone can edit.
25. Yahoo.com – number two in Web search. Also with basket of goodies (Flickr, Del.icio.us, Bix).

When I gave a talk on Web 2.0 & Its Business Impacts at COM1, NUS last month, I cited various real-life examples of how the blogosphere “chatter” could affect a company’s corporate image positively or negatively. Also discussed briefly the people (how they get younger and younger!) and the milestones behind successful Web 2.0 apps such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc. This slideshow provides a quick overview, featuring famous Web entrepreneurs such as Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Kevin Rose (Digg), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)… and Ping.sg celebrity Uzyn Chua (slide 19) :

Related Articles:

• Top Posts in Ping.sg & Tomorrow.sg Reveal That…
• Alexa Ranks Ping.sg Above Tomorrow.sg!
• Live Coverage of Flea Mart On Ping.sg
• A video guide to the Ping.sg celebration – by an absentee …

This slideshow provides a quick overview. Also features a Ping.sg celebrity towards the end (slide 19).

Note: The slideshow is now featured on a similar post with a different title and intro.

1. If you have online access: Search online in the Wireless@SG – Coverage Areas section of the Infocomm123.sg portal.

2. If you are online AND looking for WiFi spots in a specific area: Search online in the Wireless.map.gov.sg site.

3. If you do NOT have online access: Download and install the Infocomm123.sg Wireless@SG WiFi Finder on your PC or mobile phone beforehand. Just follow the on-screen instructions.

1. Non-Standard GUI Controls
   1.a. Looking Like a GUI Control Without Being One
2. Inconsistency
3. No Perceived Affordance
   3.a. Tiny Click Targets
4. No Feedback
   4.a. Out to Lunch Without a Progress Indicator
5. Bad Error Messages
6. Asking for the Same Info Twice
7. No Default Values
8. Dumping Users into the App
9. Not Indicating How Info Will Be Used
10. System-Centric Feature

Useful note: “Application usability is enhanced when users know how to operate the UI and it guides them through the workflow. Violating common guidelines prevents both… Usually, applications fail because they (a) solve the wrong problem, (b) have the wrong features for the right problem, or (c) make the right features too complicated for users to understand.”

As Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins has written recently on Mashable:

First, the American presidential candidates, then (reportedly) the outgoing Australian Prime Minister. Then the Queen of British Empire. Now the Japanese Prime Minister. It seems now anyone who is anyone is posting videos to YouTube.

Here are some of the most viewed videos:

• New Year’s Greetings Yasuo Fukuda_1.1.2008 (【メッセージ】福田康夫総裁新春メッセージ_2008.1.1): 14,505 views so far
• The Christmas Broadcast, 2007 on The Royal Channel (added in Dec 2007): 842,481 views
• “I Got a Crush…On Obama” By Obama Girl (added on June 13, 2007) : 4,950,736 views

Related Article:

• Insight: Will social media change Singaporean politics?

I’m continually amazed by how low (or high) spiritually one can get! However, this shall be as far as I would go… lest the vitriol in me get brewed into hatred and I end up joining the Dark Side (just as Luke Skywalker almost got seduced by his Darth Vader father in Star Wars).

As Eleanor Roosevelt put it: “It’s far better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”

Here’s a summary of a post with a similar title by Dion Hinchcliffe:

1. OpenSocial offers the lowest common denominator, not the full richness of each platform. Like Java, write once, test everywhere is the name of the game for OpenSocial. Using the OpenSocial model, developers can create apps to run on dozens of different social networking sites, but can’t leverage the full capabilities of the site it runs on. To create a competitive product with the full richness of the underlying platform, custom coding is needed.
2. OpenSocial is largely based on open standards. OpenSocial uses the essential browser open standards of XML, HTML, Javascript, and the data formats are all ATOM and RESTful/WOA. It also supports Flash content and functionality and most of the really popular development platforms, including Ruby on Rails. OpenSocial documentation and sample code all uses the Creative Commons licensing and Apache 2.0, and everything will be open sourced at some point.
3. OpenSocial is a doorway to data portability AND potential security holes. A site that supports OpenSocial applications provides that application with all the people data in that user’s account. Their own info as well as their friends. Users can import/export their social data to/from sites and 3rd party app developers can knit together a person’s social data across other social sites that support OpenSocial. Michael Arrington has reported that the first OpenSocial app has been hacked.
4. OpenSocial is simple but also capable of full-blown, rich Internet applications. And without server-side infrastructure. Developers can innovate with a few bits of markup and procedural code and drop it into the OpenSocial ecosystem and leverage the massive audiences and scalable infrastructure of OpenSocial compliant sites. OpenSocial even supports powerful interactive Web user interface models like Ajax explicitly. Amongst a few real gems, mountains and mountains of relatively useless, uninteresting apps will also be created.
5. OpenSocial is from Google. OpenSocial will ultimately be very good for Google, if not outright bad for a few others (probably Facebook). The outcomes may not always be to the benefit of everyone playing under the OpenSocial umbrella. User beware.
6. A new era in competency in social software is being ushered. Building successful social applications is a lot different prospect from building traditional business and consumer applications. Understanding people is the key to building effective social networking applications, and that is often the hardest thing for an industry obsessed with connecting with each other via 1s and 0s.

Therefore, Google Docs users can now:

• Create and keep presentations in one place on the web that’s accessible anytime, from any Internet connected computer.
• Manage, update and share presentations with colleagues by sending them a simple email invitation.
• Edit together online and in real time, or contribute at different times to the same presentation on the web.
• Present and control slide shows for all viewers over the web, with no special setup required. Chat with viewers in real-time via integrated chat.
• Import existing presentations to get started quickly.
• Quickly publish presentations to the general public or individuals of their choice.

AND HERE’S A VIDEO showing how users can connect through Google Talk and “can chat about the presentation as they’re watching.”

More details in The Official Google Blog. And in related news, Yahoo! Drops $350m on Zimbra; an Open Source, Enterprise RIA. Looks like we are likely to see a three-corner fight soon — Microsoft Office vs. Google Office vs. Yahoo! Office.

“…have you bothered to read Facebook’s Terms of Service (”TOS”) or Privacy Policy? What legal relationship have you agreed to? Who has access to your data and personal details? I waded through their terms and policies. Here are some things I found.

1. The terms can change any time…. you’re deemed to accept those changes by continuing to use the site. Even if you didn’t know of the change.
2. Personal use only. LinkedIn is all about jobs and business. MySpace is full of profiles for companies and products. But Facebook is supposedly only for personal use.
3. A single, individual user account…. you can’t have two accounts on Facebook.
4. You’re giving up a HUGE license… did you know that posting content gives Facebook a license to do whatever they want with your content?
5. Applications are NOT guaranteed safe… “installer beware.” A malicious application developer could break through Facebook’s security protocols and expose your info… but Facebook wouldn’t have to take the blame.
6. Disputes are arbitrated under Delaware law. You’ve agreed to “final and binding arbitration” for resolving most disputes with Facebook.
7. You surrender all submissions. If you send it to them, it becomes their property.
8. Privacy is NOT guaranteed. Besides, Facebook’s own third-party contractors might misuse your information.

.

Afternote 11 Aug 2007: See also: Terms of Use and Privacy Policy on NETCoachAsia.com. Most terms in these statements have stipulated and approved by TrustSg.

Another fun Simpson video:

• After this video ends, choose the fourth video from the left: “World of Warcraft in the Simpsons”.

• The Inc. 500 companies know far more about social media than one might predict,
• Social media have arrived in American colleges, and
• The use of social in the ivory tower is outpacing even the business world.

Sixty-one percent of the academic respondents use at least one form of social media. Four of the six social media have similar adoption rates to those of corporations. Blogging is the most common form among academia, at a 33% usage rate — 14% higher than that of the Inc. 500 respondents! Wikis, on the other hand, are used by only 3% of admissions departments compared with 17% of responding businesses in the Inc. 500. (See figure below.)

INTERESTINGLY, “ADMISSIONS DEPARTMENTS feel that social media is “very important” to their future strategy in almost a 2:1 ratio to Inc. 500 businesses that feel the same way (51% compared to 26%).” Nevertheless, it’s significant to note as much as 66 percent of Inc. 500 businesses consider social media important to their marketing/recruiting strategy! (See figure below.)

It’s such a pity that I cannot conduct similar studies among academia and businesses in Singapore and/or Asia. Still, my gut feel, since the beginning of this year has been: The statistics are likely to be similar.

Notes:

• The first study was based on detailed interviews with 121 companies from the Inc. 500, an elite group of the fastest-growing companies within the United States. The respondents are diverse in industry, size and location. They include 4 of the top 10, 7 of the top 25, and 22 of the top 100 companies from the Inc. 500 list.
• The second study was also based on detailed interviews in the US, this time among 453 admissions departments. The responding institutions are diverse in student size (from under 50 students to over 50,000), annual tuition (from less than $1,000 to over $40,000), funding (69% private, 31% public) and location (49 states are represented). The sample includes well-known private schools like Duke, Carnegie Mellon, Vassar and Wesleyan as well as many large public universities from states like Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Massachusetts.

Afternote 7 Aug 2007: According to a page on the CATLS site (Consortium for the Advancement of Teaching, Learning and Scholarship, apparently part of University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth), Dr Nora Barnes is Chancellor Professor, Department of Marketing and Business Systems, Director, Center for Business Research. She also received the President’s Award for Public Service in 2000 for contributing to a strengthening of the southeastern Massachusetts region’s business climate by providing timely and customized responses to the problems and issues faced by employers and employees.

I’ve had a twitter and a pownce. I tried both for a good amount of time, especially since I have friends on both, but none on jaiku. However, I ditched them both for jaiku in the end, regardless.

Twitter’s good points:

• it was first, thus more popular
• streamlined

Pownce’s good points:

• ability to share actual files
• attractive templates
• comments on posts

Jaiku’s good points:

• ability to stream other feeds
• their “badges”
• comments on posts

I’ve found that twitter and jaiku are actually on the same level when it comes to server hiccups. I was turned off by pownce’s apparent lack of a separate method of displaying my posts. Jaiku’s feature of streaming my other feeds eventually won the war in my eyes.

Since the poll results shows that Jaiku leads with 48% (or 193) of the votes, I decided to ignore Pownce and checked out Jaiku instead. Added my twitter and ClappingTrees blog feeds to it. Looking good. I’d probably choose Jaiku too. If I do, I may need to start using Twitterfeed so that I only need post in Jaiku once and that “jaiku” would turn into a “twitter” and then a “tumblr”. What’s your take on this?

“R” is for “Renaissance”. On June 11, I suggested to the leader of BNI Renaissance, to hold its weekly meetings at the Geek Terminal. The chapter did so the very next Wednesday.

“C” is for “Crescendo”. As a result, a few days later, Renaissance’s mentor (also a founding member of BNI Crescendo) advised Crescendo to hold their weekly meetings there too. They did so the following Thursday.

“G” is for “Global”. Shortly after, some BNI Global members apparently visited Crescendo at the Geek Terminal and decided to hold their meetings at the cafe too — on Tuesdays.

How did I know of (or rather started noticing) Geek Terminal in the first place? It was through blogs! Many bloggers in Ping.sg (such Ben Koe, DK, Keropokman and many others) had been writing about the Geek Terminal, how customers can surf wirelessly and connect their PCs to power points anywhere within this cafe! And so this was how the “R-C-G” fire started. All because of blogs, and partially thanks to me, three BNI chapters (and thus around 60-80 people) are now having business breakfast at the Geek Terminal every week!

Afternote: BNI, by the way, stands for Business Network International. There are over 20 chapters in Singapore alone. I joined the Renaissance chapter as a member a few weeks ago. The Global chapter, for some reason, has disappeared from the listing.

“And that’s the reason we do it, that’s why everybody who’s involved in the project is involved with it. And the belief is very simple. That is that you can eliminate poverty with education, and no matter what solutions you have in this world for big problems like peace or the environment, they all involve education. In some cases, it could be just with education and in no case is it ever without education. And we particularly focus on primary education.”

Dr Robert Kozma, emeritus director of the Center for Technology in Learning in SRI International and a consultant on technology in developing countries, begged to differ in a recent article in OLPC News. He wrote:

“…a key to the success of the center is having a manager who is not only technologically skilled but familiar with the informational needs of the villagers and is capable of searching the vast resources of the internet to meet these needs…. it is important to start with an understanding of what people need and their context rather than what the technology can be made to do. Taking this perspective, it is not clear that the widespread distribution of computers to children is the way to eliminate poverty in Africa.

“Rather than spending hundreds of millions of dollars on XO machines, wouldn’t it be better and cheaper for national governments to support rural villages in their efforts to set up and staff internet-connected community telecenters where villagers have access to the information they need to improve their livelihoods and their lives.”

What do you think?

Curiously, another Internet marketer 23-year-old Adam Wong apparently listed six telltale signs on Ewen Chia’s website (in a post entitled “How to Smell a Scam” and dated August 26, 2006) as follows:

1. Overall Bad Design
2. Fake Clickbank Screenshots
3. Doctored Clickbank Cheques
4. Poor Alexa Ranking: 1,170,697
5. Stock Photos (used to indicate the car and house that he bought with the money earned on the Internet)
6. Teenage Web Counter
7. No Contact Info
8. No Opt-in box (a must for any Internet marketer)

.

UPON CHECKING EwenChia.com on the Internet Archive’s WayBackMachine, however, I somehow could not find the problems mentioned above on the archived versions of EwenChia.com. The site’s Alexa ranking is currently 30,187. (Yes, we have all heard how Alexa rankings can be manipulated.) The last archived version (left) was on Jun 3, 2006. It looked almost identical to today’s version (right) — with an Opt-in box on the left column (about one post down):

There were no signs of the bad Web design or the Teenage Web Counter, as illustrated on Adam Wong’s post. Neither could I find any Clickbank screenshots or photos of houses or cars. However, I’m very puzzled as to how the the June 3, 2006 archived version (left) of the “Personal Consultation” page looked almost idential like today’s version (right) of the same page, even with a date like “Thursday, June 14, 2007″!

Questions:

• Did Ewen Chia really make millions on the Internet? Did The Sunday Times reporter verify the facts that she reported? If so, how and to what extent?
• Was Adam Wong referring to EwenChia.com or some other site? Was Adam Wong’s post a scam?
• Just what has happened?

Related Posts:

• Internet Marketing: Successes or Scams?
• Insight#4: Of Alexa, Dmoz & Technorati

And the Geo Locations for this blog in May were:

IN TERMS OF NUMBERS, membership in the directory, the map and the network now stands at 16, 30 and 45 respectively. Quite modest numbers really. However, I’m proud to say that we have quite a number of prominent and/or interesting bloggers among the members from various countries. For example:

• Chris Smith, whose Shambles Forest of Theme Blogs currently supports international school communities (teachers, support staff, administrators, students and families) in 17 countries in South East Asia!
• Keso, a top 10 blogger for China-related posts (according to Technorati)
• Keven Lw, founder of the Chinese Library 2.0 network and a library R&D leader in Shanghai, China
• Liew C.F., a top 10 blogger for Malaysia-related posts (according to Technorati)
• Pinoyblogosphere (Philipppines) – blog aggregator, directory, ranking, etc. for Pinoy blogs.
• And many others. (My apologies if I’ve left someone important out inadvertently. :-p)

Recently, to encourage ownership, I started inviting some of the more prominent bloggers to become admins/reps for their countries. Invariably, they also started to ask me what an admin/rep is supposed to do? I’ve no clear answer.

I know that I want to promote more exchange among social media users in Asia, possibly (especially?) in the areas of education and business. I also know that I’d like to have more visitors from Asia (other than Singapore). As for specifically where and how the network should be heading, I certainly welcome suggestions, ideas, etc. Could you give me some please?

• January: Xunlei, a Chinese P2P file-sharing network that allows users to download music and videos. Similar to BitTorrent?
• February: Adscape (video game advertising) — offers advertising with plot and storyline integration, demographic and geographic targeting, and a reporting interface for marketers.”
• March: Trendalyzer — software which converts statistics into interactive animations.
• April:
  Tonic Systems — presentation and document management products expected to be a strong fit with Google Docs & Spreadsheets.
  Marratech (video conferencing software) — “e-meeting and web conferencing for effective collaboration tele-working with remote staff, customers and clients.”
  DoubleClick (online advertising) — “enables agencies, marketers and publishers to work together and profit from their digital marketing investments.”
• May: GreenBorder Technologies (desktop enterprise security)
• June:
  Panoramio (geospatial photo-sharing service) — “Map your photos”
  FeedBurner (online RSS feed and blog-to-email) — an extensive feed and blog advertising network where publishers can promote, deliver and monetize their Web-based content, and end-users can access and manage feed-based content.

I TRULY LOOK FORWARD TO MORE FREEBIES soon, in particular, Web conferencing and PowerPoint-equivalent on Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Perhaps Google is looking forward too to more revenues from AdSense and AdWords? As Josh Catone wrote on ReadWriteWeb:

This is a great deal for both Feedburner and Google. For Google it gives them access to over 720,000 feeds including, 111,000 podcast or videocast feeds, many of which can now be added into the Adsense network. It also gives Google access to a wealth of data and information about how people consume blogs and information across the greater blogosphere.

For Feedburner, which has raised around $10 million from Mobius Venture Capital, Portage Venture Partners, Sutter Hill Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Union Square Ventures, it gives them access to Google’s muscle and resources (not to mention a nice exit).

The price itself seems like a steal to me. Feedburner’s 422,000 publishers may not seem like a lot for a $100 million investment, but that 422,000 publishers actually translates into access to many millions of readers that Google can push advertising to.

Is this where “community service” and “commercial profitability” could intersect? Is this really possible, feasible, desirable, etc.?

For the information of those who are compiling or reading these D-Lists: I’m currently using the LinkLove plugin and have set “$allpassion_comment_count” to a value of “10″. Yes, “10″. Therefore, you need to post a minimum of 10 moderated (read “meaningful”) comments before there’ll be a link to your blog.

Thank you truly for your links. I mean this — it does feel good to see the Authority number rising. However, I also feel phoney to see the same number rising. Therefore, I very much prefer that you link to my blog or posts because you like or appreciate something I write here and NOT because of a plugin I use or that you think you can get a link in return. Much thanks in advance.

According to a New York Times report in September 2006 (quoting Bloomberg stats), Baidu is the leading Chinese language site, with a market share of around 57 percent for search engines and around 50 percent for advertising revenue. Google, the closest second, only has around 33 percent market share for search engines and 16 percent for advertising revenue. Baidu is reportedly very strong in Chinese MP3 music content and the first to offer WAP and PDA-based mobile search in China.

Going by Alexa’s Traffic Rankings, Baidu is within the Top 10 worldwide and Number 1 in China. The other top 9 sites in China are (details extracted and summarized from Wikipedia):

1. Tencent QQ 腾讯网: The most popular free instant messaging software in Asia, and the world’s third most popular IM service. Over 160 million QQ users in China alone. Offers many subfeatures including games, pets, ringtone downloads, etc.
2. Sina.com.cn 新浪新闻中心: The largest Chinese-language infotainment web portal, with over 30 channels covering various aspects, including news, sports, technology, finance, advertising, entertainment, fashion, travel and more.
3. Sohu.com 搜狐: Offers advertising, a search engine, and other services.
4. NetEase 163.com 网易新闻: Search engine technology and massively multiplayer online gaming.
5. Taobao.com 淘宝网: A consumer-to-consumer trade site for Chinese customers. The main competitor to eBay in China for online auctions. Currently captures over 65% of the e-auction market. Part of the Alibaba 阿里巴巴 e-commerce conglomerate.
6. Yahoo! China 雅虎中国: News, information, email, and a search engine
7. Google China 谷歌中国: Enables users to search the Web, Usenet, and images. Features include PageRank, caching and translation of results, and an option to find similar pages.
8. TOM Online: A mobile Internet company, offering a variety of online and mobile services, including wireless internet and online advertising.
9. Microsoft Network (MSN): Dialup access and content provider.

WITH THIS BACKGROUND INFO, plus more details from Google Finance (added via links on the company names after this point), Keso’s articles on Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) now make much more sense:

In Baidu & Google China 《谷歌篇》, Keso considers Google China as Baidu’s strongest competitor. Both have very similar business models. Their main source of income is advertisements. However, Google is restrained by its headquarters while Baidu is constrained by the sentiments of its stock investors. In addition [taken from "Baidu & Alibaba"], Google, with its ever-expanding portfolio of productivity tools (such as Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Analytics, Webmaster Central, Apps for Your Domain), has been positioning itself as an economical search engine. Baidu, with its strong entertainment orientation, risk lowering its brand image, might raise costs for its advertisers and thereby lowering its value as a commercial “spine”.

In Baidu & Sina 《新浪篇》, Keso explains that Sina, with its recent launch of a music library, looks ready to compete with Baidu in the MP3 Search market. Sina, however, has quite fragile media relations. The whole situation is also likely to change with Baidu’s newly acquired news publisher license.

In Baidu & Tencent QQ 《腾讯篇》, Keso explains that Baidu and QQ (Tencent Holding) are very likely to top the charts if there’s ever a popularity contest among Internet youths in China. Interestingly, the nett value of QQ is larger than Baidu by 1.8 times. Baidu, with its huge in successes MP3 Search and Baidu Post Bar, has been expanding aggressively into social networking — moving closer and closer to QQ’s business model. The two companies look set to have a battle soon.

In Baidu & Alibaba 《阿里巴巴篇》, Keso explains that Alibaba, with its strong B2B business model, basically links suppliers to buyers. Thus it was originally not a competitor of Baidu. However, in August 2005, Alibaba acquired Yahoo! China. And once its estimated value of over 4 billions USD (超过40亿美元) was announced around the same period, people started comparing Alibaba with Baidu. In addition, more and more people are using search engines to find business partners. With increasing breadth and depth of search engine applications, the entire Internet has now been transformed into a gigantic trading platform!

Chinese version （中文版）:

English version （英文版）:

“Did You Know? Shift Happens – Globalization & the Information Age”
《你知道吗？环球与资讯的转变》
Created by: Karl Fisch (apparently a high school teacher/admin in the USA)
Modified by: Scott McLeod; Content remixed from: David Warlick, Thomas Friedman (”The World is Flat”), Ian Jukes, Ray Kurzweil (dubbed “the best person to predict the future of AI” by Bill Gates) and others; Music: “The Last of the Mohicans” (1992)

Thanks, Lucifer Chu. (谢谢你,朱學恆。)

At first impressions, besides the minimalist search (搜藏) interface, Baidu seems to offer many services similar to those offered in Google: e.g. news (新闻), images (图片), maps (地图), video (视频), Blogger-equivalent (空间), BlogSearch (博客搜索) and toolbar (超级搜霸). However, one key difference seems to be in the extent of integration. Unlike Google, the many services in Baidu feel like subfeatures of ONE service and not many separate services. I only need to log in once.

What do you think? Have you used Baidu and Google? Which do you prefer, and why?

See also discussion on the Asia Social Media 2.0 Forum.

• In an average week, 74% of Japanese Internet users read blogs at least once a week, compared to South Korea (43%), the UK (23%), France (22%) and the USA (27%).
• Respondents claim to have taken part in at least three (3) of the activities listed ‘Influencers’, fewer of this group (29%) were likely to do so as a result of reading a blog in Japan, compared to similar groups in other countries with 4 in 10 (41%) of Influencers interviewed in South Korea, UK (48%) and the US (49%), taking action after reading a blog.
• Less than 1 in 5 (18%) of Japanese have taken some sort of public affairs action as a result of reading a blog. 18% have signed a petition (18%), 9% by attending a public meeting.

Robert Pickard, President of Edelman, North Asia says, “However, our recent Edelman Trust Barometer research shows that Japanese are more likely than people in other countries to punish companies they don’t trust by taking personal actions against them, so it’s just a matter of time for this tendency – amplified by blogs – to assert itself in the marketplace and at election time.”

Related Info:

• Which are the Top 10 blogs in/on Japan? Check out the Asia Social Media Directory’s Japan page.

.

As of today,the Top 20 (most read) posts in Ping.sg (2007) are:

1. Exclusive: $99 Internet Marketing giveway including Robert Allen book (1097 pongs) <- money
2. BAK2u.com – Exclusive iPhone images (504 pongs) <- gadgets
3. Mighty N80 (430 pongs) <- gadgets
4. Make $2,000 a WEEK or your money back! (402 pongs) <- money
5. FHM Girls Next Door – No Bras Day (394 pongs) <- sex appeal
6. Why 90% of Internet Marketers fail (313 pongs) <- money
7. Miss Singapore Universe 2007 (308 pongs) <- sex appeal
8. Leah Dizon (299 pongs) <- sex appeal
9. BAK2u in Top 10 Life-Hacking Business Ideas in 2006! (268 pongs) <- money
10. Is This the End of WhoIsAndrewWee.com? (244 pongs) <- money? curiosity?
11. Misa Campo (232 pongs) <- sex appeal
12. Video Clip: BAK2u.com interview (14 Feb 2007) (231 pongs) <- money
13. Jfoll – hot girl in bikini (213 pongs) <- sex appeal
14. Ewen Chia’s crazy profitable blogging offer (204 pongs) <- money
15. Minister Pay Hike (198 pongs) <- ministers, salary hike
16. Admiralty MRT Suicide Video (188 pongs) <- community
17. Maria Ozawa (188 pongs) <- sex appeal
18. My first $908.69 Clickbank check! (184 pongs) <- money
19. Ping.sg 1st Meet-Up (Please RSVP) (180 pongs) <- community
20. Britney Spears Bikini Striptease (178 pongs) <- sex appeal

.

ON THE OTHER HAND, the Top 20 posts in Tomorrow.sg (2007) are:

1. Singapore ministers set for million-dollar pay hike (1559 reads) <- ministers, salary hike
2. 我的朋友 My Friends Kawanku (894 reads) <- community, rant, video
3. Distasteful 98.7 FM Shock Jocks* (838 reads) <- community, sex, video
4. Airport Thugs (822 reads) <- civil service, rant
5. Organ Robbery, the truth (727 reads) <- hota, police, abuse
6. You spin me right round, baby…right round..like a record…round round round round… (679 reads) <- media, propaganda
7. NMP Siew’s speech on ministerial salaries (647 reads) <- ministers, salary hike
8. Singapore in the Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes of All Time (436 reads) <- community, humor
9. Sprice.com.sg (376 reads) <- money, airfare
10. Insight to NTU’s Allocation System for Students Attachment (323 reads) <- institution, policy, rant
11. Fiscal finagling in Singapore (315 reads) <- ministers, salary hike
12. Short & Sweet 2007 Tracie Pang, KK Seet, Tan Kheng Hua, Lim Kay Tong, Samantha Scott-Blackhall, Loretta Chan (304 reads) <- theatre
13. If All People were of the Same Race, Would there be Discrimination? (298 reads) <- community, what if
14. STFU (289 reads) <- ministers, salary hike
15. MICA bans film on former political detainee (288 reads) <- government, film censorship
16. Europe MPs ‘gagged’ by Singapore (286 reads) <- government, speech censorship
17. The MPAA’s Singapore lie (269 reads) <- media, propaganda
18. Meet Singapore’s F1 representative who will be racing in Europe (257 reads) <- car racing
19. Latest Internet Surveillance System reborn in Singapore (245 reads) <- politics, privacy
20. Yahoo Answer! teaches Singapore how to reserve tables (219 reads) <- Yahoo, answer, humor, video

.

Note: Finding the Top 20 posts for 2007 in Tomorrow.sg took some effort because:

• “Distasteful 98.7 FM Shock Jocks” above is the only 2007 top post displayed under the Popular section on the main page.
• One 2006 post (”SEX Party” with 48879 reads) and five 2005 posts (namely, “Sarong Party Girl Un-saronged”, “Singapore Sex Scene”, “Legs Wide Open”, “Taking upskirt photos – and tio caught!”, “The Bloggers.SG T-Shirt Design Competition”) are still displayed under the Popular section on the main page.
• It’s very curious though how three posts with low reads (and not any of the above 19 top posts) are displayed under the Popular section on the main page: namely, “To Join or Not to Join” [the civil service] (172 reads), “bad feng shui in farrer court” (108 reads), and “Lift-Upgrading Projects in progress are dangerous” (73 reads).

Related Articles:

• Uzyn, The Next Kevin Rose
• Alexa Ranks Ping.sg Above Tomorrow.sg
• A video guide to the Ping.sg anniversary celebration – by an absentee
• Top posts in Ping.sg & Tomorrow.sg – one year later

In China, Ya.IYee came up with a list of “Top 40 Chinese blogs” based on stats given by RSS reader Zhuaxia抓虾 (apparently most popular in mainland China right now, with around 30% or 60,000+ users).

In Malaysia (thanks, LiewCF), Gaman compiled a list of “50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia” based solely on Technorati rankings while Blog Webmaster Malaysia Alang created a list of “Strongest blogs in Malaysia” based on Page Strength, a combination of different factors, including Google PageRank, Technorati, Alexa, etc.

In the Philippines, a few dozen companies pooled resources to sponsor and to present “The 2007 Philippine Blog Awards” in 12 categories recently (end march) — based on the evaluation of 14 judges. I couldn’t help but wonder though: Who in turn has/have evaluated the competence and objectivity of these 14 judges?

Which evaluation criterion (or ranking) is most reliable (or not reliable) to you? Why or why not?

Afternote 14-04-2007: LiewCF.com, listed on Technorati’s Top 10 for Malaysia, is not among “the strongest of strongest blogs.” Somehow, Page Strength shows no result for his Alexa Rank and listing in DMOZ.

Afternote 13-04-2007: JUST FOUND this very interesting set of PinoyBlogosphere (”Pinoy” is equivalent to “Filipino”, I presume) sites:

• PinoyBlogosphere.Net allows you to submit a blog entry that will be reviewed by all readers and will be promoted (based on popularity) to the main page.
• PinoyBlogosphere.Org is a forum about pinoy blogging by pinoy bloggers for pinoy bloggers.
• PBS Ranking – ranks registered pinoy blogs according to average page views per week. Blog readers are also able to rate and give reviews on their favorite pinoy blogs.
• PBS Pinoy Videos is a collection of various pinoy videos uploaded by none other than by fellow pinoys.
• LiNK eXchange – using both manual and auto-links. Just enter Name/BlogTitle and URL or send requests via email.

By the way, in Malaysia, there are also several similar networks:

• Malaysia Bloggers Forum — a forum hosted by LiewCF, giving blog help and resources
• Digg Clone in Malaysia — all about Malaysian local content. Every article on digg is submitted and voted on by the digg community.

Also by the way, in Singapore, for those who might not know this, there are:

• Tomorrow.sg — Articles are submitted by the community and approved by a panel of editors.
• Ping.sg — All bloggers who ping this site have their posts displayed automatically for public reading.

Related Info:

• Asia Social Media Directory: China, Malaysia and Philippines pages
• FriedBeef’s Tech: How do you measure blog influence?

Asia Social Media Directory is “non-competitive” in the sense that all Singaporean bloggers and social media activists are still encouraged to add relevant info on their sites on the Singapore Social Media Directory. However all, including those from Singapore, are welcome to join the Asia Social Media Directory Frappr map:

WHY AM I DOING THIS? Basically, I want to reach out to a much wider audience, especially people in Asia. Currently, about 50% of my visitors are coming from Singapore. Too few are from the rest of Asia.

However, there is no Asian directory available on the Internet right now (at least not one that I could find on the Internet via a Google search) that is:

• “Unconditional”: All bloggers and social media activists in Asia are most welcome to join and list their blogs and/or social media sites there without having to add a reciprocal badge/link to the directory from their sites.
• Community-managed: Anyone can add themselves in without being screened first. (Of course, if abuse occurs then abusers will be barred.)

In addition, I also plan to read more Asian blogs and start providing insights and roundups on how free/open-source/social technologies are being used in Asian business and education. Reasons include:

• More and more, Singapore is being used by westerners (Europeans, Americans, Canadians, etc.) as a springboard to Asia, and by easterners (Asians) as a stepping stone to the English-speaking countries.
• Over 50% Internet users will be Asians soon

So, would Asia Social Media Directory and my finetuned focus be of interest/value to you, my readers?

ACCORDING TO THE READ/WRITE WEB (RWW), also quoting World Internet Stats in World Internet Penetration Now 16% – Asia Growing Fast!:

• China, Japan, India, Korea (South), Indonesia and Taiwan are among the top 20 countries with highest number of users.
• English and Chinese are the top two languages of all Internet users, comprising almost 44 percent.

Extrapolating the second piece of information with the Chinese language growth rate of 346.7 % over a 5-year period: Would over 30% of world internet users be reading and/or writing in Chinese soon (say, in one or two years’ time)?

What would these extrapolations mean for you and me?

Note: RWW’s observations were made in September 2006, but they still hold true with the latest data compiled at the same site. The extrapolations here are based on intuitive projections, and not Mathematical calculations.

I know that Ping.sg is NOT competing with Tomorrow.sg. And I know that Alexa statistics are based on the visits of people who have installed and are using Alexa toolbar. Still, out of curiosity (and since Compete.com does not profile ping.sg yet), I checked the rankings and related stats for the two sites just now and was pleasantly surprised.

And the Web traffic meter on Alexa (via AttentionMeter) over the past six months reads:

Perhaps this is a herald of more good things to come for Ping.sg?

Afternote 04-04-2007: More charts from Alexa

Related Posts:

• Insight#4: Of Alexa, Dmoz & Technorati
• Lester Chan’s comment on the Alexa ranking of Ping.sg
• Top Posts in Ping.sg & Tomorrow.sg Reveal That…
• A video guide to the Ping.sg anniversary celebration – by an absentee

Afternote 01-05-2007: Traffic Rank for ping.sg is now: 73,025

This is a new design challenge in this age of information anxiety and abundance of meaning. More and more people, myself included, are doing many things at the same time. However, decades of research (and common sense) have indicated that the quality of one’s output and depth of thought deteriorate as one attends to ever more tasks. For example:

• “We are under the impression that we have this brain that can do more than it often can,” says René Marois, neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University, quoted in a recent NYTimes piece about how multi-taskers max out their brains, creating neural network bottlenecks and causing confusion and mistakes (thanks, Susan Mernit).
• When people try to perform two or more related tasks either at the same time or alternating rapidly between them, errors go way up, and it takes far longer–often double the time or more–to get the jobs done than if they were done sequentially, says David E. Meyer, director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan: “The toll in terms of slowdown is extremely large–amazingly so.” (thanks, DeedsDoing 2006)
• “Kids that are instant messaging while doing homework, playing games online and watching TV, I predict, aren’t going to do well in the long run,” says Jordan Grafman, chief of the cognitive neuroscience section at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, quoted in a CNN report last year.

IN MY EXPERIENCE FOR EXAMPLE: During Nexus 2007 last Saturday, I found myself switching among three screens on my laptop most of the time. We were using Twitter.com for message sending, Campfirenow for chatting, and Nexus Live/Interactive to view Twitter messages from everyone. I could barely pay attention to the speakers/panel on the stage. Probably listened to only half the words. One possible way to reduce distraction could be better to replace Campfirenow with a shoutbox hooked onto Twitter via its API, the way Uzyn managed to hook Ping.sg shouts into pingsg_shouts on Twitter. Open Tweetbar on the sidebar and everyone would have two less screens to distract their attention — in other words, Let everyone look at just ONE screen.

Recently, Bjorn Lee twittered: “i have ADD, maybe i shld enrol in that china camp where they reform internet addicts.. oops, thats called NS in spore.” (ADD stands for Attention Deficit Disorder here, I think.)

What other solutions are there? Listen to former Microsoft VP Linda Stone perhaps (thanks, Mike Rohde):

“Continous Partial Attention (CPA) is different than multi-tasking, where the motivation is productivity: giving equal attention to many activities. CPA’s motivation is being a live node on the network, gaining meaning from the network, being ready for new opportunities at any moment…”

“But this always on, anytime, anywhere, anyplace era has has created an artificial sense of constant crisis. The adrenalized fight or flight mechanism kicks in. It’s great when we’re being chased by tigers. How many of those 500 emails a day is a tiger? Or are they mostly mice? Is everything really such an emergency? Our way of using the current set of technologies would have us believe it is.”

And learn from Jakob Nielsen (thanks, Beth):

1. Don’t check your email all the time. Set aside special breaks between bigger projects to handle email. Don’t let email interrupt your projects, and don’t let the computer dictate your priorities.
2. Don’t use “reply to all” when responding to email. Abide by the good old “need to know” principle… send follow-up messages only to those people who will actually benefit from the reply.
3. Write informative subject lines for your email messages. Assume that the recipient is too busy to open messages with lame titles like “hi.”
4. Create a special email address for personal messages and newsletters. Only check this account once per day.
5. Write short.
6. Avoid IM (instant messaging) unless real-time interaction will truly add value to the communication. A one-minute interruption of your colleagues will cost them ten minutes of productivity as they reestablish their mental context and get back into “flow.” Only the most important messages are worth 1,000 percent in overhead costs.
7. Answer common customer questions on your website using clear and concise language. This will save your customers a lot of time — thus making you popular — and will keep them from pestering you with time-consuming phone calls and emails.
8. User test your intranet. Clean it up so that employees can find stuff faster, and make the intranet homepage their entry point for keeping up on company news and events.
9. Don’t circulate internal email to all employees; instead put the information on the intranet where people can find it when they need it. (This obviously assumes that you’ve fixed the intranet’s usability.)
10. Establish a company culture in which it’s okay not to respond to email immediately. This frees employees from the pressure of incessantly checking email and lets them get more work done.

Finally, run 5 miles or do a spin class like Beth does. She explained:

“For some reason, vigorous cardio exercise helps clear out the information anxiety Maybe it is the just the stepping away from the reflected light dancing across my eyes coming from the monitor.”

Related Posts:

• Web of Mass Distraction I

“I do think we need some code of conduct around what is acceptable behaviour, I would hope that it doesn’t come through any kind of [legal/government] regulation it would come through self-regulation.”

While condemning the bloggers who issued the threats, Mr O’Reilly was keen that the whole blogosphere should not be tarred with the same brush.

“…The fact that there’s all these really messed-up people on the internet is not a statement about the internet.”

O’Reilly’s call came shortly after high-profile blogger Kathy Sierra reported feeling threatened and at risk online. Coincidentally, the Media Development Authority of Singapore has just opened some guidelines entitled Internet Code of Practice for public consultation a few days ago.

More details on BBC Technology News page, Susan Mernit’s post, Doc Searles’ post on this (based on a letter from Alan Herrell, apparently one of those who threatened Kathy on MeanKids) and a ChannelNewsAsia report.

Update 30-03-2007: See also Bjorn Lee’s Death Threats on the Blogosphere.

Update 09-04-2007: See also Blogger’s Code of Conduct at Wikia, BlogHer’s Community Guidelines and A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs at NYT.

Just received an email message from a support guy. He wrote:

Please accept my sincerest apologies for the delay in getting back to you. We’ve been experiencing a backlog in support and are working hard to address everyone. I’ve taken a look to see why you are unable to claim your blog “http://www.clappingtrees.com”. It seems your blog was marked for review. I’ve made a small adjustment and our spiders have revisited your blog.

Everything now appears to be working as it should. You should now be able to successfully claim your blog from:

http://www.technorati.com/account/blogs/claim.html

Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any other questions. We apologize for any inconvenience. Thank you for using Technorati!

So, I’m now claiming my blog using Post Claim (by adding this link): Technorati Profile

First, Benjamin Koe, in Almost social media (Nexus 2007), had been most flattering:

“Although the speaker line up included Nathan Torkington (O’Reilly) and Cory Ondrejka (Linden Labs), I learned the most from a fellow Singaporean: the blogger known as ClappingTrees…

“This happened in a panel discussion hosted by Kevin which included Kathy Teo (CNET Asia), Jennifer Lewis (STOMP), James Seng (Tomorrow.SG). As the discussions went on about crowdsourcing the media, I began to wonder why the distributed nature of free content creation was embraced, but gatekeeping was left to a bunch of editors… Then came ClappingTrees to the mic and spoke the words that were on my mind.

“The question (paraphrased) was basically: In a world of social gatekeeping (think digg), why do the above crowdsourcing media qualify as gatekeepers of content that’s not even theirs?“

NEXT, THREE BLOGGERS who mentioned me (that I know of) had been quite factual in their reporting. For example,

Vanessa wrote:

“Question time. Josephine reminds us of Sim Wong Hoo’s old article on Singapore’s no U-turn policy, while in the US everyone can do a U-turn unless they’re told otherwise (it’s an allusion to our over-reliance on rules to limit what people can do). James responds that attempts in Singapore to form a Digg-like community has yet to really take off.

This is the point where Uzyn from Ping.sg shows himself and we give him a round of applause.”

DK wrote:

“Uzyn stole the stage for 5 minutes halfway thru the panel. It started with Clappingtree talking about tomorrow.sg’s way of selecting article and how difficult it was for bloggers to gain readership. She mentioned about ping.sg which suddenly drew lots of attention among the audience.”

Marina (a.k.a. Rinaz) wrote:

“In the middle of the session, a lady from the floor, Clappingtree, asked the panelists on why there should be a censorship. She reasonsed that everyone, as long as they are within social values, should have a voice and a chance to be heard. She mentioned that ping.sg, a blog aggregator was a site where every blog had an equal chance of being read.

“After the session, Uzyn, creator of ping.sg got hounded by fans.”

Then surprise of surprises… reading the writeup of Kevin Lim (the moderator of the session) gave me a shock and an aftershock. Initially, he wrote (the same thing) in three separate blogs on his site:

“James took the opportunity to explain how news gets published on Tomorrow.sg. He considers Tomorrow.sg as a form of human news filter, where they depend on a diverse set of editors to create balanced gatekeeping. From geeks to celebrities, conservatives to liberals, tomorrow.sg has them all. Still, this has never been enough for some bloggers (JK> Here is a link to my blog. And wow! I’ve become “some bloggers”), and tomorrow.sg has constantly come under fire for being biased given their set of editors. This issue has been beaten to death years ago, and there are always ways to get around this.”

Later, he revised this writeup in one of the blogs as follows:

“James took the opportunity to explain how news gets published on Tomorrow.sg. He considers Tomorrow.sg as a form of human news filter, where they depend on a diverse set of editors to create balanced gatekeeping. From geeks to celebrities, conservatives to liberals, tomorrow.sg has them all. Still, this has never been enough for some bloggers. Some time ago, I witnessed that the power law was developing in the Singapore blogosphere, and it was Clappingtrees (aka JK) who revitalized this idea at the panel’s Q&A, by *arguing* that popular blog aggregators such as Tomorrow.sg had *biased editors*. I do feel that this issue has been beaten to death years ago and that the more productive route would be to try new ways of getting around this.” (Note: Asterisks added by me.)

Come, come, all of you who were there and listening to me. Tell me what did I say?

Afternote 30-03-2007: Just found CoolInsights’ comments on what I said.

This is what I DID:
I added another username, hoping to have TWO CHANNELS (or usernames) on the SAME PHONE LINE: One for business subscribers and one for friends/fans/family.

This is what I EXPECTED to happen:
I truly hope that Twitter would give TWO CHANNELS on the SAME PHONE LINE: One for business subscribers and one for friends/fans/family. Possibility: Use prefixes to separate business from personal. E.g. [BIZ] for business and [PERS] for personal.

This is what ACTUALLY happened:
The system informed me that the phone line has already been used by another username. I’m a rather private person. I also hope to receive only business tweets from many of the people that I’m following. But many of them are getting too personal, sending out many tweets that are useless/meaningless (er, to me).

First, read Beth Kanter’s post on Twitter for Nonprofits: Waste of Time or Potentially Useful? where she quoted Chris Brogan’s 5 Ways to Use Twitter for Good. Now, let’s see: Quick Human Answers, Conference / News Briefings (or news flash), Friendsourcing, Micro-Attention-Sharing, Direct People to Good Causes, or Staying in touch with others without being intrusive… I could use some of these.

Was finally tempted enough to check out Twitter. Still, Twitter seemed to have greater potential for meaningless distraction than meaningful connection. On first impressions, most of the twitters looked pretty random and pointless. Also, seemed to me that Twitter works somewhat like a Shoutbox, except that it has the advantage of mobility — i.e. it can be received via IM and mobile phone.

“WHY ON EARTH would people want to tell the world what they are doing right now? … To think aloud? Brainstorm? Cry for help? Connect to some human? See something unexpected? Just plain bored? Exhibitionist?” was some of my first twitters. These question have been answered quite quickly through several happenings and/or snippets of information.

Found this interesting article, Group Messaging Instincts: How to recover them (thanks to one of tmas68’s twitters) which explains how ‘one-to-many’ broadcast messaging is part of our human instincts, just like the way ants use chemical messages, bees use dance and dolphins use sonar.

Next, subscribed to Mashable’s useful one-liner news updates on Web 2.0 happenings and I thought, “Great! A simply way to be updated on the move.”

Then, added John Edwards as a friend out of curiosity and was pleasantly surprised to see that he has added me too very quickly. This illustrates to me the political potential of a tool like this. Whether Edwards actually reads my twitters is immaterial at this point in time. Perhaps his secretary’s secretary does or doesn’t. What impresses me is that virtually, he seems willing to be a follower.

Next, checked out TwitterVision because Scoble mentioned it and tmas68 too. I’m impressed though I ‘ve seen a similar version in BlogPaul’s Frappr TwitterAmI map (see below) earlier and had created my own Frappr map.

The fact that TwitterVision is a visual display of real-time messages from real people (with names and photos) contextually placed on a map makes the experience rather mind-boggling. (Educational visualization)

Just 7 hours ago, Alex King twittered that Twitter Tools 1.0b2 for WordPress has just been released. This means, I presume, my daily twitters could be published together as a post like the way tmas68 does on his Vox blog. (Mobile micro-blogging)

Finally, my Web statistics shows that this blog’s getting a good amount of Web traffic from Twitter.com.

I think I’m going to be twittering for a little while more.

Afternotes (2007-03-22):

• More useful tweets: Slashdot, BBC, TechMeme, Chris Brogan, Scoble and other celebrity bloggers are in Twitter too. Many, however, also send out lots of personal/useless/distracting tweets. I truly hope Twitter would make it possible for users create two separate channels — one for business and the other for friends/fans. E.g. tmas68 added a business line at 1news4tm yesterday.
• Just found a list of Twitter scripts and plugins. Use at your risk!
• Beware of addiction! See Amy Jo Kim’s explanation of How Game Mechanics Can Make Your App More Fun and Kathy Sierra’s post Is Twitter Too Good?

1. Find out some more about the audience of this weblog
2. Find out other webloggers with similar interests
3. Find out about some other weblogs by digging further into their own communities
4. Identify common communities from my visitors
5. Find out more about my readership with their extended contact details
6. A picture is worth a 1,000 words
7. Have quick conversations with those who read off this weblog
8. Find out other communities and webloggers who have not yet visited this weblog (potential audience)
9. Ability to keep track of some stats
10. Increase Web traffic to this weblog (says Yours Truly)

So now, on my Followers page, I have the honor (perhaps) of seeing this:


ACTUALLY, I DON’T understand politics in Singapore or in the USA. However, it’s really interesting to read and observe a few things:

• Scoble’s post, Political use of social media: Edwards (1); Obama (.5); Clinton (NA)
• Social media on John Edwards’ website (see right)

Also, Scoble’s interview with Elizabeth Edwards:

And Scoble’s interview with John Edwards:

Who’s that? Why did s/he do that? How did s/he do that? How to stop her/him from doing the same thing again?

Nexus promises to be “a highly interactive conference where we discuss fundamental changes happening in business and technology, and how you can take a lead in them!” AND to make the event better, Nexus organizer is now using a WYSIWYG wiki to elicit and compile ideas (for example, on Session Discussions and Community Gatherings) from everyone.

What sets this event apart from prior local events seems to be the strong government, stat board and industry backing that this one managed to harness — sponsorship by StarHub and Accenture, partners from NTUC Youth and TiE Singapore, advisors from IDA, NUS, ISS, SMU, etc. and speakers from Microsoft, Salesforce.com APAC, Yahoo! SEA, Google, CNET Networks Asia Pacific, Intel China, IDC Asia/Pacific, Insead, etc. Local Web 2.0 representatives include Tomorrow.sg and Stomp.com.sg.

HOW DID The Digital Movement manage to gartner so much sponsorship and support from so many industry players? What’s their secret weapon? When asked, one of the organizers laughingly wrote: “Haha, we got no secret. Just hardwork, a lot of leveraging on windows of opportunity, and a garang just do it spirit. ”

Anyway, the topics to be covered include:

• Asia Pacific 2.0: Regional Technology Leaders on Emerging Opportunities
• Crowdsourcing The Media: Mainstream Media and Bloggers
• Future of the Web: Web Giants Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Salesforce.com
• The Mobile Web Explosion: Opportunities ahead in the convergence
• Open Source Communities: Innovation Unlimited
• Global Startups: Share Their War Stories

Really geeky Web 2.0 speakers include:

• Nathan Torkington, OReily Radar, Perl Foundation Board Member
• Andreas Weigend, Former Chief Scientist, Amazon.com

In fact, there will be a Geek-Out session on 22 March evening where local technologists can show their products/services to Nathan and Andreas if it is:

• A technological innovation
• Related to the web, mobile or the latest technologies out there
• Or just damn cool.

Will you be there? I know I will. Will Nexus 2007 become an effective catalyst and leader for Web 2.0 in Singapore? What do you think?

How is this possible? Basically, all external links in most blogs have automatic rel="nofollow" attributes. The DoFollow plugin disables these attributes and the Show Top Commentators plugin displays the names (linked to websites if desired) and number of comments that others have made recently on my blog. In other words, as Lucas put it, “…leaving a comment here gets you a followed link back to your own site through the top commentators on the sidebar.”

And since I have a good spam filter and will continue to moderate comments on this blog, I’m not worried about spam comments. Note though that only on-topic comments will be displayed. For off-topic comments, please Contact Me or just “Shout”.

Afternote on 2007-03-15: After reading Andy Beard’s Ultimate List of DoFollow Plugins, I’ve decided to reward commenters (who have posted 3 or more comments) and not just anyone. So, I’ve switched to LinkLove. I hope this won’t be perceived as calculating. I merely think that a dialog on a post (or with a blogger) surely isn’t made up of just one comment.

Afternote on 2007-03-16: “NoFollow” started because of spam. I started using DoFollow because I thought that we’ve got spam under control through spam filters. However, I forgot that there are other more subtle forms of spam — e.g. useless / meaningless one-liners. I’m waiting now to use the plugin that rewards special comments because basically, I’d like to reward Quality more than Quantity. And I believe that this is the principle behind Google’s PageRank too.

(Found this on CESBloggers.com who in turn references SlashDot.)

“… I get about twice the pageviews of mattcutts.com, but his Alexa pageview ranking is about 25 times more than mine (I got this by looking at the 1 year, most highly smoothed graph, and then squinting to guess at the mean).

“What that means is that people with the Alexa toolbar installed are 25 times more likely to view a page on Matt’s site versus mine, but overall, all users view twice as many pages on my site.

“That’s a 50 to 1 difference introduced by the selection bias of Alexa. Presumably this is because Matt’s site is really appealing to a core group of SEO enthusiasts, many of whom also like the Alexa toolbar.”

IN A SIMILAR VEIN, John Chow wrote:

“Alexa is a tool that many webmasters and advertisers used to gauge the size of a website. The Alexa ranking is based on a three month running average. The number shown is where a site ranks on the internet… The main problem with Alexa is its rankings are based on users who have installed the Alexa toolbar onto their browser. If you do not have the toolbar running, you do not affect the rankings of the sites you visit. The next big problem with Alexa is it is very easy to cheat the system. Just get a few friends to install the toolbar and have them surf your site everyday. It does not take many people to break into the top 100,000. You can even do it all by yourself by refreshing your site over and over again. Get a dozen friends to do it and you’re break into top 20,000 easily.”

Alexa, by the way, works only on Internet Explorer. Now, perhaps all these explain why this blog’s Alexa ranking is 6,588,931? However, why two particularly trivial links which have nothing to do with this blog are listed in Alexa — they are totally different from the many links recognized by Technorati and 10,500 found via a Google search? Also, how is it that an empty blog such as one that’s created by default in an Elgg community blog and my Elgg profile could be ranked 64,954? Hmmm… just because both are on Elgg.net (also ranked 64,954)? Sheeeshh… no wonder! My test blog at Blogger.com has a rank of 15, just like Blogger itself!

When I scrolled to the bottom of an Alexa page, I found this statement, “Alexa’s directory listings are provided by Open Directory and enhanced by Alexa”. At the Open Directory (a.k.a. Dmoz) site, I read that it apparently has 75,151 editors and 4,830,584 sites listed in over 590,000 categories. According to one of its Help pages, “Depending on the activity level of the editors in your area, it may take up to 2 weeks or more for your site to be reviewed.”

However, I’ve tried for months and my blog is still not listed on this Open Directory. The oft-repeated reason given on support forum had been along this line: There has been a huge backlog and the editors couldn’t find enough time to clear that yet.

Likewise, I’ve tried for months to claim my blog on Technorati, but to no avail. The reason (given by Admin) looks familiar: My blog (along with many others) apparently could have been flagged for review, the support staff are facing a huge backlog and couldn’t find enough time to clear that yet.

I wonder. When I cannot claim my blog on Technorati, is my blog considered non-existent to Technorati? A search among the blog posts in Technorati yields 11 links, but a search in the blog directory yields this error message:

“Huh?

There are blogs, and then there’s whatever you just typed in. If it’s a blog, we don’t know about it. Maybe you made a typo. Or maybe it’s a blog that doesn’t exist. Maybe you don’t exist. (In which case, please ignore this.)”

While I truly appreciate the invaluable services that Alexa, Dmoz and Technorati provide, I also truly don’t understand what is meant by “flagged for review”. Who flags a bona-fide blog for review by Technorati and thereby stop it from being claimed even by its legitimate owner? In any case, is there a way to open up this listing of blogs that have been flagged for review, Digg-style perhaps, so that more people can comment on them and thus help the editors/admin guys speed up and clear this site-listing backlog?

Afternote on 2007-03-16: Please HELP ME claim my blog on Technorati. Add me as a Fave on Technortiat by clicking this -» and then feel free to delete it later.

So, my PageRank (PR) is different for the same URL with and without www? Is my PR = 2+3 = 5?

SUBSEQUENTLY, I entered the Google Webmasters Help group. Was typing a query in the “Crawling, indexing, and ranking” category when Google very intelligently displayed this thread, Different page rank for the same URL with and without www.

According to Webado (aka Christina):

“The difference in PR between www and non www versions of the same url, also between example.com/ and example.com/index.html (for instance) has existed ever since PR has been reported. PR is always relative to the url, NOT to the page content that a url points to. All those url’s are as different as if they were totally different sites.

“At times the PR might appear to be equal – that would be because both forms are being used to about the same extent, and have incoming links of about the same quality and quantity.

“It makes sense to consolidate into one url alone all accesses meant to be for one particular page – the result will also be a consolidation of pr, with a possible increase in the final pr value for that chosen page.

“The new option in Webmaster Tools is there to take care of what’s already been indexed – but you, the webmaster, also have to do your job of redirecting url’s to one single preferred url format.

“Assuming you haven’t done either of these 2 things, and assuming your 2 url’s used to have the same PR and now are different, thats’ due to changing conditions. The incoming links to one form must have dwindled, been discounted for some reason, while the incoming links to the other form must have picked up. PR gets recalculated every few months from data a few months old. PR is also not necessarily the same across all Google Datacenters which are numerous and not in sync.”

In another similar thread, Richard L. Trethewey wrote:

“PageRank is calculated through a combination of factors beyond the simple number of links. The exact method Google currently uses is not public knowledge, but in the founders’ original thesis they describe a formula which is widely believed to still be the fundamental method. For each link that points to a page, the PageRank of that target page is increased by an amount roughly equal to the PageRank score of the page where that link resides divided by the number of links on that page. You also need to keep in mind that the PageRank score shown on the Google Toolbar is taken from a publically available database that is only updated periodically (recently, its been every 3 months or so). But Google has an internal PageRank database that they use for ranking purposes which is updated continuously as they crawl the web. There seems to be a PageRank update in progress, so you should wait a couple of days to see if your PageRank score improves.

“But the best thing you can do for your site is to set up a server code 301 redirect for all requests for pages from the old .com domain and redirect them to the new .org.uk domain. In a few weeks, all of the major search engines will merge their records of the two domains and your rankings should improve. It would also be a good idea to ask thewebmaster of any site that still links to the old .com domain to link to the new .org.uk domain to help speed up the process. But installing that 301 redirect is very important.”

And so, that’s what I have done recently, adding a 301 redirect to channel all requests for the URL without www to the URL with www. Now, waiting and hoping that my PR will be doubled (almost) soon.

(See also Matt Cutt’s SEO advice: url canonization and Michael Bloch’s Giving search engine spiders direction – 301 redirect.)

SECOND, the Podcast Awards for 2006 are out. Among the winners are three Catholic podcasts:

• People’s Choice: MuggleCast
• Best Produced: The Signal
• Best Podcast Directory: iTunes
• Best Mobile Podcast: Catholic Insider (Catholic obviously)
• Business: Manager Tools
• Comedy: Distored View
• Cultural/Arts: Anime Pulse
• Education: Tips from the Top Floor
• Entertainment: Pottercast
• Gaming: Podtacular
• General: Rosary Army (Catholic)
• Movies/Films: The Signal (again!)
• PodSafe Music: AccidentHash
• Political: Free Talk Live
• Religion Inspiration: Daily Breakfast (Catholic)
• Technology/ Science: DiggNation
• Travel: Mouse Tunes

According to the designers, this instrument is intended to be:

• collaborative: several performers (locally or remotely)
• intuitive: zero manual, zero instructions
• sonically challenging and interesting
• learnable and masterable, even by children
• suitable for novice and advanced electronic music (i.e. installations and concerts)

Although I’ve been a LinkedIn member since August 2006, I’ve not published my LinkedIn profile to the Web NOR tried to connect with anyone there. That is, until Lunar New Year’s eve three days ago. Now that I’m running a business, professional networking has become important. Furthermore, my curiosity was piqued (again) upon reading Hinchliffe’s “Best of Web 2.0 in 2006″ article, where LinkedIn was highlighted for the “Professional Social Network” category. So, on Feb 17, I really tried connecting to people whom I know via LinkedIn.

After 3 Days of “connecting”, this is what I get on LinkedIn:

“OH NO! NOT ANOTHER SOCIAL NETWORK!” Don’t you get this feeling nowadays? Social networks seem to be sprouting like wild grass every week. Perhaps you even get tired looking at the numerous icons in the GoToWeb20 website (screenshot below), or simply reading the news? Are you like me, wishing that these legions of social networks (almost like towers of Babel) would simply consolidate into a few major players? OR at the very least, open up and make it possible for users to sign-in, post to, and maintain profiles easily from just one (or if desired, just a few) source?

“HOW DO WE KEEP UP?” is a question that has been bugging me over the past few years ever since I got hooked onto the fantastic potential of Web 2.0. So, this morning, was truly gratified to read Robert Scoble’s post (also entitled How do we keep up?):

“I got up early to read feeds and do email. I started at 5:45 a.m. and it’s now 7:26 a.m. and I still didn’t get through all my feeds. But, worse, is what I did find: dozens of new products, new companies, new phones… how do we keep up with this flow that is coming through the blogs? It’s much easier to build a company now than it was in the 1990s, plus access to capital is there again, so that leads to tons of new companies and a LOT of news. What does this lead to? Risk for new companies because the chances that a new company will be able to get adoption/build audience and community is very small. There’s simply too much out there to pay attention to.”

Following Scoble’s “flow”, I found that at Slashdot (in the “Typing it all again” category), kdawson wrote:

“mrspin offers the opinion of ZDNet blogger Steve O’Hear that users may soon tire of social networks — if they don’t open up and embrace standards allowing greater interoperability among the different networks. O’Hear writes: “Unless the time required to sign-in, post to, and maintain profiles across each network is reduced, it will be impossible for most users to participate in multiple sites for very long. In an earlier post he went into more detail on the same subject, with extensive opinions from four creators of social networks.”

Following O’Hear’s “flow”, I found some weariness amidst the exciting 2007 Web predictions on the Read/Write Web blog:

“While social networks dominated 2006, we wonder if the amount of time an average user spends online will start to negatively impact on their social lives in 2007 and lead to a downturn. Could social networks prove to be anti-social? At the same time, social networks will probably also become more open – and data portability will start to occur, although MySpace will hold out…”

This is the beauty (and “ugliness”) of social networks: One article leads to another, yet another and another. After an hour or so, I believe I’ve done a quick survey, especially after doing a Google search on “fatigue, social networks, tired”. Even found a comic at Blaugh entitled “I Hate Social Networks”! I can safely infer that there IS indeed widespread social network fatigue.

Data portability had been on my mind. So, I couldn’t agree with O’Hear more. However, I wonder: Couldn’t ZDNet and the four social network leaders interviewed have set the ball rolling and start leading by example? You see, just to cast a vote and to add my opinion at ZDNet, I had to sign up and create yet another profile. Likewise, whenever I’m invited to join a new social network. As a result, I feel less and less inclined to join new social networks nowadays.

If only someone would create an easy-to-use standard-based app or widget that would enable users to keep their profiles and content on a single-source (say, on their desktop or website)! And if only all social networks would have a simple linking feature that works according to that standard!

For example, at Elgg.net, I can reap all the benefits of being in a social network while maintaining my current blog here. Reason: I can publish publish the same posts in Elgg through a feed. I can also have different levels of access restrictions for postings within Elgg. Although Elgg has/had some teething issues (e.g. duplicate/triplicate posts and disappearing media just because I tried to edit a published post), I’m sure they could be resolved eventually.

Truly looking forward to the day when I could join as many as social networks as I want with minimal effort: owning and maintaining all my profile(s) and content in one space, and merely linking them to various networks. Of course, my comments on different networks could be different…

Speaking of this, wouldn’t it be great if one could get wiki-like overviews of original information and the associated “enrichments” (Dion Hinchcliffe’s term for tags, ranks, reviews, comments, revisions, etc.) all on the same page?

Then, we the readers wouldn’t be wasting time reading Babel babble (rehashes, duplicates, triplicates, etcetera). And we the “publishers” wouldn’t be wasting time building towers of Babel — trying in vain to make a name for each of “us” separately. (Indeed, the proliferation of social networks has collectively and literally made us anti-social!)

Hopefully, by then, we’d be truly socializing and collaborating on a Valentine Day, and every other day!

(See also Google Drive: Cure for Social Network Fatigue.)

• Structured Data: RSS integrated into Microsoft’s new Vista OS, Yahoo Mail, Google Base. Interesting RSS services. More e-commerce and multimedia widgets expected. Google forging ahead with its own standards, largely ignoring microformats (the Web community’s open standards).
• Enterprise: Web Office battle expected between Google and Microsoft. Small startups may be acquired by the big Internet companies. Consumerization of the enterprise IT in the form of web-based office apps and more collaborative systems.
• Web Development: Rich Internet Apps, a continuation of the hybrid web/desktop apps theme, expected (notably Adobe Apollo and OpenLazlo). Browser-based apps extended, possibly Vector Graphics (VML/SVG) + Ajax. More Semantic Web products (E.g. RadarNetworks and Metaweb). More Amazon-like Web services (WebOS), especially from Google and Microsoft, e.g. Windows Live services vs a Google-optimized Linux.
• Search and Online Advertising: AdSense will have competition, especially from MSN AdCenter and Yahoo. Better, more robust online ad model than CPA (CPC/PPC issues). Search 2.0 in the form of vertical search engines (e.g. Google Health) and SearchMash (e.g. search result returns not only homepage of company but also some semantic meaning).
• Multimedia: More Internet-based TV (e.g. Brightcove, Google Vide/YouTube), more Interactive TV (e.g. Skype’s Venice Project), more IPTV with P2P (e.g. DemocracyPlayer). More virtual worlds (e.g. SecondLife, Habbo) and virtual money (e.g. Second LindeX, Microsoft points).
• Consumer Apps: Online real estate market ramps up, disruptive business models persists, data portability needed among social networks.
• International Web: One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) may increase the adoption of thin-client PC, web apps and Linux for the mainstream.
• Mobile: More VoIP competitors for Skype. Online/Offline mobile technologies (e.g. Smartpox). Emerging Webphone market. More user-generated content, mobile search, mobile ads, QR codes (retail), image recognition, card swapping, download hotspots, “smart client” solutions.

• Social Network: MySpace. Runners up: Bebo, Facebook, Vox, XuQa, MyBlogLog (Me> IMHO, MySpace seems rather sleazy. Academics, students and alumni probably would do better to join FaceBook. People keen on business networking would do better to join LinkedIn.)
• Start Page: Netvibes; Runners up: Pageflakes, Windows Live, Goowy.
• Social Bookmarking: StumbleUpon. Runners up: Delicious, TrailFire, Magnolia, Listible.
• Peer Production News: Netscape. Runners up: Digg, NewsVine, Reddit.
• Social Media Sharing: YouTube. Runners up: UnCut Video, JumpCut, Google Video, Revver. (Me> What about Eyespot? Like the remix feature there.)
• Online Storage: Amazon’s S3 with JungleDisk. Runners up: OmniDrive, iBackup, AllMyData.
• Office 2.0 Suite: Zoho Office Suite. Runners Up: ThinkFree, Ajax13, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Foldera. (Me> Just give me everything on the same platform as far as possible. Right now, looks like I can find most essential services on Google. Looking forward to Zoho Notebook though.)
• Honorable Mention: BlogFilers: TechMeme, Social Music: Pandora, Professional Social Network: LinkedIn, Consumer Generated Advertising: The Chevy Apprentice campaign, Online File Conversion: Zamzar (MS Office docs, images, audio, video, etc), Web Application Stack: Ruby on Rails, Mashup Tool: DataMashups

Key Features (extracted from the Zoho Notebook site itself):

• Intuitive user interface with white boarding and custom layout capability
• Quick “add” buttons for adding text, graphics, photos, audio, video, RSS feeds and documents
• Combine and add Notebook pages from other applications such as Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet
• “Content level” sharing and versioning providing fine grain control of what is shared with others
• Firefox and IE plug-ins for instant web clipping
• Real-time, simultaneous editing and sharing of content
• Skype integration for instant chat and IP telephony

FOR A LONG TIME, I’ve believed in the free culture espoused by Lawrence Lessig and the open sharing of ideas, theories, studies, research advocated by Terry Vessels (above). I’ve therefore downloaded and consumed (installed, used, read, watched, listened…) lots of free software, ebooks, video, podcasts, news reports, in-depth analyses, research studies, etc. on the Internet over the past few years.

Recently, however, I’m beginning to ask myself, “Do I really believe in free culture and free exchange of ideas? Have I’ve been more the taker than the giver?” Granted that I’m normally a frank and open person. Yes, my work has been almost invariably very demanding. And yes, I’ve been blogging from time to time, sharing new things that I’ve learnt. Still, there were times when I’ve hesitated and held back. For example, I’ve kept my research study (begun in 2005) under wraps on the Net until a few days ago. Another example, I’ve been adding lots of useful information to a wiki on a sub-domain for almost two years now. Yet so far, I have chosen not to link them from my blog.

PERHAPS MISTRUST FIRST set in when a Masters program classmate asked quite pertinently some time ago, “But how could we share our research ideas, especially in a public domain? What if someone else were to steal our ideas and claim them as his/her own?”

Our eminent Trade Minister George Yeo probably spoke for many among us when he said on BlogTV (Episode 12: Big Boys Blogging) a few days ago:

“If they expect me to say things which I’d only say very privately, then they will be very disappointed because the blogosphere is not private space… There are things which you will say to your wife which you would not say to your friends, there are things that you would confide in your teacher which you would not confide even in your classmates. That’s part of life, we all have circles of trust…”

The minister was answering young blogger Gayle Goh’s very frank comments that (1) people who read blogs want fresh new perspectives and a strong, personal voice; and (2) people might find it very difficult to trust what politicians have to say especially when they won’t deviate from the party line at all.

Gayle’s response? She looked quite skeptical, even a little disapproving.

At first, I smiled at her youthful audacity and seeming naivete. Upon reflection however, I think Gayle raised an excellent point. Yes, indeed. Just who, in their leisure, would be interested to read a party manifesto? Even though it comes in blog postings?

Jeremy Wright, in his book Blog Marketing, wrote (paraphrased initially, words in brackets below are mine):

“Most blogs are expected to have these qualities — an authentic voice, honesty, and authority… this holds true even more so for the corporate blog…. This presents unique challenges for business leaders who want to understand blogging (connect with readers), as the concepts of transparency and authencity are not often associated with corporate communications practices….

“Blogging is really about three things:

• Information: Telling your customers what you’re doing and finding out what they are thinking.
• Relationships: Building a solid base of positive experiences with your customers that changes them from plain-old consumers to evangelists for your company and products.
• Knowledge management: Having the vast stores of knowledge within your company available to the right people at the right time.

“Without blogs, company messages can get so filtered by public relations or the media that CEOs and other senior management have decided to talk directly with customers — whether it be in the company’s stores, on the company’s airplanes, or at special events set up specifically for communicating with customers. The value of direct customer feedback is obvious, and blogs provide that [one-to-one and daily] on a global scale.”

In “Chapter 3: The Power of Blogs for Business”, Wright wrote:

Be Real: The Scoble Story

“…sometimes the most important person to be blogging in your company may not be an executive. For Microsoft… the most important blogger is arguably Robert Scoble… Scober started blogging before he joined Microsoft — his existing blog was actually a major force in landing him the job. In his role as a technical evangelist, Scoble has to be both authoritative and honest.

“One of Scoble’s rules is to tell the truth, even if it means admitting that a competitor’s product is better or if it means Microsoft is doing something wrong. This can be scary for an executive to do — though Sun’s Schwartz does it quite successfully (another story in the book). For Scoble, this comes naturally, and the net effect is that he has become one of the most influential people in a company with more than 55,000 employees. The external effect is that Microsoft now has a trusted voice who will give the straight and passionate answer to even the hardest questions.”

Finally, BG Yeo himself had observed in the first part of the BlogTV show:

“It’s strange. The emotion connected with blogging is very different from that connected with say, giving a speech or addressing an audience. For some reason, there’s an intimacy associated with going into the blogosphere which you don’t associate with a public meeting.”

Hmmm…. Can BG Yeo really maintain a public, party-line stance and yet achieve that “intimacy” with young people in Singapore? What do you think?

• FIREFOX 3 will go beyond HTML rendering to provide Information Broking services based on microformats (which add semantics to markup). For example, “the contact information you see on a Web site will be associated with your favorite contacts application, events will be associated with your favorite calendar application, locations will be associated with your favorite mapping application, phone numbers will be associated with your favorite VOIP application, etc.” (see ReadWriteWeb entry and InformationWeek article; thanks to Elearningpost)
• GOOGLE READER now tracks Personal Attention Metadata. “Now I can see what’s on the top of my radar… I am subscribed to 483 feeds. Over the last 30 days I’ve read 24,891 items and have shared 1,657 items.” (see MicroPersuasion entry; thanks to Eric Rice and Robert Scoble)
• OQO’s latest handheld PC, MODEL 02, arrives — looking really cool and sporting a 1.5GHz VIA processor, 60GB drive, 1GB DDR2 RAM, 5″ 800×480 display (interpolated up to 1200×720), pen-based input, Bluetooth 2.0, 802.11a/b/g WiFi, integrated EV-DO, and an HDMI-out port. (see Engadget entry; thanks to Robert Scoble’s link blog on Google Reader)
• SANDISK launches 32GB solid state drive (SSD), and indicates that within a year from launch, they should drop in price by some 60%. “So we’re talking 32GB SSDs for what, $250 by Q2 of 2007?” (see Engadget entry)
• UCLA announced plans in December to adopt Moodle as their institution-wide learning and collaboration environment (see EdTechPost entry; thanks to Stephen Downes’ OLDaily).

Today, I’m publishing online two wiki research proposals which I’d written for a Masters in Instructional Design program at the National Institute of Education, Singapore:

• “The UTAUT and Electronic Brainstorming in a Wiki”: This proposal was written in April 2005 for “Implications of Social Psychology Theories & Research for Educators”, a module taught by Dr Angeline Khoo and Dr Lim Kam Ming. Could have worked on this as a project if not for the circumstances (long story). So, imagine my surprise upon finding a very similar project (Global Warming Student Speakout) on the Google for Educators site last October! Not sure though what the specific research questions were.
• “Mediating PBL in a Wiki environment” (1): This proposal was written in April 2005 for “MID809: Designing, Conducting, and Reporting Investigations”, a module taught by Dr Chee Kit Looi and Dr Myint Swe Khine. A revised experiment was conducted in November among two classes in a polytechnic. The results were mixed. However, due to more pressing concerns at work, the writeup for the results of this project has been placed on the backburner till now.

Looking forward to your comments, suggestions, queries, etc.

Healthbolt has done some nice analysis of the layouts of top 10 blogs at Technorati and comes up with the following Composite Map. It gives a unique insight at how a small group of top blogs arrange themselves.

See it at full size and with a key to interpret the colors here  but before you go and look at it, see if you can predict what each color signifies in the following categories:

• Advertising
• Search
• Email/RSS Subscription
• Header/Site ID/Branding/Logo
• Content
• Internal Links/Navigation

Roles - Moodle has a complete new architecture for assigning people permissions. It’s very flexible, allowing you to give just a single person the right to delete posts in one particular forum… Thanks to Open University…

XML database schema – Moodle now supports a single way of specifying database structures using XML [for easier development and wider database support]… Moodle can now run out of the box on Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle… Thanks to Microsoft…

New admin interface – admins get… a new interface designed to make it much easier to find settings and configure Moodle properly… Thanks to Google…

Unit testing framework – developers can now easily write unit tests that can be run as part of a system check to make sure Moodle code is performing as expected… Thanks to Open University…

At WikiSym last August, Ward Cunningham showed some regional trends  comparing Google searches for “wiki” and “blog.” Overall, searches for “blog” (in red) steadily outpace searches for “wiki” (in blue), although the rate of growth is about the same for both… the phenomenon is reversed in Germany … [and] in Japan … At WikiWednesday this past week, PeterThoeny said that he had shown similar trends for a recent Wiki talk, and that he also showed the trends in France …

Whoa, Nellie! Apparently, the French don’t care much for Wikis. It was a shock for me to see this, as I know several stellar French members of the Wiki community and even more French-speaking members. Any thoughts as to why this might be the case?

My guess: Japanese and Germans are on the whole very cohesive people who tend to identify closely with their communities. The French, on the other hand, are generally known to be highly individualistic. Wiki collaborations are basically “corporate” or community-based. Therefore, it’s not surprising that most French people should “hate” wikis.

Most users will never need to leave Google. What an amazing pool of spontaneously generated data this would be for researchers!

By the way, I created the diagram above using Gliffy, another exciting free tool on the Web. And yes, collaborative editing is possible. There’s versioning too. A word of caution though: Remember to save and exit from Gliffy often. It hung my system just now.

Curiously, the MIT guy chose to call this “Assist Sketch Understanding System and Operation”. I believe this is a revised version of the Physics Illustrator that I was exploring a month or two ago. The software is basically “a motion simulator for the Tablet PC”:

Bring your drawings to life with the Physics Illustrator, Simply draw two-dimensional bodies, connect them in various ways and apply forces, then watch as animation makes the bodies move, collide, and interact.

(See also HOW TO: Use Physics Illustrator on non-tablet PC.)