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.

SOME OF THE KEY BEST PRACTICES as presented in the latest Nielsen Norman Group report, ”Intranet Design Annual 2009: Year’s Ten Best Intranets“, are:

• Company and industry news
• Integrating internal and external information sources
• Editorial control of the intranet homepage
• Keeping the intranet up-to-date
• CEO blogging
• Employee and department weblogs
• Onboarding of new employees
• Consistent navigation
• Multilingual intranets; supporting international employees
• Multimedia and video on intranets
• Data visualization
• Web 2.0 features on intranets
• Community
• Polls
• Collaboration tools and discussion boards
• Internal wikis
• Employee self service
• Search
• Governance
• Development process for intranet redesigns
• Web analytics for intranets
• Staffing of intranet teams; where they report in the organization
• Updating and maintaining standards and guidelines for intranet design
• Intranet branding
• Promoting new intranet features
• Staff directory and employee profile pages
• Corporate calendars
• Personalization
• Customization
• Alerts
• Working with external design agencies
• Intranet budgets and staffing

FOUND THIS INTERESTING LINK ON a Facebook friend’s profile when I was about to post a birthday greeting to her. I agree with the author, Dan York, who wrote:

The only reason I visit a web site these days is generally if either:

1. The website turns up in a search result.
2. I get notified that there’s something interesting there that I should look at.
3. Random times when for some reason I decide to go there, perhaps remembering a URL for a site I wanted to check out.

 
That’s it. (Note that I do get the content of many websites through the ways I mention below, but I don’t actually go to those websites and see their page.)

As I think about it, my consumption of information online really comes down to five ways:

1. E-mail, although I get too much of it to read it all. [Me: Exactly!]
2. Twitter, where I see links from people or services that I follow. [Me: Now, it's the FriendFeed (or NewsFeed) on Facebook.]
3. RSS feeds where my reader pulls it in and I quickly scan through the posts.
4. Skype persistent group chats where I’m connected to several different groups of people on various topics.
5. Searching for data, typically using Google.

 
The key thing is that, with the exception of search:
All the data comes to me!

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 other groups measured in the study were the Central Asians (Indians), East Asians (Chinese and Japanese), the Southeast Asians, Arabic (north Africa and Middle East) and Amerindian-Mestizo (Mexican and Central America). All these groups will experience a population growth.

Question: Why is global white population declining and not the other groups? Does this have anything to do with the legal recognition of same-sex couples worldwide among predominantly white nations in modern history, besides general reluctance to have babies (see Causes of “Sub-fertility replacement” on Wikipedia)?

The media giant is the owner of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel, Hartford Courant and several other papers. It also operates 23 television stations.

“…factors beyond our control have created a perfect storm — a precipitous decline in revenue and a tough economy coupled with a credit crisis that makes it extremely difficult to support our debt.”

“Like many US newspapers, the Tribune has been grappling with declining circulation, a loss of readership to online media, and a steep drop in print advertising revenue.

“The New York Times reported last week that another debt-ridden major US newspaper chain, the McClatchy Co., is seeking to sell one of its flagship newspapers, The Miami Herald.

“And the New York Times itself has not been immune to the crisis gripping the newspaper industry. The paper reported Monday that the New York Times Co. plans to borrow up to 225 million dollars against its mid-Manhattan headquarters building to ease a potential cash flow squeeze.”

September Update: See also “Dow Jones shutting down FEER” and “Journalists Losing Jobs at Three Times Rate of Average Workers“.

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)

For some reason though, I didn’t manage to install or run Chrome on my desktop PC yesterday. Still wondering whether that has anything to do a coincidental Windows update on the PC just before that. Anyway, I’m intrigued by what Keso has written about Chrome, in particular:

I think the real reason for Google to join the browsers bandwagon two years ago are this: Google needs control of a browser that has sufficient influence. It also needs to set up de facto standards through something that can be controlled and demonstrated.

Therefore, what’s important about Chrome are these two things: A new JavaScript engine V8 and a “Webified” version of the desktop app Gears. Both are part of Google’s key strategy to expand browser functions to better support future Web apps.

We often naively assume that Desktop battles are waged for the purpose of establishing Trojan horse pipelines. Actually, the smarter purpose of such battles is not for thievery or user base, but for the establishment of de facto standards that are advantageous to one’s future plans. For Google, this standard will enable its apps to run perfectly regardless of the platform or terminal that anyone may use. In order to better release its “cloud of accumulated energy”, Google needs a well-supported standard and a popular browser.

Therefore, Google has chosen not to integrate many of its own products and services into Chrome. Some people complain that one can easily install Google Toolbar on IE, but not on Chrome. Actually, there’re many more things that one cannot do on Chrome: visit Gmail with one click, publish easily from Blogger, upload video to YouTube, and even customize the default search engine…

Like Chrome, V8 and Gears are released as open-source projects. This will undoubtedly enhance their neutrality and therefore appeal to developers. It doesn’t matter how much market share Chrome will claim eventually. The key is whether it can provide the best demonstration of Gears and V8, thereby enabling them to become de facto standards.

Some people say that the target of Chrome is neither IE nor Firefox but Windows. Considering the line of “cloud”, apps and browser, I basically agree with this judgement.

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?

Most likely, your class is NOT going to be as exciting as this one (left), where the professor gamely laid on a bed of nails while someone else tried to break a cement block on him with a sledgehammer! In such a case, you are likely to be distracted by a backchannel.

As Chris Lott put it, “…regardless of what a participant has at hand– a backchannel, a laptop, a cell phone, a book, or a set of Legos– they are not and never will direct 100% of their attention forward and they will find ways to create the attention cycles that characterize engagement. I was able to ignore… incompetent teachers just fine back when the only thing digital [we] had access to was a watch.”

ON JUNE 9, ELLIOT MASIE posed a similar question to teachers and learning designers on LearningTown and received over 80 responses. It’s interesting to observe how Masie kicked off the etivity with a great “spark” (italicized emphases are mine):

Initially, some of the respondents expressed concerns of “how do we know where they are”, and that “It is distracting to the trainer and students sitting near you”.

Then one respondent Ray Eisenberg turned the tide by quoting George Siemens (”ERN – Social Media, Theory and Practice, Backchannel, Laptops in Classrooms” May 31, 2008):

“When I don’t have a laptop at a conference, I learn differently, not more. I learn what the speaker is saying, rather than the resources she is citing. When I have a computer, I don’t play solitaire … I use the opportunity to find related resources, follow up on information presented, and generally enlarge the sphere of what would often be a single-perspective presentation. I’m sympathetic with the concerns of laptop mis-use. Yet I wonder if the problem isn’t partly with our lack of modeling proper technology use. Perhaps we ought to utilize these tools for academic purposes, rather than continuing lecture models and seeing laptops as add ons to learning rather than a key contributor. “

Eisenberg then added, “I agree with Siemens. In a standard lecture, sage-on-the-stage format, there are probably going to be issues. If you bring the internet to center stage then I think that we will be able, as architects have long been successful in doing, convert a problem into a feature.”

Personally, some time last year, I’ve observed the same professor teach the same lesson to two classes of students in two different settings. One class was in a tutorial room while the other class was in a computer lab. The attention the students in the tutorial room gave the professor was much more. As a result, the professor’s level of confidence and energy in the tutorial room was correspondingly higher, and he managed to speak much more fluently and crack a few more jokes in the tutorial room than in the computer lab.

As for myself as a participant, I’ve often gone online while attending lectures and seminars. I’ve noticed that I’m able to add notes online and check out related resources quickly. However, I would often miss a few words here and there. If the speaker is a boring one, most of what he said would have escaped me.

• 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]

FRANKLY, I DON’T KNOW what to make out of the Tibetan protests. I’ve not spent significant time researching on the issues involved. However, from what I know and remember of Chinese history, I feel quite strongly that Chris Nebe (as a foreigner with insider knowledge and experience of China) is speaking the truth about Tibet in the video here:


Nebe’s post in YouTube:
The West is trying to demonize China. Why? To ensure an upper-handed position economically, politically, and socially.

Too many harbor strong opinions about Tibet, yet know nothing more than the few slogans offered by the mass-media outlets.

The media screams:
“They killed innocent monks!” – but those “innocent” monks and other young hooligans killed innocent Chinese before a single shot was fired on them.
“The Chinese are oppressive” – do you consider freeing over 95% of Tibetans from slavery, building a state of the art infrastructure, and a new economy oppressive?
“The Chinese suppress Tibetan Buddhism” – then why have the Chinese spent a fortune restoring ancient monasteries and places of religious significance?

China doesn’t SPIN NEWS like we do. Their silence is too often mistaken as admission of guilt. Don’t be another uninformed drone. Do everyone a favor and learn truths before forming opinions.

Here’s to Peace & Harmony! The 2008 Beijing Olympics deserve support!

Reminds me of “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi”, where Emperor Palpatine said to Luke Skywalker: “The alliance… will die. As will your friends. Good, I can feel your anger. I am defenseless. Take your weapon. Strike me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!”

.

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).

THESE DAYS, THE WORDS “Love is stronger than Death” keep coming to mind. Four reasons: (1) Two very moving movies recently, (2) Our bible group is currently studying the Acts of the Apostles, (3) Four days of prayers and meditations during Holy Week retreat (March 19-23), and (4) Today is the third death aniversary of Pope John Paul II (also known as Karol Wojtyla before he became pope).

One of the two movies is famous: “The Passion of Christ”. The other is not well-known but its message is just as touching and powerful. It is “Karol, a man who became Pope”, showing in many concrete ways how love can conquer hatred, violence and even death. Here’re two 10-minute video clips and the English transcripts (click the “Read the rest of this entry” link below) for some of its most moving moments:

Karol, a man who became pope – Part 1 of 5

Karol, a man who became pope – Part 2 of 5

All, have a happy and blessed Easter! JPII, unum corde et anima una!

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT for Part 1 of 5:

Note: The original dialog is in Polish. The subtitles are in badly translated English. I’ve edited them a little. Words in brackets are the replaced subtitles.

@6:45 – 8:06 min of video
Karol: Why don’t I know how to answer her? Why do men force other men (similar) to live in absolute pain and without hope? How can we answer that? How many million of monsters inhabit this earth, Tomasz? Why are the innocent the ones who pay? How many people have to be born only to fall into an abyss (”be boundless”)?
Fr Tomasz Zaleski: I can only tell you that I have looked at that Nazi in the eyes. The evil I saw was so absolute, so incomprehensibile, obscene, that I’ve felt the desire to kill him. And I am a priest! I’ve felt deeply guilty. We don’t need to hate as they do. Love… only love can prevent men from falling in the abyss.

@9:06 min of video
Girl 1: You are late.
Karol: I’m sorry.
Girl 2: We have decided to enlist in the armed groups. Everyone.
Man 1: Not I. You fight with weapons, I want to fight with the word. We have the theater and the theater has to continue.
Girl 1: And where? For which spectators?
Man 1: It will keep on living in secret (clandestine) in our houses, in the cellars. We needs to save the word.
Girl 2: Poland is prey of terror and chaos, and you talk about the theater? How do you manage not to be ashamed?
Girl 3: There is no alternative. We need to take up fire-arms.
Another voice: Correct!
Man 1: The word is stronger than bullets!
Man 2: Show it with a gun aimed at the head!
Girl 1: What do you think, Karol?
Men: We have decided! Armed resistence!
Girl 1: Karol!
Karol: Stop, wait! I understand and respect those who want to take up [aim] arms. The Nazis are exterminating our people. They also want to exterminate the culture, to cancel the Polish language. The only way to have still a future is to save our past. He who wants to choose the way of the arms, I think, it’s correct that he does it. But he [Man 1] is right, we need to keep our culture alive. We will make theater too, and we will do it secretly (clandestine). Remember: the theater is the conscience of life.
Man 3: You’ll have your theater and we’ll have our arms.
Karol: Ok, let’s fight the same battle… same hope and same enemy. [Embraces man 3]
Man 3: Let’s go!
[All embraces one another, saying] Unum corde et anima una!

FULL TRANSCRIPT for Part 2 of 5:

[Scene: Gunshot rings out. Woman screams. A man pulls Karol into a room.]
Man: Where do you think you’re going? Where do you run? Do you want to be killed like a dog in the middle of the road?
Karol: Who are you?
Man: Ian Tiranoski and who are you?
Karol: Ian, you will burn your fingers…
Ian: A match is ignited and it’s extinguished. It’s not the flame of a match that burns inside me. [Lights a candle.] You have not told me yet what your name is.
Karol: Karol. I have to go. I am looking for a friend, a priest, for a mass.
Ian: A corpse mass?
Karol: Yes.
Ian: We’ll win with love, not with fire.
Karol: Can you say that with the Nazis just outside your door?
Ian: Nazism will end, evil will devour itself, but…
Karol: But… if love doesn’t triumph, Nazism will return even with another name. Do you mean that?
Ian: Exactly! [Gives Karol a book] St John of the Cross, you’ll be surprised by it. It’ll become your preferred reading. Pick it up.
Karol: Thanks.

[New Scene: Karol talking to a priest in a church.]
Karol: I want to look for the same reasons that you have, of hope and of faith, I want to close myself up in a monastery…
Fr Tomasz: Karol, in such times the people need to have priests nearby and not confined in a monastery.
Karol: I have thought a lot about what I want to leave, and I keep thinking about the importance of the choice that I am about to make. I wonder if it’s because I want to hide myself, or because I feel me in a guilt for all the pain that I see, or if there is something deeper… God is calling me.
Fr Tomasz: John has written in his Gospel that Jesus said: “You have not chosen me but I have chosen you”. The door is open, Karol. Now it depends only on you.

[New Scene: Fr Tomasz and Karol get out of a car.]
Fr Tomasz: Let’s go. [The two enter a building and meets a Cardinal.]
Karol: I have seen all the horror around us, and I have been drawn with strength toward a good, the priesthood. In the name of every human being, of his dignity… to know myself through the knowledge of God, to live God in the depths, I want to become priest…
Cardinal: In the darkness of this evil, we have to give testimony that the divine sense of life is more important than life itself.
Karol: I am here for this.
Cardinal: The Nazis have closed our seminary, you are risking your life. Therefore your mother must not even know that you study here. You’ll lead your usual life, but you’ll study and meditate secretly with us every time it’s possible for you.

[New Scene: Soldiers marching forward.]
Commander: Arm! [ Soldiers ready rifles to shoot. Fr Tomasz standing near the wall, talking to a German captain who has earlier saved Karol's life against the wishes of a Nazi leader.] Come back, father! Come back, father!
German captain: Thanks, Father, to have helped me to die. I’m safe now. I can’t see the Germany of my childhood, those white houses along the river…
Commander: Father, come back!
German captain: Go away, father. He has ordered you to walk away from me.
Fr Tomasz: Brother!
German captain: Go away, I beg you. Don’t get yourself killed.
Fr Tomasz: A new day will come when your children will see on the river those same white houses.
Commander: Aim! [ Soldiers raised rifles.]
Fr Tomasz: [Embraces the captain] God bless you.
[Nazi leader gets out of car and waves to commander.]
Commander: Fire!
[German captain dies. Nazi leader points gun at Fr Tomasz.]
Nazi leader: Who has killed him? You or me? You have killed him, Polish priest. And now, I’m going to kill you.
Fr Tomasz: [Controlling anger and grief] May God forgive you!
Nazi leader: According to my god, the world must be governed by honor.
Fr Tomasz: The world must be governed by love!
Nazi leader: [Walks away and tells commander] Kill him.
Commander: Aim! [Fr Tomasz pulls his priestly stole down from his neck and kisses it.]
Commander: Fire! [Fr Tomasz dies.]

[New Scene: Karol walking along a road, turns sharply around and sees the name of Fr Tomasz on a list of executed people. Weeps bitterly.]

[New Scene: Student priests studying in church. An explosion.]
A student [running and shouting]: They have exploded the bridge of Demlikj! the Russians are near! The Germans are going away, Poland is free! Thanks be to God. [The students embraced one another happily.] Poland is free! [Karol smiles and prays with relief.]

[New Scene: Ordination of Karol Wojtyla as priest. In a church, Karol (face flat) lying on the floor. Cardinal in front of him. Choir singing and praying.]
Karol: Come, Creative Spirit, I’ll be on the floor where others walk to arrive where you drive their footsteps.

[New Scene: Grim-looking man walking towards Russian leader.]
Russian leader: Welcome. Julian Cordec, correct? They have told me of you a thing that I judge impossible for a Polish.
Julian Cordec: That I don’t hate the Russians? My best years have been at the university of Moscow.
Russian leader: They say that you are not Catholic. What is it, a joke? An excuse (expedient) to have a career with us?
Julian Cordec: The joke for the socialist revolution would be to let the Catholics act unmolested, don’t you think?
Russian leader: Is there a reason why this should become your desk?
Julian Cordec: [Hands a file to the leader.] The list of the Polish clergy. The Nazis have eliminated one third of the priests, but they are still many, too many. I won’t let them act, think, or breathe. One day, they won’t even have the time to dream about their God.
[Russian leader raises cup and toasts Julian Cordec.]

[INTRO SCENE for the next part of the movie: In a church. Karol turns around and camera zooms in to show a closeup of his face.]
[Voiceover] I am a young face carved on the rocks of the Tatrs. May a grain field grow from my youth, mature in the hopes and the pain so that our joy may glorify You… great mystery.

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!
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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.

By the way, the interface of the YouKu.com site looks very like YouTube.com! In the spirit of Web 2.0 and open-source, let’s hope YouTube (or rather Google) would let things be.

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.”

HERE ARE SOME PRACTICAL TIPS from a very interesting girl called June (a.k.a. princessgx on YouTube):

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.”

CWNews:

Instead of the familiar scene of the Baby Jesus laid in a manger, the Vatican’s Nativity scene this year will show the infant Jesus in a home that also includes his father’s workshop. No reason has been given for the change.

Does the it look like this Honthorst painting of St Joseph, as displayed on AmericanPapist.com (with an infant instead of a child looking up at St Joseph)?

AN INTERESTING EXPLANATION from Zenit:

Lev [an art historian] said: “This Nativity is not so much a break with tradition but is presenting a new side of the Nativity, revealing a new facet.

“It is trying to represent Joseph’s experience, his dream of what will happen knowing that Jesus will be born and Mary is with child. He had no idea the way it would all work out as he prepared to take on this task given to him by God through a message of an angel. So it is what he imagines in his home amid his work before it comes to pass.”

“This fits Joseph and the acceptance of his call into the story,” Lev continued. “Joseph is never the star of the Nativity, but his role is crucial. So this is not upsetting biblical tradition, but [giving] a different facet, looking at it in a different light.”

“In the Nativity accounts, a mother figure is always there, but this Nativity makes present the importance of the father figure and the fact that he is essential. It’s a reminder that he wasn’t born only to a mother, while providing a source of meditation during this time when we are faced with the battle against marriage and the family. It is a good way for the Church, in nonaggressive and nonpolitical way, to remind us of the basis of our understanding of family through the Holy Family.

“This is a Nativity very much of Joseph Ratzinger, a teaching Nativity. Instead of complacently laying out the characters, this year they are being laid out in a way so we have to think about what this momentous birthday means, think about the circumstance in which Jesus is born, while reminding us of Joseph’s essential role.”

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.

In my case, I’ve chosen the latter because I’m basically a private person, PLUS council work has turned out to be really time-consuming (gasp!) AND really serious work, bound by strict building management laws and regulations.

I’m taking a break for another month or so. Pardon my silence.

“My expectations for this computer were, I must admit, not very high. But it completely took me by surprise. It was cleverly designed, imaginative, straightforward, easy to understand (I was given no instructions on how to use it. It was just, “Here. Figure it out yourself.”), useful and simple, entertaining, dependable, really a “stick to the basics” kind of computer.

“…unfortunately, the internet is the only fast element of the computer. My main problem with this laptop is how very slow it is. It’s true that I am used to faster computers, but that’s not the problem. It’s just really slow. I had to wait two minutes to get onto one application. That’s just a little longer than I can accept. Also, it got slower and slower and slower the longer I went without rebooting it. I had to reboot it all the time. We’re talking once every two or three hours of use!”

For more details, go to the “Freedom to Tinker” blog.

“…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”.

• I cannot simply enter “Rochester Park”. I must enter a block number. So, I plucked a number from the air: “9″.
• After x seconds of inactivity, map.gov.sg would show a timeout message and then a timeout screen (!) as follows:
  
• As TedFox noted, “[map.gov.sg does] not provide any bus/mrt directions (which can be taken from the sbs website though)”. It also does not provide other useful information such as “Satellite Image”, “What’s nearby”, “Analyse Loc”, “Related Editorials” at the top of the StreetDirectory.com page:
  
• Nor does it provide this useful titbit of information at the bottom of the page:
  

  “Streetdirectory.com Rochester Park is located in Dover, Singapore. The Dover district is a small one filled with schools and tertiary institutions. Private schools such as Anglo Chinese School (Independent), or ACSI, and Anglo Chinese Junior College are located here, as well as public schools such as Fairfield Methodist Secondary School. Many locals study in ITE Dover to obtain technical certificates or go for a diploma education at Singapore Polytechnic. Many expatriates sent their children to United World College Southeast Asia (UWCSEA), one of Singapore’s international schools. These expatriates also enjoy going for a drink at Rochester Park, a popular cluster of restaurants and wine bars in Dover.”

• Finally, the location map itself look like this on Map.gov.sg:
  and the location map on StreetDirectory.com looks like this:
  

Disclaimer: I have no vested interest in either Map.gov.sg or StreetDirectory.com. Neither am I aware of having any friend (or foe) in these two organizations.

Related Articles:

• Is this the end of StreetDirectory.com?

“A district court yesterday ruled that Virtual Map (Singapore)’s online maps on StreetDirectory.com had breached the Singapore Land Authority’s (SLA) copyright. The judge also ordered the company to destroy or deliver up all infringing material.”

I’ve been referring to the maps and related services (e.g. Bus/MRT directions) on StreetDirectory.com for years and found them very useful in helping me find my way around Singapore. Yes, we are living in a very small island (only 699.0 sq km). But this island also has a population of more than four million people and God knows how many streets and buildings. I’m sure at least thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of other users find the site very useful too.

What a dreadful piece of news to read on the eve of our national day! Does this court case mean the end of a free and very useful reference site for Singaporeans and visitors? Or (still hopeful…) will SLA start providing this service instead?

Related Articles:

• Can Map.gov.sg Replace StreetDirectory.com?

• 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.

You are Yoda

Photo credit: CC license by Orange Beard (metrojp).

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.

First, I read Chillycraps’ Pinging Party post and found the official recording of the live Ping.sg webcast on Ustream:
.

This recording, however is almost three hours long! :-p So, here’s a quick guide to this video:

• 0:00 NTT and Rinaz warming up the camera, people streaming in, testing on stage…
• 39:00 Award Presentation begins with MCs Brendan and Rinaz.
• 45:00 Most Entertaining Blog: Chillycraps
• 51:15 Most Interactive Blog: EastCoastLife
• 58:00 Most Insightful Blog: Cobalt Paladin (entertaining video around 62:00)
• 71:00 Best Photoblog: Keropok Man
• 81:00 Best Blog Design: Veron
• 88:30 Most Controversial Post: EastCoastLife
• 97:35 Most Entertaining Post: EastCoastLife
• 103:42 Most Insightful Post: dk99
• 115: Best Citizen Journalist Post: dk99
• 120:30 Post of The Year: EastCoastLife
• 125:30 Blog Of The Year: Veron (Suddenly, there was no sound!)
• 131:00 How Ping.sg Got Started (Haha! Uzyn used the word “Web 2.0″ to describe Ping.sg!)

Next, read Chillycraps’ What the Fish post and found two amusing video recordings by Rinaz:

.

1. Fishes! (Technology: Reactrix)

“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?

1. Begin sentences with subjects and verbs. Make meaning early, then let weaker elements branch to the right.
2. Order words for emphasis. Place strong words at the beginning and at the end.
3. Activate your verbs. Strong verbs create action, save words, and reveal the players.
4. Be passive-aggressive. Use passive verbs to showcase the “victim” of action.
5. Watch those adverbs. They can dilute the meaning of the verb or repeat it. Use them to change the meaning of the verb.
6. Go easy on the ‘ings’. Prefer the simple present or past. For example, “wish and hope and think and pray” is better than “wishing and hoping and thinking and praying“.
7. Fear Not the Long Sentence. Take the reader on a journey of language and meaning.
8. Parallel Lines – Establish a pattern, then give it a twist. Build parallel constructions, but cut across the grain.
9. Let punctuation control pace and space. Learn the rules, but realize you have more options than you think.
10. Cut Big, Then Small. Prune the big limbs, then shake out the dead leaves.
11. Prefer the simple over the technical. Use shorter words, sentences and paragraphs at points of complexity.
12. Give key words their space. Do not repeat a distinctive word unless you intend a specific effect.
13. Play with words, even in serious stories. Choose words the average writer avoids but the average reader understands.
14. Get the name of the dog. Dig for the concrete and specific, details that appeal to the senses.
15. Pay attention to names. Interesting names attract the writer – and the reader.
16. Seek Original Images. Reject clichés and first-level creativity.
17. Riff on the creative language of others. Make word lists, free-associate, be surprised by language.
18. Set the pace with sentence length. Vary sentences to influence the reader’s speed.
19. Vary the lengths of paragraphs. Go short or long — or make a “turn”– to match your intent.
20. Choose the number of elements with a purpose in mind. One, two, three, or four: Each sends a secret message to the reader.
21. Know when to back off and when to show off. When the topic is most serious, understate; when least serious, exaggerate.
22. Climb up and down the ladder of abstraction. Learn when to show, when to tell, and when to do both. (At the bottom are bloody knives and rosary beads, wedding rings and baseball cards. At the top are words that reach for a higher meaning, words like “freedom” and “literacy.”)
23. Tune your voice. Read drafts aloud.
24. Work from a plan. Index the big parts of your work.
25. Learn the difference between reports and stories. Use reports to render information and stories to render experience.
26. Use dialogue as a form of action. Dialogue advances narrative; quotes delay it.
27. Reveal traits of character. Show character-istics through scenes, details, and dialogue.
28. Put odd and interesting things next to each other. Help the reader learn from contrast.
29. Foreshadow dramatic events or powerful conclusions. Plant important clues early.
30. To generate suspence, use internal cliffhangers. To propel readers (to turn the page), make them wait.
31. Good questions drive good stories. Good stories need an engine, a question the action answers for the reader.
32. Place gold coins along the path. Reward the reader with high points, especially in the middle.
33. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Purposeful repetition links the parts.
34. Write from different cinematic angles. Turn your notebook into a “camera” — shifting focus to capture both landscape and character.
35. Report and write for scenes. Then align them in a meaningful sequence.
36. Mix narrative modes. Combine story forms using the “broken line.”
37. In short pieces of writing, don’t waste a syllable. Shape shorter works with wit and polish.
38. Prefer archetypes to stereotypes. Use subtle symbols, not crashing cymbals.
39. Write toward an ending. Help readers close the circle of meaning.
40. Draft a mission statement for your work. To sharpen your learning, write about your writing.
41. Save String. For big projects, save scraps others would toss.
42. Turn procrastination into rehearsal. Plan and write it first in your head.
43. Do your homework well in advance. Prepare for the expected — and unexpected.
44. Read for both form and content. Examine the machinery beneath the text.
45. Break long projects into parts. Then assemble the pieces into something whole.
46. Take an interest in all crafts that support your work. To do your best, help others do their best.
47. Recruit your own support group. Create a corps of helpers for feedback.
48. Limit self-criticism in early drafts. Turn it loose during revision.
49. Learn from your critics. Tolerate even unreasonable criticism.
50. Own the tools of your craft. Build a writing workbench to store your tools.

A quick check on the IP address (70.86.138.114) suggests that this hacker is located in Texas, Dallas (USA) — more specifically, along McKinney Ave:

Can someone catch this guy/gal and tell him/her to buzz off?

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

This is definitely NOT true. First, blogs on Google Blogger have addresses that end with blogspot.com and NOT blogger.com. Second, blogs on Google Blogger might not even have addresses that end with blogspot.com if the owner chooses to point another domain on that Blogger blog. For example, Robert Scoble pointed the Scobleizer.com domain at his Scobleizer.WordPress.com blog and his blog is listed as Scobleizer.com in Technorati (Authority: 6,232, Rank: 70) with no trace of blog host WordPress.com at all.

Here are some counter-proof: Some of the Top 100 Technorati blogs that I know for a fact are on Google Blogger are:

• PostSecret (Authority: 11,787, Rank: 9)
• Official Google Blog (Authority: 8,653, Rank: 13)
• XiaXue (Authority: 3,841, Rank: 85)

There were 10 speakers: Brett McFall, Tom Hua, Jay Abraham, Mark Joyner, Armand Morin, David Cavanagh, Ewen Chia, Stephen Peirce, Mike Filsaime, and John Childers. Each internet marketing guru on the stage spoke persuasively of having a simple easy-to-follow system which guaranteed success. Some qualified by adding, “lots of hard work over a period of time”. Somehow though, with the possible exception of Jay Abraham and Mark Joyner, their systems all looked and sounded the same:

Basically, each guru suggested offering a freebie to lure prospects to a site and into giving their email addresses. Then the hardsell process begins in earnest: A one-time irresistible offer is made online and the specially designed website starts to sell in almost all possible ways (upsell, downsell, cross-sell, etc.) until the prospect yields to temptation and pays up.

AT THE END OF EACH GURU’S TALK during the WIMS 2007 seminar was invariably a sales pitch, whereby the guru would show what looked like an endless list of over-priced products/services. Then he would slash the prices to about a tenth or more, and tell the audience to buy NOW. Many people actually did as told.

I did a quick estimation. Some of the speakers charge each attendee $5,000++ for attending his program which includes one day of training, two days of coaching and monthly meetings for one year. If 100 people sign up for the program, he’d have made $500,000 (half a million!) per program.

I also ran some checks on the PageRanks (using the multiple PageRank checker) and the estimated traffic (using AttentionMeter.com) on the speakers’ websites and found the following:

Fig. 1: Google PageRanks for the 10 speakers.

Fig. 2: Google PageRank for some of the speakers’ sites

Fig. 3: Compete.com Graph for ArmandMorin.com, BizSuccessOnline.com, BrettMcFall.com & StephenLive.com

Fig. 4: Compete.com Graph for Abraham.com, Aesop.com, EwenChia.com, MarkJoyner.name, MikeFilsaime.com

Fig. 5: Compete.com Graph for Aesop.com, ArticleCity.com, AutoPilotProfits.com, eBookWholesaler.net, Simpleology.com

Notes:

• AutoPilotProfits.com belongs to Ewen Chia, Aesop.com and Simple-ology.com belongs to Mark Joyner, ebookwholesaler.net belongs to Tom Hua.
• With rampant link exchanges on the Net, PageRanks are increasingly being manipulated.
• Traffick, a search engine blog, wrote (”On Alexa, Compete.com, Quantcast, et al.”, February 06, 2007):

“People who don’t know too much about web stats love to quote Alexa ranks way too much… that’s seen as a silly thing to do by those “in the know”. But still, darned tempting. You can buy better data, but Alexa is free.

“More recently, upstarts that don’t seem too dissimilar to Alexa have come along: Compete.com, Quantcast, etc…. Based on the evidence I’ve sifted through, there’s not a shred to suggest that Compete.com is better at this stage, and some to suggest it’s actually worse.”

I remember from experience that hardsell also happens in face-to-face sessions. And how I hate being subject to it! These guys are shrewd marketers. These techniques probably really work well. Perhaps consumers need to beware! How many times have we bought things that we don’t need but thought we need at that moment of buying? Still, what are the right things to do when one really needs to make a living and so sell well on the Net (or elsewhere)? And just who (if any) have achieved real successes?

Related Posts:

• Scam? Ewen Chia, Adam Wong, Both or Neither?
• 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.?

A Japanese IT journalist confirms this in an online article in April, Twitter booms in Japan / Twitter from Skype. Nobi has been seeing more and more early adopters getting on board with Twitter. He wrote:

“I also started to see the third wave of Japanese early adopters have started using Twitter around yesterday. Seeing Orkut, Gree and mixi case, this could be the most critical group of all. Both Orkut and Gree captured some people of this group but they couldn’t keep momentum among them. This group of people are knows computers and Internet but they are not necessarily following latest trends in web technologies and services.

“This is a very colorful group and includes several big and significant clusters. One big cluster is Mac-fanatics in Japan. their occupations, generations and taste varies widely but they are very well connected through some extremely popular Mac web sites. They also tend to have closer relation with media, famous people, etc. thus are somewhat influential.”

Related Posts:

• Insight#5: More Good Ways to Use Twitter
• Japanese Loves to Read Blogs

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!

“Visitors to the Ping.sg website will be able to see what is going on at the fair and chat online with the stall holders and visitors to the fair… At scheduled intervals, the emcee for the BuyButtonz event will also be delivering reports live from the fair. Interviews with BuyButtonz CEO, Ping.sg and the various stall holders at the fair will also be webcasted.”

This integration is believed to be the first to connect the traditional fair format with the online world via video streaming. Usually, live events are covered by local radio and TV stations.

So far, confirmed stall holders at the BuyButtonz Fair include ladies intimate wear ClosetLingerie.com, homegrown designer-wear Caramel.com.sg and T-Shirts vendor WantonDoodles.com . Each vendor will be bringing a selection of uniquely designed products that is normally available only online. Other online vendors include Good Image Tea BioLifeMarketing.com.sg, Animation Production and Training Intense-Animation.com, discount magazines outlet YourMamaShop.com, adventure travel company OhanaAdventure.com and many more.

BuyButtonz is an online payment solution that makes it easy for online payments to be collected securely. Ping.sg, a metablog popular amongst Singaporeans, is the official online media for the fair. Registered users of Ping.sg will stand to receive up to 5 free BuyButtonz on-top of the One free BuyButtonz that is given out to all Singaporeans.

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。)

The message was as follows:

From: DMOZ Editor <xxx.dmoz@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 28, 2007 9:05 AM
Subject: DMOZ – Requesting test username/password.

Site:http://www.netcoachasia.com/
Site submitted: January 17, 2007
——————————————————

Hello,

I am an editor at dmoz.org (DMOZ or ODP) and would like to see if it’s possible to have a sample/test username and password + access code? The courses seem very interesting, but for some sites we must be able to see some of their descriptions and what they offer before we can list them.

Rest assured, this username/password + access code will be kept purely confidential, and you can delete it at anytime.

http://dmoz.org/guidelines/site-specific.html#password -Explains how dmoz editors keep usernames confidential and why we sometimes need them.

Thanks,

Anonymous dmoz editor

A GOOGLE SEARCH ON “DMOZ editors” yields quite worrying results. The first four are as follows:

Corrupt DMOZ Editor

WebProWorld :: View topic – DMOZ editor wants $300 to list my site

Psssst — GIVING away DMOZ Editor Accounts! – Jim Boykin’s Internet …

The Resource Zone – Open Directory Project Public Forum

Discussion board sponsored and managed by members of the ODP Community, for discussion of dmoz-related issues.
www.resource-zone.com/ – 3k

Note: This editor asks for a password to a course. I gave him/her access to one. After a day or two, s/he asks for another course to see. I don’t understand. I’m just listing an elearning site. Why does a Dmoz editor need to view multiple courses on my site?

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.

Now, my 9otta 9et 9oals (aka “9 Worthy 9oals Before I Expire”) are:

1. Complete a PhD program in educational psychology with a world-class professor.
2. Make a positive difference in the lives of the youths in my family and within my church so that they in turn would make a positive difference in the lives of others.
3. Be actively involved in non-profit work for the less fortunate in Asia, e.g. like what Beth Kanter is doing for Cambodia.
4. Establish a successful learning media business headquartered in Singapore with outreach to various parts of Asia.
5. Publish and maintain a very special never-ending “book” that’s a favorite among discerning audience.
6. Spend a few months traveling around (and living in) some of my favorite spots on earth, e.g. the Holy Land, some of the most beautiful islands in Greece; Tuscany and Umbria in Italy; major mountains and rivers of China; hot springs of Japan, the Little Portion Hermitage in Arkansas, USA.
7. Go up in a hot-air balloon, skydive, then scuba dive and finally sleep under the stars — all within a day or two.
8. Spend an afternoon hanging out with John Michael Talbot.
9. Leave a memorable and valuable legacy for my loved ones.

.

TAGTIME: I am tagging these 9eek 9als whom I’ve met so far, either physically (in Singapore) or virtually (via the blogosphere): Beth Kanter (Beth’s Blo9), EastCoastLife, Estee (9eek 9oddess), Nicole (The 9al), Raine (Ar9onaut Aura), Rinaz (Marina’s Blo99ariffic), Su Yuen (Striving to achieve one 9oal at a time!), Tstar (A Replacement to Writin9?) and Veron (9raphics desi9ner at Splarkette.net)

Note: The idea of this meme is to list five to ten goals that you’d like to achieve in your lifetime no matter how outrageous and share them with the world. Then tag others to do the same.

Afternote 27-04-2007: I had my doubts when trying to respond to this meme because this almost looks like a “cheap” exchange of links. However, upon second thoughts, I find some value in writing and therefore rethinking goals that are worth pursuing for me AS WELL AS in reading about the goals of people that I’ve befriended in the blogosphere. So, here it is.

.

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

Among them, I like Rinaz’s writeup the most: What a great summary and such a cute video, especially the last part where the scenes and voices were fast forwarded! And thanks for the kind words. At closeup, Rinaz looked really pretty. And she was so witty and pleasant to be with.

I’ve also enjoyed the company of the others, especially those sitting right next to me: Tstar, Ridzuan and Uzyn. It was a great meetup, and I truly look forward to the next one.

• I’m a rather private and introspective person, which may come as a surprise to certain people. Someone had once commented, “But you’re so outspoken!” Yes, where work is concerned, I am often quite forthright
• In this blog, I write about my faith, inner thoughts and sometimes feelings. Sometimes, I merely quote passages or verses that I like. All these I had presumed that most people wouldn’t be interested in. In fact, this blog is quite religious. More specifically, it’s Christian and Catholic. People who are non-Christian sometimes get rather defensive (even offensive) when they are presented with something religious (or Christian).
• I’ve wanted to migrate this blog to WordPress for months, but have yet to find the time or the specific instructions (or means) to do so.

BUT WHY THIS CHANGE NOW? I’m beginning to notice that many bloggers can get quite personal and many blog readers actually like to read personal details and thereby get to know the author more personally.

Also, some people have mistaken me for a man. They said, “You write so impersonally in your blog.”

PLUS: It would be wonderful if some of you actually like what I’ve written there and start sharing with me more interesting or inspiring stories of similar nature!

So anyway, to stop teasing your curiosity, here’s my “secret” blog: SingleCatholicWoman. Note that this is NOT a Singles ad. I’m simply blogging about the challenges and opportunities (or advantages) of being single, Catholic and female.

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

1. Speedlinker: Roundups, Comments, Trackbacks, etc of interesting posts. E.g. Problogger.com
2. Quoter: Blockquoting an interesting point of view, extract or news snippet and add a short bit of opinion and sourcing information. E.g. Susan Mernet’s “Quote of the Day”.
3. Entertainer: Amusing video, cartoon, image or joke. E.g. CartoonStock.com, BLaugh.com
4. Questioner: On-topic, interesting and conversation generating question. Insightful and interactive.
5. Updater: Ongoing project statistics or status.
6. Newsreader: Interesting news from press releases or grapevine. E.g. TechCrunch.com
7. Recycler: Dragging out some old goodies from the archives and reposting them for your new readers. (Collis didn’t have any example here, so I’ve added one. This “recycler” is a good online friend of mine. Her blog, a model for me at one point, also contains other types of posts.)
8. Guest-Poster: Your guest gets an extra plug, you get a day off and your readers get some variety.
9. Announcer: Own local blog news, short and sweet. E.g. what you plan to do, a new competition, reset of top commenters.

I think I’ve done 1-4, 6 and 9. Which about you?

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