the(new)mediaslut

FutureGov - Solutions for Government | Education | Healthcare

Check out the latest of FutureGov at their website at www.futuregov.net.

Wrote James Smith in an earlier comment on this blog,

FutureGov is not so much a replacement, as simply the new name for ‘Public Sector Technology & Management’ - a public sector solutions magazine that has been published in Asia Pacific for the past five years. The circulation remains largely the same, and the content is similar - what’s changed is our focus on public sector objectives and challenges, rather than IT execution.

This blogger was clearing the spam comments when she surprised at where URLs the spam comments seemed to be coming from.

the(new)mediaslut › Moderate Comments — WordPress via kwout

You shouldn’t be doing this, but this blogger took the risk and clicked on the url and voila…

getphentermine’s Blog - CNET Asia via kwout

It looks like the CNET Asia’s member sites has been spammed or it has become a victim of a phishing site.

CNET Asia should better start putting in the right protocols and delete them. There were some “members” of names that are not fit for print and that could have a negative image on the brand!

Thanks to The Digital Movement and IDA, Singaporeans got a chance to meet Tan Chade-Meng, one of Google’s first Singaporean employee.

However a blogger event highlighted one of the greatest irony of the event.

Wrote Zit Seng,

We were advised to bring our own notebooks for a “live chat”. Well, wireless was mostly not working, there was no Wireless@SG, and the only “live chat” was the conventional Q&A with moderator on stage and microphone passed around.

Okay, this is IDA’s first InfocommLIVE. Let’s hope it gets better.

Maybe IDA was pulling a “Google” prank???

Kudos to Intel Malaysia for coming up with this viral video with Intel for the Malaysia’s PC show this weekend.

We, of course, have to thank Intel for having a hand in making our gadgets smaller.

However, with a section of a smaller size Intel employee replacing somebody who is bigger in size and a tagline that says small is the next BIG thing, it could be seen as Intel as replacing staff who are dimensionally challenged.

This blogger would have stuck with the focus on the gadgets.

A blog, named XXvsDY, setup to highlight the recent sage between Singapore blogger Xiaxue and Dawn Yawn has highlighted that Dawn Yang has been plaugarising posts from other sources without giving the due credits.

XXvsDY’s posts arn’t very clear on the example of Dawn Yang’s plaugarising though so here is a kwout of them.

Freedom Digitized via kwout

Star Blog via kwout

Ironically, but not surprising, there is a forum at Stomp discussing about Dawn Yang’s plaugarism.

This blogger wonders if Singapore Press Holding will enforce the same set of standards to the Stomp blogger.

Then again..

Plagiarism site:http://www.sph.com.sg - Google Search via kwout

*Mana Ada System?

Rockybru posted about the Malaysia Airlines wannabe blog that the smart corporate masters decided to turn off the most crucial part of a blog, the comments.

Wrote Rockybru,

Malaysia Airlines has had a blog (click on the url above) soon after the General Election, apparently, but the blog hasn’t really taken off. If they ask me, I’d tell them the reason the blog’s not as popular as it should be is because someone at the national carrier has decided to disable the COMMENT section.

Don’t you find it strange that a service industry player like MAS who do not see the value in feedback?

*Mana Ada System translated from Malay means “where got system”.

Almost everybody in the publication industry will describe CNET Asia as a online publication.

One blogger, however, described CNET Asia as a blog instead.

Claud Continues To Talk via kwout

If you go through any media list that a PR agency can offer you, Darius Chang is a writer (probably a senior writer by now) for CNETAsia.com.

A rose by any other name may still smell as sweet, but when is a blog a blog?

Are all online publications now blogs as seen by bloggers? Is this a marketing perception issue that publishers of online publications need to address?

Or is this a problem when you mix editorial and bloggers together at an event that it is harder to differentiate the  media from the blogger or vice versa?

Is there even a need to differentiate bloggers from the media?

The differentiation is really that difficult actually.  Darius is paid as a tech writer to ask those “technical and brain squeezing questions and have probably done a lot of reading/research on the product at launch before attending the event.

The notoriety of being banned.

EASTCOASTLIFE gives her side of the story.

This blogger last year posted about Olive Riley who, at 108, is considered to be the world’s oldest blogger.

A year has almost passed and it is sad to hear that Olive has passed on.

Wrote Techradar.com,

Most grandmothers don’t know what a VHS is let alone a computer, so it does come as a surprise that the world’s oldest blogger, who died on Saturday in Australia, was the grand ol’ age of 108.

Olive Riley was the owner of the blog ‘The Life Of Riley’, which has more recently become ‘World’s Oldest Blogger’.

The blog had more than 70 postings about her life in Woy Woy, Southeast Australia.

May she rest in peace and Google keep her blog permanent.

Seasoned print journalists and publishers will go up in arms reading this like some did when they read an intern’s post about her editor citing that print should not longer see online as its addon.

Wrote Jessica DaSilva,

First, she (Janet Coats, editor of The Tampa Tribune) said people needed to stop thinking of the Times as competition. She said she understood that it’s hard to think that way when the paper is right across the Bay, but that it is the truth. Not every story will be covered and it won’t be covered in the same way the SPT will cover it. The Trib simply doesn’t have the resources for the old business model.

“I hope (The St. Petersburg Times) keeps doing more of the same,” she said. “I’d like to see them try and do it with a reduced staff. It will only make us stronger.”

Then she dropped the reality bomb.

“People need to stop looking at TBO.com as an add on to The Tampa Tribune,” she said. “The truth is that The Tampa Tribune is an add on to TBO.”

Hmm.. That’s like saying straisttimes.com should be the first to release the news followed by its print edition the next day.

I wonder what Singapore Press Holdings or any print publishers here would say to this suggestion.

I have always highlighted that publishers shouldn’t be cutting and pasting their stories from print and put it online. In doing this, the publisher have created competition internally for eyeballs between its print and online edition.

Say the same content appears on the print and online, and if online is free, wouldn’t the reader rather go for the online edition. This of course reduces the need to get the print edition.

In classic vicious cycle, the print publishers will highlight that its online edition is killing readership of its print edition.

What if the print publisher decide to put a walled garden for its online content? They limit the number of subscribers to the online edition which does not interest advertisers. As a result the publishers now say online isn’t working.

How about separating the online and print editorial team? That’s still competing for eyeballs.

Like duh.. you create competition among yourself and guess who loses?

This is what happens when you have the traditional thinking that online is an addon to the print edition.

How would the print as an addon of online approach work?

Here’s my take.

Take for example breaking news. The online medium allows the breaking of news faster than the print edition. Today’s newspaper is all about yesterday’s news. So breaking news in print doesn’t make any sense today.

So you have breaking news on your online edition, what’s next? Let readers comment on this breaking news.

The problem with traditional media is that feedback is often limited or slow coming. Readers’ feedback online is fast to the speed of being instantaneous.

If the times allow, use these feedback as material for tomorrow’s paper.

I believe straitstimes.com is doing the breaking news online, but it still doesn’t allow readers to provide comments on their site.

Currently, there have also been quite a few reporting in print about the happenings of the blogosphere. Most recent, Jean.sg’s post of her alleged molestation incident a year ago was picked up the local media.

Though, the media took to interview the alleged perpetrator to provide his side of the story, there were many angles that the media could have explored but didn’t.

One would be a feature on how women can protect themselves when traveling overseas. Or one which asked whether if a other female bloggers would have blogged of a similar unfortunate incident too.

Back to Janet Coats’ comments though and one which really struck Jessica and this blogger.

Wrote Jessica again,

Janet believes in the news industry. She believes in holding government, media and the public accountable. And she knows there is not another job that makes such a huge difference and wields such power. News organizations offer society so much, and that is why she cannot take another job - because journalism is her calling, and she knows there is nothing else she could ever imagine herself doing.

“It’s worth fighting for,” Janet said.

The aftermath of DK’s hourly blogging special between Ping.sg and him opened up old wounds between Ping.sg and EASTCOASTLIFE.

This can be seen with EASTCOASTLIFE’s explosive comments on DK’s 12pm post titled “Anniversary Party Sponsors. Where are they now?”

Wrote EASTCOASTLIFE,

Uzin took S$200 from my hubby. He promised a mention in Ping.sg but only did so two days before the 1st anniversary awards. He didn’t give him a receipt. He bought the cake from Arzhou who was running an illegal biz baking cakes at home without a license. The cake cost S$150 and another S$50 was to buy some lao hong biscuits. My hubby runs a legal biz frequented by VIPs. I will definitely take up this case myself though my hubby isn’t keen.

Photo from http://singapuradailyphoto.blogspot.com: The SGD150 cake in question with 150 white colour balls?

At last year’s Ping.sg Awards, the winner of Ping.sg Blog Of The Year was Sparklette.net who also won the Ping.sg Award for Best Blog Design.

In contrast, EASTCOASTLIFE won four individual awards and DK won two but none of them won the Blog of The Year awards. This lead to both bloggers to speculate on how Sparklette.net could have won the award.

Wrote EASTCOASTLIFE,

Did Uzyn disqualified me because I had won so many awards already? Or because of the scandalous post I wrote about him and dk? Was Veron given the award because she was the web designer of Ping.sg and Uzyn needed her more? :)

At the post award celebration, dk and I cornered him on this controversial award, he flared up and told us to shut up. ntt and ridz were present, we were bantering with Uzyn and he yelled :”DON’T SAY ANY MORE!” There was an awkward silence and sekling who was sitting beside me, said,”Don’t say any more, he’s angry!” What!? He can get angry, others cannot? His parents don’t teach him manners? Yell at an elder? ???! I walked out.

Why can’t he be transparent about his choice? What was he hiding? Nothing can be changed but he should at least answer the questions.

Will this year’s awards be better with more transparency or will we be expecting more controversy?

DK’s blue light hourly special today pushed the number of unique hits to his blog to above a 1000 when his daily average is about 400+.

Unfortunately, his emotions got the better of him as of his 3pm post when he complained about not being nominated for the Ping.sg Awards.

Same same like APLINK when his emotions got the better of him too.

However, DK did bring up interesting revelations about the sponsors for the first Ping.sg blog awards. It also brought up the argument that commercial blogs, be it an advertiser of Ping.sg or not, should not have a place in the aggregation site for the benefit of the members.

From a potential advertiser’s point of view, it doesn’t really make sense for them.
Let’s role play to see why.

Advertiser: I heard of Ping.sg and it has lots of members. Can you recommend if I should advertise there?

T(N)MS: Sure. You want to a banner ad for three months?

Advertiser: Yes, and you know we have a corporate blog to gel with the banner ad campaign. Can we be ponged?

T(N)MS: While it is encouraging to see a corporate like you engaging new media and making use of it,  you can put a banner ad on Ping.sg but your blog can’t be in the site. You see, your corporate blog is a commercial blog and it goes against the site’s T&Cs.

Do you think the advertiser would want to advertise in Ping.sg?

The New Socialite highlighted a solution for Ping.sg and the founder of Ping.sg is also looking at the same direction for a solution.

But like APLINK pointed out “so to encourage sponsors to join ping 2.0 commercial service - just ban them first from ping 1.0 - with no regard and expect them to come back happily and pay for the honor of being in the ping community once again ? Interesting strategy”.

This tech news could have been easily lost but it does make for an interesting read.

Wrote The Straits Times,

AN INTERNET start-up is suing national broadcaster MediaCorp for millions of dollars, the latest step in a legal tussle that could redefine how Singaporeans record live television.

The firm, RecordTV, runs a website that allows users to download free-to-air programmes, like Prime Time Morning, and store them in an online database.

The media giant had threatened to sue the Singapore-based company, claiming the device flouts copyright rules.

At RecordTV.com FAQ site, it seems like RecordTV checked with the relevant authorities before launching the service.

From RecordTV.com FAQ,

What is RecordTV.com?

RecordTV.com is simply an Internet-based DVR (Digital Video Recorder) or VCR. The functionality is identical to a DVR or VCR, except that the storage is on a remote server. RecordTV has consulted with the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) and Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA) and accordingly obtained all necessary regulatory licenses for online storage services from the Government of Singapore.

Did something go wrong along the way? Is there a reason why Mediacorp was the one drawing first blood to sue RecordTV.com?

The original RecordTV.com was founded in US in 1999 but closed down in 2001 because of lawsuits. Interesting, the CEO then also highlighted problems of the lawsuits.

From CNET.com,

“We were kind of in a catch-22,” said RecordTV Chief Executive David Simon. “We couldn’t raise funding because of the legal issues…but we couldn’t also fight the lawsuit without raising funding.”

Here’s a video of the SG RecordTV.com team explaining their Facebook application in March 2008 this year.

It seems banning DK99 from Ping.sg has somehow made DK Ping.sg’s “in-group” public enemy number one.

And as Sun Tze said, its better to keep your enemies closer so you know what they are doing.

DK has announced an hourly special to state his opinions about the recent ban by the Ping.sg “in-group”.

The first two are out and there make for an explosive read for a Sunday.

Wrote DK of dk.blog.sg,

Below are the blog entries planned for the day and their schedule released time today.
Note: All timing are in Singapore time (GMT+8)

1100am: My reply to “The Reason Behind dk99’s Ban” - My reply to the locked forum entry.

1200pm: Anniversary Party Sponsors. Where are they now? - A look the sponsors of Ping.sg 1st anniversary party and where are they now.

0100pm: Why DK stop organising gatherings? - Why DK stop organising gathering after the Christmas Gathering?

0200pm: Ping.sg Advertisement - Meet DK (Banned Edition) - A short advertisement break by our sponsors.

0300pm: DK not insightful enough for ping.sg awards. - An insightful look into why DK wasn’t in ping.sg awards.

0400pm: Did they know what they are in for? - The truth behind the “I’m in. Are you?” twitter message.

0500pm: First argument. DK vs Uzyn & Daphne - Did you know that it happen almost a year ago?

Late night: Conclusion - Last post to sum up everything.

Ping.sg has banned another member from its aggregation site for making seditious remarks that could split the community into two.

Wrote Uzyn for Ping.sg,

I love Ping.sg and I will not hesitate to take any actions to stop any unappreciative users from trying to break the site and the community.

The member who Ping.sg has banned isn’t just an ordinary member, but somebody who have worked within the community from day 1, maybe later.

Wrote DK of blog.dk.sg,

Missed the good old days when everything is still peaceful in the community. When the community is run by the community itself and not some community manager. When there is no elitism even in the regulars. When every single member are equal.

Still remember the first gathering at Pitstop Cafe.
The exposure during the Nexus event.
The meetup at Essential Brew.
The great gathering at Geek Terminal.
The fun we had at Far East Shopping Centre booth.
The ping.sg presence during blogout.
The geek terminal launch party and the mini birthday celebration after that.
The first anniversary party.
The funny advertisement we made for ping.sg.
The huge gathering at Ms Clarity Cafe.
The recording of blogbuzz.tv.
The wonderful Christmas gathering.

For that, DK99 was banned from Ping.sg

DK was referring to a blog post made by Daphne who is the part-time marketing person cum community manager for the Ping.sg  community.

Daphne did a great job of responding to DK’s post.

Wrote Daphne,

When I wrote the term, the “in group”, it was really quite clear to me that it was not an exclusive list of bloggers, and neither was it limited only to those bloggers who attended. If you look at my pictures from that damning post, you will see the faces of some of the most prominent bloggers on Ping.sg.

It had all the elements of a perfect PR crisis communication plan. Firstly, Daphne apologised for her post if it caused any unhappiness among readers who misunderstood her words.

She explained what her post really meant and finally ended it explaining how Ping.sg is for everybody.

Unfortunately, the instigator got banned and the issue is now a blogging point for the weekend.

While Nocturne provided a psychological explanation to the actions of Ping.sg and DK, this blogger doesn’t really think DK is all out for the glory.

DK’s post highlights a classical dilemma that all marketing teams have: How do you balance your marketing activities to keep existing clients happy and at the same time  get new clients in? In this case here, replace clients with members.

DK was probably concerned that new members are alienated from the usual group. This meant that all Ping.sg activities would be by the same members every year and this members could feel burnt out by it.

This probably explained why a couple of Ping.sg community members who helped out in last year’s Awards are taking a back seat.

As the community grows, you want new members and existing members to work together.

This blogger doubts the founder of Ping.sg plays World of Warcraft as you constantly have new members joining guilds which have level 70s soloing those level 20 instances or even up to level 60 ones nowadays. How do existing guild members help the newbies get to that level?

If the founder of Ping.sg is complaining about being in the red, it isn’t really a surprise.

Vendors want more than just banner ads these days and if they part money with Ping.sg, they want extra value adds from Ping.sg.  Maybe something like putting their content in a edm which can be send to members.

The irony of it is that Ping.sg has banned commercial blogs that depend on Ping.sg to get the hits and awareness so they can pay Ping.sg the money to advertise on Ping.sg.

So banning advertisers like Andrew Peters and Chain of Beads for having commercial blogs is like biting the hand that feeds you.

Furthermore, the only advantage that Ping.sg has is a technological one where members need only put in their RSS feed once and the site automatically updates it when a new post is entered.

From a marketing standpoint, more and more competitors are entering the other fields that Ping.sg stand a higher chance of making money, like the blog awards.

Omy.sg has entered this space. Not only do they have sponsors, they have rewards for the voters to vote for the blog awards.

The Ping.sg Awards is in less than two weeks time and no sponsor has been announced.

Inside marketing sources have also highlighted that working with Ping.sg Awards have not gone really smoothly too.

Does this mean  the found of Ping.sg have to fork out his own money to host the event?

Andrew would have tried his best to convince two of his clients, Recuit.net, or even Twinity, to part some marketing dollars to sponsor the awards, but this blogger can safely assumed that opportunity has been slammed long time ago.

This leads to the possibility that DK might one day become a marketing manager with a huge marketing budget to do online marketing. With the bridge burnt, this blogger doubts DK would want to bring Ping.sg from red to black.

It was with great fanfare over the weekend when Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong left a message on Reach Singapore’s Facebook group.

Wrote The Straits Times,

Putting on his spectacles, PM Lee confirmed four friend requests (adding to the existing 281), checked out photos of Reach events and typed a message on the wall of one of its friends.

‘Welcome to Facebook! Glad to have you as a friend. Please tell your friends too,’ he typed, signing off as ‘LHL (for Reach)’.

The profile was created two weeks ago and was made public to all yesterday. It can be found by searching for ‘Reach Singapore’.

Reach chairman Amy Khor said it was a necessary platform to engage netizens.

But it seems that the “Welcome to Facebook! Glad to have you as a friend. Please tell your friends too” message left by Singapore’s Prime Minister has been “deleted” from the Reach Singapore Group.

So was Minister Teo Ser Luck and Dr Amy Khor’s messages.

Does this mean Reach Singapore have to organise another Facebook posting ceremony?

The blog post started as a cry for help. Now it has turn into a media circus.

It might have taken Jean of Jean.sg lots of guts to blog a post her post re-accounting her unfortunate incident where her modesty was deemed to have been outraged, however, was she aware of the reactions she would be getting from netizens?

They varied from support to insults.

Interestingly, the blog post has been picked up by the Singapore media and it seems like John (the alleged aggressor) has turn into from villain to the unfortunate victim.

This blogger have been asking her girlfriends if they would blog about such an incident and to get their opinion about the blog post.

Not surprisingly, many of them replied that they would not blog about it because it was something too personal.

What surprise me was their reaction to the blog. Most of them highlighted that they felt Jean was just trying to get attention.

Maybe that’s the problem. Has social media turn bloggers into anti-social animals where the blog is the only avenue to attract attentions to one call for help?

Or is it the medium that is starting to be the place for a person to let out her/his soul?

Or maybe, just maybe, bloggers need to have their own PR person to help them communicate to the press?

So what should Jean do now? or John?

The Associate Press (AP) came under fire from last week for serving a take down notice against the Drudge Retort for copyright violations.

It seemed AP wants quotes from 33 to 79 words from the site.

Jeff Jarvis for Buzz Machine posted that AP’s action was calling the pot black.

Wrote Jeff,

This complaint comes from an organization that leaches off original reporting and kills links and credit to the source of that journalism. Yes, it has a right to reproduce reporting from member news organizations. But as I point out here, the AP is hurting original reporting by not crediting and linking to the journalism at its source. We should be operating under an ethic of the link to original reporting; this is an ethic that the AP systematically violates.

Jeff, a few days later, suggested that AP should has proposed a link ethics.

Whenever this blogger cuts a quote from another blog post or online media outlets, this blogger will try her best to link it to the site.

This blogger also limits herself to cutting a paragraph or two, three max, from the source.

However, some Singapore bloggers looked to cut and paste the entire article, citing the source but do not link it back to the source.

Blog.Simplyjean.com is one such blog that has been cutting and pasting the entire article from the straitstimes.com without linking it back to their site.

Simply Jean via kwout

Jean’s argument would most likely be that the link to the article will disappear after two weeks in straitstimes.com.

But should simplyjean .com also follow Jeff’s link ethics and link the article back to straitstimes.com?

Update

It seems that the blog in question had all its pings taken apart from Ping.sg

Ping.sg/user/rapedapart - The Community Meta Blog for Singapore Bloggers via kwout

Original Entry

Ping.sg has recently ban blogs that are deemed commercial or critical of its creator.

Commercial blogs, deemed by Ping.sg, like Hypocol and Bak2u have been banned from the blog aggregation site.

This blog which was critical of Ping.sg’s action against Hypocol has been banned too. The irony was that this blog was also critical of Andrew’s reaction after his client’s blog was taken out.

Yet, blogs that even have NSFW (Not Safe For Work) titles are allowed to run free on the Singapore’s blog aggregation site.

Pro-sex but not Pro-business?

Is this a anti-Ping post?

Some of you might think it is and I won’t blame you.

This post, however, wants to highlight while you are the owner of the community and you set rules to police the community, the policing have to be fair and just to ensure that nobody is above the rules you have set.

Owner included.

(Updated: Advertlets up about 1500 hours)

It has affected the loading of this site. Back to ad-free site.

Notification: Internal Error via kwout