Do tech geeks buy their gfs/wives/mistresses a weekend getaway?
A marketing person from a US big brand resort lamented about the lack of Return of Investment (ROI) when they executed an advertising program with a local tech website.
Though the advertising program showed million of impressions, the resort got ZERO bookings and no emails about the advertised location in Asia.
The intention to target male geeks on a vacation spot to bring their other half maybe well intended, but the program might have failed in understanding the mentality of the male geeks.
Males when they shop, they know what they want in their mind, they go to a shop, look at the prices, buy and walk out of the shop.
For example, say the geek is looking to buy a graphic card, he would go straight to Sim Lim Square, go around the shops for the best price and get the graphic card.
You wouldn’t catch a male geek window shopping for the best looking tie or get distracted to go shopping for a holiday when the geek’s on a mission to get his graphic card, or would you?
No more Boon at Questex?
It seems like Ong Boon Kiat, the editor for Network World Asia, is no longer with the publisher Questex.
His last article seem to be on July 06, 2007.
Boon Kiat joined Questex in Feb this year and was introduced as one of the "mystery" editors for Questex.
The other mystery editor was Emily Chia.
Knut has taken over SAP
Smartbrain went to the SAP summit 2007 in Bangkok, expecting the worst. After all, can any company be more boring than SAP? Can any industry be more boring than Enterprise software?
Cuteness greeted Smartbrain at the entrance.
An army of SAP bears
Electra is an SI doing SAP implementation.
Symantec joined in with the bear necessities theme.
IBM launched its new database, named ddb2b, the successor to db2.
No dumped chips here, just balloons.
In the wake of the EU Commission’s ruling that Intel has been selling its server chips at below cost in an anticompetitve move, HP showed off its new Superdome, the Itanium-less Superbox. SAP promises to be platform neutral, but this may be stretching it a bit.
You know Wireless@SG sucks when..
…it takes five minutes to wait for the registration page for Wireless@SG to load.
the(new)mediaslut tried registering for a Wireless@SG at MacDonalds and somehow to Qmax registration took like ages to load.
Maybe that’s what the(new)mediaslut gets for demanding for FREEBIES.
Happy Birthday, Singapore
Its Nine of Eight today and the(new)mediaslut would like to wish all his Singapore readers a Happy National Day.
Last weekend…
Boo headed to PIKOM PC Fair and later, Low Yat Plaza in search of a good, cheap notebook.
The plastic hand is about the size of a regular human hand, so you can imagine size of the U1010 convertible (which is also a tablet eeeek! Of COZ its a tablet!!)… touchscreen, Windows Vista Basic, Intel processor, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 5.6-inch display, 0.61kg etc …….(yummmmmmm but solid state memory, when?…….when??) Me want…ME WANT!!! (Retailing for less than RM5000)
Boo continued quest for notebook at Low Yat…but prices were not much different. A new branded notebook at PC Fair (with mainstream specs - 512MB, 60G-80GB HDD size, below Pentium Core Duos) were going for about RM1799, same as at Low Yat. (After Da Woof’s prompt - mainstream in this context is what that Boo saw a lot of at PC Fair and LYP on that particular day, for Boo’s friend type of usage. For Da Woof, its "Intel CD, 1GB RAM and 80GB HDD, no less :P")
The most popular notebook we saw was the latest Acer Aspires with new ID designs…(very, very nice!), and (from what we saw that day) these were the cheapest around as well at RM1799 but usually cos they used and used AMD processors and/or Linux OS.
On the rare occasion there was a lower price, it would be by about RM50 cheapr and had a free colour printer thrown in. Once we stumbled upon a booth that offered that. The booth right next to it, was RM5 more and WITHOUT a free gift.
When we asked about it, cheaper booth guy slowly pulled the placard away and adjusted the price to match (but it still didnt have a free gift!)
Was the booth with free colour printer, some sort of gangster and the other salesman had to adjust price or risk being bashed up?
Or do they both have the same owner, who used that kind of gimmick to give the illusion that customers would be getting a good deal??
Boo don’t know :(
Cat in the cab leads to networking site
Remember the days of Web1.0 that saw ideas come out of paper napkins at coffee joints.
How about a social networking site from a taxi?
Yes, taxi drivers can be smart.
So the tale of this networking site starts with a catlover boarding a taxi in good old Singapore.
When the catlover’s mobile rang, it went MEOW.. a very loud MEOW.
The taxi drive jumped in a panic and ask the cat lover had a cat in the cab (What you expect, cat in the hat?).
Catlover had to explained that it was from his mobile phone.
Catlover shared with the taxi driver the MEOW ring tone and soon they were talking about cats that lead to a pet show.
Few days later, catlover gets a call from taxi driver and they still talked about cats.
As a result, catlover and taxi driver sets up http://catbasket.wetpaint.com/
Viva Web2.0?
Another editorial mass exodus at Tech3C
Tech3C is now without an editorial team.
Milton Sau, former writer for ITJourno Asia, has since left the publication 2 weeks ago.
The editor, Kalid Muhammad, left the group last week.
This is the 2nd time the editorial team left en-mass.
The pioneer group, made up of Calvin Siew, Tan Kuo Ping and Farihan Bahrin, also left en-mass in June-August 2006.
No reasons were given for both departures though industry rumours have it that both groups left because of salary disputes.
Freelancers for the magazine have also highlighted that their fees were not paid out accordingly.
Boo’s picture brings back memories
(sigh) Smartbrain’s much more expensive DSLR and powerful flash simply overwhelms this picture and the balance is all wrong. Unlike Boo’s simple compact, the screen became too dark and only the Yahoo logo was visible on the Motorola, while nothing was visible on the Nokia.
Still, that event does bring back memories (oh, wait, it was a different event than Boo’s. Never mind).
Smartbrain: Can I have the agenda?
PR: It’s in my room, I’ll get it you at dinner.
Smartbrain (at dinner): Can I have the agenda?
PR: Oh, I forgot. I’ll give it to you first thing in the morning.
Smartbrain: Agenda?
PR: Here it is, here it is (five minutes before the event starts).
Smartbrain: …
PR: Oh, here’s the file for this evening’s one on one (given at half past two, in a plenary session with the one on one at four and no time in the middle to prepare).
Smartbrain: … (tries to concentrate on the presentation on stage)
At four…
Smartbrain: So how is your company tapping into this new mobile micropayment space?
Anonymous interviewee: Well, that’s not really my field of expertise… (and goes on to talk about handsets).
Smartbrain: (Trying to look smart) How about the breakthroughs in near-field communication that I’ve heard. Surely that’s a hot topic now?
Interviewee: Well, that’s not really my field either… I’m the product selection and placement guy (and continues to talk about handsets in certain local markets)
Smartbrain: (trying to look like he is in position of a brain, asks first relevant question) So how are the differences when it comes to EDGE and 3G markets that you see here?
Product placement manager: (gives meaningful answer).
What happened was that the PR, in a frenzy of expensive restaurant dining and furniture shopping sprees, simply grabbed the company’s last ten or so press releases, including a couple on near field communications and micro payments, and handed them to Smartbrain. No information on the interviewee was in the file received.
The motto of the story is that in order to be the in-house PR manager of a major multinational telco, the only thing needed is a pleasant demeanour and the ability to lick ass while taking Journos out eating or shopping. The ability to hand in a meaningful agenda in a timely fashion, warn of one on one interviews more than a few hours before the event and provide relevant information as to the one on one is strictly optional.
Viva TMS.
Three things…
… i find amazing about this photo…
1. Boo’s crappy compact captures the screen clearly
2. Flickr is viewable on the BlackBerry device
3. Boo’s photo composition is NOT BAD and manages to strategically place Yahoo! right in middle… only Yahoo!’s David Riemer partly blocks it.. cant help that.
This photo was taken during last years 3GSM Asia in Singapore during a Bento set lunch while Riemer was talking abt the "Sushi" platform……
SG Edelman’s word-of-mouth lead to leave?
An anonymous source has highlighted that Derrick Koh, an account director at Edelman Singapore and one of the group leads for its word-of-mouth team, is set to leave the PR agency in mid-August for Lenovo Asia Pacific.
There has been no word to whom might replace Derrick, but his departure follows that of Jeremy Seow, who has since joined Yahoo SEA.
Derrick and Jeremy were the word-of-mouth firebrand at Edelman Singapore office.
Would you like to go to the USA?
Twice this year Sun Microsystems has invited Smartbrain to the US of A. Twice, the invitation came with less than two weeks to go, and as most of Asia knows, it takes quite a while to get a visa to that former British colony. So twice, the reply was, I would love to go, but I cannot.
Last week, Sun invited Smartbrain to interview some big-shot VP to talk about the new Ultrasparc T2. However, the nice PR said that an answer would have to be had by lunchtime "tomorrow". Unfortunately, the message was sent at seven in the morning of "tomorrow" hence giving one only the better part of five hours to respond.
What probably happened was that the PR clicked send, then turned off his notebook so the email only made it to his outbox until he went online again the next morning.
To wind him up, Smartbrain told the PR that he was busy and could not take the interview as he was doing an interview on Power 6 that day. Actually, it was a lie. The interview was about Cell, but still, it was about a rival’s CPU.
Somehow, that must have done the trick. Today, Sun calls and gives a whole three weeks’ notice for some event in San Francisco. But by now, the idea of going to a Sun event somehow just does not appeal anymore. Three strikes and you’re out. Three totally screwed up invitations and this is to make amends? No thanks, mate.
Let’s put it this way. Back in January and March, there was a desire, a want of travel and new climates. Today, with Smartbrain spending more working time in Singapore than Bangkok, and more time in Changi and Cobra Swamp airport than in the Office, a bit of Bangkok would be nice for a change.
Freelancer Gin Lee now a SPH man
Oo Gin Lee said goodbye to five years of freelancing and joined SPH’s Digital Life since July 2007.
As such, Gin Lee had to up his Gin’s Tonic blog spot at asia.cnet.com to his good friend Micheal Tan.
Micheal Tan has renamed the blog as reHASHplus.
Steele takeover at ITJourno Asia
Julie Steele has taken over the realm of the editorial department at ITJourno Asia as noted by the many IT journalists at the recent MediaConnect Asia Kickstart 07 event held in Bintan last weekend.
Previous editors of ITJourno Asia included Victoria Lea and Aaron Koh. Tan Lili, Milton Sau and Melissa Chua, all previous writers of ITJourno Asia, have since left for greener pastures.
It was highlighted by the IT journalists that Steele’s first introduction into Asian culture of the difference between American/Australian last names and Asian surnames.
Steele picked up a story from Oo Gin Lee, a writer with Digital Life Singapore, and repeatedly highlighted his surname as Lee instead of Oo.
Welcome to Asia, Ms Steele.
Victoria’s secret out in Z land
Victoria Ho (right), previously from Fairfax’s Computerworld Singapore, is now with ZDNET Asia.
Her first few articles at ZDNET Asia includes a story about Oracle opening a research center in Shanghai and StarHub to launch ‘fastest’ HSPA service.
Ho was one of the few ex-IDGers who moved over to Fairfax Business Media in Singapore after Fairfax bought over the licenses of Computerworld SG and CIO Asia.
Ex-IDGer like Tan Ee Sze and ex-IDGer/Fairfax Connie Chng and Kenneth Liew have started their own tech news website, www.convergenceasia.com .
The only ex-IDGer remaining at Fairfax after the take over of the magazine is CIO Asia’s Teng Fang Yih.
