the(new)mediaslut

If you have taken part in SMRT’s Ride SMRT, Celebrate Life! contests, you might received an eDM with emails of other contestants group with yours.

The email addresses are group based on alphabetical order and each group would have about 200 emails exposed.

The problem resulted as a result of the sender putting the emails in the CC field rather than BCC.

Maybe SMRT should get their staff trained in email profiency.

Here’s the sample of the email. The email addresses have been added with xxx in front of them to mask the original addressees.

Subject: <ADV> Ride SMRT, Celebrate Life! December Draw WinnersDate: Fri, 28 Dec 2007 18:06:22 +0800

Message-ID: <6162FE8D0256CD45A179616123D574380522CCDF@corpex1.smrt.com.sg>

X-MS-Has-Attach:

X-MS-TNEF-Correlator:

Thread-Topic: <ADV> Ride SMRT, Celebrate Life! December Draw Winners

Thread-Index: AchJN++wItlqI0e1QSW7QqQB3/rjnQAASPtg

From: "RideSmrtAndWin" <RideSmrtAndWin@smrt.com.sg>

To: <xxxan_@yahoo.com>,<xxx1704@singaporeair.com.sg>,<xxxher@gmail.com>,<xxx122@hotmail.com>,<xxx4455@ntu.edu.sg>,

<xxxaru85@gmail.com>.....

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.------_=_NextPart_001_01C84939.9F0A8C32

Content-Type: multipart/alternative;

boundary="----_=_NextPart_002_01C84939.9F0A8C32"

------_=_NextPart_002_01C84939.9F0A8C32

Content-Type: text/plain;

charset="us-ascii"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

This message contains images. If you cannot view the images in this

message, click here

<http://www.ridesmrtcelebratelife.com/edm/20071228_draw1result.html> .

SMRT has since apologise for the exposure.

From SMRT:

Dear XXX,

We sincerely apologise for the oversight and have taken immediate action to correct the mistake. The staff who had sent the mail out has been counselled, additionally, we have also reviewed our procedures to ensure that this will not recur again.

Once again, we are sorry. We thank you for your feedback and seek your continued support in our promotion.

Regards
Wei Min
Ride SMRT, Celebrate Life Lucky Draw Team
Website: www.rideSMRTcelebratelife.com

When the clock strike 00:00 on April 1, 2008, Singapore will suddenly have 1,000,000 less Internet users. Singapore’s IDA will have some explaining to do.

On Mr Wang Says So Blog, Mr Wang highlighted a Straits Times article of IDA inflating figures to make it look that many Singaporeans were connected to the Internet because they had a land line belonging to a leading monopoly telecom in Singapore, Singtel.

From Mr Wang Says So Blog,

Basically all you have to do is make the wild claim that every grandmother, grandfather, uncle and auntie who has a phone in his/her home is also an Internet user.

Alas, the truth eventually emerges, as it usually will. And it’s a rather embarrassing truth.

Mr Wang was referring to this article that appeared in the Straits Times.

From digital.asiaone.com,

THIS is not an early April Fool’s joke. On April 1 next year, close to one million Internet dial-up subscribtions in Singapore could ‘disappear’.

It raises a poser about one set of figures Singapore has used in claiming to be among the world’s most wired cities, although this claim holds, thanks to other criteria and widespread broadband penetration here.

SingTel, which owns most residential phone lines here, ends its free Web access service, available to all these customers, on April 1.

The drop in 1,000,000 users will hurt Singapore Internet rankings.

According to Internet World Stats, as of 2005, Singapore had 2,2421,800 Internet users or 66% of the population.

Minus the 1,000,000 Internet users on April 1, 2007 might see Singapore only having half of the 66%  of population who uses the Internet. This also means Singapore will see negative figures in year to year growth.

Using numbers to highlight the strength of a message provides some depth to the numbers, but to have “inflate” them is a dangerous thing to do.

PR tend to “inflate” numbers and it is the job of the tech journalists to question the numbers.

Kudos to the writer, Irene Tham, for noticing the drop and discussing the impact of it will have.

But what is a “subscribtions”?

In a graph posted in Techcrunch, with information from ComScore, Yahoo! Singapore Mail site saw a drop of traffic by 95% from Nov 06 to Nov 07.

Graph from TechCrunch. Click on image to go to post!

Interestingly, Yahoo! Singapore Travel site was another bad performer in the same period of time with a drop of 78% of visitors.

I stop using Yahoo! Mail for the longest time. Somehow the new interface, which looks like Outlook Express, just gives me the creeps. Outlook Express was a scary experience, wasn’t it?

Maybe news that my mother still uses Yahoo! Mail might give Yahoo! Singapore a New Year cheer.

Hotmail? I just use it to access MSN and it just collects spam.

Hmm.. How about this marketing campaign for Yahoo! Singapore. Every 100 Spam collected in Yahoo! Mail Singapore gets you a chance to win a can of Maling luncheon meat (AKA SPAM).

That could them a spurt of visitors, especially with the Chinese New Year coming.

Ministers and civil servants of Singapore Inc. got an early Christmas present when it was announced that they will be receiving up to 21% pay hikes to keep inline with private sector remuneration.

The blogosphere, however, posted they feel the pinch of these pay hikes with Singapore’s inflation at the highest and their salary nowhere increasing in percentage as their civil servant counterparts.

Andrew Loh, of The Online Citizen, put forward the argument that the government should pay to keep good talent, but questions if such a precedent will backfire.

“If you want good people in government, you have to pay them salaries commensurate with the private sector,” wrote Andrew.

“This is what we have been told – by the prime minister, ministers, PAP MPs, the local media and some Singaporeans.

“…However, perhaps the government has not paid enough attention to an issue which such a formula will create. This is the perception that those in public service are money-grabbers.”

Andrew highlighted that this will discourage Singaporeans from serving the country.

With public demonstrations non-existence in Singapore, disgruntled Singaporeans have gone online to highlight their displeasure.

Reuben, for Plaktoz.com, highlighted the FaceBook “I’m pissed off that my prime minister’s getting S$3.million this year” group that as of print has 2,000 over members, mostly Singaporean.

Hady Mirza - Idol in Singapore, some say Asia too

Singapore Idol #2 winner, Hady Mirza won the Asian Idol contest last Saturday and his achievement was well congratulated by bloggers.
The low down of the Asian Idol event was that the “planning and execution of this regional competition sucks to the core” according to Johnathon for Bondevia.com.

The Vietnamese Idol and judge may have paired up for a rendition of “I Love Rock and Roll” but Johnathon described the pair was neither rocking nor rolling.

News that is fit for print isn’t fit for bloggers

SG bloggers showed trust in the local media by double checking it with BBC with regards to the report that “Singaporeans prefer social stability to freedom of press.”

Bernard Leong, for the Simple is the Reason of My Heart blog, compared the local report with that from BBC and concluded in a line that “our press has managed to report everything except telling us that Singapore is ranked the lowest in terms of media freedom among the 14 countries that was surveyed“.

Who would dare say Singapore media isn’t into creative writing?

After five years at ZDNET Asia and a total of 13 years spend in tech journalism, Isabelle Chan, senior editor, has bid farewell to the industry last Friday.

Eileen Yu will take over the realms from Chan.

Over the 5 years at CNET Asia, the publishers of ZDNET Asia, Chan looked after the News and Enterprise Tech content group. She also edited two print titles, CNETAsiaWeek and C|Level Asia, in that 5 years.