the(new)mediaslut

Got this in the email… I dont know how true it is, but I think the laughs are damn worth the time it takes to compile this news from 365 days of 2007!

Yes, it’s that magical time of the year again when the Darwin Awards are bestowed, honoring the least evolved among us. Here then, are the glorious winners for 2007:

1. When his 38-caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach, California, would-be robber James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder. He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked…..

And now, the honorable mentions:

2. The chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a meat-cutting machine and, after a little shopping around, submitted a claim to his insurance company. The company expecting negligence sent out one of their men to have a look for himself. He tried the machine and he also lost a finger. The chef’s claim was approved.

3. A man who shoveled snow for an hour to clear a space for his car during a blizzard in Chicago
returned with his vehicle to find a woman had taken the space. Understandably, he shot her.

4. After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride.
He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies. The deception wasn’t discovered for 3 days.

5. An American teenager was in the hospital recovering from serious head wounds received from an oncoming train. When asked how he received the injuries, the lad told police that he was simply trying to see how close he could get his head to a moving train before he was hit.

6. A man walked into a Louisiana Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the counter, and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled, leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer…$15.
(If someone points a gun at you and gives you money, is a crime committed?)

7. Seems an Arkansas guy wanted some beer pretty badly. He decided that he’d just throw a cinder-block through a liquor store window, grab some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinder-block and heaved it over his head at the window. The cinder-block bounced back and hit the would-be thief on the head, knocking him unconscious. The liquor store window was made of Plexiglas. The whole event was caught on videotape.

8. As a female shopper exited a New York convenience store, a man grabbed her purse and ran. The clerk called ‘911′ immediately, and the woman was able to give them a detailed description of the snatcher.
Within minutes, the police apprehended the snatcher. They put him in the car and drove back to the store. The thief was then taken out of the car and told to stand there for a positive ID. To which he replied, ‘Yes, officer, that’s her. That’s the lady I stole the purse from.’

(And they wonder why tigers eat their young!)

9. The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti,
Michigan, at 5 A.M., flashed a gun, and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn’t open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren’t available for breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked away.

***A 5-STAR STUPIDITY AWARD WINNER***

10. When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motor home parked on a Seattle street, he got much more than he bargained for.
Police arrived at the scene to find a very sick man curled up next to a motor home near spilled sewage. A police spokesman said that the man admitted to trying to steal gasoline and plugged his siphon hose into the motor home’s sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges, saying that it was the best laugh he’d ever had.

In the interest of bettering human kind please share these with your friends and family .. unless of course one of these individuals by chance is a distant relative or long lost friend. In that case be glad they are distant and hope they remain lost.

Remember—– they walk among us!

In one sweeping statement, a Professor Lye, for the Nayang Technological University, might have insulted genius introverts, Singapore scholars and the  importance of Chinatowns the world over.

Wrote twasher for rot.blogsome.com,

First, there was a great reply from a foreign professor-VIP, whose identity I still have not isolated, who practically rushed up to the microphone and said, “If you get into a top ten university and get funding from them, just GO!”

Oh dear. Damage control time. Most of the defenders made satisfactory glosses, but NTU practically slapped themselves in the face with a huge cream pie.

Lye went up to the microphone and started spewing phrases like “I will challenge you”, “the world has also come into Singapore”, “there are 40-over countries down here” (referring to NTU’s mix of nationalities), and ended with this gem: “If you’re an extrovert introvert and you go overseas, you’ll just go to Chinatown!”

I find Professor Lye’s statement that describing Chinatown as a place where introvert go to the most forgiving.

Chinatowns started because of 1st generation overseas Chinese who could regularly gather in a place to socialise.

A place where homeland Chinese cuisine could be bought and shared among other overseas Chinese.

A place where homeland Chinese could engage in trade of homeland Chinese wares that was well missed.

From Wikipedia,

Some Chinatowns have a long history, such as the Chinatown in Nagasaki, Japan, or Yaowarat Road in Bangkok, both of which were founded by Chinese traders more than 200 years ago.

Chinatown, San Francisco, California was the first Chinatown to be established outside Asia, during the California Gold Rush, which began in 1848.

Other cities in North America where Chinatowns were established in the mid-nineteenth century include almost every major settlement along the West Coast from San Diego to Vancouver. By the second half of the nineteenth century, bustling Chinatowns were also established in New York and Chicago.

The discovery of gold in Australia caused the establishment of relatively small Chinatowns in cities there, and similar migrations of Chinese resulted in tiny settlements termed “Chinatowns” being established in New Zealand and even South Africa. European Chinatowns, such as those in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, are for the most part smaller and more recent than North American Chinatowns.

Chinatown is a place where a lot of communication and socialising take place and is definitely not somewhere an introvert might want to go.

Also, as most Chinatowns might have been built before the universities, the distance between the two areas can be extremely far.

The distance between Nanyang Technological University and Chinatown is almost a 90mins or more ride by both train and bus.

If you are an overseas scholar and would like to go Chinatown, wouldn’t you need to ask around to find out how to get there? Which bus to take? Which MRT station should one stop?

Congratulations to Malaysia for being considered as a location for Google data farm in the region.

Wrote AFP,

“They want to make their presence felt in Malaysia. It will be a big boost for our ICT (information and communications technology) industry,” Abdullah told Malaysian journalists at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“I was told that Malaysians formed the highest group of Google users in Southeast Asia,” Abdullah said according to The Star daily.

Earlier reports here said that Google was looking at Malaysia, India or Vietnam to establish the world’s biggest server farm — a cluster of powerful computers used to store data.

I was had a online discussion with a telecom insider and suggested that maybe the Singapore government might just give Google one of it southern islands to build the data farm.

Pedra Branca, not one of the Southern islands, will be a mocking choice if Singapore did win their international legal tussle with Malaysia.

However, the telecom insider said it was very unlikely that Google even considered Singapore as a location although it is deem as one of the more technologically advanced nations in the region.

The reason?

Problem with a server farm is that the local government will want to do “wiretaps” - interceptions.

  And they will host lots of things that might be illegal in the country

  Good thing about Malaysia Multimedia Super Corridor has a law that clarifies all that.

The Hartal MSM committee of the The People’s Parliament in Malaysia has called for Malaysians to boycott their mainstream media every Tuesdays to protest the false reporting made in them.

Wrote the Hartal MSM Commitee,

This committee comprising 8 individuals was set up in late December 2007 when it became apparent from participants’ comments in The People’s Parliament that there was a genuine concern in society over how news reported by the mainstream media (MSM) did not always tally with factsThe earnest discussions in our blog and numerous suggestions by readers on strategies to address this concern clearly indicated that many treated the shortcomings of MSM with the seriousness they deserved. It also became obvious that some structure and methodology would have to be put into place if the suggestions to tackle MSM’s failings were to be effectively implemented.

Example of false reporting includes,

1. On 20 Nov 2007, senior political correspondent Lydia Lim of the Singapore Straits Times reported on the 10 ongoing International Court of Justice hearings between Malaysia and Singapore to decide on the dispute between the two nations for sovereignty over the Pedra Branca. Lim’s report said that the Malaysian legal team had resorted to the use of a photograph of dubious authenticity lifted from an anonymous blog to create a photographic illusion and exaggerate the proximity of Pedra Branca to Johor. This scandal was reported in numerous blogs. However none of the MSM published this piece of disturbing news.

2. On 19 Dec 2007, Malaysiakini reported a statement issued by Anwar Ibrahim in which the ex-deputy premier implicated former transport minister Dr Ling Liong Sik and his successor Chan Kong Choy in the RM4.8 billion Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) project irregularity. None of the MSM carried this news item. Interestingly, MSM have also not seen it fit to undertake an investigation into this scandal.

I wonder if any of the PR agencies in Malaysia will openly support or just continue reading their newspapers for media monitoring purposes.

So they ban foreign talents singing about Singapore complaints.

Wrote Reuters,

A choir that planned to sing a list of complaints about life in Singapore cancelled its performances after the city-state banned its foreign members from singing, organizers said on Saturday.

The 60-member “complaints choir”, a concept that originated from two Finnish artists, was scheduled to perform at a weekend festival but authorities granted a performance license on the condition that the foreigners would not participate.

Rumours have it that the original lyrics had a complain about the rap done by the Media Development Authority, but that’s only a rumour.

I overheard an overzealous nationalistic Singaporean in the MRT mumbling to himself on the MRT today saying,

They can take our jobs!

They can take our money!

They can take our women!

But we have to be thankful for the Singapore authorities to protect our sovereign rights to complain from these foreign talents!”

If the overzealous nationalistic Singaporean is reading this post, here’s the video of the complain choir whose only complain was that the conductor was Malaysian.

Malaysia and Malaysians are still looking for five-year-old Sharlinie Mohd Nasyar who disappeared among a month ago.

For The Star New Media editor, A. Asohan, the unfortunately reality that the danger can strike closer to home was too much for him that he laced his Sunday column by calling the sms prankster a s.o.b more than five times.

Wrote A. Asohan for The Star Sunday 27 Jan 2008,

On a recent Sunday, my nine-year-old daughter received, on her handphone, an SMS which addressed her by name, and in a texting version of Bahasa Malaysia, asked her what she was doing, adding “abang rindu mu, bis yah,” or “I missed you, please reply.”

The kids were with their mother at the time, so he called up the number and asked the man who answered, who he was and why he was sending SMSes to our child.

It’s my daugher, you s.o.b!

Asohan also recounted his experience with the police but also wonders why the police had to question him the purpose of him lodging this report twice!

When I was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, recently, I saw the missing photos of missing Sharlinie Mohd Nasyar all over the capital city.

Is KL still a safe place for tourist with kids to go? Nowhere is safe if a parent doesn’t take full responsibility of their kids by having an eye on them all the time!

I hope the police do capture the prankster so that the prankster doesn’t go around “smsing” innocent young children in Malaysia no more!

• Found another Singapore food store that has a Facebook group: The Sweet Stone http://tinyurl.com/2vfqpg #

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I had to take the taxi yesterday because I was carry a large luggage to the bus terminal for my weekend trip to Kuala Lumpur.

It was one of those rare trips that I boarded a taxi where the driver managed to strike a conversation with me.

In a mix of Mandarin and Hokkien, we conversed about the recent debate about the amount a taxi driver’s daily earnings of SGD318 as announced by Raymond Lim, Minister of State for Transport, in a recent Parliament sitting.

The Today newspaper ran a story how netizens of an Internet forum calculated that the daily takings would total SGD9858 a month.

(Though the Singapore papers are reluctant to give credit to bloggers, Jean of the Simply Jean blog should be credited for her calculations of the monthly earnings.)

I highlighted that paper also clarified that ComfortDelgro corrected its statement and said the SGD318 earned were calculated based on two shifts.

Upon hearing the monthly earnings and ComfortDelgro, the taxi driver roared with uncontrollable laughter and I almost became an accident statistic if the driver didn’t gather composure quickly.

The taxi driver then highlighted that because the new taxi fares have created an over supply of taxi drivers during the peak hours and lower demand, some taxi drivers have taken to make use of the peak hours as a rest period.

The new peak hour surcharges meant taxi drivers get to earn an extra 30% on top of a fixed surcharge.

He highlighted that passengers arn’t stupid. Many has adjusted their timings to take taxi before or after the peak period, thus saving on the extra surcharges.

On the bus to Kuala Lumpur, this conversation got me thinking about Comfort Delgro and how they got into the mess.

Wrote The Straits Times on Jan 22, 2008,

While some cabbies have complained that passengers are not flagging taxis, Mr Lim said their earnings have however gone up.

Based on figures provided by ComfortDelGro, Singapore’s biggest taxi operator, cabbies are pocketing about $11 more a day, earning about $318.

Mr Lim was responding to questions from MP for Tampines GRC Ms Irene Ng and MP for Tanjong Pagar GRC Mr Baey Yam Keng in Parliament.

Technically, a day is made up two shifts, so earnings of SGD318 was correct.

But the statement given by Mr Raymond Lim made it sound as if one taxi driver earned SGD318 per day.

Unless ComfortDelgro has started to hire Cylons as taxi drivers (which maybe something they have not announced), then it would be possible for a taxi drivers to drive two shifts a day for 365 days a year.

Maybe there was a request by the Land Transport Authority to ComfortDelgro for some figures.

An overzealous member of ComfortDelgro might have taken the figures and then passed it to the authorities without thinking of the consequences of the wordings.

Based on this incident, it would be very difficult for readers to believe whatever figures that ComfortDelgro provides to the media or the authorities.

The best way to do it now is via an external auditor to provide figures from this taxi operator.

Another authority that will be caught playing the number games will most likely by IDA in April 2008 when the number of Internet users in Singapore will drop by a cool 1 million users. Then again, the fault has been pointed at Singtel for providing such figures to the authorities.

Thanks to beconfused for introducing Zi Char Uncle!

So your food delivery service is targeted at university undergrads whom 100% have an email account and uses the Internet daily, what would your marketing strategy be?A Zi Char uncle at the Nayang Technological University (NTU) of Singapore has gone the online route by creating a blog and even a Facebook group.

Zi Char is a local Singapore slang when translated means stir fried and a Zi Char stall is a shop that sells stir fried dishes.

Here are two ideas that the Zi Char uncle can used to really exploit the use of the blog and Facebook as a marketing tool.

1. Facebook daily special

Facebook has a mini-feed so the Zi Char uncle can announce a daily special in the social networking site. It could come with a code number which readers just SMS and get the dish at a special price. Something like a blue light special at Kmart.

2.  User generated menu

Get the university students to suggest new dishes to the Zi Char uncle. The Zi Char uncle do not have to select all of them, but only those he feels are reasonable enough for him to do.

Select a few dishes and credit it to the students who suggested it.

The Zi Char uncle can even show how much orders have been from the suggested dishes and rank them weekly on his blog or Facebook group.

This way, the students who suggested the dishes would one to have their dishes on top of the menu and thus do their own push to get friends in campus to order it.

 As our mainstream media still have a love hate relationship with the citizen journalists, let us welcome the new micro journalist.

No, I am not talking about very short journalists attending press conference.

Rather news reporting in 140 characters or less.

Wrote Naom Cohen for The New York Times,

“NASHUA: Just saw Bill O’reily misbehaving at Obama rallly. Shoving Obama staffer.”

With these sloppily spelled words, sent Jan. 5 by text message by John Dickerson, chief political correspondent for the online magazine Slate, did microjournalism come of age.

The encounter between Mr. O’Reilly, the Fox News host, and the campaign aide did become actual news, kind of, for a day (a brief item ran in The New York Times, for example). But it first emerged from a high school gym in New Hampshire via Mr. Dickerson’s BlackBerry.

Sounds like the summary exercise you do when in Secondary Schools in Singapore.

I could see this happening in Singapore.

Scenario: At minister lead press conference.

Reporter A twits,”Minister walks up stage and everybody claps!”

Blogger B twits, “Conference to start at 6pm. Minister comes 6.30pm. Make me wait long long, see him walk up stage.”

(Cartoon from Social Signal blog)

Finally something for Yahoo! to cheer amids the news of possible lay-offs of US based Yahoo-ers.

Marketing Magazine’s Adaline Lau wrote about that trend of ad expenditure in Hong Kong which sees ad spend in traditional media going down while online interactive ad spend going north.

Wrote Adaline Lau,

Latest figures from Admango show that while traditional TV, newspaper and magazine remain the key media, the data shows that interactive has increasingly become a popular channel for marketers to promote their messages.

Within the interactive ad spend category, Yahoo! Hong Kong dominated at 52.9%, followed by Atnext.com at 13.8% and MSN messenger with a mere 5.1% share.

Other popular portals that made it into the interactive mix include on.cc, headline, Sina, Singtao and she.

I am not surprised that MSN messenger has quite a low share.

First of all, the brand confusion. Is it MSN messenger or Windows “Live” Messenger? If it confuses the consumer, it confuses the advertisers.

Next the roll-over ads are irritating. If you accidentally move your mouse over the ad at the bottom of messenger, the ads pops out. If it is a video ad, such actions will automatically play the video at an extremely loud volume.

If you want to close the ad, you click on the close link on the ad. Sounds simple, but not really.

Most often, that mouse click opens up the website of the ad instead and doesn’t close the ad accordingly.

It would be interesting to find out in details what advertisers are spending on Yahoo! Hong Kong.

• Thai Airways air hostess wear shorter skirts n fight over men frequently, not! They only exist in Bangkok TV land. http://tinyurl.com/yp6zyx #

• Hope Ric Shreves (http://tinyurl.com/2snnpe) doesn’t print any materials of the Internet in Afghanistan (http://tinyurl.com/27×8q8). #

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The Monday morning of Jan 21, 2008, must have been one hell of a morning for those staying between Pasir Ris and Tanah Merah as the SMRT train service between these stations of the same name was halted because of a “track fault”.

Through the service disruption, zm the studious blogger questioned SMRT’s corporate communications procedures when it came to crisis management.

(pictures gathered from Hardwarezone)
Wrote zm,

non-transparency on cause of service disruption. On the screens at the MRT station, i only knew there was a DISRUPTION from PSR to TNM. What’s the fault? Why is SMRT always so shy to tell commuters of the actual problem?

Is it important to tell commuters the reason for the disruption?

Yes. It isn’t because the commuters are a bunch of busy people, but a reason would have provided them the necessary information to make decisions on whether to wait for disruption or look at alternative transportation.

Did somebody committed suicide again by jumping onto the train tracks? Did a train run off a track? If commuters knew that this was a problem, they would know it would take awhile for train service to resume so it would be better to look for alternatives.

I believe SMRT engages in many emergency drills to prepare the staff for, well, emergency, but are their corporate comms department also tested during these drills?

During such emergencies or crisis, the corporate communications shouldn’t be just preparing a speech for a spokesperson, but they should look at how to disseminate such disruption to the public.

There a few ways to do. The fastest way is to deploy a team at the affected stations to inform incoming commuters that there is a train disruption and it might take awhile for regular service to resume.

According to some reports, there were only signs that say train service is disrupted.

During such crisis, commuters want to speak to humans to understand the situation, not robots or machines!

The next step is to send out a note to radio stations to make an announcement that train services are disrupted between station A and B.

Putting your crisis management procedures in a drill will also highlight some of the holes that needs plugging.

Be honest and upfront in a crisis. Don’t shy away from the problem as it will be made as if you have something to hide. which then ends up in speculation and rumour mongering about the cause of the crisis.

If Singtel gets the sole rights of selling the Apple iPhone in Singapore, they will probably highlight how Singaporeans are benefiting from Singtel’s foray into acquiring foreign telcos.

Commsday’s Pamela Perez highlighted a Reuters report that Thailand’s AIS Chief Marketing Officer has highlighted that AIS, Singtel and Australia’s Optus have been approaching Apple for the rights to sell the iPhone in the respective countries.

Wrote Pamela,

Thailand’s Advance Info Service together with its parent company Singapore Telecom and Australia’s Optus have begun discussions with Apple to launch the well-touted iPhone in Thailand and the southeast Asia-Pacific region, an AIS senior official told Reuters.

Chief marketing officer Sanchai Thiewprasertkul told the Bangkok Post, the firms have been discussing phone volumes, marketing terms and partnerships.

However, the agreement has yet to be completed as Apple’s revenue sharing condition is not likely to work in Thailand, Sanchai said.

One would have to wonder what strategies will Singapore’s Starhub and M1 apply to get these rights for the Apple iPhone.

You have to hand it to the Chinese military for creativity.

Either they can’t afford to buy their own map or they think the new generation of viewers can only relate to world events with WOW, the Chinese military made use of a map in World of Warcraft to highlight military exercises in Turkey, Iran and Iraq!

Looks like the world map to me. Source: http://www.varietyasiaonline.com
Click on image to go to site!
Maybe the Chinese military uses WOW to practice their gaming warfare exercise.

Individual troop management.. The infantry could be made up of hunters (they carry guns), medic corp as priests (healers!) and of course warriors as the tank division!

• New Business Idea for 2008! Teach PR teams difference between CC and BCC field. #
• If I can come up with a search engine better than Google, why would i give it to A*Star? http://tinyurl.com/ynps7v #

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One year after leaving ZDNET Asia in early January 2007, Vivian Yeo is back at ZDNET Asia.

Vivian was one of the pioneer writers at ZDNET Asia as she joined the online tech publication in May 2005.

ZDNET Asia was also launched during that time.

Vivian cited personal reasons for leaving ZDNET Asia then.

Welcome back to the Z team.

The PR industry also noted a recent Lynn Tan byline at ZDNET Asia which also stated that Lynn Tan is a freelance journalist with the online enterprise tech publication.

Is this an indication that she has left the Z team?

The PR industry’s speculation continues.

PR textbooks will tell you the best way to get your message to the media is by a press release, but they must left out a very important footnote - Please remember when mass mailing, put your email addresses in the BCC field.

In case you don’t know what BCC means, it stands for Blind Carbon Copy.

However, it seems like somebody at World Marketing Group forget what BCC and he pasted a list of media email addresses of the media people at the Singapore Press Holdings.

Any PR agencies out there want their email addresses? It is going to cost you though!

From the World Marketing Group’s email:

From: Regina Barsana [mailto:reginabarsana@wmg-group.com]=20
Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 10:43 AM
To: xxxj@sph.com.sg; xxxyanlun@sph.com.sg; xxxgj@sph.com.sg;
xxxnow@sph.com.sg; xxxama@sph.com.sg; zblocal@sph.com.sg;
zbzz@sph.com.sg; xxxy@sph.com.sg; xxxbao@zaobao.com.sg;
xxxk@sph.com.sg; xxxhnw@sph.com.sg; giammt@sph.com.sg; yeekh@sph.com.sg;
xxxshg@sph.com.sg; teems@sph.com.sg; xxxkm@sph.com.sg;....

Subject:  <<image001.png>> RE: Launch of ELLE USA mag-EZ PR

=20

=20

=20

18th Jan 2008

=20

=20

ELLE USA, One of The WORLD'S LARGEST FASHION MAGAZINE,=20

now available in a pack!

=20

=20

SINGAPORE, January 15, 2008. ELLE USA, one of the foremost authority in
the magazine for fashion, beauty, and style, is now available through
mag-EZ.  It will now join an impressive list of international titles and
big brand names like The Economist, Fortune, National Geographic,
Harvard Business Review and BusinessWeek, among others.

=20

To have partnered with mag-EZ is to set the industry afire for all
discerning publishers and readers alike. What better way to reach and
understand an ever dynamic market but through mag-EZ and its discerning
clientele. Now, mag-EZ not only makes ELLE USA subscription easy, it's
the perfect fashion gift you can give to yourself or a friend.

Cheap doesn’t always mean good.

That’s what about 200 Tiger Airways passengers found out on Dec 7, 2007.

Thanks to Traumatised by Tiger for the YouTube Video.Seriously, what are the communication procedures that Tiger Airways have for customers in case of delays? How do they empower their staff to handle such situations like this delay?

Do they have one in the first place?

Now that Tiger Airways are allowed to fly to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in February 08, is a 45 mins flight going to be extended into a 5-hour wait? The same time that is needed to travel to the Malaysian capital by bus?

Sorry, Tiger. I am sticking to the 5-hour bus rides.

Its a new year and a new site design for the(new)mediaslut.

If you are using IE, the advertlets banner will block this blog nice logo.

So stop using IE and get Firefox instead!