Great Singapore iPhone food app Screenshots of BuUuk beta If you like HungryGoWhere or Yum.sg, you’re gonna love this.  I’ve just got myself a beta version of BuUuk, an iPhone App for finding places to eat in Singapore. I’m guessing the name is a play on the word “book” like “book a table at a restaurant”? Even as a beta version, I have to say this is a great app and a much needed localised product. While there are all the usual elements of an iPhone App: search, scroll menus, tabs for featured, top rated, and categories, BuUuk does an amazing job of connecting your geospatial data to your food. In other words it completely solves your hunger woes because: You get to search for what you want to eat. When you find some you get to pick the highest rated. When you pick that highly-rated restaurant you get to read reviews if you still have time and your digestive juices haven’t killed you yet. But, if you’re in a race against time, it tells you the distance you are from it via your GPS data. If you’re on a non-GPS iPhone (like me) it tells you how far the place is from its nearest MRT station. But if you’re lazy like me and want to drive, it also gives you a map and a button out to get directions from your Google Maps app. But despite all the fancy technology, these guys haven’t forgotten that the iPhone is essentially a phone. On every page that shows a restaurant, there’s a huge orange Telephone button to press and make a phone call to the restaurant. And in the spirit of Web 2.0, they haven’t forgotten about the social features as well. Without even the need to login, you can simply cast your vote with a single button press at the end of every satisfied meal. How much simpler can that be? I know I’m suppose to be a beta tester, but I can’t seem to find the bugs. Its not really crashing or mucking up. But if I could propose some improvements it’d be: Dates on the reviews and blog posts so I know what’s current. What does the map and distance mean for an iPhone 2G user who doesn’t have GPS? Other than that, it’s an awesome app that’s going to stick with my iPhone for the long haul. Oh, and BuUuk is looking for more Beta testers. If you’re interested, why not drop a note in the comments below and I’ll let them know you asked.        Friendster still #1 in Singapore Jeff Roberto presenting some interesting stats at Naumi Hotel, Singapore Had a lunch session with Jeff Roberto, Marketing/PR Director at Friendster today and contrary to the buzz about Facebook and MySpace, Friendter is apparenty doing pretty well in Asia and stands at #1 in Singapore “with over 1.6 million registered users and 974,000 million monthly unique visitors”. Their claim is that over 60% of Singapore’s internet population is on Friendster (or at least registered an account once upon a time). One of the more interesting insights Jeff gave about the company was that it had a huge mobile focus. The company has the m.friendster.com mobile site and also serves up APIs for developers to create their own apps. And because Friendster seems to be thriving in Asia, they’ve already created localised versions of the mobile portal in Indonesian, Malay, and Traditional Chinese. I wonder how many of the 1.2 billion mobile phone users in Asia will fancy social networking on the mobile? The other interesting thing about Friendster that I didn’t know was that it apprarently has the top user engagement score. That means people are lingering around on each others profiles a whole lot longer on Friendster than they do on other social networks like Facebook and MySpace. I don’t get this at all! When I asked Jeff, he said it was the photos, music, and content that people upload that keeps audiences there. But isn’t that the same content found on any other social network? I wonder what people are looking at on Friendster. Although I got on Friendster way back in 2003, I find most of my friends are now on Facebook. Somehow the Facebook wave swept through the region and we’re now in the swell. But if these positive numbers Jeff gave are anything to go by and Friendsters move in the direction of an open app platform, then there might be a good fighting chance for Friendster to break out of Asia for a global tug-of-war. After all, Jeff did say that there’s very little overlap in social network users.        Are we seeing a netbook ecosystem? My Eee PC 901 with Ubuntu Eee 8.04.1 This happens a lot with technology. When something becomes common place, we begin to see an “ecosystem” form around the technology to support it and leverage the value that can be added to the technology. While the iPhone is with a good example with its apps, hacks, and websites, I believe the netbook is beginning down that path as well. After getting my Eee PC 901, I came to realise that a 8.9″ screen with 12GB of disk space isn’t the kind of machine you want running Windows XP and it may not be the best machine for running Microsoft Office as well. I’m starting to see a rise of alternative software specifically built for the netbook. These include Linux operating systems such as Ubuntu Netbook Remix and Mandriva Mini, and office suites like ThinkFree Netbook Edition. It appears that the main consideration for these alternate software is to cater to the small screen size and lack of processor power. I believe that this ecosystem will morph in different ways as the netbook hardware introduces different features. One upcoming paradigm shift is coming with Asus’s Eee PC 901 that includes built in HSxPA. That means not just being connected at Starbucks WiFi, but while you’re on the move making the netbook more like a 3G phone and less like a laptop. Also, most netbooks today get about 5 hours of continuous usage on 6 cell battery packs. If innovation would would take place and increase battery usage to about 10 hours, the netbook would match the usage of mobile phones, and that will be another game changer. I’m looking forward to seeing more people clutching their 1kg netbooks accessing applications and websites that fit nicely to a 1024×600 screen. The Ubuntu Eee website puts in quite nicely: Your Eee PC is not your typical laptop, so why should you use a typical laptop interface?        Swapping Windows for Linux on Eee PC 901 I got my Eee PC 901, the 12GB version that comes with Windows XP, yesterday. Today, it runs Ubuntu 8.04. No, I’m not a Linux fanboy. In fact, I wanted Windows installed to use this netbook as my mobile office especially when I do presentations. But within 24 hours I learned that Windows XP is not fit for the Eee PC and the best alternative is a Linux one. So what went wrong with Windows? Updates. Yes, the very code that suppose to keep you safe and running fine broke my netbook. Like any good Windows user, the first thing I did when I got my computer was to install an anti-virus (I used AVG Free). Then I connected to the Net to update the AV as well as Windows. Now, do note that this simple netbook only has a 4GB SSD for the OS. There’s another 8GB SSD as a secondary disk, and the Windows installation is on the 4GB one. As I left the updates to download and install in the background, I decided to install Microsoft Office 2007 on the 8GB disk. That went well and I even ran Word, which wasn’t as sluggish as I thought it would be. While there was smooth sailing on the 8GB disk, little did I know that a ship wreck was about to take place on the 4GB disk! All of a sudden, I received a prompt that said I was running very low on disk space. I checked and to my amazement I was down to 52MB! I panicked, stopped the updates and tried to move as many files as I could to the 8GB disk. I even re-mapped the Desktop, My Documents, and Program Files to the 8GB. But even that wasn’t enough. Updates kept coming for Windows and Office and these were critical updates! Many hacks later, Windows started acting weird. The Programs menu started displaying odd things and other programs vanished. I didn’t know how to fix these, and the updates kept bugging me for an install. It became apparent that a 4GB system disk wasn’t enough to contain Windows XP. So I went to look for an alternative and found that there were many Ubuntu projects that focused specifically on the Eee PC. I came across eeebuntu and eeeXbuntu but decided to settle on Ubuntu Eee, which looked like the most popular. It appears that all these were designed specifically for the Eee PC and based off the Ubuntu Netbook Remix. I absolutely love this OS. Not only does it install well, it is designed for netbooks. Windows XP isn’t. Using Ubuntu Eee, you’ll notice that the Windows sizes can’t change, every window you open appears in full screen because netbooks already have small screens and it isn’t wise to make multiple windows fit into the real estate. The only things that don’t work upon install are the WiFi and the Webcam. The WiFi fix is easy actually because there’s a native driver from Ralink, but there’s a NDISWrapper method too if you want to use the Windows drivers. There’s a great tutorial for that here. I’m yet to figure out the Webcam, but let’s leave that for another 24 hours. Update: I re-installed Ubuntu Eee 8.04.1 and now everything just works. WiFi works perfect, it even has roaming (auto-detects networks). To get the webcam working was just turning it on in BIOS. Suspend manages to recover well now. The only bug I’m aware of is pressing Fn+F2 to turn off WiFi radio freezes the machine. Hope the next update fixes that. Looks like I’ve got a full fledged Eee PC without the stock OSs! =) Update 2: If you want to watch Kevin, Preetam and I discuss netbooks, click here.        How good are social media monitors? Kelvin sent me this interesting blog post by Andrew Frank of Gartner. In it he decides to test social media monitoring companies to see if if they practice what they preach. In other words, do they listen in on their own brand to see who’s talking about them. Andrew had listed all the social media monitoring brands at the end of his post. Most of the brands came back to reply in the comments which is a good sign. But this simple exercise got me thinking not just if they do it, which is easy even with Google Alerts, but can they. What if we repeated that exercise on a freshly created blog. No search engine has picked it up no one has linked to it. How long and what would it take for these services to find it? I think this would be a true test of these service’s technical prowess. Why do I have doubts? Because just before reading Gartner’s blog post, Kelvin and I were mucking around with a new social media monitoring service. I shall not name names here, but one of the keywords we used was “poverty”. What was amazing was that it had results that dated all the way back to 1964 (before the Internet was invented by the way) with a grand total of… wait for it… 466! Just for scale, Google returned 73,300,000. But seriously, I don’t expect these engines to re-create Google for the sake of selling a subscription service to marketing folks. I think a lot of them do their best based on search engine results which is a good measure. If it can’t be found in a search engine, it might as well not exist. And if you didn’t know, a search engine doesn’t return results past 1,000 (10 results a page x 100 pages). Also, Steve Rubel believes that search engine page rank is the best measure of influence online.        Plurk isn’t a game changer… yet Today I went back to visit Plurk and updated it since I last left it in favour of Twitter back in June. While I was trying to re-familiarise myself with Plurk, I had a sneaking suspicion that there were many like me who tried it when it first came out but now exist with 0.0 karma and have not been back since. After a bit of poking around, I found that friends like Kevin and Adrianna were karma-less like me. I guess it was comforting to know that I wasn’t the only one who can’t manage two microblogging platforms. But then in an attempt to restore my Plurk reputation and give this platform another chance, I stumbled upon the very helpful “Find Your Twitter Friends” button. I clicked it, put in my username and got a bigger surprise! All the top social media and Web 2.0 experts I follow on Twitter including Steve Rubel, Jeremiah Owyang, Mitch Joel, and Nat Torkington have picked abandonment in favour of Twitter. I don’t think Plurk is a bad service at all, but I think it’ll take quite a bit of effort to do a Facebook on me (I’ve officially abondoned Friendster in favour of a Facebook which came much later). Maybe I’ll visit Plurk again in another four months to see if it has evolved into a game changer. But for now, there’s just too much going for me on Twitter’s shores to migrate.        Social Media Marketing Examples in Singapore I was inspired today to follow the lead of Peter Kim and publish a list of brands that have been using the social media for marketing. This is a great exercise that has given me a good picture of what’s been happening. Unlike Peter’s, my list isn’t as long and it’s focused on Singapore. What’s interesting is that in Singapore, there’s such a lot of blogger relations/events going on. Also, the oldest use of social media for marketing is NHB’s Yesterday.sg back in 2005! Well done Walter! My list definitely isn’t exhaustive, so if you’ve got other examples to share, do send them my way or add them to the comments. I also plan to incorporate this into Ming Yeow’s Wiki soon. Hope you find it useful too. HBO Asia YouTube Competition: Flight of the Conchords (September 2008) HP / Waggener Edstorm Blogger Trip: HP Hong Kong (September 2008) Coverage: Estee, Blogger Trip: HP Berlin (June 2008) Coverage: Vanessa, Blogger Event: HP Touchsmart (June 2008) Coverage: Nadia, Nicole, Marina, Geek Goddess Show, Jacelyn, Hillary, Brian, Nicholas, fabrikade Blogger Event: HP 2133 Mini-Note (April 2008) Coverage: Vanessa, Michael, E27, Bernard, Tech65, Intel / Ogilvy PR Blogger Event: Intel Centrino 2 Launch (July 2008) Coverage: Claudia, DK, Lenovo Blogger Event: IdeaPad S10 Launch (September 2008) Coverage: DK, Claudia, LG Blogger Relations: LG Secret product review (July 2008) Coverage: IZ Reloaded, Blogger Relations: LG Scarlet HDTV product review (May 2008) Coverage: IZ Reloaded, Blogger Relations: LG KS20 product review (April 2008) Coverage: IZ Reloaded, Blogger Relations: LG 42LB7RF HDTV product review (April 2008) Coverage: IZ Reloaded, Blogger Relations: LG Viewty (March 2008) Coverage: Sparklette Blogger Relations: LG Shine product review (May 2007) Coverage: IZ Reloaded, Sparklette, LG / Fleishman-Hillard Blogger Event: LG Secret at CommunicAsia (June 2008) Coverage: Leonard, Sheylara, Esther, Sher, IZ Reloaded, Media Development Authority Viral Video: Management Rap Video (November 2007) Ministry of Community, Youth, and Sport / Ogilvy PR YouTube Seeding: Thinkfamily.sg TVC (June 2008) Microsoft Xbox Blog: Xperts.com.sg (August 2008) Contest: Halo 3 giveaway (November 2007) Coverage: Sparklette Ministry of Health Blogs: Nursing Blogs (November 2007) National Heritage Board Photoblogging Contest: Heritage Photoblogging Contest (December 2007) Coverage: Sparklette Blog: Yesterday.sg (August 2005) National Heritage Board / Hill & Knowlton Twitter/Flickr Contest: International Museums Day (May 2007) Nokia Video series: Nokia Nseries 14 days (December 2007) Coverage: Sparklette Contest: Nokia N95 Wireless Adventure (May 2007) Coverage: Sparklette Contest: Nokia You Make it Reel (March 2007) Coverage: Sparklette NParks Blog: Garden Voices (December 2006) NParks / Hill & Knowlton Wikipedia Entry: Singapore Gardens Festival (December 2006) Blogger Relations: Singapore Gardens Festival (February 2008) Coverage: Wilson, Panasonic Blogger Relations: Panasonic Toughbook Product Review (February 2008) Coverage: mrbrown Sony / Hill & Knowlton Blogger Event: Sony Alpha 900 Launch (September 2008) Coverage: Claudia, Esther, Camemberu, Blogger Event: Sony Cybershot T77, T500, T700 Launch (August 2008) Coverage: Claudia, DK, Esther, Benjamin, Blogger Event: Sony VAIO Z, SR, FW Launch (July 2008) Coverage: IZ Reloaded, Benjamin, Claudia, Nicole, Vanessa, Samsung Blogger Event: Innov8 Launch (October 2008) Coverage: Nicole, Blogger Relations: Video Camera videos (February 2008) Coverage: Estee Starhub Pfingo Blog: Geeks not Freaks Blog (August 2008) Yahoo! / Fleishman-Hillard Blogger Event: oneSearch, oneConnect at CommunicAsia (June 2008) Coverage: IZ Reloaded, Mark, Leonard, Sheylara, Esther, Sher,        Remember to engage the fans This morning I was at Social Media Breakfast 4. It was my first time to SMB and I have to congratulate the organisers on getting a great crowd. I loved the fact that there were so many people from PR agencies and corporations there trying to pickup on new ideas and network with bloggers. Today’s session focused heavily on blogger relations, for some strange reason because the topic was “Corporate Adoption of Social Media”, and while listening to the discussions something was bugging me about what was being said. Everyone wanted to find out which were the best bloggers, what bloggers wanted, how to treat them, what to expect from them, and what they wanted to do at events/engagements. It them occurred to me that the reason all that sounded strange was because the fundamentals were missing. No one said: “I engaged a blogger because he/she bought my product, loved it, and blogged about it”. This I found quite funny because anyone who’s been doing social media marketing knows that to start you need to listen. And if you’ve listened right, you’d know who your fans are and who you need to impress a second round. I have also noticed that at most corporate blogger events in Singapore, it is almost always the same bunch of bloggers. It can’t possibly be true that all these same folk bought and loved Samsung, Sony, Intel, Lenovo, HP, and Dell. To me the biggest mistake a corporation or PR agency can make is to aim for the highest profile bloggers and neglect those not-so-famous fans who have already blogged about them. Not that engaging the popular bloggers aren’t a good idea, but seriously, we have to start where it matters and greater impact is felt when one of these fans tells his buddy: “Hey, after buying this product, they invited me to check out a sneak peak of the new model and it’s damn hot!” Well, at least that’s what I’d go after when trying out blogger relations.        New PR KPI: the spreading effect I’ve been thinking about the way PR folks measure their success. In Singapore and most markets I’ve worked with, the standard KPI is clippings. But I have a problem with that. Yes it is easy to count, but as a boss or client, what is my influence? You see, the mass media is dead. By dead I don’t mean out of business, but dead in terms of influence. Before the age of the Internet and cable TV, it was easy to communicate your agenda and news to the masses. Just get into the newspaper (most cities/towns in the world have only one) and get on TV or Radio. But today, with hundreds of cable/satellite/IP TV channels, approximately 200 million blogs, millions of online news sources, and not to mention endless hours of uploaded video, there is no media that reaches the masses. All that’s left is niche media and highly distributed media. This shift affects the PR industry the greatest and it really calls for a different game plan. I feel that most PR agencies, at least in Singapore and Asia, still live in denial and continue to sell the “we have great friends in the media” pitch to prospective clients. In our social media age where a single obscure blog post can turn into a whirlwind of influence (remember the HD DVD key issue?), calling the editor-in-chief of the newspaper your best buddy isn’t exactly a trump card anymore. The advantage of a good PR agency is its ability to produce stories that spreads. It doesn’t matter if that story goes out to a journalist or a blogger, as long as it’s online because good story spreads no matter what. So until we can do wireless keyword search on everyone’s brain, I think that the true tangible effect of influence from a PR perspective is how well it spreads. It’s not impossible to accomplish as proved by the launch of Cuil. All it took was one good press release to get this snow ball rolling.        Think of the ripples in your social media marketing Last Friday I spoke at an workshop hosted by the certain government organisation. My portion of the workshop was about using the social media as a marketing and communication platform. I approached the topic in an allegorical fashion by looking at the impact of the social media as the ripples in a pond produced by dropping a stone in. Here are some the points I made regarding approaching the social media. 1. Bloggers aren’t always the best way to go Most people look at the social media like a shopping spree. They run right into the mass of bloggers and grab randomly a couple of popular ones who they think will blog about their product or service and wine and dine them in hope of a blog post. While this approach can be useful for certain popular consumer products which do end up spreading like wildfire, what impact does this approach really have among the approximately 200 million other blogs worldwide? 2. Start by leveraging your existing stone Most corporations forget they already have an existing ripple generating platform (read stones). It could be a website, a product, or even what the public are searching for. By grabbing the random bloggers to pitch to is like creating multiple tiny ripples with limited influence. No one knows where the impact came from, and the influence can be easily forgotten. With a little bit of research using Google Insights, for example, you can easily find out what people in any market are searching for when it comes to your product or brand. Leverage their habits you can communicate with them on what they’re already fascinated by. Here’s a simple example: Searches for BMW spiked around interest in F1 in Singapore. Did BMW take advantage of that to reach out to people searching for it online? 3. Create a resource Resources as opposed to corporate brochure sites are a great way to utilise the social media. Not only do people share them with others they know need them, but they often get bookmarked and referenced when needed. A resource could be anything from a niche search engine like ExpatFinder or a simple blog post like this one which was bookmarked on delicious by over 700 people. 4. Be your own media Traditional PR tells us to communicate to the mass media and make use of their platform to influence the public. In the social media we get the chance to be our own media. One of the best examples in Singapore is Yesterday.sg. This is a blog run by the National Heritage Board and it is not only a marketing tool for the organisation, but also a really useful media resource for anyone interested in heritage and history in Singapore. 5. Create content that spreads Everyone loves viral videos. But what’s better than one viral video is a viral series. A lot of marketers try for that one big viral campaign. But why stop there when you can make a whole show? The prime example is definitely Gary Vaynerchuk’s Wine Library TV. All he does is sits behind a desk, talks about wine and goes crazy over the New York Jets. This simple production has become a real hit online. What’s interesting here is that while he could have sold the show to TV networks or cable channels, he continues to provide it free online. Why? Because when things are online with a permanent link, they spread! People share these in email, on their blogs, in social bookmarks. Try that with TV shows. 6. Build community The final point I made was the importance of building a community. Not just getting eyeballs on your fancy campaign, but get them to come back again and again. Get them to contribute content, make them talk to each other, make it worth their while in participating on your platform. Every organisation I believe can build community from their base of fans to the smallest of niche user groups. Communities make people realise that they’re not the only ones using your product and can easily get support and feedback from the community. Marketters should also think about growing these communities empowering existing members to help new members. Software companies such as Six Apart are especially good at this.        The high-tech way to travel Malaysia I thought I’d write about my bus trip from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur and back over the weekend since there was actually interest expressed on Twitter. What’s most fascinating for the technorati is that this is a high-end luxury coach that provides power sockets for laptops and free WiFi as well as a personal movie/games-on-demand on a swivel 11-inch LCD screen. For readers who are not from Singapore or Malaysia, travelling from Singapore to KL and vise versa is a common occurrence in these parts with the road trip lasting between 4 to 6 hours depending on the traffic and how many speeding laws you break. This was my first time on an Odyssey coach. It cost S$110 a person (return). This could possibly be the most expensive bus service for this route and competes very closely with Areoline. I have to admit, the money spent on it was worth it because it was definitely my most comfortable trip to KL. I actually prefer this to flying. OK, no point me rambling on here, let me show you some pictures and explain along the way. This is what the bus looks like from the outside. I actually like the professional look and colour scheme and really stands out as premium compared to other buses that use loud colours and tacky phrases. This is what the bus looks like on the inside. Above is from the front, and below is from my seat looking out. Now for the exciting part. That’s me using the WiFi to check mail. If you’re ever within 10 metres of these buses in Malaysia and want to borrow a little bandwidth, you can whip out your WiFi-enabled device and try to connect to “odyssey[bus number]” SSID. Mine was odyssey1603. The fidelity of the connection isn’t perfect. I felt it was close to 70% up time. While in the bus, there’s no issue getting the WiFi signal, always full bars. The only problem is the backhaul. My guess is that the router is connected to a 3G data modem which gets a connection where the network is strong. At times along the highway download speeds were slow or even absent, but near KL and JB it was pretty good. Every seat on the bus feels like a quality airline flight with its own entertainment system. But unlike the one you get on Singapore Airlines, this one looks like a home-grown system. It has both a English and Chinese lables on its controls and the movies have A and B sides–you know what that means–VCDs! All of the content was digitised and very well delivered through the client box and Ethernet cables under every seat. Lastly, here’s the view of the “cockpit”. It is actually quite amusing to listen to the cabin crew welcoming you onboard and introducing the Captain. Short of the phrase, “…we hope you enjoy your flight…” you would have thought it was a Boeing you just hopped on. That’s it from me. Maybe you can try it out yourself and let me know what you thought. Would like to see other coach services step up to meet the needs of the technorati. It was a rather productive 5 hours for me. You don’t have to wait for the PR invite This is a note to bloggers and also a followup/response to Vanessa’s and Claudia’s honest and very helpful blog posts to PR folk. Being a PR guy before, I’d like to propose that the reversed approach could work for bloggers too and possibly reduce the amount of miscommunication and frustration felt on both sides. If you’ve never received an invite from a PR agency or corporation like Vanessa and Claudia and you want to get in some of the journalistic action, here are a few tips on how you can go about making yourselves known to PR agencies in a productive way. If you’re seriously into something you know corporates use PR agencies for, write to them! For example, if you love your Nokia mobile phone, why not write in to ask to be invited to the product launch of the next product? I would suggest that you could even propose fun things to do such as borrow the product for a review, tell them you want to do a video review and upload it to YouTube, etc. A good starting point for bloggers in the region is the Asia Pacific PR Directory. PR agencies need to justify to their clients why they’re spending time and money on you. So when you write to them, tell them not just your interests, but also alert them to your Technorati ranking, and reveal a bit about your visitor statistics to prove you’re worth their while. PR guys need to be smart about who they target and brief their client on who’s coming. So make it easy for them by always having an about/profile page and readily available contact details such as an email address and mobile number. Photos of yourself would be useful too if they’ve never met you before. If you have a bunch of friends who happen to care about something niche, like a bunch of technology geeks who want to check out Microsoft’s PhotoSynth, why not write in as a group and propose to the agency to persuade their client to get a really good engineer down to demo it for you while you livecast it. If this reversed approach makes you shy, let me tell you that many professional journalists do the same when they want to write a stroy on a specific topic/technology. PR agencies are gateways to top corporations and have ready spokespeople to speak to you on the topic that inerests you most. All they ask for in exchange is influence through an honest medium. So if you’re already going to write about something you love so much, you can make use of the agencies to get so much more. On the flip side, if you hate a product you got, you can feedback to the PR but customer support will most likely be your best bet in solving your crisis. Playing with new snaps Last week I had the chance to play with three of Sony’s latest Cyber-shots: the T77, T500, and T700 at their media/blogger event. For a guy who’s last digital camera was a Canon PowerShot A70 from 2001 (it was revolutionary at that time mind you), these new point-and-clicks were gifts from the future. My favourite was the T700 (pictured above) mainly because it came with 4GB built-in memory. That makes absolute sense. No need to carry many storage cards and swap them around, just turn on and shoot. The other thing that fascinated me was the button-less back panel. Nothing there but a huge touchscreen. No it isn’t like the the iPhone’s pinch-to-zoom one, but Sony did a decent job is making full use of the real estate. Talking about touch screen, the T700 and T500 had good solid touch screens, but the T77 used a soft material, like the one on your laptop’s LCD so that when you touch it, it produces those scary LCD ripples. Felt like I was going to damage the screen… and yes you were suppose to touch the screen. The last thing that thrilled me was the smile shutter. I know, tacky right? But it’s amazingly fun! What it does is automatically snaps a photo of you when you smile. No pressing of the shutter release, just snaps on its own. There are just so many applications for it: wedding reception tables, candid shots at parties, etc. Oh and just one final point to gloat: I ended up winning a Sony DPF-D70 digital photo frame! So did DK, Esther, and Nadia! w00t! Is pitching to bloggers just a fad? Since my exit from PR, I’ve been getting a couple of invites to blogger/media events organised by PR agencies for their clients. Being on the “other side” has made me think about the effectiveness of reaching out to bloggers. I’m beginning to realise, at least in Singapore’s technology industry, that it’s always the same few bloggers who get invited to the events. It’s definitely fun in the beginning, but unlike media, bloggers do not have the obligation or need to “fill a page” or “file a story” like journalists. Because of this, the fun wears off when a blogger realises that he/she didn’t really fancy the product that was launched and the outreach is wasted. My advice is that PR agencies need to move one step up and not just invite bloggers for the sake of getting an online clip, but invite those who are truly interested. For example, I posted a simple post on the Ruckus Wireless’ MetroFlex DZ way back and within a month, I was contacted by the local distributor here to ask if I wanted to try it out for myself. I said yes. And ended up making a video of it with Kevin. The key here is having a conversation with an interested party instead of inviting the random blogger to every new product launch. It would definitely be more worthwhile if it was more targeted. If a blogger uses an iPhone, Apple should talk to him/her. If they use Sony Cyber-shot cameras, Sony should invite them to the events, give them media discounts, etc. This way brands can build ambassadors while achieving PR goals. That approach is obviously more time consuming, but it is definitely more rewarding. My guess is that it isn’t being done well in Singapore. A good example on my blog is despite my two most popular posts of all time being about my Samsung i780, Samsung’s PR agency has not even tried to make contact. In this world of search and links, it really isn’t about the overall rank of the blog that matters, but what visitors are going there for. I dare say that the thousands of visitors to my Samsung i780 posts easily beats and definitely influences stronger than other blogs with better overall readership. Crossing over to entrepreneurship OK, I admit. To be able to introduce myself as a Consultant gave me quite a thrill, and a social media consultant was a recognistion many people coveted. But as of last Thursday, 21 August 2007, I exchanged my Consultant at Hill & Knowlton status for an unpaid entrepreneurship with our new startup, JamiQ (say Jamie-Que). I can’t tell you too much about JamiQ now except that we’re focused on social media intelligence by combining a whole lot of amazing technology with social media expertise. But we’ll be sure to roll out a public beta within the year so watch for that. It’s really interesting to have only worked five years of my life, three as a technology journalist, and two as a social media and PR consultant. Somehow, that combination has given me enough insights and passion to take the leap into startup land building and running something I believe will change the way we work with the social media. I just want to take this post to thank Hill & Knowlton for a great opportunity to introduce the social media to the company and clients, and also for teaching me heaps about doing business, managing clients, and understanding the power of influence through strategic communication. So, here I go head first into the ocean of opportunity. Wish me luck! Aside: If anyone is interested in a technology / social media PR consultant position at Hill & Knowlton Singapore, there’s kind of a void that needs to be filled. Let me know your interest and I can recommend you to the team. Driving data packets instead of cars Think there’s a lot of new technology going into cars? Well, you’re spot on! So much technology in fact that in about 2 years, we Singapore drivers will more likely be driving data packets on an Ethernet cable with packet shapers and QoS to make us more efficient. Now doesn’t that remind you of Tron? When the Singapore government announced plans to upgrade the ERP in-car units with GPS-enabled ones earlier this year, most Singaporeans looked at it as a system to toll a driver from anywhere and the end of speeding. While the fast-lane will now just be max-speed lane, it gives rise to the possibility of something quite revolutionary. According to Tom Vanderblit, author of Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), drivers today make user-optimal and not system-optimal decisions. He explains in the August issue of Wired that if we think of cars on the roads as data packets on a network, we get a chance at packet (traffic) shaping to improve our drive. The article ends by mentioning the possibility of giving drivers real-time traffic data and offering dynamic traffic routing, but only if every car (in any given congestion) had technology such as Dash Navigation’s GPS-based social networking system. It amazes me that what seems a dream to a futurist author could become a reality in my home country in about 2 years. The pieces just seem to fit: Congestions + GPS +  ubiquitous wireless network (3G). And even better, Singaporeans won’t (can’t) complain about the death of road freedom! Twittering Singapore news Today I was inspired by the use of Twitter by news agencies such as CNN, BBC, and even our local ChannelNews Asia and wanted to take this innovative usage to the next level by adding multiple sources of Singapore news in a single Twitter stream. Since there wasn’t a consolidated Twitter stream of Singapore news, I decided to create http://twitter.com/sgnews with the help of TwitterFeed, Yahoo Pipes, and a collection of the best RSS-able Singapore news. How it works: I collected a bunch of RSS feeds from ChannelNews Asia, The Business Times, TODAY, Yahoo News Singapore, Tomorrow.sg, and Topix Singapore News. To clean up duplicates (because sometimes Yahoo syndicates from CNA), I filter them through Yahoo Pipes to get rid of the repeats and form a single consolidated RSS feed. I put this Piped feed into TwitterFeed which automatically and periodically updates http://twitter.com/sgnews with a nice clean stream of the most current news. Users can Follow http://twitter.com/sgnews and get the most up-to-date news on Singapore from multiple sources. I created this as a personal tool to get the news I wanted, but if you like it and find it helpful too, feel free to Follow SGnews on your Twitter account. Also, if you believe there are other good feeds to add, do let me know in the comments below. Have fun and tell your friends! Update: I’ve re-jigged the system a little feeding all RSS feeds directly to TwitterFeed and parsing only the Yahoo and ChannelNews Asia ones with Yahoo Pipes because only those two have duplicate entries. This increases and flexibility and reliability of the syndication. Update 2: I’ve chosen to output only the headlines because in a 140 word Tweet, the body is so badly turncated to make space for the link it’s actually more disruptive than helpful. The new is tidy and clear now. You’ve got to love the Z Today I hosted bloggers Claudia, DK, IZ, Nadia, Nicole, and Vanessa at Singapore’s Sony VAIO media launch. It was a blast! These bloggers are just lovely. Of the three new models launched today, I dare say that Sony has done a great job this time round in building an amazing notebook with the Z Series. It’s the sleekest, most powerful, and sexiest 13.1″ I’ve ever seen. From my point of view, I believe it was also the crowd favourite at the event. Check out these specs: Up to 2.53GHz Intel® Core™ 2 Duo 13.1” LED backlit display, 3.42 lbs. Up to 320GB hard drive, available 128GB SSD Up to 4GB RAM, available Blu-ray Disc drive Up to 6-hour battery (realistic number) But did you know that Sony also… …redesigned the motherboard to have 12 layers on one so it can be smaller than the previous TZ series? …removed the top metal cover of the optical drive to make it lighter? …bored holes in the chassis of the optical drive to reduce weight? …redesigned the heat sinks to be smaller and more efficient so they can use a quieter fan? …and designed the keyboard with isolated keys (not a new feature) … but it is to help girls with long manicured nails type better! …VAIO stood for Video Audio Integrated Operation and now is Visual Audio Intelligent Organiser? If I wasn’t a mac user, I’d definitely get myself one of these. The failure of my MBP’s battery pack is making this a tempting offer. Cuil is pretty darn… urm… cool Just when I thought there was wisdom in Kelvin telling me that it information-based start ups should not recreate spiders to crawl the web but instead use Google as the “universe” comes a new search engine that not only claims to honour privacy but also indexes 3 times more web pages than Google! If you haven’t tried it, it’s called Cuil (pronounced “cool”). It’s built by ex-Google engineers and works pretty well on my search attempts. Cuil seems to be doing a repeat of what Google was when it started out, clean, simple, and powerful. As a power user of Google, Cuil lacks the command line like options and advanced settings Google offers, but I can imagine Cuil appealing to the majority of casual users who simply wants the basic keyword search. I also imagine that Cuil can perform better than Google in extreme niche searching since it seems to crawl much farther and wider than Google. The other thing about Cuil is that it doesn’t index search habits and thus claims to leave your privacy alone. Despite the skeptics, I think Cuil stands a chance to grow up and in the process convert a good lot of casual users and privacy freaks. Ponders: Is there really 3 time more universe than Google or are the numbers just fluff? Why I want to meet Meng Meet who? Tan Chade-Meng, apparently he’s the first of my countrymen to be hired by Google. I’m not the kind to go meet a successful Singaporean for nationalistic pride, and normally I’ll look at a person’s credentials and expertise before signing up for an event. But this time round, of all the fantastic things I’ve heard and read about Meng, I’m going to see the dude that leaves this out of office message! I’m on leave until 8/15/2008.  If you can’t reach me, please don’t think I’m dead, especially if you’re from payroll (if you’re not from payroll, I don’t really care what you think. Except you, boss). During my leave, I will archive most of my incoming emails without reading them.  Why?  Because being on leave, I’m likely to be frolicking on a beach or something, and reading emails is incompatible with frolicking. If your request is important, please email me again after 8/15/2008. If your request is not important, please send it to /dev/null, it will be taken care of in the most appropriate way, I promise. In case of an absolute emergency that requires my immediate attention, my teammates know how to contact me.  Bribe them.  Tell them they look beautiful.  Say they look almost as attractive as Meng. Examples of “absolute emergency”: - You are the President of the United States. - You are Celine Dion. - You urgently want to give me a billion bucks. - Evil forces intent to destroy the world today (Note: not AFTER my vacation, but today) and you think I’m the only one who can save the world. - You discovered that I’m The One, but so did the Agents, and you have only 24 hours to find me to give me the “blue pill/red pill” speech. - All of the above. During my time away, I will refrain from becoming evil.  But if I do become evil, I promise I will grow a goatee and rub my hands in a sinister way when I speak.  And if I capture a superhero sent to stop me, I will painstakingly explain my evil plans in detail to him/her before handing him/her to my snickering, incompetent goons. If you’re as convinced as I am and want to know the brain behind such creativity, then come along! The details are: Date: 30th July 2008 Time: Registration starts at 6:30 pm Venue: DXO, Colours by the Bay, 8 Raffles Avenue, #01-13, Esplanade Mall And you register here: http://www.thedigitalmovement.org/meetmeng/ Quality matters in the social media I think they finally got it! Singapore’s Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports has put out a new TV commercial directed by renowned Malaysian film maker Yasmin Ahmad. Yasmin has a gift for creating emotive shorts and has lent her brilliance to the creation of many tear-jerking TVCs in Malaysia. Apart from having the TVC air on broadcast TV, the ministry has taken it online under the ThinkFamily.sg banner (read campaign). They have a dedicated YouTube Channel and over 12,000 views of the English version since July 11 (this is just the original, not including the re-uploaded copies). I feel that too often agencies and corporations are jumping quickly into the social media hype with “strategies” that are really just fancy methods of online activity instead of focusing on quality content. It appears that MCYS has thought through this campaign very carefully, put in good investment into creating the best TVC they can afford, run it in traditional media that’s proven and safe, then extend it online… Bam! instant social media success. Here’s the video, watch it for yourself then compare its quality to other Singapore government social media acts. The social media is the wild west, may the best video win. Syncing the browser I use multiple computers, one at home (Mac) and one at work (PC). Both are laptops, both I own, both I leave in their respective shrines. I take them out when needed, but put them back right after. So clearly as a Firefox user, Google Browser Sync was a God-send. Well, until Firefox 3 came along. For some reason, Google isn’t updating GBS for Firefox 3.0 anymore. So, upgrade to Firefox 3 or stick with GBS? I finally took the plunge when I found out about Mozilla’s Weave. I hasitated a bit because it was an early prototype. Essentially it’s the same good service: syncronise bookmarks, passwords, form data, history, and cookies. All encrypted on a central server. I don’t recommend services such as Foxmarks and others that only sync your bookmarks. Seriously, if you already use del.icio.us, syncing bookmarks isn’t too big a deal. What I really wanted is to remember sites I visited at home, and continue on them at work. And passwords too. I trust my browser a lot. =) So if you were looking for a replacement to GBS, Weave is a good alternative. It has worked well so far… all 15 mins of it… and I think Mozilla has done a great service to the community to pick up where Google left off. SingTel’s iPhone reservation system that isn’t Today I sent this page from SingTel to the office following the 3G iPhone’s hype from last night. It was done in good faith that SingTel was making an effort to reach out to those who want to reserve themselves a 3G iPhone in Singapore. But instead of enthusiasm and excitement, I heard complaints. Not of my mass email, but of SingTel’s silly website. For once I thought SingTel was ahead in customer service and marketing providing the excited public with a simple website to order a 3G iPhone instead of the crazy queues that wrap around the block in the US. I thought wrong. You still have to go down to the SingTel shop to confirm your reservation. Yes, confirm. If I was going to queue at the shop, I might as well be getting the darn iPhone! Incredible, SingTel has successfully evolved backward in customer service and marketing making it more inconvenient to get an iPhone. From the main page, you click “Yes” and you get this form. No where does it say that you need to go down to the shop until you click “Next”. When you’re done with the form, instead of a “Thank you, your reservation is done”, you get this: Yup, welcome to SingTel’s online world where you still have to get your bum down to the offline shop. Maybe I should just get one from Australia since I’ll be there over July 11. Singapore is on the “coming soon” list. Talking to holograms This short video of Microsoft’s founder, Bill Gates, was taken last month at the 16th World Congress on Information Technology 2008 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Although this isn’t the first time a life-size hologram was used to deliver a speech, it was the closest to home. I think this is a great technology with amazing implications. How many of us get to see our heroes in the flesh? The closest I’ve gotten to real heroes of technology would be at the recent talk by Vinton Cerf, and on another occasion where Cisco’s CEO John Chambers came to Singapore and spoke on a government-led platform. But beyond talks, what about rock concerts, product launches, religious preaching? This is important for a small country like Singapore. There isn’t much incentive for the best and brightest to visit our shores, we have a small population, and a small addressable market, but among the smallness, there are eager fans who would watch every TED Talk video, stay up for the WWDC 2008 keynote, or even fly to the UK to watch their favourite football club. Holograms could make a difference. Of courses today’s holograms are pre-recorded. But one day I’m sure they’ll be live. As least it’ll be handy till we figure out teleportation. Plurk in the sidebar If you haven’t tried Plurk, you should. Its like Twitter, only messier. In fact, with only 13 friends since I started a day ago, it’s getting a bit too much to track all the plurks and replies to plurks. I discovered by accident an easier way to manage Plurk making it more Twitter-like. Plurk has a mobile interface at http://www.plurk.com/m/ where it lists all plurks in a Twitter-like form. Although it’s created for the mobile browser, you can open it in Firefox or your favourite web browser too. But I found that the best way to use it was to place it in the sidebar. I use Firefox and this is how you do it: Go to http://www.plurk.com/m/ Click Bookmarks > Bookmark This Page… Save the bookmark where you like and name it as you see fit Click Bookmarks > Organise Bookmarks… Right-click on your Plurk bookmark Click Properties Check Load this bookmark in the sidebar Click OK Now click the bookmark and you should see it open in a sidebar like this: Now it’s more widget/app like and you don’t have to keep a whole tab open for it. I’m sure it works in other browsers’ sidebars too, but here’s the Firefox way. Our hybrid media future Two weeks back I was on a panel at the PR Academy’s conference discussing “new media”. Unlike the barcamps and unconferences we social media folks are so fond of, this conference was done old skool with a government Minister as the guest-of-honour and panel mates that were my father’s age. I was the only “digital native” on the stage throughout the day-long conference and the general sentiment toward new media was approached with mixed feelings. A commenter mentioned to me that other than my optimistic self, it was “very much doom and gloom and what will become of our beloved printed press”. The panel I was on was made up of two senior newspaper editors, a publishing consultant, an engagement consultant, and me. At one point during the panel a question from the floor asked the obvious, but realistic, question if the new (digital) media will kill the traditional (mostly printed) press. The answers that came back was to the effect of “yes, but we’re trying new things”. That’s not surprising at all. In fact, as far back as 1998, there’s been talk about print dying and even current stats are proving that the prediction is true. Even the pron industry can’t cut it with print. Who else can survive? That was my logical sentiment as well. But after the conference I started thinking about the development of technologies on a whole and now I’m beginning to feel otherwise. As Internet technologies improve together with screen technologies that make it easier for all of us to consume digital content (think Kindle), so does print technologies and recycled paper give rise to cheaper print media. Amazon has offered print-on-demand for a while now, and I imagine all books will be available in PoD one day. In fact, the PoD model mixed with new media is a potent platform for new innovations. David Sifry’s new start up, Offbeat Guides, is doing just that compiling up-to-date information from the web and compiling them into printable PDFs. But then again, maybe not all print is doom and gloom just yet. According to Chris Anderson, if you give out your newspaper for free, it can grow! Looks like our media future is going to be a hybrid one. He made an amazing network Volunteer voyeurism I recently watched the geek thriller Untraceable, where the above web site was taken from. The show follows the FBI cyber crime unit as they try to track down a crazed computer genius who kills his victims through crowdsourced voyeurism. The more people visited the site killwithme.com the faster his victims died. This started me thinking about our less extreme exhibitionism and the voyeurs who participate in the exchange. There are portions of the social media that are specifically designed around the concept of “presence” which is an invitation to volunteer voyeurism. This week, I Twittered the message: Never go to a new job thinking what you can learn, they pay you for what you can give and how much money you can make. and the same day a friend sent me a message on IM asking if I’ve changed jobs. No I haven’t, I just felt it was timely advise that I’ve been repeating to others who were contemplating moves. Two weeks ago, I turned on the “What I’m Listening To” feature on Microsoft Messenger as I was listening to Belle & Sabastian’s The Life Pursuit and immediately a friend started a conversation surprised that I listened to the same music she does and discussed how I missed their concert after I left Australia for Singapore back in 2004. I’m sure this is a common experience for you too both as a voyeur and a “victim”. It intrigues me to observe how acceptable voyeurism is in today’s internet culture. I’m sure there are people observing others anonymously online, but at the same time, there doesn’t seem to be anymore shame in watching the exhibitionist and responding directly to him/her. Even in the show, although the viewers were protected by the anonymity of their computers, they chose to participate in a live discussion in the chat box next to the gruesome video stream as if to say “the responsibility isn’t ours, you’re the exhibitionist”. I feel that services such as MyBlogLog, Facebook’s status updates, and Twitter have made us so used to watching and being watched that voyeurism is now mutual. Is this something to worry about or something to embrace? I’m caught in the middle right now because I love Twitter and I’m all for public viewing and responses, but like I mentioned a while ago, I still dare not use Seesmic (think video Twitter) although iSight is staring right at me everytime I use my computer. What should I be talk about at a social media conference? I’ve been invited by the PR Academy, a division of the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA), Singapore to be on a panel discussing the challenges of communicating in the new media environment at the 7th Annual PR Academy Conference on the 22nd of May 2008. I’m quite excited about this although MICA is a little late to the new (social?) media table. But, better late than never ya? I’m probably the youngest member of the speaking group and there’s already an expectation from the organisers that my opinions will be vastly different from the rest. I don’t think you can plan for a forum discussion except to speak about what I’ve seen and heard. I do hope that I’ll be able to share something interesting at the table. I’m thinking I should bring up some examples of what’s been going on in the local social media scene. Any good examples that I should be sharing? First Takes: VMware Fusion 2 Beta 1 Just grabbed VMware Fusion 2 Beta 1 off the VMware site and installed it. Immediately you can tell the menu is different, even the dock icon looks brighter (I think). What’s the changelog? In summary from the VMware site: VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta 1 brings support for multiple displays, tools for even easier switching to VMware Fusion, experimental support for DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 2 3D acceleration Although the long-awaited DirectX 9.0 support is finally out (gamers rejoice!), my favourite feature is the multi-display support. I’m glad it supports up to 10 screens although my MBP only gets the luxury of one other. Here’s how its done: This feature works both in Full Screen and Unity mode where Windows XP and Mac OS are “blended” together. The other thing that immediately caught my attention was the little icons at the bottom of the VM’s window. These icons now give you immediate access to iSight, IR, Bluetooth, and shared folders. Fusion 1.1 only gave you access to USB, optical drive, and network. This is so much easier to use and configure. So far my installation hasn’t crashed, upgrade was seamless, and I’m quite happy with Beta 1. I’m still waitinf and see if I can find some bugs. If you’re thinking of trying it out even if you don’t have Fusion 1.1, there’s a Serial Key just for the Beta on the download page. But if you’re upgrading from a purchased license, then you don’t need it. Oh and if you want to switch over from Parallels or Virtual PC there’s importation support. I think I just learned a new word. (Disclaimer: Although VMware is my client, this review is purely my opinion and my mucking around.)