Business Advertising Blog Tips

Video comes to the blogging world

2008-11-03T11:45:00.000-08:00

This week the focus will be on logs, not the wooden kind but rather the electronic versions - blogs and vlogs. The first is the basic web log (blog) consisting of text and optionally some pictures, while a vlog is the video version of the same thing. In its simplest form a blog is a personal diary that you make available to others. This could be as exciting as a day-to-day description of a climb up the north face of Everest all the way down to what Mary Beth had for breakfast somewhere in the southern parts of the US. If you want to rush right in at this point, or if you had something really interesting for breakfast, jump over to the Home Builder article (page D7) that describes how to get started in the blogging world. Blogging or making comments on web sites and bulletin boards goes back to the Neolithic age of computers. I remember commenting on the local bulletin boards (they were from way back in computing terms), and posting comments on a board. In contrast the blog is a personal item but it can still attract comments from readers, some who will not be so polite. If you do decide to start your blog expect that at least one person will not like what you are doing. There is no way around this. There are people will disagree with just about anything no matter how tame you think your writing is. Just like some people in bars prefer to listen to a tone deaf singer over the trained version, there are people out there who will not share you love of fluffy animals whose picture you want to share with the world. A video blog is the same as a standard blog in all ways except that it comes in the form of a series of video clips. This is still an interactive online diary, just one that moves. Some of these are edited and produced, others are just raw footage taken with a mobile camera or web cam and dumped into the blog. Vlogging started about two years back and at the end of 2004 the online directory Mefeedia listed less than a hundred of them. You can visit this site and after a quick, free sign-up search through over 310,000 vlogs. If you want to learn how to vlog for free then visit freevlog.org for information on how to do it and some of the tools you can use. The biggest difference between a blog and a vlog is the amount of work you may have to put into it. Posting an edited video versus a raw capture requires software tools and possibly some additional hardware. To do it well is an artform and not something everyone can do. There is even a conference on the subject, Vloggercon . The better-known video site You Tube also has vlogs from such names as peanut, samui, plissken and koh. Hard core Vloggers believe that vlogging will one day replace TV since they can get unedited footage rather than the standard talking head slant on every story. One popular blogger, Seth Godin, recently announced that he doesn't like comments in blogs, particularly his. This has created a flood of responses from people that feel they have the right to comment on anything they like. The reasoning is simple: too much time spent clarifying based on comments or, worse, writing based on the anticipation of comments. Another reason is that most comments tend to be insults or rants. These do not encourage any real interactivity and you are usually in a losing battle with some kind of logic-deprived fundamentalist. For the most part the old gentlemanly art of conversation gets lost in the electronic world. One potential problem with blogs of all kinds is one of bandwidth. If the blog is pushed out or pulled in as part of an RSS feed, the volume of bits will add to the already overloaded communications architecture of the globe. Locally people are complaining that they are getting very slow responses, both here and from external networks. Blogs do provide some anonymity, particularly if you use a service like blogger.com, so your blogs can be on things that you may not be able to share from, say, the work blog or even your home country blog. You cannot, for example, criticise the Chinese government on any local local blogging host but you could from an offshore version. Industry news Local foreigners have been complaining about the lack of access to any English versions of the World Cup broadcasts and I know more than one person who has signed up for the Malaysian satellite feed. Sadly the Internet feeds have either been poor or blocked from many of the English speaking countries such as the UK and Australia. This leaves Thailand as one of the few countries in the region that do not provide an English commentary feed for the tournament. Not a very positive indicator for Thailand, again. It will not be surprising to readers that Microsoft is developing its own music and video gadget that it will use to compete with the Apple iPod. If you remember I already told you that the software giant is putting together its own iTunes equivalent service. With its own hardware Microsoft can also control who gets to listen to what using its own built-in security. Despite its own proprietary music format, I will hazard a guess that you will be able to convert to MP3 thanks to some clever program from a 14-year-old, before the MS hardware hits the streets. The unit is already in a demo form and being shown around to RIAA members as you read this. It is interesting that the Microsoft-branded music service appears to be in competition to other services that it has provided the software for, such as the Viacom MTV Networks service that was launched a few months ago. The technology also provides a protection base for other music subscription services, all over the planet. Unlike some other service, Microsoft's will be primarily based around the pay per download model, with some type of subscription service also available - details are sketchy at the time of writing. Some of the early feedback appears to indicate that the new Microsoft service is better than iTunes in the sense that Microsoft is building a community-based system instead of a basic shopping store like iTunes. It will be interesting to see how well Microsoft does in this venture, with giants like Amazon also moving into the field. Final delivery dates are unknown and I suspect somewhat flexible. In other news, Microsoft lost the appeal on a legal case involving Office. It means that Office versions will be changing the way they communicate with Access and this will have the expected effect on existing programs and macros in products like Excel.

How to join the blogging community

2008-11-01T12:45:00.000-07:00

You can contribute to the world of blogging in just a few minutes. One way is to join sites like My Space at www.myspace.com or more specialised services like the Digital Divide Network at www.digitaldivide.net. There are many other hosting sites that support blogs, with one of the most popular places to start at Blogger.com. To join Blogger, just follow the following steps: 1. Enter www.blogger.com in your browser. 2. Click on that big orange arrow labelled "Create your Blog Now." At this point you will need to select a username and password that you will be using to access your blogger account. Remember to make the password interesting - include some numbers and mix the case. You will also need to think of a display name that is used to sign all your posts. This name can reflect your blog type, say SoccerMum or ArticExplorer, or something unintelligible like MxplOz4, which is more like a password than a username but you will see a lot like this. You also need to provide a real email address. Some people will create a blogger email account for this. 3. When you have identified everything, check the box that says you accept the terms of service then Continue to go to the next step. This is where you give your blog a name, something as simple as My Blog Report or as heady as My Philosophical Musings on the Nature of the Universe. What you call it is completely up to you. The hard part will be picking the URL address that people will use to access your blog. This can be anything you like as long as it is not already being used by someone. You want to make this concise and easy to remember. Be patient, it may take you a while to find something that has not already been taken, as there are thousands of blogs already in use. At this point you will also need to type in the word you have been shown to confirm your selections and to block automated blog creation. Click Continue to move to the next screen. You are almost finished. All you need to do is select from one of the template styles that Blogger provides. There are 12 of them, click on the radio button and then on the Continue Arrow. There will be a brief pause while your Blog is set up and then you are ready to go. Click on Start Posting and you are shown the posting screen with some other tabs for modifications. The Settings tab will allow you to make some changes ranging from your blog title, some access settings and to the deletion of this blog. You can restrict comments, create teams and lost of other stuff in this section. The Template tab is where you change the colour of your navigation bar or for the more adventurous you can use your HTML and style sheet knowledge to modify every part of your blog's appearance. Unless you are sure, best not to play in this area too much. The View Blog tab only works after you have created your first blog, so back to the Posting tab. Enter your blog title then enter in some text, add in some links and even some pictures if you wish. Then click on Preview to check what the final result will look like than when you are ready, and Publish. Now try the View Blog tab and there it is, your first blog. The really hard part will be to think of something new to post on a regular basis and of course to let everyone know about your blog's URL so that they can go and see it. If your blog becomes popular, be prepared for your first comment. This can range from a poor to well crafted flame from someone called Anonymous to a congratulations from your grandmother on passing your O levels. Welcome to the wonderful world of blogging.

I want to be a Webmaster. Tips and suggestion for new Webmaster.

2008-09-07T14:19:00.001-07:00

I want to express my knowledge of Webmaster to everyone. I am just a beginner on webmaster and learning about 1 year but I have studied hard in this field. If you have any suggestion on my writing, please let me know by post your message in article you want to suggest or email to me. My email is satiz2000@hotmail.com . I appreciated for every comment to me.

Do want to be a webmaster? Why? I think the basic of decision you want to be a webmaster because you love it. This job isn’t easy as you think. It’s about learning and doing by yourself. Every beginner webmasters feel really hard to pull their website to be popular and they get too little expected thing from their effort. It’s look like no way for new webmaster to success or satisfied result. Oh, forget about that sad story. I want you put more effort for your success. I have a roadmap for you to be a successful webmaster.

1) Find the correct keyword – In the past, I have build my website by random thinks. I love playing game so I build a game website and then no one come to visit my website. “Why?” I thought. This is a example of ordinary webmaster mistake. I had didn’t know that I jumped to very competitive market. It’s almost impossible for the beginner to win this fight. So, the first thing for new webmaster to do is researching keyword. You should find the keyword that few competitors that will make you have more chance to success promote your site. You should stick and focus only this keyword.
2) Choose the correct tools – This part is about planning your website to what it look like. After you select a keyword then you should design your website that which components should have such contents section, forums section, etc. , roughly design and search for appropriate tools (you can ask me or in webmaster forum such as digitalpoint.com).
3) Compose your website – This step is gathering everything to build website. Building website can be very easy to extremely hard from choosing tools in the previous step. If you can’t build website as you want, you should consider changing tools or programs.
4) Promotion – In my opinion, this is the biggest and hardest part of webmaster works. Website can be compare as “Goods”. The promotion is very important factor to success or failure. Promoting can be do by various method such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), buying Traffic from Search Engine, Email Marketing, etc. The factors you should concern are traffics (number of visitors) and ROI (return of investment).
5) Monitor result – It’s very important to check progression because website require improve and maintenance carefully. Try the various monitor tools , gather data , analysis data and use information to optimize your website.

Webmaster is quite a new job, much knowledge wait for you to discover. Try it and do it you will find it’s very fun.

Vista a yawn, not a 'wow' - bloggers

2008-08-27T07:13:00.001-07:00

While Microsoft trumpeted Vista worldwide on Tuesday, the Internet abounded with postings with postings from people who people who were unimpressed or down-right disappointed with the new operating system.

As Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates headed a multi-million dollar "The Wow Starts Now" ad campaign for Vista, computer aficionados online countered "Yawn, not wow,"

Headlines on weblogs and news websites included "Think whisper, not bang" and "Why you don't need Vista now."

Critiques mocked Vista's grand promotion campaign, contending the system that Microsoft spent five years and $6 billion to create had little to offer that hadn't been available in Apple's Macintosh computers for years.

"Not that I have a hate-on for Microsoft or anything...but I think this Vista was just a joke," wrote a blogger at Microsoft or anything ... but I think this Vista was just a joke," wrote a blogger at Microsoft-operated Windows Live Spaces website .

"Just like (Windows) XP it's going to take like two years to work out all the kinks. And by the way, I'm still finding problems with XP!"

Numerous patches, fixes, and updates have been released for the Windows XP operating system that Vista is replacing since its release in 2001.

Unlike the releases of Nintendo's Will and Sony's PlayStation 3 video game consoles in November, throngs did not queue up at stores to buy Vista when it went on sale after the stroke of midnight on Monday, bloggers observed.

"In fact, it was kind of the opposite," a Tech Blog author identified only as Josh wrote. "No one really cared."

Bloggers complained that Vista was expensive and slowed computers that lacked upgraded memory and graphics components.

"Your software won't work," Chris Pirillo wrote while providing "tips" on Vista in a Windows Fanatics weblog. "Consider that a huge tip."

"Assume that if something works in Windows XP, there's a good chance it will not work the same way in Windows Vista."

Vista also scanned computers to insure film or music files there were legally copied, bloggers complained.

"They can search your computer via the Internet and delete any illegal files including music downloads," Josh wrote. "My privacy has been breached."

Microsoft has proclaimed Vista its most secure and thoroughly-tested operating system release.

Webloggers advised readers to put off buying Vista until flaws had a chance to be discovered and fixed.

Online complaints included needing to upgrade most old software along with hardware to work with Vista.

WildTangent, a major computer game publisher, has accused Vista of "breaking" many popular computer games.

Some bloggers praised Vista features such as photo handling, speech recognition and desktop search but contended that Vista offered nothing revolutionary.

"Much of the new goodness has been available on the Macintosh for years," Adam Hertz wrote in an online posting.

"But, for those who wouldn't consider crossing that particular chasm, Vista seems like a good thing."

SUNDAY BRUNCHTales and sales

2008-08-26T19:13:00.001-07:00

Besides helping bloggers get started, Katika Saisenee has advice for them on making money through online businesses

Katika Saisenee, 32, nicknamed Keng, has lately emerged as one of Thailand's most popular coaches for those who want to join the world of bloggers.

"I've focused on this topic for the past two years, as writing personal diaries on the Web on a regular basis is still quite new in Thailand," says Keng, the owner of Keng.com and also the IT director for Mode 2 (Thailand) Co, a Japanese-owned marketing and ad agency.

Keng started his blog in 1999 and currently updates his site about four times a week, attracting 500-600 daily visitors who are keen to start their own blogs to share their world view with others via this new mode of communication.

"Blogging is now quite easy for virtually anyone. With tailor-made software, you can start your own site with just a few clicks. At my site, we also provide all the back-up and related services," says Keng, a graduate of Assumption University.

Many youngsters start writing blogs simply to share their stories with friends and relatives. In Keng's case, he started by posting light-hearted pieces on his site, coupled with lots of photos and, later, video clips.

Besides topical issues, stories about a nice holiday or newly-discovered destinations are among the favourites.

"In fact, it could be any topic but, in the long run, you need to find your niche. For me, it's blog coaching. I'm also compiling my content in a pocket book, which should come out in the middle of this year," Keng says.

"Another example is Vinegargirl.com, started by one of my friends. She focuses on fashion, beauty and other women's stuff. This one-year-old blog attracts 700-800 visitors per day. It has the potential to compete with magazines or women's sections of daily newspapers.

"In other words, blogs allow you to publish at a very low cost, with little set-up or lead time. Yet blogs can reach a very large and diverse audience, local or international, especially the younger generation," says Keng, who has also been pushing for more e-commerce in Thailand.

In mid-2006, Keng sold off his earlier Web-design business, Hostify Co, to Japan-based Mode 2, as the latter wanted to expand its international marketing and ad agency into Thailand to especially serve Japanese clients.

"Now, marketing communications is about websites, SMS, the so-called viral marketing in which e-mail forwarding can be a powerful tool to advertise. It's already here in Thailand, thanks to video clips posted on YouTube," he says.

"The cost of viral marketing is very competitive and in some cases it could be free, but it's effective.

"This method was adopted for the marketing campaign of a major Japanese auto firm here, which recently launched a new model. You can visit the site, load your personal video clip and then write a short story about the product and your experience.

"In short, viral marketing is video clips plus YouTube plus e-mail forwarding. A popular message could effectively reach tens of thousands of people within a very short time, as happened recently here.

"The growth of e-commerce is unstoppable. The marketing and distribution of music CDs, for instance, has shifted to the Web. A Japanese cosmetics firm is also planning to start catalogue sales on the Web here shortly.

"Soon, we could have synthetic scents on an Internet device. Small guys can also tap the potential of e-commerce. In fact, there are abundant opportunities to make money by selling niche products," Keng says.

"For instance, a guy I know makes money from selling skate shoes on the Web to kids online in the provinces. It's a sideline, as the guy also has a full-time job. When he's free, he checks to see if there are orders for the products advertised on the Web.

"Usually, he'll get quite a few. Then he goes to the wholesaler and places those orders, so there is no need for inventory. The products will be delivered to customers by mail.

"There're many people making money from e-commerce this way. The trick is that you need to focus on niche items for which traditional suppliers cannot yet tap the demand or for which the demand may be too small for big suppliers," Keng advises.

To blog or not to blog?

2008-08-26T07:13:00.001-07:00

First there were plain websites showing information on companies. Then they got more complicated with fast digital technology, allowing viewers to download millions of pages and ask questions and give responses with text and simple photos.

But today, a new development in the cyberworld - blogs - is getting strong and catching the attention of marketers.

"Blogs emerged over the past few years and became big because of YouTube's popularity among Thais, which was about last year," Mahithorn Pongsarat, CEO of Digithais Network Co Ltd, the digital media agency arm of Carat Media Group, said last week. Surfing the Internet, anyone can find weblogs from both blog operators and brand-owners.

Some top weblogs today are xteen.com, BlogGang from Pantip.com, Storythai, GotoKnow and www.oknation.net from Nation Multimedia Group.

Adisak Limprungpatanakij, president of Nation Broadcasting Corp, calculates that oknation.com has already signed up over 10,000 bloggers with almost 60,000 entries.

It gets 3,000 new bloggers each month. Each blog records 17,000-20,000 visitors, based on unique IPs, and 130,000-150,000 page views per day.

With these numbers, blogs have inevitability surfaced on the radar screens of both media consulting companies and marketers. They are now salivating over the thousands of people who remember a weblog's name and keep visiting it to share common topics.

"Having their own weblogs is like owning a specific wide area on the Internet where bloggers can write everything they want, show pictures and broadcast video clips. Then others see them and share their views. And if they grow frustrated with the contents, they can clean up the entire thing and create a new one," Mahithorn said.

"About 40 per cent of our corporate clients show strong interest in the channel and want to keep their own weblogs," he said.

The challenge is that they have to spend big bucks to set up a separate department to oversee all contents to ensure nothing improper is posted and viewer interest can be maintained. Weblog operators can't control bloggers unless they start with an environment that invites cooperation.

"We have created a culture of sharing views on many topics without posting improper words, and all bloggers automatically take care of that. If improper bloggers really exist, they face social sanctions, and I have witnessed cases in oknation.net," Adisak said.

Digithais recommends corporate clients join a weblog that has already earned a good reputation rather than try to create their own, as it can save a lot of money and guarantee a wide audience. Companies have to be very clear in their objectives for owning weblogs. If it's worth it, do it; if not, join others.

However, they have to be very good at disguising themselves as normal bloggers and not use a hard-sell approach.

Successful cases abroad that come to Mahithorn's mind are Nokia and Adidas, which run blogs in MySpace.

Another choice for marketers is to be a part of weblogs.

They can choose popular weblogs and negotiate for space, mainly for banners, to advertise their products or brands.

NMG's oknation.net has already experienced that. Both Nation Group and Digithais confirm that blogging is not just a fashion. The trend will continue for as long as we are in the "user-generated-content era".

Life and times of a 95-year-old blogger

2008-08-22T19:13:00.001-07:00

She Is Billed as the world's oldest blogger. At 95 years old and with a worldwide following that has seen more than 340,000 hits on her blog, Spaniard Maria Amelia Lopez has achieved the kind of status that millions of younger Internet chroniclers can only dream of.

Lopez, who was introduced to the world of blogging by one of her grand children just eight months ago, has become such a global hit that she receives posts in languages as strange and impossible for her to understand as Russian, Japanese and Arabic.

"My name is Amelia and I was born in Muxia [A Coruna - Spain] on December the 23rd of1911," she wrote as her first post on amis95.blogspot.com. "Today it's my birthday and my grandson, who is very stingy, gave me a blog."

With a mix of humour, warmth optimism, nostalgia and feisty out bursts of left-wing polemic, she has won a regular readership of people keen to find out just what this Spanish great-grandmother is going to say or do next.

"You have to live life," the silver haired blogger said in her most recent post. "Not sit around in an armchair waiting for death."

Her blog tracks not just a nonage narian's day-to-day battles against aches, but offers musings on everything from politics and religion to broadband and death.

Among her chief hates are old people's homes, which she criticises for drugging their clients so they spend their final days snoozing quietly in front of the television.

"I blame the children, who don't want to help them," she said yesterday from the house beside the Atlantic Ocean in Muxia, in the rugged northwestern corner of Spain, where she stays during the summer. "Internet has given me a new lease of life, but I don't see any old people's homes offering their residents Internet," she said.

Lopez, as the recent pictures of her shaking maracas in a Brazilian hotel prove, lives as far as you can get from the "do-nothing and wait-to-die" culture that she regularly lambasts.

Her grandson Daniel, with whom she lives, taught her to navigate the Internet after she pestered him to download biographies of poets and politicians. The blog was a gift from Daniel, who had no idea what he was unleashing into cyberspace. He has become her chief assistant: Lopez navigates with the mouse while he types in the words she dictates.

"Now so many people write to me that I can't hope to reply to them all, though I want to," she explained. "My grandson complains that he has to work as well, he can't spend all his time typing."

Much of her traffic comes from Spain and Latin America, but newspaper and television interviews, with YouTube links given on her blog, have spread her name beyond the Spanish speaking world. Lopez tells stories of her childhood and youth in Galicais. She recalls, too, the terrors of the Spanish civil war, and how her brother was sent to the front aged just 16 and came back with one leg shot off.

She was fined for refusing to show support for General Francisco Franco's National Movement."I must be the oldest socialist activisit in Spain," she said. "I've been socialist since I was 16, but my father would never let me actually join the party."

Her dislikes include daytime pillpopping, crude language and telephone companies that are slow to install broadband. Her main loves are poetry, politics, childhood memories, her native region of Galicia, a Jesus Christ who dislikes wealth and, she says, "the workers".

She has acquired readers in such far-flung places as Alaska, Australia, China and Nigeria.

Some people have suggested that she cash in on her popularity by getting paid-for advertisements placed on her blog, something she rejects. "I did this to amuse myself, not to start competing with people or making money," she said.

Net bloggers break through government censorship

2008-08-22T07:13:00.001-07:00

Savvy young bloggers in Burma are breaking through the military junta's tight Internet controls to past photos and videos of swelling anti-government protests, experts said yesterday.

The government blocks almost every website that carries news or information about the Southeast Asian country, and even bars access to web-based email.

But an army of young techies in Rangoon works around the clock to circumvent the censors, posting pictures and videos on blogs almost as soon as the protests happen.

Many of these images have been picked up by mainstream news organisations, because bloggers have managed to capture images that no one else can get. When Burma's detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi stepped outside her home in Rangoon to greet marching monks and supporters on Saturday, the only pictures of the landmark moment were posted on blogs.

Mizzima News, an India-based news group run by exiled dissidents, picked up one of the photos of Aung San Suu Kyi and said more than 50,000 people accessed their website that day.

"People were saying they wanted to see more pictures of Aung San Suu Kyi," said Sein Win, Mizzima's managing editor. These bloggers are mainly young university students in Rangoon who have made it their mission to post messages and pictures since the anti-junta rallies broke out there on Aug 19, he said.

"We have many volunteers in Rangoon. They are mostly university students and they keep sending us messages, pictures and video clips about the demonstrations," he said.

Messages on blog have applauded Buddhist monks, who have led the protest movement. The movement has grown into the biggest challenge to the junta since a 1988 uprising that was crushed by the military, killing at least 3,000.

"Many people were thanking monks for their courage, and were rallying support behind monks," Sein Win said from Chiang Mai.

"The censorship is very tough, but many people want the world to know what is happening in Burma," he said.

The California-based Mandalay Gazette also said young people in Rangoon were supplying pictures on the protests.

"It's encouraging to see message of support coming as far as from Russia, and some message said monks were correcting the junta's 'wrongdoing,'" said a US-based editor, who declined to be named. A Thai-based Burmese reporter from the Democratic Voice of Burma, a Norway-based broadcaster, said it had received video clips and photos from "many volunteers" in Rangoon since the protests began last month.

"The quality of pictures from Yangon [Rangoon] is very good. Many young people were helping us, and the junta cannot control our freedom of information," said the reporter, who operates anonymously for safety reasons.

The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders has called Burma a "paradise for censors" and listed the military-ruled nation as one of the world's most restrictive for press freedoms.

Since the protests, the regime has cut off the mobile phones of prominent pro-democracy supporters and of some journalists representing foreign media.

State media yesterday accused the foreign press of stirring unrest.

No foreign journalist has obtained a visa to enter Burma, under military rule since the start of the anti-junta rallies, rights groups said.

blogspot with Windows Live

2008-08-21T19:13:00.001-07:00

Windows Live emerges from beta

After a trickle of updates and beta versions bearing the Windows Live moniker, Microsoft is ready to start promoting its official package of free desktop programs for e-mail, instant messaging, blogging and sharing photos.

"The programs are essentially a free upgrade for Windows," said Brian hall, general manager of Windows Live at Microsoft.

The package includes Windows Live Mail, which can grab messages from multiple free Web-based e-mail accounts, including Microsoft's Hotmail, Google's Gmail and AOL e-mail, The new package allows PC users to read and respond to mail even when they're not online, just as Outlook Express, which Microsoft has phased out, did.

Its Windows Live Photo Gallery lets users manipulate and organise digital photos and upload them to Flickr, a photo-sharing site owned by Yahoo, and to Windows Live Spaces, Microsoft's own blogging and social networking site.

The package also includes Live Writer, for writing blog posts, the Live Messenger instantmessaging program and Live Family Safety, parental controls for Web access at home.

The applications aren't much different from test versions previously available.

What's new is the spotlight Microsoft plans to shine on the programs.

Hall said the company has planned "one of the largest online advertising campaigns at Microsoft", with plans for 10 billion Web advertising impressions on Microsoft's MSN sites and third-party sites, including the social networking site Facebook, in which Microsoft bought a 1.6-per-cent stake last month.

Microsoft's Windows group will be marketing Windows Live alongside its latest Vista operating system during the crucial holiday shopping season.

Matt Rosoff, an analyst at the independent research group Directions on Microsoft, said this marketing push is indicative of divisions within Microsoft, between the old guard running the MSN online business and the Windows Live group.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Sony plans to launch lighter Play Station 2

Sony announced plans to start selling a new, lighter version of its PlayStation 2 video game console just in time for the crucial end-of-year shopping season.

The newly designed PlayStation 2 will hit stores in Japan on November 22 with a recommended price tag of 16,000 yen (Bt4,830 dollars), Sony Computer Entertainment Japan said in a statement.

"While inheriting the functions of the current PlayStation 2, the internal design architecture of the new system has been completely overhauled, resulting in a console that is lighter in weight," it said.

The launch comes as the PlayStation 3, the successor to the PS2, battles fierce competition from Nintendo's Wii and Microsoft's Xbox 360.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Nintendo's Famicom faces end of road

It could soon be game over for the Famicom, the vintage family computer that two decades ago set Japan's Nintendo on a path to become a global video game icon.

Nintendo has decided to stop repairing the Famicom, the console that wowed the world with "Super Mario Brothers" and "Dragon Quest", because stocks of spare parts are running out, company spokesman Ken Toyoda said.

The family computer, which was sold as the Nintendo Entertainment System in the United States and Europe, made its world debut in Japan in 1983.

Boasting far superior graphics to any other home video game console on the market at that time, it went on to sell almost 62 million units worldwide, and was followed by the Super Famicom, repairs of which will also be halted. "Some say it's sad Famicom is leaving and players are nostalgic, but Nintendo's saga has not ended. We want people to enjoy the Wii now," said the spokesman for the Kyoto-based firm, which began in 1889 making playing cards.

A WEB of opinions

2008-08-21T07:13:00.001-07:00

ABOARD THE crowded D train, rumbling into Brooklyn on the Manhattan Bridge, the inevitable rant explodes. A rant courtesy of Faye Anderson, whom we'll call Ms CJ, aka Citizen Jourrnalist. A rant directed at us, Mr MSM, aka Mainstream Meida, for all our perceived faults.

"It's not you, the journalist, it's the institutin," Ms CJ tells Mr MSM. "You're not telling the whole story...You've lost your creditbility..."

We listen, take notes, check if the tape recorder's working. No telling what Anderson might do if she's misquoted.

She's saying anyone can be a jornalist, at least anyone with an Internet connection. Start a blog, she says, tht's easy.

Citizen journalism is giving voice to those who, in the pre-Internet era, may have felt voiceless. But some challenge the value of all this citizen involvement. Is it really " journalism" ? Are "they" really "journalists"? What's the difference between citien journalists and bloggers who write about politics?

"The term 'citizen journalist' has an Orwellian ring to it," says Andrew Keen, author of "The Cult of the Amateur', who's criticised the Web 2.0 - Wikipedia world, where everyone can become their own editors.

"People are becoming Big Brother, either with a camcorder or a keyboard, and following the candidates around. It's ridiculous. You can't just be a great journlist, the same way you can't be a great chef or a great soccer player."

Journalists, he continues," "follow a set of standards, a code of ethics. Obejectivity rules. That's not the case with citizen journalists.Anything goes in that world."

And sometimes the facts go out the window.

Others argue that journalism is enriched through everyday Joes and Janes, ho offer more voices, more texture to pulic debate.

Michell Stphens, who teaches media history at New York University, says citizen journlism harks back to the days of spoken news, when communities gathered in open-air markets and twon squares. It can be traced to Thomas Paine and the pamphleteers of the 18th century, and to the antiwar, counter-culture alternative press that prospered in teh 1960s.

A citizen journalist, Stephemns notes, is not the same as a political blogger. The former can, and sometimes does, original reporting: the latter, for the most part, is a political junkie armed with opinion. But these definitions don't always fit.

"There really is no simple definition for waht a citizen journalist is, just lots and lots of examples," says Dan Gillmor, former technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News and author of "we the Media: Grassorots Journlism by the People, for the People".

"It ranges from people who do journalism all teh time to people who do what you might call a random act of journalism to people who don't consider themselves journalists but are in fact practisig j ournalism.

"The publishing tools - digigal cameras, blogging software-are at the people's disosal," Gillmor continues. "And for a lot of them, the underlying motivation is frrustration with teh traditional media."

Take Anderson.

Now off the D Train, Ms CJ continues with her rant as she steps onto the streets of Brooklyn. She's railing against ilegal immigration - "What part of illegal," she snaps, "don't you get?" - and wonders where the MSMers aer in coverig this "big, big" story.

Tall and strking, anderson was raised in Brooklyn's rough Beddford - Stuyvesant neighbourhood and first set foot on an aeroplane on her way to California to attend Stanforf Law School. She looks like a cross between Meryl Streepk, Chita Rivera and Pam Grier, with physical features as hard as to pin down as her politics. She grew up a Democrat, swithed to the Republican Party in teh Reagan years and bolte out of teh GOP in 2000, following the election debacle. Now an independent, she supports none of the candidates.

Politics is, Ms CJ says, all about the horse rece, the money haul, teh strategists, the pollsters, all about ensuring that official Washington and its political class stay employed.

Citizen journalism, she says, is her enty into teh political process, a way for "an outsider like me to play some sort of role" - curious statement since she herself is a former Washington player, a policy wonk who once served as the face of the Republican Party to African Americans, a regular on C-SPAN's Washington Journal". But those days are over.

"Washington was physically making me sick," Anderson explains.

So she collected a list of clients for ther policy consulting business and returned to Brooklyn. For almost three years, nderson's been a full-time policy consultant and citizen journalist.

Anderson at large is nowhere near as widely read orr heavily linked as RedState or Daily Kos, America's popular conservative and liberal blogs. Technorati, which tracks a site's number of links, says Anderson's blog has received 236 blog mentions, while RedState and Daily Kos have received 21,000 and 107,000, respectively.

But Anderson points to other successes. She's the first blogger to beling to the Trotter Group, a 15-year -old association of well-known black journalists. And last summer, she was credentialed to cover the CDemocratic debate at Howard University.

Says Anderson: "Look, everyone's trying to analyse what citizen journalism is, what its impact will be in this election. We, the citizen journalists, ae figuring it out. You mainstream media folks are figuring it out. But whatever it is, there's no going back. We're here. Get used to it."

Cultivating green habits

2008-08-20T19:13:00.001-07:00

It's good to see that schools are now aggressively promoting awareness about the environment and global warming among their students. The earlier you start building green habits, the better chance you have of behavioural change that will eventually help save our planet. Kerry Dyke, environment coordinator of the International School Bangkok, has been extremely active in organising environmental awareness programmes for the past two years. Part of his success is introducing an environmental elective for students where they have to make an environmental change as a part of their grade.

Spearheading the school's activities is a group called the ISB Green Panthers, which is made up of environmentally conscious teachers, parents and board members. According to their blog (isb-green-panthers.blogspot.com/), the group's aim is ''to increase environmental awareness at ISB and more importantly, start making positive environmental changes to reduce the school's eco [carbon] footprint. Green Panther goals are to improve ISB's environmental performance by: Activating environmental awareness, learning and action; analysing consumption patterns and habits at ISB; modelling responsible citizenship; providing venues for meaningful social action and reducing our impact on the environment.''

The school also offers an ISB Earth Award to individuals or collective projects, which raise awareness on environmental issues and inspire students to fight for change.

The school's canteen now offers organic dairy products from Dairy Home where animals receive an organic diet and the farm follows free range practices.

Some of the eco changes at ISB from 2004-2006:

FChanged paper to a new brand that has an eco-friendly record and makes paper from fast growing plants; not trees.

FSet up a reuse paper tray.

FEco-class room checklist. Each classroom had a contract and they chose what they would accomplish on that contract, e.g., to use only one air-con instead of three.

FBan on styrofoam.

FOrganised Earth Week.

FNo disposable dishes for bake sales.

Eco changes from 2006-2007, since the forming of

the Green Panthers:

FAn improved recycling centre that collects batteries, tabs from cans, juice boxes, printer cartridges and mobile phone batteries.

FBlue box for each class for paper recycling.

F Reduced the plastic bag use in the cafeteria from 300-plus a day to zero!

FStopped the use of paper cups for sports teams and helped encourage teams to use reusable water bottles.

FWeekly eco tips in the student bulletin.

FWeekend trip with 25 students to Khao Yai to work with Wildaid and learn about conservation.

FEnsure new building and campus design has the environment in mind.

FIntroduced dishes to use at events instead of disposable materials.

FImplemented a no idling policy in the parking lot.

F An Inconvenient Truth shown in middle and high school.

FHosted Earth Week and Earth Fair.

Changes in 2007/2008:

FLooking into organic rice and other products. Fair trade is also considered.

FStarted the Green Panthers blog, isb-green-panther.blogspot.org

FPlanted over 50 trees around campus with the students.

FCollecting newspapers and plastic bags and donate to Thaicraft Fair Trade organisation to make crafts to sell and help poor communities.

FEco weekend trip with WWF.

FStarted a tree nursery at school, with plant-a-tree-today to help ISB reduce and offset its carbon footprint.

Among the many plans for the future is a project to set up a biogas converter, which will convert food waste into biogas for use in the kitchen. And once again this year ISB will be holding its Earth Week from April 21 to 25 with several activities and special events related to the environment each day. The week rounds up on April 25 with the 2nd annual Earth Fair joined by other ''green'' corporations.

How are you helping to reduce your carbon footprint? Share your eco-friendly activities with us by emailing usnisas

Why Facebook has the right blend of privacy and features

2008-08-20T07:14:00.001-07:00

While most of Thailand may be addicted to the heavily translated and localised Hi5 social networking site, I prefer Facebook. If anything, my attraction to the social networking platform is verging on addiction. Why? For me, Facebook offers just the right blend of privacy and control while at the same time being a platform for third party applications long before Google spoke of Open Social.

Long before the days of social networking, mankind came up with a rather curious way of keeping in touch with people without actually having to actively keep in touch: People forwarded (occasionally) interesting email messages to each other.

This social act was not so much about the message being forwarded in itself, but rather it is about implicitly saying "Hi there, I'm still here as your friend but since we are so busy with life in Bangkok, I'm forwarding you this little bit of nothing instead." An analogy in the animal kingdom would be the way monkeys in a troupe groom one another and search for fleas even when there are none.

However, the problem of these early social networks, or rather social trees, is that repeatedly pressing forward left a rather curious trail for all those downstream to see with email addresses being exposed in a free-for-all.

Then came business networks like LinkedIn and Plaxo. Useful to some they may be, but it was sort of boring and became a chore. Salesmen may like it but I for one did not have the time to keep my LinkedIn profile anywhere close to up to date.

At the same time, the social networking platform-cum-blogs and picture sharing sites aimed at teenagers such as MySpace, Hi5, Orkut (I think - I've never figured that one out) came into being. Rather than forwarding a series of pictures to a hundred people and have 30 bounce back because it filled up their in-box, posting pictures and sharing them for all to see became a viable option. Only problem is that all too often, it really was for all to see.

And then there was Facebook and the world seemed to coalesce around the Facebook model. The sites aimed at teenagers stepped up their privacy controls and the business oriented networks added some fun and some blog-like and photo sharing features.

Why does Facebook work for me? Top of the list is privacy. I only add people I meet and want to be friends with, ignoring for the most past some people who seem to want to have thousands of friends or sources I have met for interviews only in passing.

Most of my list consists of journalists from the region and probably 90 per cent of the Singaporean public relations community (bad mistake, I know, but it is a bit too late to start afresh now). Facebook allows one allow friends access to a full or limited profile, so most of the people I want to be friends with can feed my fish, plant things in my garden or play Scrabulous with me, while those I prefer to keep at arm's length see somewhat less.

What I like most is being able to keep up to date with what is happening with friends without having to actively email them junk or IM them. It is always nice to see the messages, wall posts and ice cream roll in from friends when I set my status to show my frustration at my day job, often when half a dozen companies want me on the same couple of days and refuse to take no for an answer rather than frustration at the job per se.

Then there is the platform nature of Facebook. While Facebook has some built-in applications such as the picture sharing albums and notes (blogs), I seem to spend most of my time playing Scrabulous, a Scrabble-like game. Journalists all over the region seem to think that they are good at the English language but getting to play games against one another really sorts the men from the boys. Cheating is all too easy given the asynchronous nature of the game (some games can take days to finish especially if players are busy or out of the office) so it boils down to an honour system, often with taunts for allowable but impossibly obscure words.

Then there is the factoid like finding out that one particular PR manager has played nearly 200 Scrabulous games while her office staff think she is beavering away at work rather than maintain "media relations" through a friendly game.

Yes, I spent too much time each day popping into Facebook, but more often than not my interaction is not with a Facebook developed application.

One interesting social quirk I find is that people from the same organisation are often not friends with each other even though all of them seem to be happy with being friends with a third party journalist (which is probably much more dangerous). Perhaps it is about not wanting one's boss to see how much flirting messages are on one's wall or not wanting colleagues to see you in a suggestive bikini by the beach.

Recently, I created an event on Facebook inviting people to my mini-birthday party in Singapore and had a rather varied cross section of the Singaporean IT community turn up. A tad unorthodox, but it goes to show that the virtual social networking world and real world do intertwine.

And then there is the politics. Groups exist where people who are not direct friends can congregate and post messages and share media, much like on a good BBS system. One group set up by Democrat Party interns has a grand total of, wait for it, 218 members. Not that the group seems to have much going on in it.

Bangkok senator Rosana Tositrakul's Facebook group probably did not make much of a difference, with the 63 members' votes hardly making a blip in her 740,000 supporters.

More telling is the comparison of a pair of pro- and anti-Thaksin groups, with members of the "I bet I can find 1,000,000 people who dislike Thaksin Shinawatra" group outnumbering the "Thaksin Shinawatra appreciation society" by 2,314 to 205, or more than 10 to one. But still, 2,300 is still a long way off one million. Early days perhaps, and it will be interesting to see how these groups fare come the next general election and whether we will one day elect a blogger to parliament as has been the case in Malaysia.

Social networking sites offer everything that is offered in real life, but in a way that cares not about geographical distance or time zone. My best scrabulous buddy is a journalist in Malaysia, while the one who seems to always come up with words of encouragement when I am down works for Sun Microsystems in Singapore. Some might argue that computers take away from life and real-world social interactions, but could I build and maintain close friendships like this with friends in so many countries in the real world? I think not.

MICROBLOGS on Mobile phone TAKE ON NET BLOGOSPHERE

2008-08-19T13:12:00.001-07:00

Mobile Internet devices and online communities are merging to a new kind of Web diary: "microblogging", where people fire off terse missives about what they are doing or thinking at any given moment.

The postings are barebones, on-the-go versions of online journals in which people share their lives and dreams, hence the name microblogging.

"Blogging has evolved and become more formalised," Christian Crumlish, Yahoo Design Pattern Library curator and author of social networking book "The Tower of Many", said.

"A beautiful blog entry is an art form and it takes time. So, microblogging fits into your life where you take a minute or two to see what's going on and go back to work".

Hot website Twitter has attracted a large following since its launch more than two years ago as a way to share Haiku-like text message updates with unlimited numbers of friends instantly through mobile telephones.

The service entices users with its signature line, "What are you doing?"

Start-up Utterz, publicly unveiled last year, goes a step further by allowing users to post text, video, photos or audio from mobile phones to the Internet with a simple call.

"We want to use the technology that you have in your pocket," Utterz president Randy Corke said.

"We want to make blogging as easy as talking," he said.

Training helps bloggers hone professionalism

2008-08-19T07:13:00.001-07:00

Miami real estate agent Lucas Lechuga began blogging to share his knowledge of the local market. He didn't bargain for a $25 million defamation lawsuit when he wrote that a Miami developer had gone bankrupt decades ago.

In Lake Geneva, Wis., commodities trader Gary Millitte registered the Internet domain name LakeGenevaNews.com eight years ago, but is so worried about the legal boundaries of writing online that he still hasn't started the ultra-local news site.

Non-journalists entering the world of blogs, online feedback forums, online videos and news Web sites provide information that newspapers and other media can't or don't. But many are now turning to professional journalists for help with dilemmas they're facing: When is something libelous? What's the difference between opinion and news? And how do you find public documents?

About a dozen would-be reporters navigated the basics of journalism at a recent training offered by the Society of Professional Journalists in Chicago. The group plans similar seminars this month in Greensboro, N.C., and Los Angeles.

Lechuga, who didn't attend the training, said it would have been a good idea. Having jumped into the world of online publishing with a finance degree, he said the claims against him -- which are still pending -- arose from a question of semantics, and he would have chose his words differently if he had a second chance.

"It would definitely have been something that would be worthwhile and I'd (have) been able to prevent this," said Lechuga.

Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., which supports working journalists, praised the effort to offer training to so-called citizen journalists.

"I think that what we're moving toward is some king of positioning between amateur and professional," Clark said.

Amateurs have long contributed to professional news reports, including the film of John F. Kennedy's assassination and photos from the Virginia Tech massacre last year, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the tsunami in Southeast Asia in 2004, Clark said.

Now, many distribute their content on their own, and some have gotten into trouble, said Clint Brewer, the national president of SPJ.

Geoff Dougherty, editor of the Web site ChiTownDailyNews.org and a presenter at the SPJ program, is trying to prevent that by offering his reporters online training.

With a $340,000 Knight News Challenge, he's creating a team of 77 to report on the smallest of meetings in every city neighborhood -- gatherings that mainstream news organizations don't cover.

"I see us in five years as the go-to source for Chicago news," said Dougherty. "It's a big goal."

Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, said more than 100 judgments valued at $17 million have been handed down against bloggers over the last three years -- about 60 percent for defamation, 25 percent for copyright infringement and 10 percent involving privacy.

"It's the tip of the iceberg," Cox said. "Bloggers are being asked to write checks. The threats against bloggers are very real. The costs are very real."

Other groups offer help, including NowPublic.com -- a site that gathers photos, video and news tips from the public and distributes them to news organizations, including The Associated Press. NowPublic, funded with venture capital, offers resources for contributors and helps them learn to police themselves, said co-founder Michael Tippett.

"A lot of our members are aspiring journalists," Tippett said. "They'll get half of it right. We'll push them to getting all of it right."

MJ Tam, who has blogged about motherhood for eight years and attended the Chicago workshop, said she worried about how far she could go in rating baby products.

"I just want to make sure I'm doing the right thing," said Tam. "How far can I take criticism? What's considered libel? I need those basics."

Horribly good internet plot to kill off TV

2008-08-18T19:13:00.001-07:00

The creator of Buffy has broken Hollywood's grip by launching a superhero show on a blogIn the case of Joss Whedon, it was boredom, not necessity, that proved the mother of invention.

While he was on strike with fellow Hollywood screenwriters earlier this year, the creator of TV dramas such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer decided there had to be 'something more effective than walking up and down in a line with a placard'. So Whedon rounded up a few friends and set about making something quite unlike anything the world has seen before.

The result is Doctor Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog - found at doctorhorrible.net - and it has been an instant summer success that is uniquely difficult to categorise. It is a TV show that has never been shown on TV, an internet video that looks nothing like an internet video. It was made for the fun of it, not for ratings or profit, and put on the web in the hope that someone would notice. The fact that they did, in their millions, has delivered a shock to the Hollywood system, raising the spectre of writers, directors and actors bypassing major producers and selling directly to audiences online.

'I was told several times that it's impossible,' said Whedon, speaking from Los Angeles. 'But you can to an extent write your own rules. I realised there was nothing I wanted to do more, and the only person going to finance something as strange as this was me.'

Funny and fantastical, the musical adventure features aspiring super-villain Dr Horrible, who is hoping to defeat his nemesis, the arrogant Captain Hammer, win his dream girl and join the Evil League of Evil. Bad at being bad, his ray guns misfire and he inadvertently blows his cover by blogging his dastardly plots. The show, which first aired just over a fortnight ago, consists of three parts, runs for about 40 minutes and is neither a YouTube clip nor a movie. As Whedon noted: 'It's not "your cat falls off a TV set" or Ben-Hur - there is something in the middle.'

Dr Horrible owes its existence to the strike which paralysed Hollywood from last November to February this year, a dispute that partly concerned how much writers of TV series should earn when the studios put their content online. With other work on hold, Whedon's creative response to the issue was to sidestep the studios and come up with a show of his own. He got help from his brothers, Jed and Zack, and friends in the industry.

Whedon, 44, recalled: 'The show was written by our id. It came partly out of love and "We are the goofiest people about and say it loud". That joy gave us a sense of freedom. We had no restrictions on length or budget except what I was willing to spend - how much can I throw at this midlife crisis?'

The immediate cult hit status of the finished product appears to have exploded some myths about online viewing habits. 'Everyone has their theory about how long something can be on the internet. I know that if it's good enough to hold people's interest, it doesn't matter how long it is.' When the show was made freely available last month the site generated 200,000 hits per hour and soon crashed. Whedon added: 'First, part of this was just making an internet event. Second, if you can make money from this, you really have a business model.'

But that has not happened yet. Whedon, who will only say that he invested a sum 'below six figures' in the production, 'significantly less than one hour of a TV show', has not yet recouped the money, but believes he will if he can secure a DVD release.

He also intends to make more web-only productions like Dr Horrible, and foresees a new form of artistic community. 'It's a way to tell stories unencumbered. I want to work for a model where the internet could be the whole thing. We could do a feature, we could do a play, we could do whatever we want to do. There is no way this medium can be ignored, especially by me, after years of trying and failing to get TV shows made. The opportunity to put something pure straight out there is too good to miss.'

Although Whedon has the head start of a huge online fan base from his earlier work, other writers and directors may now be tempted to follow his example.

Cynthia Littleton, a TV writer at Variety magazine, said: 'It's proved you can make a big splash, get a lot of attention and be creative and inventive in a somewhat new medium. Put it online and people will come and check you out. There's no question that, going out on a limb like this, Joss has got other producers with the ability to write cheques watching very carefully.'

Attack of the killer zombies

2008-08-18T13:13:00.001-07:00

Somewhere out in cyberspace, a hacker gathered the zombie computers he had been arranging with email worms, viruses and Trojans; he used them to launch a big hack attack on Akamai, the web distribution company, and knocked Yahoo, Google, and some Microsoft and Apple Computer sites offline by bringing the domain name server (DNS) system to its knees. Playful scientists wrote the first viral worm for smart phones; now the hackers know how to do it.

Technology came of age; the US government turned down an application by United Airlines for a loan to get out of bankruptcy; hours later, the House of Representatives passed a sweet tax bill custom written for the technology industry, right down to reduced foreign revenue taxes, tax credits for research and development, protection for stock offers to employees, and support for outsourcing to foreign companies.

That grumbling you heard late each night last weekend was the sound of yuppiephone fans as they were told to check their phones at the gate or go home from the US Open golf tournament, which banned them totally, no exceptions.

Apple Computer generously allowed British, French and German people to use its iTunes online music store but our kind of Asian person remains barred from the service.

Independent artists and labels got together to accuse Apple Computer, iTunes and Steve "President for Life" Jobs of trying to extort them into horrible contracts; Apple promised less money than artists from major labels in return for a three-year exclusive contract and implied, "Nice little band you've got here, be a shame if something happened to it."

Munich, Germany, declared after a one-year trial that Linux works; it began a 14,000-computer migration to open source from Windows; the Oktoberfesters will use OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office and the Mozilla browser instead of anything else.

The Boston Consulting Group was struck off the cocktail party invitations and New Year's card lists of US companies after it said: "Go East, young companies"; BCG says outsourcing is not the bane of US workers but the hope of the US economy, and the first companies who outsource will be in at the beginning of the next mini-trend of globalisation. The US Bureau of Labour Statistics said maybe 2.5% of lost US jobs went overseas _ 4,000 jobs maximum.

If you are getting a lot of spam these days and need a 100MB email box to store it, Yahoo will give it to you for free; for 400 baht a year (down from 600 baht) Yahoo will give you two gigabytes for your spam plus all virus attachments plus legitimate email _ and a POP3 link to boot; this is only because Yahoo loves you and has nothing to do with Google's Gmail, which will give you one gig of spam storage for free as soon as Google clears the vapour from its offer.

"This was our D-day," bragged an organiser; guns drawn, hundreds of German police fanned out across the country, kicked down doors in coordinated 5am raids and arrested 12 of the country's most dangerous criminals _ film pirates.

Spam is all right if your politics demand it; the leftish anti-Bush Moveon.org spammed 2.2 million innocent people to demand they see the anti-Bush movie Fahrenheit 9/11; this information is just in case you wondered why governments won't ban spam.

Microsoft released yet another test version of its Service Pack 2 security upgrade and bug fix for Windows XP; the company won't even answer questions about whether the update will be ready for the latest final, unshakeable deadline of next month.

Now that it has solved the spam problem and has a search engine on the way, Microsoft will offer an anti-virus program; actually, Microsoft had an anti-virus program a decade ago but it was atrocious. The scare-monger Eric Drexler admitted that he was totally wrong with his 1986 forecast that nanotechnology's self-replicating machines would turn the world into a grey goo; men can't even make such machines.

Northwest Airlines turned over all data on all passengers to the US government because of all that terrorism that is going on; passengers sued the airline for breach of its stated privacy policy; US District Court Judge Paul Magnuson explained the company did not have to follow its privacy policy because there was no proof customers actually read it; in other words, privacy policies are just big business laughing at you, and totally unenforceable.

The US Federal Trade Commission said a "do-not-spam list" would merely give spammers another list of good email addresses to spam, so they won't have one.

Dave "Mr Blog" Winer abruptly turned off 3,000 web logs he was supporting for free, saying he simply could not afford the bandwidth; the sudden move brought mixed reactions, including praise for everything Mr Winer did to promote RSS blogging, to criticism of turning off so many people without notice.

Web's convention plans call for blanket coverage

2008-08-18T07:13:00.001-07:00

CBS, ABC and America Online announced plans to extensively cover the summer's presidential nominating conventions in unconventional fashion. AOL's broadband subscribers can get live gavel-to-gavel coverage and express opinions on convention issues via online InstaPolls, the unit of Time Warner said . ABC-TV's Peter Jennings will anchor convention sessions on abcnewslive.com, the 24/7 streaming news channel operated by the Walt Disney Co. subsidiary, available through America Online and the RealNetworks content subscription service. CBS plans free coverage of the sessions on CBSNews.com, plus on-demand clips and news reports. (Viacom , the parent of CBS, is an investor in MarketWatch, the publisher of this report.) By contrast, the ABC, NBC and CBS television networks have announced plans to broadcast only three hours coverage of each party's convention. A highlight of the ABC Web channel's coverage of will be a one-hour, live interactive program conducted at 7 p.m. each night of the conventions. Guests will discuss issues, answer e-mailed questions from AOL subscribers, and comment on live online surveys. "During a period of heightened interest in politics and news, we're able to engage voters in the political process like never before," said Bernie Gershon, senior vice president and general manager of ABC News Digital Media Group. America Online's plans for convention coverage include a simulcast of the nightly ABC program, called "Press Pass," along with instant polls, online chat/debates and message boards. Broadband subscribers will have access to coverage of speeches and convention proceedings and news from ABC and from Time Warner's CNN. Dial-up users will get an audio stream of the ABC-provided programming. "This is built on communication," said Lewis Dvorkin, editor-in-chief of AOL News. "There's not much coverage (planned) on television. But the larger thing is that politics is turning into a public scrimmage, and if you want to you can participate right on the (PC) screen." Hear Dvorkin talk about AOL's convention plans. (Portions of AOL's convention coverage will also be available to non-subscribers via the Web at www. electionguide04.com.) BBC to Webcast Athens games live The British Broadcasting Corp. is planning live Web coverage of the Summer Olympics from Athens beginning Aug. 13. "We will be maximizing our rights deal to provide video coverage for U.K. broadband users," Aashish Chandarana, broadband project manager for BBC Sports Interactive, told Wired news. In particular, the BBC's sports Web site will feature a live video simulcast from the Beeb's broadcasts. Chandarana realizes his largest potential audience will be at work. "When people go home, they're not going to watch the Olympics on the Internet. They're going to watch it on TV," he said, according to Wired. In the U.S., the Olympics rights holder NBC will not stream the games live but will offer video highlights on NBCOlympics.com. Evan Silverman, executive producer for the Web site, said the General Electric subsidiary is "taking a huge step forward in showing competitive footage online for the first time. " He said no video will be available until after NBC has completed its telecast of the event. It's becoming a broadband world Nearly 63 million active Internet users employed a high-speed connection to access the Web in May, according to researchers at Nielsen/NetRatings . That compares to 66.5 million who used dial-up. Four years ago, high-speed connections accounted for 9 percent of active users. "Broadband growth (has) shot up 40 percentage points, while dial-up users continued a steady decline," the researchers reported. Nielsen/NetRatings also said broadband surfers access the Web almost twice as much. High-speed users spent an av+

erage of 17 hours online in May, compared to narrowband surfers who were on slightly less than 10 hours. Short bytes Google said it acquired Picasa, a software company focused on helping people manage their libraries of digital photographs. The Pasadena, Calif.-based company also operates a peer-to-peer network to allow people to share photos and chat about them. In May, Picasa announced a deal with Google-owned Blogger to make it easy for Web loggers to include photos in their blogs. Financial terms of Google's purchase of Picasa weren't disclosed. Tune in You can also hear Internet Daily.

Did Bill Gates shake the blogosphere?

2008-08-17T19:13:00.001-07:00

Bill Gates told Warren Buffett about blogging on Thursday. Buffett, the legendary investor and moving force behind Berkshire Hathaway , was in attendance at the eighth annual CEO summit put on by Microsoft in Redmond, Wash. Also on hand were Barry Diller of InteractiveCorp , Carly Fiorina of Hewlett-Packard , Jeff Bezos of Amazon. com and Dell Inc.'s own Michael Dell. They all heard Gates describe blogs and RSS feeds as tools that "make it very easy to communicate" with customers, suppliers and employees. The result, according to New York public-relations executive Steve Rubel, is likely to be a number of meetings of executives and their PR people and IT managers to explore this "blogging thing Bill Gates talked about." Rubel, of CooperKatz & Co., also wrote Friday morning, "The blogosphere changed. It feels very much like 1995 all over again." Gates' endorsement of blogging, Rubel said, is likely to lead to more businesses using it: "Bottom-up business communication will only gain steam here." But there's more to the story. Gates' comments were also "a veiled declaration of war on Six Apart, Userland, Google and anyone else who makes blogging tools." Microsoft has indeed been a booster of blogs. More than 700 employees publish the online diaries, often discussing projects and software in development. One of the more ambitious is Channel9, the work of five company employees who "want a new level of communication between Microsoft and developers." It includes descriptions of new technology, video interviews of Microsoft program managers and developers, and some gossip. FBI plans fall piracy offensive An official of the Federal Bureau of Investigation said the agency hopes to prosecute 50 "significant spammers" later this year. Jana Monroe, assistant director of the FBI's cyber division, told a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Thursday there are 100 possible targets. "Such cases may be investigated and prosecuted as computer intrusion matters or as online cyberfrauds," she said. The CAN-SPAM Act's provisions may also be considered and applied. Short bytes SportsLine.com, a money-losing provider of sports media on the Internet, said it hired an investment bank to explore strategic alternatives. SportsLine , which has been seeing increased competition in the business of providing online fantasy sports, said Thursday that it hired Perseus Group, an independent investment bank. Terra.com , a portal for Hispanic Web sites, will distribute 30 Internet radio stations featuring Spanish-language music and content. The stations are programmed by U.S. and international DJs using Live365.com's broadcasting service. "This relationship underscores how Live365 can readily leverage its consumer-driven programming model to provide relevant content for specific audiences," said David Porter, director of business development for Live365. The stations are available on Terra.com's music channel. America Online is reworking its software for older PCs. On the heels of beginning a test of software catering to broadband users, the Time Warner unit is also developing a slimmed-down client for computers with less than 120 megabytes of memory, according to BetaNews.com. The software will be available for dial-up users only. Tune in You can also hear Internet Daily. Call your local CBS Radio station for broadcast times. Internet Daily can be heard on your Pocket PC PDA, too! .

Battle looming over standard for web forms

2008-08-17T07:13:00.001-07:00

Just because you are the committee responsible for a standard doesn't mean that everyone will agree with you. Consider the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the new Web Forms 2.0 specification, which has been put out for final comment.

There is a splinter group of browser makers with some heavyweight names like Apple Computer, the Mozilla Foundation and Opera Software called WHAT-WG, or the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group. They have their own ideas on what should be in the specification.

Now you must be thinking that Microsoft has to be in this mix somewhere _ and you are correct. Essentially there is the W3C, which is saying the answer is XForms, Microsoft, which says it's XAML, Macromedia opting for Flash MX, and Mozilla is saying that it's XUL.

Let's look at what is at stake here. Forms based on current web standards are used all over the place on the web. When you order something from Amazon, or surf with Yahoo, create you new blog entry or log in to a system somewhere, you are using forms.

The new XForms specification has advances on current technology but it not compatible with current browsers, so everyone is going to need a plug-in to use the technology. By contrast, Web Forms 2.0 is compatible with your browser but relies on scripting, which some people say is not good enough for corporate applications.

WHAT-WG will submit its proposal to the W3C for consideration, which may mean two new standards instead of one. Worse, we could end up with different people using any one of the four available technologies, removing the concept of an open, easy to use forms system for Internet users.

Microsoft has been against XForms since the beginning _ why support an open standard when you can push your own? It will be included in their next browser releases.

The industry _ that is, your company and mine _ just wants better forms processing that allows better communication and connectivity with the back end processes like the database system.

The last update was with the HTML 4.0 spec we saw in 1999, and in Internet terms that is a couple of generations old already. As far as the person filling out the form is concerned, they don't really care as long as their information is collected, their order processed or their bill paid.

For developers and those who have to do something with the information it does become an issue, especially if the user needs a special browser to access the system. If you are Amazon you don't want to have to tell people they can only order from Amazon if they have Brand X browser installed.

Any selection by W3C that requires the above restriction means that W3C has not done its job, which is to produce a standard for all web users and browser writers. At the same time, if Microsoft's browser will not support what W3C comes out with, then that will be a lot of people unable to access the new forms.

There are a lot of concerned glances in Microsoft's direction these days. There is real concern about Microsoft's grand vision for Windows Longhorn applications built in the XML-based XAML markup language using Longhorn's Avalon graphics system. Browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Apple's Safari will be useless to access these Internet-based Windows applications.

So we have a battle looming over how forms will be rendered and supported. It may mean losing an open standard provided under HTML now and it may mean everyone with a browser needing an upgrade or an add-in. Worse we could be locked into a fully proprietary model.

It does show that cracks exist in the web technology groups and that there are potential consequences for you and me in the near future. It also could show that we are facing a problem going forward with any type of open standards for Internet development.

People are already doing development work with XForms, a standard first proposed in 2000, but as usual the W3C was too slow and other technologies have grown up in the gap. Bottom line: how your forms development is going to be handled in a year's time will depend on how W3C tackles this issue.

Blog - the 'on-demand' culture

2008-08-16T19:13:00.001-07:00

Richard Sambrook, CEO of the BBC's World Service, shares his insight on the importance of the Internet, blogging and the development of journalism from the advent of the printing press 300 years ago to today's uncharted waters of news-on-demand through mobile devices.

"In the early 1990s, the BBC recognised the importance of the Internet and invested heavily in it. We set up the BBC News web site, which led on to other forms of digital service such as broadband and mobile services.

"Today we are only beginning to fully understand the "on-demand" culture for news. On-demand and particularly wireless services are going to have a particularly important future. Electronic news will be crucial. We are looking at how we can develop our services to take advantage of video on demand, broadband and the latest mobile handsets and networks."

It has been suggested that the number of news viewers is in decline with the new generation, that only the older generation are interested in the news. "I don't think this is true," Sambrook explained. "What is changing is the way people absorb their news. The younger generation, the younger demographics, are very interested in news if they can control how and when they receive it. This is why on-demand will become increasingly important. This level of control started with the Internet but it is clear we are now on a curve with much to learn. Technology continues to move rapidly and we have to try to keep up with that.

"There is a fundamental shift going on between broadcasters telling the world what we think they want to know and the audience being able to pull, on demand, what they want to know. The fundamental relationship between broadcasters and their audience in general is changing."

So what does he think of the latest trend of Internet blogging?

"Blogging is simply a means of publication, but one in which the barriers of entry to public debate and public discourse have fallen to zero. You can set up a blog for no financial outlay whatsoever and if you understand the Internet and get your site linked to, you can build up a readership quite easily. Yet, you get an awful number of sites which are very opinionated and unrestrained. You do not really know what you're getting when you read a blog.

"On the other hand, for the exact same reasons, it is one of the most exciting developments in this field I have seen in almost 30 years as a journalist because so many people are now taking part in public debate. It's like the bringing in of the printing press 300 years ago when suddenly all these pamphlets appeared which were all very opinionated. In the end it all shakes down. People learn which ones to trust and which ones not to trust, and a degree of regulation will be bought to bear. I'm sure something similar will happen to blogging. Some of the wilder ones will die off as people will understand that they are not to be trusted. There will be fewer groups of blogs which are trusted and become more part of the media which we all today recognise. But I think the opening up of the public debate is a really interesting initiative and in the end it will be very helpful.

"I don't think that just because you write a blog you can automatically call yourself a journalist and therefore you do not get the same kinds of protection. Rights _ as in the right to address the public and take part in public debate _ also come with responsibility. What we've seen to date is that bloggers are keen to assert their rights to take part in the public discourse but haven't taken a lot of care in their responsibility towards public debate and to ensure that they act responsibility, that they are accurate and fair and all of those other journalistic principles. Until that is understood and better established I do not think they can necessarily expect _ though I don't want to rule anything out _ to attract the same kind of protection as journalists have."

Sambrook said that the BBC viewed Asia as an incredibly interesting region which will only grow in importance. The vibrancy and confidence of Bangkok is clear to see and though nothing specific has been decided it is highly likely the BBC will be investing more in Thailand in the future.

"Asia is going to be an important inspiration for the rest of the world, a source of innovation and trends in fashion and culture. A global broadcaster like the BBC will have to report on that but hopefully we will benefit from that as well as we learn from Asia."

Blogging more evolution than revolution

2008-08-16T15:30:00.001-07:00

And they say that the technology sector is full of hype _ well, it's nothing compared to what's coming out of the new-ish phenomenon known as blogging. As if there wasn't enough self-importance going around in the so-called blogosphere (last time I'll use that expression, I promise), media outlets in the entire media-sphere fueled the egos out there by suggesting 2004 was the year of the blogger.

So now everyone's getting a blog and it will increasingly eat up our bandwidth _ and will continue to do so as bloggers track back and link back to other bloggers ad nauseam like a dog chasing its tail. And yes, I have been ranting about this since before they suggested that bloggers would see the extinction of the species we now know as journalists.

My biggest beef is this: Don't they know we've been through this in the media and on the Internet countless times before? Surely one media organisation or commentator could have pointed to the fact that this is not that different to the Usenet service of the early Internet days. Okay, so it's not exactly the same, but there are enough similarities to make a connection.

Usenet's newsgroups also provided a forum for like-minded people to discuss single subjects, whether it was technology or tapestry or anything else. There were also star posters _ people who gave their views on a daily basis and whose views were sought out by a large-ish audience. They were also a good source of non-mainstream news on a particular topic, good for publicising an event or two, and a useful place for forward-thinking journalists to go to for leads. All of the above pretty well sums up the attraction of web logs, I would have thought.

But it's not just Usenet that was a precursor to today's blogging outbreak. People or groups have been doing something similar with web sites since the beginning, with Matt Drudge's Drudge Report an obvious example. But an even simpler _ and longer-standing _ medium for someone or an organisation to create a news source is through the humble email list.

Dave Farber, one of the pioneers of the Internet and a former chief technologist of the FCC, runs an email list called IP (which actually stands for Interesting People rather than the protocol). It's probably one of the most active forums I've encountered and certainly has some of the best insights into telecoms and Internet technology and policy you're likely to find anywhere. Certainly there's no blog equivalent and Farber himself doesn't seem to have felt the need to create one.

So that gets rid of myth number one _ blogs aren't really new, rather they're a continuation of a long-standing tradition of using the Internet as a form of one-to-many communications. Myth number two is that suddenly everyone will become a journalist and the media as we know it will not exist.

Of course, the fact that the earlier forms of Internet communications didn't wipe out dominant media already accounts for myth number two. But I think it's also worth looking at who these bloggers are that are going to change the face of reporting. The fact is, any technology blog worth visiting is either written by a technology luminary _ Tom Evslin, the founder and former CEO of ITXC is a recent new addition to the world of blogging and a good example _ or an existing technology writer who also reports for the mainstream media, such as Silicon Valley reporters Om Malik and Dan Gillmore (who recently wound up his Silicon Valley eJournal).

In the case of people like Tom Evslin, they're read because of their industry knowledge, not their reporting skills, besides which they're never going to accept the meager wages that journalism has to offer in any case. Of course, there will also be some that slip through the cracks _ an outsider who's neither luminary nor hack _ who creates a web log and finds a loyal following. And any mainstream media firm that's thinking smartly is probably going to offer that person a job (which they'll no doubt take, because running a blog has even less pecuniary rewards than writing for a company).

Don't get me wrong _ I'm an avid follower of most of the worthwhile tech blogs out there. But they really are just one of many additional sources of information that have always existed.

A boost for bloggers

2008-08-16T07:13:00.001-07:00

We're bubbling over with enthusiasm for Bubbler, a blogging program for the blog impaired. It lets you post video, photos and, of course, your opinions to the web as easily as if you were using one of the popular text-only blogging programs.

Bubbler is sort of a competitor to Google's Blogger, Six Apart's Movable Type and Microsoft's MSN Spaces, but they hardly measure up to this kind of competition. You can post darn near any file straight to the web without knowing any HTML coding or much of anything else. We posted a slide show of family photos and gave it password protection, and it was as easy as clicking ``add file'' and browsing to the place we had the slideshow stored. It came with music as well.

Bubbler is made by Five Across (www.bubbler.com). It was founded by a former Apple engineer, so it works equally well with Windows or Macintosh. It was a cinch to use one of Bubbler's basic startup templates, but we had some difficulty removing the sample photo.

A free version lets you create a text-only blog and post it to the web. A ``court reporter'' feature lets you type messages that appear on the blog immediately. The full version that lets you post photos, video, sound, PDF and Office files, costs $5 a month or $49 a year for up to 10 megabytes of blogging space; 500 megabytes would cost $25 a month or $200 a year.

The art of the package deal

Adobe has a $1,000 package of programs for Mac and Windows, and if you like it, you can save $1,500. It's called Creative Suite 2, and it pulls together most of Adobe's programs for advertising, publishing and web design.

It's common in the software industry to put together a package deal when sales of the individual items start to fall off. Microsoft Office is an outstanding example. It doesn't mean the pieces aren't great on their own, but just that the market for individual pieces is getting saturated.

The success of a package then depends on price and pulling the pieces together. Adobe has done this beautifully with an overlord program called Bridge. Bridge is a visual file browser. It gives you a quick look at all the files related to a particular project and all the files you've used recently. They show up as thumbnail images; click on any of the folders and you go right there to continue your work.

Bridge pulls together the features of Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat 7, GoLive and the best-selling Photoshop in Creative Suite 2, Premium version. These five programs would cost $2,695 at list price, but are being marketed at $1,199 as a package. A Standard version, which leaves out Acrobat and GoLive, lists for $899. A search on the web revealed only slight markdowns from these prices at discounters.

Creative Suite is huge. We spent days with this package and barely touched its features.

Here are just a few highlights:

FInDesign is Adobe's competitor to Quark Express, a $699 publishing program from Quark (www.quark.com). Like that program, InDesign is full-featured. You can create documents ranging from small brochures to multi-volume books.

Snippet may be its neatest feature. Anything you create, including page layouts, can be saved as a snippet and dragged over to Bridge. Snippet not only saves it but also saves its position. So an item that is part of a layout, an image being created for a logo, for example, can be pulled and edited, and then when you put it back into Snippet, it is snapped right back into the logo.

FAdobe Illustrator is a top-of-the-line drawing and paint program.

The best tools are Live Trace and Live Paint, which let you turn photos and other art into line drawings, sketches and paintings. The program lets you enlarge any artwork without getting the ``jaggies'' on the edges.

FPhotoshop has a tool called Vanishing Point. Select a vanishing point on a building, say, where the image recedes into the distance. The program can then adjust any text and pictures to fit that receding image. The program will also adjust colour tone and other markings so the new addition looks like it's always been part of the picture.

FGoLive is a powerful web page creator. Simply drag and drop text and images into place on a screen, and you can publish your creation to the web.

You can also drag and drop PDF files onto the web site. You can bring in just one page or an entire file. This holds true for anything created with InDesign, including books and brochures.

Finally, the training video that comes with the package is one of the best we've ever seen; we couldn't have figured things out without it.

It runs for one hour, but then continues for an additional hour if you register any of the programs. More training CDs are available from www.totaltraining.com, but they're expensive: 10 hours for $130.

You can get a lot more detail at www.adobe.com.

Note: Though many people buy high-end programs like this, we would say it's best suited to professionals and students in the graphic arts. Still, general users are a surprisingly big part of the market for high-end graphics.

When we talked to sales clerks at office and computer stores, we learned that customers who say they just want to touch up their digital snapshots will usually buy Photoshop, even though it costs hundreds of dollars.

Blogs give gripping first-hand accounts

2008-08-15T19:13:00.001-07:00

As Hurricane Katrina tore across the US Gulf coast, leaving snapped communications in its wake, Internet Web logs offered an unique and often dramatic insight into the storm's destructive fury and aftermath.

With the mainstream media struggling with the logistics of covering the story, the blogs came into their own, providing gripping firsthand accounts from some riding out the hurricane, posting updates on the flooding situation and helping put people in touch with stranded relatives.

Television stations like CBS affiliate WWL-TV in New Orleans, which was forced to evacuate its studious due to rising waters, turned to its own blog on Tuesday to offer a continuous stream of updates.

"Two dead in Slidell in rising waters after attempting to get back to their homes," the blog reported at 11.53 am(11.53 pm Bangkok time). And one minute later: "Kenner mayor asking for more National Guard. Asks anyone with the guard to call 468-7200."

The New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper joined with reporters and editors from NOLA.com, an affiliated website, to produce stories and blogs about the storm.

"Water continues to rise around our building, as it is throughout the region. We want to evacuate our employees and families while we are still able to safely leave," the newspaper's blog reported on Tuesday morning.

NOLA.com editor Jon Donley had offered dramatic eyewitness reports of the storm unleashing its fury on New Orleans on Monday.

"New Orleans is sinking...I don't want to swim," Donley posted on Monday morning as he looked out to see "water, appears about knee deep, whipped by the steady wind into whitecaps and breakers".

At one point, Donley described his acute distress at not hearing from his daughter who had decided to ride out the storm at the family home, surrounded by pine trees.

"I'm looking at the wind smashing the trees outside this building tropical storms. And that storm surge," Donley wrote. "All we can do now is pray for our family members in harm's way."

Kaye Trammel, an assistant professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge received responses from around the world to the dispatches she posted on her site "Kaye's Hurricane Katrina Blog".

Another live eyewitness account of the storm's impact came from John Strain, a social worker in Covington, Louisiana.

"The wind is really picking up now and I hear the roof above me wobble," Strain wrote in his blog.

"The sound is like a waterfall or rushing river. It is a powerful noise. It is a noise that reminds me how small I am and how big God is."

Why blogging could be bad for your health

2008-08-15T17:53:00.000-07:00

There are two schools of thought when it comes to the topic of blogging and the rise of web sites with often highly opinionated views. While many think that the rise of Internet publishing is the best thing since sliced bread, others have warned of anarchy and violence if things are left the way they are.

Richard Sambrook, CEO of BBC World and a former news director of the BBC, used the term "do-it-yourself journalism" to describe blogging. The Internet, he explained, had reduced the costs of entry to the world of journalism to all but zero. Anybody with a half-decent command of English (and many without) can now reach out and present their views to an almost infinite audience.

However, the problem is that with such freedom brings with it the risk of anarchy. A totally unregulated Internet will mean that people will say things that will one day get other people angry. Angry people retaliate and, in extreme situations, this anger can start from mere flame wars (people bad-mouthing others on bulletin boards and chatrooms), progress to physical violence in the real world and, in extreme cases, lead to these wannabe journalists being murdered.

Far-fetched? Not at all. Speaking in May this year, Sambrook had just come from a meeting of the International News Safety Institute, which had identified this very lack of regulation and responsibility as a key reason why so many "journalists" were being murdered each year in the Philippines. Basically, these writers were saying things (both true and otherwise) which others objected to for various reasons and thus the easiest way to shut these dissenting voices up was to have them killed.

Sambrook said he did not think that all Internet bloggers should automatically be afforded the entire gamut of rights and privileges that members of traditional media enjoy, but that some regulatory framework would have to be developed to ensure that these writers are responsible for their actions and are protected where appropriate.

One month later, the ICT Ministry's Cyber-Inspectors, champions of virtue, righteousness and protectors of the public from the vile sins of pornography and gambling, decided to close down two web sites critical of the government _ thaiinsider.com and fm9225.com _ in a blatant display of state censorship. Both were quickly reinstated by highly-paid solicitors citing Thailand's constitutional right to free speech. No violence ensued, just a lot of free publicity and sympathy for those web sites and the powers-that-be sweeping debris and fall-out under the carpet.

On the surface, this appeared to be a triumph of free speech over control and conservatism, but only on the surface. Look beyond this and it soon became clear that the only reason both web sites survived was because of their political and business power-bases rather than winning the argument on merit on a fair and level playing field. It was a case of power-politics as usual, albeit in cyberspace, and not the vindication of the Internet as the new medium it was made out to be.

Still, both provide a valuable alternative view of the situation in Thailand, albeit one that must be taken with a grain of salt. Or two.

While the two have made headlines, they are far from united in their quest for journalistic truth. Indeed, it could perhaps be said that the two are the voices of their backers; that they exist to voice the views and opinions of their pay-masters, nothing more, nothing less. But back to the argument at hand, that of the value of traditional media.

Traditional media answers to the truth and tries to filter out lies and propaganda from fact. The recent series on the smart ID card project was a case in point. Both sides exaggerated, flamed, accused and twisted the case in point, which was that the card failed four points of the Terms of Reference: Java compliance, PKI security, the ability to securely add and remove applets without affecting other applets and the requirement to have 32KB of memory available for Java Applets and their data.

Proponents of the card conveniently forgot the word "available" and say that the card does have 32KB of memory. Yes, it does. In fact it has 66KB of memory, but, as delivered, only 28KB of memory is available to Java Applets and their data.

Opponents of the card have likened it to measures of control used by a certain dictatorial regime that fell half a century ago, while others have exaggerated the security risk that comes with having public-key encryption functions of the card running on the host PC. While this is a problem in terms of non-compliance with Java Card standards, it is not a critical security flaw _ a public key is, by its very definition, public and manipulating it off-card is not a problem.

Were the smart ID card project news published on either of these two anti-government web sites, perhaps these particular anti-card sentiments and others would have made it to "print" (or rather, to the home page).

Were they published through overtly pro-government channels, the proponents' claims of compliance without presenting any supporting facts while conveniently mis-representing quotes from the Terms of Reference would have been the order of the day.

Technologists would love to believe in the romantic notion of the Internet being a free and fair medium of expression for everyone. The case above would tend to suggest otherwise.

Freedom without responsibility serves only to present a biased view of the world with little regard for journalistic values of truth and integrity. True, there are left-wing and right-wing papers each with a bias, but while they would gladly exercise their bias, outright deception through the presentation of half-truths would not make it to print. This is partly because of the checks and balances in a system that has been honed for many decades, but moreso because of the need to uphold the reputation of the newspaper.

The biggest challenge for media in the digital age is thus hardly technological. To paraphrase Sambrook, while anyone can set up a blog with next to zero outlay, the costs of building up trust and respect remain as high as ever. Newspapers and traditional media will be faced with the question of how to transfer this ethereal goodwill to cyberspace.

Time-Warner tried and failed with AOL. Microsoft's partnership with NBC has yet to gel. Yet it is a challenge that Thailand's media may have to face up to out of necessity if we are to transform and survive in the current political and economic climate.

FOCUS - High growth seen for China's weblog industry despite restrictions

2008-08-15T07:13:00.000-07:00

The weblog services industry in China will continue to see high growth despite heavy regulation and censorship, analysts and industry players said.

They added that growth will come despite many players also struggling to develop profitable business models.

They said the industry has grown sharply in the past few years with more than 100 blog service providers (BSPs) in China, up from zero at the beginning of the decade.

On top of the dedicated BSPs, providing platforms for users to maintain personal online diaries and commentary, an increasing number of supporting services sites are emerging, providing such things as hosting of audio podcasts, photos and short videos. Most of the small entrepreneurial firms have started aggressively seeking venture capital.

Still, with mounting competition in the sector, BSP operators and analysts say a shake-out is inevitable. However, they add that the high growth and volatility of the industry, plus the low operating costs that many providers have, may make it difficult to forecast when such consolidation will take place.

Max Su, Internet sector analyst with Analysys International in Beijing, said that by the third quarter of 2005 the number of registered blog accounts in China came to 33.36 mln, or more than double the 2004 total of 16 mln.

Since a registered account does not necessarily imply an active account, and as some bloggers maintain more than one website the number of Chinese bloggers is difficult to gauge.

Isaac Mao, one of China's pioneer bloggers and vice president of venture capital firm United Capital Investment Group (China) Ltd (UCI), said the number of active blog writers in China is probably no more than one mln.

He added, "I think that number will boom in the next two years if we see the emergence of a solid blogging service.

"Maybe the current ones in the market will improve more and we will see a solid blog service like TypePad (of the US) or (Google Inc's service) Blogger. "

Su attributed the rapid growth in registered sites to the entrance of web portals such as Sina, Tencent and Microsoft into the blog market.

He noted that the entrance of the major portals into the industry will provide a boost to dedicated providers such as Bokee.com (formerly Blog China) and BlogCn.com, as many users of the portals' service will eventually seek better-quality professional services.

"Now there are too many players in the market, and some of them are going to stay here for a while, but it is going to peak and then the BSPs who can really provide decent services will eventually lead and it will be just a few big providers," Su said.

Mao says he does not see much threat to dedicated BSP companies from services being offered by the major portals.

"I don't think that either Sina or MSN Spaces will get even half of the market... because other companies will focus their services and do it better than Sina or MSN," Mao said.

"This is not just a money business, it is a loyalty business."

Mao also sees an imminent shakeout.

"There has been fast development in this market but I think it will start consolidating soon, maybe in 2006," Mao said.

"I don't think all of (the current BSPs) have a strategy or model for developing their businesses."

Mao said most of the BSPs were too unfocused and were trying to offer too many services rather than building a strong brand and reputation.

"If you are going to do a video-sharing project then you should just make the video perfect, don't do blog-plus-video, don't do blog-plus-video-plus -pictures. This is the worst idea," said Mao.

Many of the BSPs are placing their hopes on revenues through advertising, mobile services and premium hosting services -- areas that Su and Mao said have some potential but have not yet proven especially revenue accretive.

"More BSPs have started to offer paid memberships and many high-end Blog users are willing to pay for that," Su said. "Even if only one pct of total users are willing to pay for premium services, the market potential is huge."

"There definitely will be a shakeout of the blog service providers," said Kevin Wen, international business officer for Bokee, but he said that this won't be as sudden as some others expect.

"It doesn't really require a high cost to maintain a small BSP. There are lots of free tools you can use, you can have a single server, and bandwidth is not expensive -- but if you wanted to make yourself big that would cost a lot," said Wen.

Bokee is planning an overseas listing, possibly in 2006.

"Absolutely we have to look at being listed in the Nasdaq in the next year or two years, but it's really hard to say clearly how we are going to do that. Right now we're just focusing on developing our services to increase our users," said Wen.

Michael Li, president of Seattle-based 21st century Lion Inc which operates three-month old start-up 1Blogs.com which is targeted at the China market, said his firm expects to set up a Shanghai office and servers.

Li admitted that the earnings potential of his venture and others' is still unclear.

"There's not currently a very good business model for blogs. I think blogs are now like portals were six or seven years ago," Li said.

Noting that 1Blogs.com had not yet developed a revenue-generation model, he said the company, which uses open-source software, did not have an urgent need to turn a profit.

"The maintenance of a site does not require that much capital so you can keep a service going for a long time (without making any money)."

Li expects the market to take shape in the following years with small companies becoming acquisition targets for whatever industry leaders emerge.

"We'll see those with the best business models being bought out by larger companies, like there has been in the United States with Google buying Blogger and News Corp buying MySpace," Li said.

Bokee's Wen said his firm has already started acquiring firms.

"This year, after we raised funding, we acquired two companies, Banner Rich, a wireless SP company, and ChinaPage -- the business-to-business company founded by AliBaba founder Jack Ma," said Wen.

Wen said he sees the main competition currently coming from local rivals but notes that it will eventually come from foreign operators.

"The biggest competition long term will be Yahoo! and MSN -- they really have a lot of potential -- but I think at this stage it's going to be local companies such as BlogCn and BlogBus," he said.

But while foreign entrants are becoming a force in the China 'blogosphere, ' this may not be without cost to their home-market reputations, said industry players.

Overseas players risk negative publicity when they comply with Chinese censorship laws.

China blocks many websites it deems unsuitable and also uses keyword filtering on domestic search engines.

Microsoft attracted heavy criticism earlier this year when it was revealed that its China weblogging service employed key-word filtering preventing users to use terms such as "democracy" and "human rights" in titles of weblogs, a step that Mao said was unnecessary.

"Microsoft has done a lot more than the government required them to do," said Mao. "I think they wanted to flatter someone in China."

Yahoo! Inc's China unit was also criticized for providing state authorities with IP information that helped lead to the jailing of Chinese journalist Shi Tao for "revealing state secrets".

"I don't think (censorship) will make a huge difference for (Microsoft and Yahoo!'s business prospects in China)," said Analysys' Su. "But I agree that seen from outside it may not benefit them."

Rebecca MacKinnion, former CNN China bureau chief and now a research fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, argued that heavy regulation has not held back the development of domestic businesses here.

She noted that that most Chinese bloggers don't pay as much consideration to censorship issues.

"For most people in China you grow up in this environment where it's just obvious that there are things that you don't talk about because they will get you in trouble," she said. "It's just going to be obvious that this kind of behavior will start to transfer to the web."

"While some people get frustrated because they write something and it will get filtered, or it will cause them to get blocked, a lot of people are feeling that the web gives them more freedom of speech than they had before, so the majority are willing to accept the censorship as a natural aspect of the country that they live in and a fact of life," MacKinnion said.

UIC's Mao said he believes the high-tech and Internet sector will bring China's business practices more up to an international standard.

"Venture-funded firms are more open and more internationalized than the state-owned companies and some of the large monopolies in the China market," Mao said.

China's registered bloggers double

2008-08-14T19:14:00.001-07:00

The number of registered bloggers in China more than doubled to 33.36 mln at the end of the third quarter, from 14.75 mln at the end of 2004, said Beijing research house Analysys International.

The top blog service providers (BSP) by market share in the period were Tencent's Q-Zone with a 30 pct share, Netease with a 15 pct share, and Blogcn with a 12 pct share, according to a statement released by Analysys.

The growth of blog users was mostly driven by large portals such as Sina and MSN as well as instant message service providers such as Tencent, Analysys said.

While these portals may pose a threat to traditional BSPs, such as China's Bokee and Blogcn, they will not replace them, according to Analysys.

"Due to the innate nature of loyalty of blog services and different positioning between portals and traditional BSPs, it's impossible for portals to replace the traditional BSPs," said Sun Lilin, an analyst with Analysys.

Business models are still evolving and most BSPs are attempting to attract more users by developing new products and launching featured services, Analysys said.

The firm added that while most blog services remain free, high-end users are beginning to accept paid services such as mobile blogs and paid blog space.

Make your company website dance

2008-08-14T13:12:00.001-07:00

If you have a small business, you have probably created a website a few years back. The content is now a little outdated, and you are waiting for a programmer to "program" new content into your website.

You don't have a full-time IT department to maintain the website but you need to update your content and keep track of your company. You just want to enter the content and not worry about the technical details of the web.

How can you update your website, like the pantip.com web board, where people enter their opinions, and their entries become available for all to see?

This can be achieved thanks to accumulated efforts in the development of content management systems (CMS).

CMS started out creating making little things possible, like web boards, guest books, stat counters, and so on. However, new-generation CMS takes the concept to a new level, enabling the site owner to install base CMS as the bare bones of the operation and install these applications as plug-ins. Some of the applications that CMS does are:

Portals. They allow you to set up accounts for each website user. For example, people who don't have an account can see five categories on your website, opposed to a corporate employee who may be able to see seven categories, including employee administration functions such as internal memos and vacation leave.

An executive may be able to see every category available, plus reports and analyses of operations. If the executives are in the office when they use the site, then implementing an Intranet may be useful for added security. If there isn't any sensitive content, portal accounts are quite sufficient. The design or themes of the website can also be altered with portals, to suit the users.

Blogs. Using the net we can move our personal diaries onto an online platform. A blog, which is short for weblog, allows users to open their own spaces for personal thoughts. It could be text-only, a text blog; with photos, a photoblog; from a cell phone, a moblog or mobile blog; a voice blog or a video-blog. Some business owners start blogs to promote their firms, allowing the visitors to comment on each posting. Many corporate developers have blogs that "leak" information about future products.

E-commerce. Several CMS models allow your company website to become your storefront to sell your product. The tricky part is the back end, interfacing with a credit card service provider. However, this could turn out to be as simple as copying some codes to put into your CMS. Ask your credit card service provider first which CMS it recognises.

Groupware. It is a good idea to keep track of all staff activities, meetings, documents and designs for projects online. Firstly, it keeps everyone working at the same pace. Each employee can see the whole project from the beginning. Second, if a new member starts or someone quits, the company will be able to retain what has been done to carry on working towards completion.

Forums. This is the web board mentioned earlier. The new generation of CMS allow users to set up categories, search, and keep a posting.

E-learning. For orientation or internal training you could develop e-learning classes to improve employee skills. E-Learning has well-structured content and guides students step-by-step.

Image galleries. Long gone are the days of film photography. Corporate events and personal photos can be kept for centuries online.

The good news is that most CMS have an open source, which means there is no need to pay for licences. If you are geeky enough you can even alter the source code to suit your needs.

There are more than 30 open source CMS on the web. Some are good, some are shoddy, but the more popular ones are PostNuke, Mambo, XOOPS. All of these are PHP based.

If your server uses a Microsoft language, try Rainbow which uses ASP.NET technology. For an enterprise with more complex requirements, try a commercial solution from Macromedia or Adobe.

With CMS, non-technical users can add content to sites just like they can using online banking or when they buy gifts online. It might be a little technical to install and to set up the server at the start, and you might need the help of someone more technically minded, but once it's up and running you and your staff can control the content, which is better than leaving a site static for years without an update.

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2008-08-14T07:13:00.001-07:00

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What is Web 2.0 definition.

2008-08-13T16:57:00.001-07:00

You have probably heard of "Web 2.0". In fact if you have any interest in the Internet and the World Wide Web it would be surprising if you hadn't. A simple Google search for the phrase brings up over 50 million matches. But what exactly is it?

If you've used Google Maps (maps.google.com), shared your photos online with Flickr (www.flickr.com), looked up (or contributed to) an entry at Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) or read your email in an Internet cafe with Microsoft Outlook Web Access, then you've already experienced at least some of the technologies that go to make up Web 2.0. You might also have come across terms such Ajax, web services, RSS, tagging or podcasts. You've almost certainly read a blog, or you may even have your own. Well, all of these (and more) can be wrapped up in the all embracing term Web 2.0.

But is it all hype? For instance, if you own a web site you may be wondering if you have to reinvest in new technologies to bring your site "up-to-date" and if so, what is it going to cost you? In this, the first of a short series of articles, I'm going to attempt to demystify what Web 2.0 is and (maybe more importantly) isn't.

The phrase Web 2.0 was first used at an O'Reilly Media seminar in late 2004 and the buzzword stuck, but many of the elements that make Web 2.0 possible have actually been around in some form since the mid 1990s.

In its broadest sense Web 2.0 refers to the second generation of web sites and services supplied via the Internet. The main distinguishing point between these and the earlier generation is the "look and feel" of the service. Web 2.0 sites tend to present the user with an interface that looks and acts more like a desktop application than a plain HTML web site.

But Web 2.0 can also be described in some ways as a philosophy rather than just a collection of technologies. In this sense it is the view that people shouldn't be restricted to being passive "browsers" of the web, rather they should have the opportunity to be active contributors. The massive number of online blogs, podcasts, social networking sites, and so on that have sprung up over the last few years indicate that many people share this view.

Just to confuse things further, Web 2.0 is sometimes described as "Internet 2.0," which can then be misinterpreted as referring to "Internet2" - a specific project to develope the next generation of network infrastructure.

You may also have heard the phrase "the web is the platform" when describing Web 2.0. If this sounds familiar, then you probably remember that Netscape was touting the same phrase back in its early days. Its goal was to develop a dominant browser in the marketplace that would drive sales of its server products. In the end they lost the "browser war" to Microsoft and effectively disappeared. As it is beginning to become clear, web servers and web browsers themselves are not the important part of the equation - it's the web services delivered over them.

I referred to Google Maps earlier and it's worth taking another look at this service as I regard it as being a good example of a definitive Web 2.0 site. Being a long time web user and developer, the first time I saw Google Maps I couldn't get over the feeling of "wow!" as I dragged and zoomed the map around in real time and switched between map and satellite views without the tedious old web experience of waiting for the whole page to redraw. When I saw this I knew I was looking at and experiencing the future of the web.

As the initial fun of map browsing wore off, I began to wonder just how they did it. How had they made a web page behave so similar to a desktop application? That was my first introduction to Ajax, an acronym for Asynchronous Javascript and XML. Ajax is a technique used to exchange small amounts of data between your browser and the web site server so that only the parts of your page that have actually changed get updated, not the whole page.

Ajax is the core to the dynamic features of Web 2.0. It is not the whole story, but without it Web 2.0 would be a very different and probably less exciting platform.

How Ajax works, its benefits and its disadvantages (yes, it has some) will be covered in more detail in the next article. In the meantime, as you conduct your daily surfing on the web, see if you can spot which of your favourite sites are starting to introduce these more dynamic Web 2.0 features. You'll probably be surprised at how fast it's happening.

David Judge is a Bangkok-based IT consultant, with a focus on emerging web technologies.

Video comes to the blogging world

2008-08-13T07:13:00.001-07:00

In its simplest form a blog is a personal diary that you make available to others. This could be as exciting as a day-to-day description of a climb up the north face of Everest all the way down to what Mary Beth had for breakfast somewhere in the southern parts of the US. If you want to rush right in at this point, or if you had something really interesting for breakfast, jump over to the Home Builder article (page D7) that describes how to get started in the blogging world.

Blogging or making comments on web sites and bulletin boards goes back to the Neolithic age of computers. I remember commenting on the local bulletin boards (they were from way back in computing terms), and posting comments on a board.

In contrast the blog is a personal item but it can still attract comments from readers, some who will not be so polite. If you do decide to start your blog expect that at least one person will not like what you are doing. There is no way around this.

There are people will disagree with just about anything no matter how tame you think your writing is. Just like some people in bars prefer to listen to a tone deaf singer over the trained version, there are people out there who will not share you love of fluffy animals whose picture you want to share with the world.

A video blog is the same as a standard blog in all ways except that it comes in the form of a series of video clips. This is still an interactive online diary, just one that moves. Some of these are edited and produced, others are just raw footage taken with a mobile camera or web cam and dumped into the blog.

Vlogging started about two years back and at the end of 2004 the online directory Mefeedia listed less than a hundred of them. You can visit this site and after a quick, free sign-up search through over 310,000 vlogs. If you want to learn how to vlog for free then visit freevlog.org for information on how to do it and some of the tools you can use.

The biggest difference between a blog and a vlog is the amount of work you may have to put into it. Posting an edited video versus a raw capture requires software tools and possibly some additional hardware. To do it well is an artform and not something everyone can do.

There is even a conference on the subject, Vloggercon. The better-known video site You Tube also has vlogs from such names as peanut, samui, plissken and koh.

Hard core Vloggers believe that vlogging will one day replace TV since they can get unedited footage rather than the standard talking head slant on every story.

One popular blogger, Seth Godin, recently announced that he doesn't like comments in blogs, particularly his . This has created a flood of responses from people that feel they have the right to comment on anything they like.

The reasoning is simple: too much time spent clarifying based on comments or, worse, writing based on the anticipation of comments. Another reason is that most comments tend to be insults or rants. These do not encourage any real interactivity and you are usually in a losing battle with some kind of logic-deprived fundamentalist. For the most part the old gentlemanly art of conversation gets lost in the electronic world.

One potential problem with blogs of all kinds is one of bandwidth. If the blog is pushed out or pulled in as part of an RSS feed, the volume of bits will add to the already overloaded communications architecture of the globe. Locally people are complaining that they are getting very slow responses, both here and from external networks.

Blogs do provide some anonymity, particularly if you use a service like blogger.com, so your blogs can be on things that you may not be able to share from, say, the work blog or even your home country blog. You cannot, for example, criticise the Chinese government on any local local blogging host but you could from an offshore version.

Industry news

Local foreigners have been complaining about the lack of access to any English versions of the World Cup broadcasts and I know more than one person who has signed up for the Malaysian satellite feed. Sadly the Internet feeds have either been poor or blocked from many of the English speaking countries such as the UK and Australia. This leaves Thailand as one of the few countries in the region that do not provide an English commentary feed for the tournament. Not a very positive indicator for Thailand, again.

It will not be surprising to readers that Microsoft is developing its own music and video gadget that it will use to compete with the Apple iPod. If you remember I already told you that the software giant is putting together its own iTunes equivalent service.

With its own hardware Microsoft can also control who gets to listen to what using its own built-in security. Despite its own proprietary music format, I will hazard a guess that you will be able to convert to MP3 thanks to some clever program from a 14-year-old, before the MS hardware hits the streets.

The unit is already in a demo form and being shown around to RIAA members as you read this. It is interesting that the Microsoft-branded music service appears to be in competition to other services that it has provided the software for, such as the Viacom MTV Networks service that was launched a few months ago. The technology also provides a protection base for other music subscription services, all over the planet.

Unlike some other service, Microsoft's will be primarily based around the pay per download model, with some type of subscription service also available - details are sketchy at the time of writing. Some of the early feedback appears to indicate that the new Microsoft service is better than iTunes in the sense that Microsoft is building a community-based system instead of a basic shopping store like iTunes.

It will be interesting to see how well Microsoft does in this venture, with giants like Amazon also moving into the field. Final delivery dates are unknown and I suspect somewhat flexible.

In other news, Microsoft lost the appeal on a legal case involving Office. It means that Office versions will be changing the way they communicate with Access and this will have the expected effect on existing programs and macros in products like Excel.

Security net flawed

2008-08-12T19:13:00.001-07:00

Almost 3,000 trucks and container vehicles will be deployed to shift airlines from Don Muang Airport to their new home at Suvarnabhumi, a 52-km trip that will cause sleepless nights for logistics managers.

Last week, a THAI executive had the mission mapped out even to the last truck. It will transport critical equipment that needs to stay back at Don Muang Airport until the last flight departs at dawn on September 28. But could he have overlooked one more important last minute trip - the detainees' wagon?

That's the cage on wheels assigned to transport the unfortunate individuals who turn up on Thai soil without a visa. Destined to be shipped out on the next convenient flight they languish in a very scruffy almost forgotten patch of real estate at Don Muang, well hidden from the gaze of other travellers.

Airlines are obliged to return them to the city where they boarded the flight to Thailand, but for some of the detainees that could mean a wait of up to three days.

If they are locked up, September 29, the next day they will gain a bonus sightseeing trip of the city that they hoped to visit and a chance to be the first detainees to scribble their names on the walls of the new facility at Suvarnabhumi.

I doubt if anyone has enjoyed a tour of the new airport's detainee centre, but if it is anything like the Immigration Division's long-stay quarters for unwanted aliens they might be in for a shock.

There are hints that the detainees will be even more cramped at Suvarnabhumi than at the old airport. Apparently, Airports of Thailand executives are still shaving off floor space here and there in a frantic attempt to satisfy its airline customers. In turn, airlines face the prospect that their offices will not be fitted out in time for the opening. It was described as a mad scramble, partly blamed on late leases issued by the AoT and airline head offices plainly not believing the airport's D-day call. A trip down the Internet's blog lane unveils an interesting view from some of the 4,000 passengers who joined the July 29 flights. Tap in "Suvarnabhumi airport blog" in the Google search and take your pick.

One blogger, a journalist working for the respected publication Flight International, dedicated his travelogue to the search for a toilet in concourses A and B. It warns the AoT of impending chaos as aging males and those who tipple too much ale for their good dash down the seemingly endless concourses to a find a suitable place to relieve themselves. You could be forgiven for not noticing the small signs pointing to the toilets, but not the long queue of males hopping from one foot to the other in sheer desperation.

For reasons not too difficult to fathom, designers skimped on toilet floor space giving the valuable square metres to essential shopping areas. Personally I blame the International Air Transport Association for this as its CEO spent almost decade preaching to airports to get into the shopping mall business to give member airlines a break on landing fees. Something had to go.

A far more interesting blog was supplied by a passenger who meticulously swept through the entire building recording every nook and cranny on video. He placed the various clips on his blog site with observations of a dedicated cameraman who obviously enjoyed identifying every detail down to the nuts and bolts that hold this airport together.

Of course, the footage had its tedious moments when he panned across the ceiling in slow motion providing a thorough pictorial of steel struts and dust covered glass panels.

One clip sported the headline "Shocking." Now just where had the blogger's video camera ended up this time? At first I thought he had sneaked up on a sex romp in the back stairs of the passenger terminal.

No, the cameraman had stepped through an open fire escape door and descended to the ramp, airside, where the One-Two-Go 747 was parked at a jet bridge. The camera panned the scene with some acceptable shots of tarmac, aircraft wheels and the mechanics supervising the jet bridge.

"I am not supposed to be here," he wrote in the caption. "I just walked from the passenger terminal to a parked aircraft and not a single person challenged me."

To ensure there was no mistake he strolled up to a gentleman wearing an AoT badge and asked him politely to take some shots of him standing near the aircraft. The executive obliged with a smile. They exchanged some small talk and the cameraman returned back up the stairs to the concourse.

We will not need an International Civil Aviation Organisation report to tell us what the blogger's video illustrates so plainly. If that was the best security the airport has on offer on a day when the prime minister was on a happy walkabout then it is back to the drawing board or the training lab. But I have noticed on many occasions that "farang" visitors can often stroll past security possibly because the guard is not sure if he should shout "hey you" or just trip the intruder up with is truncheon.

You actually guess what they are thinking. "Here comes a headache, look the other way."

Last week's foiled terrorist plot in the UK underscores yet again the almost impossible security task facing both airports and airlines. It comes at a time when the AoT management is already struggling to test Suvarnabhumi Airport's security systems and bring them up to at least Don Muang's standard by the opening deadline.

Not an impossible task, but certainly one that has not been made easier by the prime minister's insistence that the airport open before national elections take place.

Airlines already employ additional security at Don Muang Airport usually out-sourced to companies that are certified by the AoT. Apparently, only two companies have gained certification for Suvarnabhumi Airport, although there are several others that are bidding for airline contracts, hoping that they can gain certification before the deadline.

While basic security is provided by the AoT, individual airlines decide to hire their own to be on hand at the check-in counter, gate, and baggage transfer points and at the aircraft itself.

This additional cost adds to the overall bill to set up shop at Suvarnabhumi Airport. Landing fees will also increase from day one as well as passenger fee, up from Bt500 to 700.

AoT is tempting fate with these kind of increases at a time when it will certainly be asking passengers and airline customers to be patient during months of inevitable teething problems.

A more sensible and less greedy approach would have scheduled increases once all the problems were ironed out possibly by December. AoT is not very customer friendly and this is reflected in the constant barrage of negative media, no matter how sweetly AoT executives smile at press conferences.

Blog deal

2008-08-12T13:12:00.001-07:00

Sany Group,a Chinese heavy machine manufacturer, has made headlines in recent days. But the attention didn't come from a press release or interview; it came from a blog.

Earlier this kJune, Xiang Wenbo,excutive president of Sany, published a series of articles on his Internet dairy, or blog, saying the company aims to pay 30 per cent more than the US private equity frim Carlyle Group to buy its rival Xugong Group Construction Machinery Co Ltd.

Xiang's blog became a hot topic across China. Many industrial insiders are wondering why a private company like Sany is joining the take-over battle for Xugong, China's largest construction machinery manufacturer.

Technical improvement

As Xiang has said on the blog, Sany aims to become the leader in China's construction market.

The company has set a lot of records in the industry.

In 1994 it became the first manufacturer in China to produce a high-pressure concrete conveying pump with large conveying capacity.

In 1998,at Saige Square of Shenzhen it set up a world record,300.8-metre-high truck mounted concrete pump for steel-structured buildings.

Now, sany's concrete pump is the most popular product in the market,and accounts for abount 40 per cent of domestic sales.

The company entered the engineering machinery manufacturing field in an all-round way,with products for machinery building, road building and hoist machinery. Its products fit into eight categories with more than 50 kinds of specifications.

"When we embarked on engineering machinery we found that almost all the famous brands in the market came form foreign countries," says He Zhenlin,vice president fo Sany. "In order ot compete with them we began to build our own famous brand."

At that time most Chinese engineering machinery makers were still using outdated technology. So from the beginning Sany decided to build its brand through improving technology, He says.

Based in Central China's Hunan Province,the company has established offices or engineering plants in many developed countries such as the United States, Germany and Japan,so sa to learn the most advance technology. It is planning to build an office in Hong Kong in order to keep the quality and price of crucial units and components in line with international standards.

Besides these steps, the company has made deals with foreign companies. It's working with a US company to develop road rollers. It will also work with Indian companies to develop pavers.

"Thchnology is always our focus. The investment on technical research and development has achieved double-digit growth in recent years," says He, who declined ot state figures.

"The investment is also used in technical co-operation and exchange with domestic universtities," He says. "For example,we developed the intellingent road roller jointly with Chang An University.

The take-over issue

Despite its successes, Xiang's blog has drawn the most media attention for the company.

Part of this is due to the importance of the Xugong deal.

Xugong is owned by Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group(XCMG),China's largest construction machinery company. The purchaser,the US Carlyle Group, is one of the largest private equity firms in the world.

Last October,the Carlyle Group agreed to buy 85 per cent f Xugong for US$375 million. the deal is still pending, however, and is in the hands of the central goverment.

It is the biggest-ever offer by a foreign investor for a majority stake in a leading State-owned company in China. It also sparked a hot debate, with some analysts saying it is not good for the government to sell such an important company ot foreigners.

Meanwhile,many of them don't believe Sany has the capability to take over Xugong. Some anlysts speculate Xiang's blogging was done deliberately to draw media attention and get people on their side.

"I don't think Sany can take us over now according to its capability," says Wang Yansong, vice president of XCMG.

Sany Corp,the listed subsidiary of the group,had a 216 million yuan (US$316 million),according to its annual report.

Vice President He Zhenlin admits growth slowed down last year,but says that's natural for a company that has experienced quick development for years.

"Many insiders suspect we can't afford the price that we bid," He says."I cna assure them there is no need to worry about the money." He declined to comment further on the bid.

Meanwhile, Xiang keeps writing. He says Sany's aim it to protect China's construction machinery industry.

Mixed opinions after a decade of blogging

2008-08-12T07:13:00.001-07:00

'Check this out. Amazing!" It took just a brief sentence, and after those four words a revolution followed.

The first entry on Scripting News effectively ushered in the first blog 10 years ago. In the intervening years these online diaries have been touted as the future of media, labelled "pathetic drivel", and caused court cases, prison sentences and international incidents. But love them or loathe them, bloggers around the world have ensured incredible growth for the medium. Latest figures indicate an estimated 70 million blogs in existence, with around 1.5 million posts being written every day.

Scripting News, written by the prickly New Yorker Dave Winer, began with a whimper rather than a bang: his first entries were little more than a list of websites he had visited that day. But despite its lacklustre launch, the site became one of a small coterie of online destinations that began the revolution.

The word blog was not officially coined until two years later, but over the past week bloggers have gathered around the Web to celebrate this ad-hoc anniversary.

"Try to imagine the breadth of changes they brought to the Web," said Anil Dash, an early blogger who now works for the software company Six Apart.

"Blogging has gone from an unnamed or even nebulous concept to helping form a nascent community, and then to the fundamental evolution of the social web."

The hobby started to become increasingly popular thanks to the Blogger.com website, founded in 1999, gaining further momentum after the September 11 attacks. "We're seeing about 120,000 new weblogs being created worldwide each day," said Dave Sifry, the chief executive of the blog monitoring site Technorati. "That's about 1.4 blogs created every second."

Technorati's figures suggest that the medium is dominated by Japanese and English-speaking people, who contribute around two-thirds of all posts on the Web. Most sites are read by a tiny group of friends and family, acting like public noticeboards, but some have grabbed headlines and helped build careers for their authors.

Many writers - some of them anonymous - have signed lucrative book deals on the back of their blog's success, and others have become minor celebrities.

Every subject from farming to finance has bloggers writing about it in their spare time. Businesses are using the medium to reach out to customers, while news organisations, including the Guardian, now run stables of blogs to try to bring readers into closer contact with their journalists. There are also significant minorities blogging in politically repressive countries such as Iran and China, which has led many to hail blogs as a powerful force for challenging the establishment.

"Blogging and other kinds of conversational media are the early tools of a truly read-write Web," said Dan Gillmor, author of citizen journalism bible "We The Media". "They've helped turn media consumers into creators, and creators into collaborators - a shift whose impact we're just beginning to feel, much less understand."

In China, 50 bloggers and "cyber-dissidents" have been imprisoned in the past eight years, and most recently a man known as Kareem Amer was imprisoned for three years in Egypt for insulting Islam and the country's president, Hosni Mubarak, on his blog.

Not everyone believes the influence of blogging will be long lasting. Andrew Keen, a former dotcom entrepreneur and the author of the forthcoming book "Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture", says that though it is enticing to believe that online diaries are empowering, the hype is dangerous.

"It's seductive in the sense that it convinces people to think they have more to say and are more interesting than they really are," he said. "The real issue is whether it adds any more to our culture. Most of it is just so transient and ephemeral."

The rise of the blog also triggered the explosion of other sites on which ordinary people share their experiences, from social networks such as MySpace and Facebook to the video-sharing website YouTube. Keen says this "digital narcissism" is spurred on in large part by the Internet's overemphasis of a libertarian political outlook, and a tendency to make individuals talk to themselves about themselves.

But he admits that there have also been some important contributions.

"Not every blogger is a narcissist who has nothing to say. In particular there are people in China and Iraq who are blogging - and that is very brave," he said.

"But generally I don't see a social benefit. It's just a great vehicle for next-generation media personalities. Why do I want to know what some guy sitting on the west coast of America thinks about Iraq? Would you pay to listen to this person?"

Google buys blog distributor FeedBurner

2008-08-11T19:13:00.000-07:00

Adding another potentially lucrative channel to its prosperous advertising network, Internet search leader Google Inc. on Friday announced its acquisition of FeedBurner Inc., a service focused on making money from the steady stream of information flowing from blogs, podcasts and traditional news sites.

Financial terms of the long-rumored deal weren't disclosed -- an indication that the acquisition price wasn't large enough to dent Google's wallet, which is bulging with more than $11 billion in cash. Previous reports about Google's plans to buy FeedBurner pegged the sales price at about $100 million.

Google shares gained $2.49 to close at $500.40 Friday.

With just 30 employees, privately held FeedBurner had been subsisting on $10 million in venture capital raised since its inception four years ago. Google will allow FeedBurner to remain based in its current Chicago headquarters, but hasn't made a decision on whether the brand will be retained.

Although FeedBurner is a small company, the buzz about its service has been steadily building as it helped distribute ads through the rapidly expanding universe of bloggers, podcasters and other sites that send out headlines and links through Really Simple Syndication, or RSS.

More than 431,000 Web publishers currently belong to FeedBurner's network and the company says it delivers about 67 million feeds to its subscribers each day.

That kind of volume lured Google, which is aggressively looking for other marketing opportunities to build upon its success delivering text-based ad links alongside its search results and other more standard content on the Web. The formula accounted for most of Google's $3.1 billion profit last year.

Google recently has been experimenting with video ads on some of its partners' sites and its YouTube.com subsidiary and hopes to create a platform for distributing other types of visual ads with its planned $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick Inc. Federal antitrust regulators are taking a hard look at that deal to make sure it doesn't give Google too much power over Internet advertising market.

Executive blogs and 'social media'

2008-08-11T07:13:00.001-07:00

The development of social media has removed the distinction between journalist and audience. The internet has become the vast equivalent to a magazine's letters pages, with an audience potential beyond virtually any media that has come before it. This has created a "react or die" situation for organisations in terms of their communications strategies.

In the world before this one, accusations, criticisms or praise would make their way into the hands of concerned media, where, pending a hierarchy of editorial approvals, they would make their way onto pages or screens or airwaves for the public to receive. Now we live in a world where information or opinion goes directly to a global, open-access publication.

What this means for corporate communications is that praise or criticism, secret or damaging information can appear virtually out of nowhere and be common knowledge in a matter of hours. The stark reality of this is that there is virtually nothing that can be done about it. And that's not the only side of it: the public is now just a few keystrokes away, and companies are ignoring this access at their peril.

So how do corporations or other organisations protect themselves in a world where everyone has access to the media? How do companies benefit from this vast resource of public interaction? Well, the full answer to that is still being acted out online, but one of the key actions that has appeared is an immersive approach: the savviest corporations are out blogging themselves.

One of the more talked-about examples of this came from General Motors. GM introduced its FastLane blog at the beginning of 2005, written by vice-chairman Bob Lutz. The blog had three communications objectives:

- To develop two-way communication between GM and its customers, including unfiltered feedback from customers.

- To increase web traffic.

- Help GM overcome its image of being an out-of-touch, older company.

As well, way back in 2005, blogs were just beginning to be used by corporations, so creating the auto industry's first executive blog positioned GM as a technology leader.

While there was a strong drive to use the blog to promote new products - on the blog Mr Lutz and other executives challenged readers to test-drive GM's new lineup of cars and trucks - this wasn't the whole story. The blog was supported with posts and podcasts from many GM executives.

Mr Lutz still contributed at least half of the posts. And it was though his postings, most notably discussing how the company could rescue its boring vehicle interiors, that the blog really progressed and set a precedent for this new, open form of communication.

The response to the blog, and to the fact that the world's largest automaker had opened this public dialogue, was very strong and largely positive. The blog has attracted millions of visitors and thousands of posts from the public. At one point, more than 500 other blogs had referenced FastLane.

Off-line media were quick to take notice as well. Positive coverage came through in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, U.S. News, Financial Times, BusinessWeek, and USA Today, among others. This was largely due to the fact that while GM was leading the way in this type of communication, the company's more marketing-oriented key messages made it through nonetheless.

More importantly, this active development of an online presence undoubtedly helped to stem the flow of criticism or negative online publicity. By getting involved in social media actively, GM was able not only to reach the public directly, it became a source of information in the world of social media, as evidenced by the large number of other blogs making reference to FastLane.

Online Chain Effect - Blog Era

2008-08-10T19:13:00.000-07:00

While many businesses in Thailand are now gearing up to take advantage of new opportunities presented by the Internet, others are struggling to make sense of it and view it as a looming threat.

Whatever the business - be it media, travel or retailing - the Internet is changing the rules

Public relations specialist DC Consultants recently bought representatives from traditional media, online media, web hosts and an airline together to talk about how the rise of the Internet has affected them.

Kowit Sanandang, digital media director of the BKK Post, explained how Rupert Murdoch ceased his attachment to print media a few years ago. The reason was that he saw how his daughter had stopped reading traditional newspapers and was consuming all her news via her PC. Murdoch called together all his editors and told them, "That's it. We're going online!"

Since then, Murdoch has invested billions into building up an online presence. One of his key investments was in the MySpace social networking portal. Today, MySpace has 100 million users, a figure that no print media can hope to match.

Murdoch spent 600 million dollars to buy MySpace, but in one year he broke even in his investment with a deal with Google.

More recently, he was trying to purchase Dow Jones Newswire, the owner of The Wall Street Journal and the Asian Wall Street Journal. But rather than going back into print, he wanted the WSJ because it had successfully moved into the digital age - half of its revenue now comes from the online edition.

Kowit also said that Lord Roy Thomson, a former owner of the BKK Post, has today sold off most of its newspapers and was trying to buy Reuters, which makes most of its money online by selling financial information.

However, while eyeballs are going from print to online, advertising is not following at the same pace.

"The trend is from print to Internet to mobile," Kowit explained. "We set up Post Digital to explore the Internet, SMS text messaging and other online paid-for services and the BKK Post was the first Thai newspaper to offer an electronic edition," he said.

"Newspapers have a deadline. But online media does not have a deadline, only story births. If any of my staff mention the word deadline, I will fire them," the former editor of the BKK Post joked.

Today, the BKK Post in conjunction with Canada-based Newspapers Direct offers an online version at the same time as printed version This version can automatically be searched, read and translated into 10 different languages.

"Online versus media. It's all about power. It's about the power of the editors and those in the newsroom. In the past, it was a one-way street to get news out to the public. But today, the power of the editors is eroding," he said, citing the emergence of citizen journalist as one of the reasons.

Many news organisations worldwide have embraced citizen journalists, who have proven to be very useful in helping their news coverage.

Dr Kanokwan Wongwatanasin, chairperson of web hosting firm ISSP, explained how 2007 is finally the year the online population in Thailand has reached a critical mass.

It took radio 38 years before it reached a mass of 50 million users, 13 years for television, 10 years for cable and just five years for the Internet. Last year, ISSP estimated that there were seven million active Internet users, mostly in the group from 15 years up until their first job, but that demographic is expanding rapidly both ways.

The mobile market, on the other hand, is estimated at 31 million, and together the two are more than enough to do serious business today.

Dr Kanokwan said that 2004 was the year of the search engine, 05 was the year of the blog, while last year was the social network, as evidenced by sites such as MySpace, YouTube and Facebook.

"This year, the biggest thing is online video. We used to think that it was impossible, but today with broadband, anyone can broadcast," she said.

Kanokwan set her sights on 2008 and said that social mobile networking will come to Thailand, despite the lack of WiMax.

"Everyone will have a second life in cyberspace, four-year-old children will demand a notebook and people will watch TV less and less and spend more of their time reading blogs and watching online Korean dramas," she predicted.

Coca-Cola has adapted by allocating one third of its annual advertising budget to online media.

However, the change in Thailand will be muted because of the lack of 3G or WiMax. Today, many WiMax solutions promise up to 75Mbps speeds with a cell radius of up to 50 kilometres. Already in Japan and Korea, many households do not own a television and consume all their video via the PC.

"Lord Buddha said that we are all connected. I feel that is so true today," she said.

Torboon Puangmaha, CEO of popular Thai portal Sanook.com, explained how today the way the new generation works is quite different.

"I would write a memo and send email, but today's 20-30 year old graduates need something instant and they work more by instant messenger," he said.

He echoed the consensus that there was a marked shift from print to online, but noted that streaming media has blurred the boundaries of broadcast and static content even further.

"Socially, online games mean we can have friends who enjoy the same things in Japan or Korea. I came from an all-boys school and it was very, very hard for me to get to know any girls. When I did, I would have to sit in front of a telephone and hope it would ring. Today, kids can have friends from all over the world and their voice calls can follow them everywhere in the world via VoIP," he said.

For the online advertiser, the Internet can be a challenge. Since people pull only the content they want to watch, advertisers cannot force them to watch traditional advertisements. However, it also opens up new opportunities.

For instance, Pringles recently did a campaign with Sanook in which users competed for an iPod shuffle by inviting competitors to sing songs and submit a sample video clip. Other users would then vote for their favourite singer in a highly user-interactive manner in a mini reality show format.

Cathay Pacific Thailand manager Yongyuth Lujintanont explained how the airline industry has been transformed by the Internet. Today, travellers buy tickets, check in, select seats and can even print out boarding passes online. On the plane, many Cathay Pacific flights now provide Internet and while on the ground, passengers are kept informed of flight information via SMS.

First time - Bush online

2008-08-10T13:13:00.000-07:00

For the first time, U.S. President George W. Bush is having his first on-line Q&A session Wednesday when flying back home from Egypt.

Beginning 1800 GMT, Bush is answering questions submitted via whitehouse.gov on the subject of his trip to the Mideast from the Air Force One presidential jet, the White House announced in its website.

The website has a policy chatting room where senior officials regularly answer questions from anyone who can access the site.

But it is the first time Bush does it himself.

However, it is not the president who does the typing and he will let someone type down what his answer is.

The event followed another ground-breaking move that White House senior staff members blog about Bush's trip to the Mideast on the White House website.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and Counselor to the President Ed Gillespie have been posting periodic updates on whitehouse.gov in a blog called "Trip Notes from the Middle East."

The White House has not jumped into Web 2.0 as other agencies have.

It has hosted on-line chats with officials and the popular Barney Cam, which shows Bush's dog.

It also has used YouTube to post anti-drug messages. But this is the first White House blog.

Other agencies, including the Library of Congress, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and State Department began blogs last year.

Official blog for information access in Africa

2008-08-10T08:09:00.001-07:00

The Kenyan government plans to set up an official blog by September this year to facilitate better communication between the government and the public.

Information Permanent Secretary Bitange Ndemo said Thursday the government also considers the introduction of the ICT bill, which is expected to become law within the next two months, an important tool in unlocking Kenya's ICT potential.

"The blog will allow the government to respond to everyday issues being raised by the citizens," Ndemo told journalists in Nairobi.

"More and more people are turning to the internet to read, write or say whatever they want to say and if such forums were properly utilized, especially during the election period, we would not have experienced the kind of problems we had in the country at the beginning of the year."

The blog will first begin as a month-long pilot project under the information and communications ministry before being incorporated in all other ministries.

The official said the government blog would push public officials to perform better in their fields of expertise. It would also ease the current problems faced by journalists trying to gain access to credible information, especially from the government.

"It would be a huge task, but we will set it up and we would have people there to respond to queries. The good thing about the blogs is that people would be more honest," he said.

Kenyans have been discussing the possibilities of introducing more information, communication and technology policies in a country still pulled back by an array of obsolete ICT laws, despite the push to modernize the government operations.

The draft Bill has been under discussion for more than five years and is yet to become law despite the increased use of new technology in the country.

The new framework will allow the provision of multiple services under a single license unlike the current regime whereby companies have to apply for multiple licenses. Enditem

Five tech blogs you should have on your list

2008-07-24T23:39:00.000-07:00

A while back Mark Cuban, tech entrepreneur and owner of the
Dallas Mavericks basketball team, blogged about his two favourite
technology magazines - one was about the broadband marketplace while
the other was the title Communications Technology .

The thing I like most about this blog entry was that I'd never
heard of either site, and given that the recommendation came from Cuban,
who blogs at http://www.blogmaverick.com, and is himself a compelling
read, I (rightly) figured they'd be worth adding to my reading list.

Not that I needed any more reading sources - my RSS reader
(if a blog/web site doesn't offer an RSS feed these days, I simply don't
read it) has over 100 feeds and normally a backlog of articles in the
thousands. As such, I'm in the process of culling my reading list to
something of more manageable proportions. Before I do that, however, I
thought I'd offer my own recommendations. Herewith, then, are five of my
favourite tech blogs and information sources, in no particular order.

Techdirt

There are a whole bunch of players that churn out scores of
stories per day via a team of reporters, the online equivalent of the
quickly-fading IT trade press. They all tend to cover the same stories,
all reasonably well, so you really only need one of these on your list.
Some of the sites in this category include Om Malik's GigaOM, The
Register, Ars Technica and Tech Crunch. However, the one that I tend to
use most is Techdirt (http://www.techdirt.com), mainly because I find it
provides more analysis and context to its stories. The Register would be
a candidate, especially as it's not US-centric like the others, but it's
not at all friendly towards RSS readers so doesn't make the list.

O'Reilly radar.

The telco 2.0 blog.

Susan Crawford's blog.

Henry Blodget's www.alleyinsider.com.

O'Reilly radar

Many will have heard of O'Reilly through its books and
conferences and may also be aware that founder Tim O'Reilly is credited
with coining the term "Web 2.0". As you'd expect, the publishing company
has a great online presence and practices what it preaches when it comes
to social networking and blogging. While there are numerous blogs
available on its site, the one I turn to most is its Radar blog (found
at radar.oreilly.com), which has a range of contributors and is
especially strong on its coverage of Web 2.0, social networking themes
and emerging technologies. In their own words, "we draw from the wisdom
of the alpha geeks in our midst, paying attention to what's interesting
to them, amplifying these weak signals, and seeing where they fit into
the innovation ecology."

Telco 2.0

If you want insights into future telco business models, then
go no further than the Telco 2.0 blog (http://www.telco2.net/blog),
which is produced by research and analysis firm STL Partners. Their
Telco 2.0 initiative aims to look at how the telecom industry can make
money in an IP world and includes regular brainstorming sessions and
conferences around the same theme. While there are some obvious plugs
for the conferences and research products, there's also a lot of good
information and tidbits from their research results as well as
commentary on telco news. Incidentally, I came across this site thanks
to the Telepocalypse.net blog of Martin Geddes, who is now part of STL
Partners. While Telepocalypse is not updated as often as it was in the
past, it's still worth a read.

Scrawford.net

If policy and regulatory matters matter, then try Susan
Crawford's blog at scrawford.net. Crawford is on the ICANN board of
directors and also teaches Internet and communications law at Yale Law
School. Typical topics on the Crawford beat include an in-depth look at
the 700MHz spectrum auctions in the US; discussions around network
neutrality; goings-on at ICANN and the implications of
filtering/blocking. It's telecom regulatory issues through the rigorous
mind of a legal practitioner.

Silicon Alley Insider Remember Henry Blodget? He was the
high-flying securities analyst at Merrill Lynch during the heady days
before the dot-com crash who later was charged with securities fraud
when things went pair-shaped. Whatever you think of the guy, he's
certainly abreast of what's happening in the digital world and you can
now catch up with his regular analysis at Silicon Alley Insider. Blodget
is one of the three founders of the site/blog, which was started last
year and seems to be expanding rapidly, with commentators from the likes
of Forbes and Variety added to the roster. It's a site that goes well
beyond straight news and a must-have on any high-tech reading list.
-GEOF LONG

Yahoo! succumbs to the power of Google

2008-07-24T23:36:00.001-07:00

The firm's advertising tie-up wounds Microsoft but hurts its
own future too, says John Naughton

Truly, you couldn't make it up - unless perhaps you were a
script consultant for a soap opera. Here's the plot line so far:
Microsoft, a successful but ageing computer company with a vast deposit
account, decides it needs an attractive acquisition to enable it to keep
up with the younger - Web 2.0 - generation. So it makes a generous offer
to Yahoo!, a fashionable but faltering younger company. But Yahoo!
doesn't want to be ravaged by an older corporation and embarks on all
kinds of crazy schemes to repulse its offer, including making overtures
to Google, the new boy on the block.

Microsoft is initially incredulous, then mad as hell, then
conciliatory. But Yahoo! is implacably hostile, so Microsoft retreats to
bide its time. This looks like a smart strategy, because Carl Icahn,
American capitalism's most awkward billionaire, spots an opportunity and
starts buying up Yahoo! shares with the intention of unseating the
board, installing his own stooges and selling the company to Microsoft.

Since Icahn has eaten other corporate boards for breakfast, it
would be foolish to underestimate him. Especially as he's claiming that
Yahoo!'s standoffishness has destroyed 'shareholder value'. Yahoo!'s
leadership then looks for ways to undermine his campaign and ensure a
Microsoft-free future. Since the date with Google seemed to go okay,
they reason, why not ask them for a live-in partnership? Not a
conventional marriage, you understand, but still the kind of
relationship that makes you feel good at the end of a long day in the
markets. Google may be awkward in an adolescent way, but it's fabulously
rich and successful. And it scares Microsoft to death.

Last week's episode involved Yahoo! and Google signing their
prenuptials. This allows Yahoo! to run ads supplied by Google alongside
Yahoo!'s search results and on some of its web properties in the United
States and Canada. The agreement is non-exclusive, giving Yahoo! the
ability to display paid search results from Google, other companies, and
Yahoo!'s own Panama system. The two companies also declared their
intentions to make their instant messaging systems' inter-operable', or
capable of communicating with one another.

Google went to some pains to emphasise the non-exclusive
nature of the arrangement. 'We are proud of the advertising technologies
we have built,' its blog declared, 'which show users a relevant ad
whether they are searching for a specific item or browsing the internet.
This arrangement extends those benefits to Yahoo! and its many users,
advertisers and publisher partners. We currently provide similar
services to sites like AOL and Ask.com, as well as many other partners.'

This verbiage about non-exclusivity is clearly aimed at
anti-trust regulators in Washington, who may now take a much closer
interest in Google. Thus the two partners went to great lengths to point
out that the arrangement was not a merger; that Yahoo! would continue to
operate a search engine; that Yahoo! was free to enter into
relationships with others; that the deal would neither increase Google's
share of web searches nor allow it to raise search prices for advertisers.

But this is really a smokescreen. The fact is that Yahoo! has
played groupie to Google's Mick Jagger. The extent of its desperation
was revealed in its SEC filing, which revealed that the deal included an
$83m escape clause for Google. It has a guarantee of placing at least
$83m worth of ads through Yahoo on a rolling four-month basis, or it can
walk away. As one commentator put it, 'that's a pretty tiny threshold,
considering that Yahoo's quarterly US revenues are $1.3bn. The amount
comes to about 1 per cent of Yahoo's total projected revenues for 2008.'

The SEC filing also contains this mysterious clause: 'If the
services agreement is terminated by either party within 24 months of the
effective date as a result of a change in control of Yahoo! (other than
a change in control triggered only by Microsoft), Yahoo! is required to
pay to Google the sum of $250,000,000.'

What does it all mean? The most plausible conclusion is that
Yahoo! has basically handed the search-based advertising business to
Google. Or, as TechCrunch's Michael Arrington put it: 'Yahoo!'s hatred
of Microsoft runs so deep that they were actually, in the end, willing
to destroy the future of their company just to keep it independent for a
short while longer. They've ignored the wishes of their shareholders,
employees and many now former key employees in killing that deal.'

The deal is dismal news for Microsoft, whose bid for Yahoo!
triggered this chain of events and whose chances of taking on Google in
search-based advertising are now dimmer than ever. There was no
guarantee that a Microsoft-owned Yahoo! would have become a serious
competitor for Google, but at least it would have stood a fighting
chance. Now Microsoft's best bet is to make a case to the Feds about the
dangers of a Google monopoly. Who said irony was dead?

The good Tricks Of Pinging your blog

2008-05-24T10:58:00.001-07:00

What is pinging? I will explain what pinging is how it helps your blog and what the best pinging services are. Pinging is the process of telling tracking services that a site has been updated. When a blog is pinged it essentially tells a blog tracking system that your blog has been updated. How does pinging work? Well a ping service scans regularly blogs for updates. Whenever there is a new update for a particular blog that is reported back to the pinging service’s site. You can almost think of ping services being just like search engine spiders both scan sites looking for information and both report that information back to their specific site. The difference is a ping service only reports back new blog posts.
Why is pinging useful for my blog? Pinging in effect tells people that there is a new blog posting available. Those who are loyal followers of your blog will see the ping and want to visit your blog. Those who haven’t read your blog before will see the ping and perhaps think “hey there’s a new blog I haven’t been to before I think I’ll check it out”. Pinging helps to increase your traffic because it tells people when your blog is updated. Those who visit sites with pinging services will see this information in the form of a scroll on the left or right side or top of the page. The scroll is usually in XML format and typically includes the title and URL of your blog as well as the date and time of the update. OK so now I know what pinging is. Who offers pinging? The answer is there are several pinging services available which you can use to have your blog pinged. We’ll go over some of them right now. Weblogs.com Weblogs.com is probably the most well-known pinging service. Weblogs.com monitors sites for updates and then pings whenever there is an update to report. Virtually every blog software is available to use Weblogs. Yahoo’s Blogs Another popular pinging service. This one is offered by Yahoo and has a built-in integration with movable type and other tools. One cool thing about this service is that it offers the ability to give out updates via Instant Messaging services like AOL and ICQ. It is a direct pinging service so those who sign up for subscriptions to your blog will be sent an email anytime your blog is updated.
Blogrolling.com allows its bloggers to manage their blogrolls(updates) through a web-based interface. Recently updated blogs are also highlighted on Blogrolling’s web site. Data is automatically retrieved from other sites like blogger.com and weblogs.com every 5 minutes. Often times your blog is already being pinged so you might not have to sign up for it. Search on the site first for your URL before signing it up. Technorati Available at rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping Technorati is another service that pings blogs. It gets its data from a variety of places and is definitely a site you should go to for blog pinging. These are just 4 of the many different blog pinging services available. A quick search on Yahoo or Google will reveal many other possible blog pinging services to use for your blog. So sign up for as many as possible and watch your blog traffic increase. It is best to sign up for as many as you possibly can to ensure that your blog is well-pinged. A well-pinged blog will definitely help your blog attract more visitors. Pinging tells people when your blog is updated. It is an incredibly useful and easy to sign up for service so be sure to sign your blog up for pinging! - Tery Dety
Technorati Tags: Trick, Pinging, blog

Top Secret of Increasing your Blog / Web Traffic

2008-04-07T03:56:00.000-07:00

Getting more page views is often the most important goal for Web developers. But there is more to getting page views than posting your site on search engines and writing your meta tags. There are some other things you can do to improve your chances.
1) Content
Create and maintain actual content on your Web site. If you're trying to sell something, it helps if you have articles and information about it. If you're providing information, make sure that you have more than just lists of links for your customers to browse. Having high quality content that is updated regularly will keep your customers coming back.
More: Content is King
2) Write and send a newsletter regularly
Newsletters remind your customers that your site is still there. Even if everyone who is subscribed doesn't visit every time you send, you still keep your site in their mind. Also, since it's email it's easy for your readers to send it on to their friends, thus increasing your potential customer base.
3) Post to related newsgroups
Groups like Yahoo Groups, Google Groups, or even the About forums have many topics - there is sure to be one related to your Web site. Get involved with the forum - don't just post ads, and your site will get more traffic. Be sure to include your URL in your signature.
4) Post to related mailing lists
Just like the newsgroups, you should find related lists and get involved on them. You can find lists at TopicA and List Universe.
More: HTML Mailing Lists
5) Run a contest
Contests get people interested in your site. And if you have a good prize, you'll get people excited to try to win. Be sure to include an official rules page, and you'll want to find out if there are any rules in your state our contry regarding contests For example, in Canada, there must be a skill testing question to determine the winner.
6) Invite a guest speaker to your site
If there is someone in your field who is fairly prestigious, ask them if they might come and chat with your readers. If you have a chat room, you can hold the event there, otherwise, you can hold it in a public chat room. If they don't want to chat, perhaps they would be willing to write a short note for your site. Remember it can't hurt to ask.
More: Web Based Chat Software
7) Advertise online and off
Banner ads and text links are important, but offline advertising works too. Radio ads, ads in trade journals, and so on all help to generate interest in your site.
More: Advertising for Your Site
8) Give away free items
Purchase things like pens or stress balls with your Web site name and URL on them and give them away to your customers. Perhaps you could give them something if they fill out a marketing survey. Or you could create a screen saver related to your topic and give it away to first time visitors.
9) Copy Winners
If there are sites in your topic area that already get lots of hits, visit them to see what they do that is different from your site. If it's at all possible, mimic what they do to add the same value on your site.
10) Watch your Page Views
Use your site tracking software to stay informed with what is working and what isn't. It doesn't do any good to purchase a new ad and then never determine if it actually worked.

How to Raise more Traffic on your Blog or Web Site

2008-04-07T03:45:00.000-07:00

This traffic-building strategy isn’t based on tricks or techniques that will go out of style. It’s mainly about providing genuine value and letting word of mouth do the rest. Sadly, this makes me something of a contrarian today, since I happen to disagree with much of what I’ve seen written about traffic-building elsewhere. I do virtually no marketing for this site at all. My visitors do it for me, not because I trick them into doing it but simply because they want to.
There are 10 of my suggestions for building a high traffic web site:
1. Create valuable content.
Is your content worthy of being read by millions of people? Remember that the purpose of content is to provide value to others. Do you provide genuine value, and is it the best you’re capable of providing?
When I sit down to write, I sometimes imagine myself standing on an outdoor concert stage before an audience of a million people. Then I ask myself, “What shall I say to this audience of fellow human beings?” If a million people each spend five minutes on this site, that’s nearly 10 person-years total. I do my best to make my writing worthy of this differential. I don’t always succeed, but this is the mindset that helps me create strong content.
Think about the effect you want your writing to have on people. Since I write about personal growth, I want my writing to change people for the better. I want to expand people’s thinking, to raise their consciousness, and to help them eliminate fear from their lives. If my writing doesn’t change people’s thinking, actions, or awareness, then my value isn’t being transferred well enough.
When you focus on providing real value instead of churning out disposable content, your readers will notice. And they’ll refer others to your site — in droves. I typically see at least 10 new links to my site appearing each day (mostly via trackbacks but also via vanity feeds). I’m not going out and requesting those links — other bloggers just provide them, usually because they’re commenting on something I’ve written. Many fellow bloggers have also honored StevePavlina.com with a general recommendation for the entire site, not just links to my individual blog posts. It’s wonderful to see that kind of feedback.
Strong content is universally valued. It’s hard work to create it, but in the long run it generates lots of long-term referral traffic. I’d rather write one article I’m really proud of than 25 smaller posts. It’s been my experience that the best articles I write will outperform all the forgettable little posts I’ve made. Quality is more important than quantity. Quantity without quality, however, is easier, which is one reason so many people use that strategy. Ultimately, however, the Internet already contains more quantity than any one of us can absorb in our lifetimes, but there will always be a place for good quality content that stands out from the crowd.
If you have nothing of genuine value to offer to a large audience, then you have no need of a high-traffic web site. And if there’s no need for it, you probably won’t get it. Each time you write, focus on creating the best content you can. You’ll get better as you go along, but always do your best. I’ve written some 2000–word articles and then deleted them without posting them because I didn’t feel they were good enough.
2. Create original content.
Virtually everything on this site is my own original content. I rarely post blog entries that merely link to what others are writing. It takes more effort to produce original content, but it’s my preferred long-term strategy. I have no interest in creating a personal development portal to other sites. I want this site to be a final destination, not a middleman.
Consequently, when people arrive here, they often stick around for a while. Chances are good that if you like one of my articles, you may enjoy others. This site now has hundreds of them to choose from. You can visit the articles section to read my (longer) feature articles or the log archives to see an easy-to-navigate list of all my blog entries since the site launched.
Yes, there’s a lot to read on this site, more than most people can read in a day, but there’s also a lot of value (see rule #1). Some people have told me they’ve read for many hours straight, and they leave as different people. I think anyone who reads this site for several hours straight is going to experience a shift in awareness. When you read a lot of dense, original content from a single person, it’s going to have an impact on you. And this content is written with the intention to help you grow.
Although I’m not big on competing with others, it’s hard to compete with an original content site. Anyone can start their own personal development web site, but the flavor of this site is unique simply because no one else has had the exact same experiences as me.
While I think sites that mainly post content from others have the potential to build traffic faster in the beginning, I think original content sites have an easier time keeping their traffic, which makes for a more solid, long-term foundation. Not everyone is going to like my work, but for those that do, there’s no substitute.
3. Create timeless content.
While I do occasionally write about time-bound events, the majority of my content is intended to be timeless. I’m aware that anything I write today may still be read by people even after I’m dead. People still quote Aristotle today because his ideas have timeless value, even though he’s been dead for about 2300 years. I think about how my work might influence future generations in addition to my own. What advice shall I pass on to my great grandchildren?
I tend to ignore fads and current events in my writing. Wars, natural disasters, and corrupt politicians have been with us for thousands of years. There are plenty of others who are compelled to write about those things, so I’ll leave that coverage to them.
Will the content you’re creating today still be providing real value in the year 2010? 2100? 4000?
Writing for future generations helps me cut through the fluff and stay focused on the core of my message, which is to help people grow. As long as there are people (even if our bodies are no longer strictly biological), there will be the opportunity for growth, so there’s a chance that at least some of what I’m creating today will still have relevance. And if I can write something that will be relevant to future generations, then it will certainly be relevant and meaningful today.
In terms of traffic building, timeless content connects with people at a deeper level than time-bound content. The latter is meant to be forgotten, while the former is meant to be remembered. We forget yesterday’s news, but we remember those things that have meaning to us. So I strive to write about meanings instead of happenings.
Even though we’re conditioned to believe that news and current events are important, in the grand scheme of things, most of what’s covered by the media is trivial and irrelevant. Very little of today’s news will even be remembered next week, let alone a hundred years from now. Certainly some events are important, but at least 99% of what the media covers is irrelevant fluff when viewed against the backdrop of human history.
Ignore the fluff, and focus on building something with the potential to endure. Write for your children and grandchildren.
4. Write for human beings first, computers second.
A lot has been written about the optimal strategies for strong search engine rankings in terms of posting frequency and post length. But I largely ignore that advice because I write for human beings, not computers.
I write when I have something meaningful to say, and I write as much as it takes to say it. On average I post about five times per week, but I have no set quota. I also write much longer entries than most bloggers. No one has ever accused me of being too brief. My typical blog entry is about 1500–2000 words, and some (like this one) are much longer. Many successful bloggers would recommend I write shorter entries (250–750 words) and post more frequently (20x per week), since that creates more search engine seeds for the same amount of writing. And while I agree with them that such a strategy would generate more search engine traffic, I’m not going to take their advice. To do so would interfere too much with my strategy of delivering genuine value and creating timeless content. I have no interest in cranking out small chunks of disposable content just to please a computer. Anyone can print out an article to read later if they don’t have time to read it now and if the subject is of genuine interest to them. Part of the reason I write longer articles is that even though fewer people will take the time to read them, for those that do the articles are usually much more impactful.
Because of these decisions, my search engine traffic is fairly low compared to other bloggers. Google is my #1 referrer, but it accounts for less than 1.5% of my total traffic. My traffic is extremely decentralized. The vast majority of it comes from links on thousands of other web sites and from direct requests. Ultimately, my traffic grows because people tell other people about this site, either online or offline. I’ve also done very well with social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg.com, and reddit.com because they’re based on personal recommendations. I’ve probably had about a dozen articles hit the del.icio.us popular list within the past year, definitely more than my fair share.
I prefer this traffic-building strategy because it leaves me less vulnerable to shifts in technology. I figure that Google ultimately wants to make it easy for its visitors to find valuable content, so my current strategy should be in alignment with Google’s long-term strategy. My feeling is that Google would be well-served by sending more of its traffic here. But that alignment simply arises from my focus on providing value first and foremost.
5. Know why you want a high-traffic site.
I write because my purpose in life is to help people become more conscious and aware — to grow as human beings. I don’t have a separate job or career other than this. Because my work is driven by this purpose, I have a compelling reason to build a high-traffic web site, one that aligns with my deepest personal values. More web traffic means I can have a bigger impact by reaching more people. And over the course of the next few decades, this influence has the potential to create a positive change that might alter the future direction of human civilization. Most significantly, I want to help humanity move past fear and for us to stop relating to each other through the mechanisms of fear. If I fail, I fail. But I’m not giving up no matter how tough it gets.
Those are big stakes, and it might sound like I’m exaggerating, but this is the level at which I think about my work today. Everything else I do, including building a high traffic web site, is simply a means to that end. Today I’m just planting seeds, and most of them haven’t even sprouted yet. A high traffic web site is just one of the sprouts that came about as a result of pursuing the purpose that drives me. But it is not an end in itself.
What will you do if you succeed in building a high-traffic web site? If you someday find yourself in the privileged position of being able to influence millions of people, what will you say to them? Will you honor and respect this position by using it as a channel to serve the highest good of all, or will you throw that opportunity away to pursue your own fleeting fame and fortune while feeding your audience disposable drivel?
Although I launched this web site in October 2004, I’ve been writing articles since 1999, and feedback has allowed me to understand how small slices of my writing have affected certain people in the long run. After reading something I’ve written, people have quit their jobs, started their own businesses, changed religions, and ended relationships. While some people might find this level of impact ego-gratifying, for me it intensifies my feeling of personal responsibility for my writing. I’ve seen that I’m able to have an impact on people, so I damned well better make it a good one.
This “why” is what drives me. It’s what compels me to go to my computer and write something at 3am and not stop until 10am. I get inspired often. The #1 reason I want more traffic is that it will allow me to help more people. That’s where I direct my ambition for this site, and consequently I’m extremely motivated, which certainly plays a key role in taking action.
6. Let your audience see the real you.
My life and my writing are intricately intertwined, such that it’s impossible to separate the two. When someone reads this web site, they’ll eventually come to know a great deal about me as a person. Usually this creates a skewed and inaccurate impression of who I am today because I change a lot over time — I’m not the same person I was last year — but it’s close enough. Getting to know me makes it easier for people to understand the context of what I write, which means that more value can be transferred in less time.
I’ve told many personal stories on this site, including my most painful and difficult experiences. I don’t do this to be gratuitous but rather because those stories help make a point — that no matter where you find yourself today, you always have the opportunity to grow in some small way, and no matter how small those changes are, they’re going to add up over time to create massive lifelong growth. That’s a lesson we all need to remember.
When I find ways to turn some of my darkest experiences into lessons that might help others in similar situations, it actually transforms those painful memories into joyful ones. They take on new meaning for me, and I can see that there was a positive reason I had to endure such experiences, one that ultimately serves the highest good of all. Oddly, I now find that it was my darkest times that help create the most light for others.
With respect to privacy, I don’t really care much for it. I do respect other people’s right to privacy, so when people tell me personal stories via email, I don’t turn around and re-post them to my blog. But I’m OK with being rather un-private myself. The need for privacy comes from the desire to protect the ego, which is a fear-driven desire, and fear is something I just don’t need in my life. My attitude is that it’s perfectly OK to fail or to be rejected publicly. Trying to appear perfect is nothing but a house of cards that will eventually collapse.
I think allowing people to know the real me makes it possible to build a relationship with my audience that’s based on intimacy and friendship. I dislike seeing people putting me on too much of a pedestal and using labels like “guru” or “overachiever.” Such labels create distance which makes communication harder. They emphasize our differences instead of our similarities. Communication between equals — between friends — is more effective.
More genuine communication means better connections with your audience, which means more repeat traffic and more referral traffic. This isn’t a manipulative game though, and excessive or overly dramatic self-disclosure for the purpose of linkbaiting will only backfire. Your reasons for storytelling must be to benefit your audience. The traffic benefits are a positive side effect.
7. Write what is true for you, and learn to live with the consequences.
If the stuff I’ve written on this site means I’ll never be able to run for a political office, I can live with that. I’m willing to write what is true for me, even if it goes against my social conditioning. Being honest is more important to me than being popular. But the irony is that because bold honesty is so rare among civilized humans, in the long run this may be the best traffic-building strategy of all.
People often warn me not to write things that might alienate a portion of my visitors. But somehow I keep doing the opposite and seeing traffic go up, not down. I don’t treat any subjects as taboo or sacred if they’re relevant to personal growth, and that includes diet and religion. It’s no secret that I’m a vegan ex-Catholic. Do I alienate people when I say that torturing and killing defenseless animals for food is wrong? Perhaps. But truth is truth. I happen to think it’s a bad idea to feed cows cement dust and bovine growth hormone, to pack live chickens into warehouses where the ammonia from their feces is strong enough to burn their skin off, and to feed 70% of our grain to livestock while tens of thousands of people die of hunger each day. I also think it’s a bad idea to pay people to perform these actions on my behalf. It really doesn’t matter to me that 999 people out of 1000 disagree with me. Your disagreement with me doesn’t change what went into producing your burger. It’s still a diseased, tortured, chemical-injected cow, one that was doomed to a very sad life because of a decision you made. And you’re still responsible for your role in that cow’s suffering whether you like it or not.
That last paragraph is a good example of the kind of stuff I write that makes people want to put me in a cage, inject me with hormones, and feed me cement dust. It wouldn’t surprise me terribly if that ends up being my fate.
I write what is true for me, regardless of public opinion. Sometimes I’m in the majority; sometimes I’m not. I’m fully aware that some of my opinions are unpopular, and I’m absolutely fine with that. What I’m not fine with is putting truth to a vote.
I take the time to form my own opinions instead of simply regurgitating what I was taught as a child. And I’m also well aware that there are people spending billions of dollars to make you think that a burger is not a very sad, diseased, tortured, chemical-injected cow. But I’m going to keep writing to help you remain aware of things like that, even though you may hate me for it. That defensiveness eventually leads to doubt, which leads to change and growth, so it’s perfectly fine. I’m good at dealing with defensiveness.
I don’t worry too much about hurting people’s feelings. Hurt feelings are a step in the right direction for many people. If I’m able to offend you so easily, to me that means you already recognize some truth in what I’ve written, but you aren’t ready to face it consciously yet. If you read something from me that provokes an emotional reaction, then a seed has already been planted. In other words, it’s already too late for you.
My goal isn’t to convince anyone of anything in particular. I’m not an animal rights activist, and I don’t have a religion to promote. My goal is to awaken people to living more consciously. This requires raising people’s awareness across all facets of their lives, so they can make the big decisions for themselves. It requires breaking social conditioning and replacing it with conscious awareness and intention. That’s a big job, but someone has to do it. And if I don’t do it, then I have to admit I’m just part of the problem like all the other hibernating bears.
A lot has been written about the importance of transparency in blogging, and truth is the best transparency of all. Truth creates trust, and trust builds traffic. No games, no gimmicks… just plain old brutal honesty. Even the people that say they hate you will still come back, and eventually those people will become your most ardent supporters. Even if they don’t agree with you, they’ll learn they can trust you and that your intentions are honorable, and trust is more important than agreement.
8. Treat your visitors like real human beings.
Even though I’m sitting at my computer writing this, seemingly alone, I know you’re a real human being reading it on the other end. My apologies to sentient androids who may be reading this years after it’s been written. You aren’t just a number in my web stats. Despite the technology involved and the time-space differential between my writing and your reading, there’s still a human-to-human connection between us that transcends time and space. And that connection matters to me. I feel its presence whenever I do my best writing.
While I imagine being on a stage in front of a million people when deciding which topic to write about, once I actually get going, I imagine having a one-on-one conversation with a friend. This means revealing some of myself and being honest, as the last two points already addressed, but it also means genuinely caring about you as a person. And that’s perhaps one of the best kept secrets of my success as a blogger. I actually care about helping you grow. I want you to become more conscious and aware. I want you to experience less fear in your life. And my concern for your well-being isn’t conditional upon you liking me.
I happen to think we have a lot more similarities than differences. Based on what I know about myself, I imagine you’d like your life to be better tomorrow than it was yesterday. I imagine you’d like to be happier, more fulfilled, and more at peace with yourself. I also imagine you’re living below your potential and could use some help overcoming fear and solving certain problems to enable you to tap more of that potential. And finally, I imagine you wouldn’t believe me if I said you can have it all for only $19.95 (as well you shouldn’t).
The reason I work so hard to create original content and then give it away for free is because I want to help as many people as possible. I genuinely care what happens to this beautiful planet and to the people who live here. It’s possible I actually value your life even more than you do. This is the kind of motivation that never wanes. I sometimes lose sight of it when I get caught up in the details, but the connection is always there, waiting for me to tap into it whenever I want. This provides me with a wellspring of creative ideas and an inexhaustible passion for contribution.
I don’t need to play stupid marketing and sales games with you. There’s nothing for you to buy here. Even if I add some products in the future, I’m not going to try to manipulate you into buying something you don’t need with a slew of false promises. I might make more money in the short-term by doing that, but it would sever our genuine connection, create a wall between us, and reduce the level of impact I’m able to have. Ultimately, that approach would lead to failure for me, at least in terms of how I define success. I can’t help you grow if I violate your trust.
I cannot force anyone to grow who doesn’t want to. But there are a lot of people on this planet who are now ready to let go of low-awareness living and start pushing themselves to the next level of human existence. And they need help to get there because it’s a difficult journey, and there are strong forces working against it.
Real human beings helping real human beings is ultimately what traffic growth is all about. That’s precisely what a link or a referral is. If you align yourself with the intention of genuinely helping people because you care, you’ll soon find yourself with an abundance of traffic.
9. Keep money in its proper place.
Money is important. Obviously I have bills to pay. Money pays for my computer, my high-speed internet connection, my house, and my food. I just returned yesterday from a vacation that money paid for. My wife and I had a great time partly because we didn’t have to worry about money at all on the trip. We did everything we wanted to do without being hampered by a lack of funds. And this web site paid for it.
It’s important that I generate some money from my work, but it’s not necessary that I extract every possible dollar. In fact, relative to its traffic levels, I’m seriously under-monetizing this site. But money is only a means to an end, not an end in itself. Making a positive contribution to the world is a lot more important to me than money. Money can be useful in achieving this objective, but human relationships are far more important. The funny thing is that the less I rely on money, the more of it I seem to have.
I’m already making more money than I need to pay my bills, and my income from this site keeps going up each month. If I simply keep doing what I’m doing, I’ll probably end up becoming fairly wealthy. But money is an extremely weak motivator for me. Very little of what I do today has a profit motive behind it except to the extent that money will fuel more important goals. That tends to confuse certain people because some of my decisions align with earning money, but many don’t. While I do consider myself an entrepreneur (at least it’s less isolating than “guru”), I only see money as a tool for enhancing and expanding my contribution.
While many entrepreneurs pursue money for the purpose of becoming wealthy, I chose a different route. I sought to earn money for the purpose of increasing my freedom. I don’t want to get myself stuck in a pattern of working for money, so I’m constantly turning down opportunities to make money that would restrict my freedom. For example, I don’t do any consulting or coaching. Consequently, my calendar contains very few fixed appointments. This doesn’t mean I’m idle. It just means I spend my time doing what I freely choose to do instead of what others would have me do. I require this level of flexibility to do my best work.
By paying close attention to how I earn money and not just how much I earn, I keep money in its proper place. This allows me to stay focused on my purpose without getting wrapped up in less important concerns like building a brand, closing sales, or doing phony marketing.
I dislike it when other people use one-dimensional sales and marketing tactics on me, so I avoid using these techniques on this site. I’ve sort of unplugged myself from the current capitalistic system and set up a side system of my own that I find much more congruent with conscious living. I would love for other people to have the same level of freedom I enjoy each day. I’m sure I’ll continue to improve my approach over time, but it’s working wonderfully so far. Imagine having a business with no products, no inventory, no sales, and no customers, but still generating an abundant positive cashflow.
Since the income generation is largely on autopilot, I can focus my time and energy on creating content instead of on doing marketing or trying to sell something. And being able to devote so much time to content creation without worrying how I’ll pay my bills makes it a lot easier to build high traffic.
Some business models make it very challenging to build traffic. You have to spend a lot of time and energy just on lead generation, and then maybe you try to monetize those leads by selling a product or service. It’s always an uphill struggle.
I give all my best content away for free. Word of mouth does the rest. So my traffic building strategy is more like flowing downstream. It hasn’t been a struggle for me at all. And once you have sufficient traffic, it isn’t that hard to monetize it without becoming an ogre.
We’ve all heard the expression, “Build a better mousetrap, and they’ll come.” And we’ve also heard marketing and sales people say that this is just plain wrong — you have to market and sell that mousetrap effectively too. I say they’re all wrong. My approach is the equivalent of, “Build a better mousetrap and give it away for free, and they’ll come — and they’ll bring friends too.”
10. If you forget the first nine suggestions, just focus on genuinely helping people, and the rest will take care of itself.
One thing that turns me off about typical self-help marketing is that authors and speakers often position themselves as if they’re the opposite of their audience. I’m successful and you’re not. I’m rich and you’re not. I’m fit and you’re not. You need me because something is lacking in your life, I have exactly what you lack, and if you pay me (and make me even richer and you poorer), I’ll show you how you can have it too. And if it doesn’t work for you, it just means you’re even more of an idiot than the people who provided my testimonials.
I’m sure you’ve heard this sort of nonsense many times before.
All of this I’ve-arrived-and-you-haven’t stuff is stupid. It suggests that life is about destinations and that once you’ve arrived, you’re done growing and can just relax and sip fruity drinks for the rest of your life. But there’s more to life than border crossings. If you go from single to married or from non-millionaire to millionaire, that’s fine and dandy. Crossing the border into parenthood was a big one for me. But that’s only one day of my life, and to be honest, I didn’t have much control over it except for a decision made nine-months earlier (and it seemed like a pretty attractive idea at the time). What about all those other days though?
Growing as a human being is something I work on daily. I’m deeply passionate about my own growth, so naturally I want to share this part of the journey with others. If I start marketing myself with the “I’m successful and you’re not approach,” I hope someone will come put me out of my misery, since that would mean I’m done growing and ready to die. I don’t expect to ever be done growing as long as I exist as a human being. There are always new distinctions to be made and new experiences to enjoy. And yes… plenty of mistakes to be made as well.
One of the great benefits of focusing on helping others is that it gets fear out of the way. Without fear you become free to just be yourself. You’re able to take intelligent risks and remain detached from any specific outcome because the journey is more important to you than the specific stops along the way. Personally it’s not the destinations that excite me but rather the unfolding process of discovery. I love the anticipation of wondering what lies around each new bend.
If we are to help each other, we need to be partners in the pursuit of growth, not opponents. So it makes no sense to put up fake walls between us. The ego needs walls to protect it, but if we can get past the fear-based needs of the ego, we’ll make a lot more progress.
There are plenty of things I could do with this site that would make me more money or grow traffic faster in the short-term, but I won’t do them because they’ll just put more distance between us. I’ll be on my side, you’ll be on your side, and we’ll each be slightly afraid of the other. I’ll be worried that maybe you won’t buy what I’m selling, and you’ll be worried about getting ripped off or taken advantage of. We’ll just be drinking yet another round of fear, which is exactly the opposite of what we need to grow.
One of my biggest challenges in life right now is figuring out how to help enough people switch their primary polarization from fear to love. Our emotions are an energy source for us (they drive our actions), and most of the world is still driven by fear energy. Watching TV news is a good example; we can actually feel energized by watching others suffer. Hurting animals is another example; we eat their fear for breakfast. But there’s another fuel for human consciousness, and perhaps the best way to describe it is unconditional love. This isn’t the squishy emotion of romantic love — it’s a sense of connection to everything that exists and a desire to serve the highest good of all. Unconditional love, when it becomes one’s primary fuel, cultivates fearlessness. In this state you still have the biological fight-or-flight response, but you aren’t driven by emotional worries like fear of failure or fear of rejection. You feel perfectly safe regardless of external circumstances. And when you have this feeling of unconditional safety, you’re truly free to be yourself, to embrace new experiences, and to grow at a very fast pace.
Personal growth is not a zero-sum game. If you grow as a human being, it doesn’t harm me. In fact, ultimately if all of us grow as individuals, it’s going to make this whole planet better for everyone. When enough people switch their primary polarization from fear to unconditional love, this planet will become a true paradise. That’s a good thing for all of us, one that’s more important than all the money in the world.
Perhaps you have a less ambitious goal for building web traffic than raising human consciousness and working towards world peace. That doesn’t matter. You can still make helping others your primary focus, and if you do that, you’ll find it relatively easy to build a high-traffic web site. If you align yourself with serving the highest good of all, you’ll receive plenty of help along the way, and best of all, you’ll deserve it.
Do your best to help your visitors out of genuine concern for their well-being, and they’ll help you build your traffic and even generate a nice income from it. It’s as simple as that.
Final thoughts
Building a high-traffic is incredibly difficult if you’ve never done it before. These tips really only scratch the surface of what you need to know to succeed. Since writing this article, I found an alternative suggestion for those who find it very challenging to build substantial traffic and income online.

Top ten mistakes for SEOing

2008-03-22T06:53:00.000-07:00

Most mistake for search engine optimization

Using wrong keyword for title of your site
Put high keyword density
Using the FRAMES
Using Cloaking Page
Using Too many similar doorway pages
Having too many Link Exchange in little time
Mess up with redirection
Creating Pages Containing Only Graphics
Creating Hidden Text
Using Automatic Submission Tools

Free Blog Sites Article

2008-03-15T00:04:00.000-07:00

Basic Blogging Tips for the New Blogger

A blog is an online publication of thoughts, opinions, and commentaries of the blogger. The blogger, on the other hand, is the person who maintains and posts entries in the blog. It is currently the hottest trend in online communication, as nearly everyone has read, commented on, or written a post.

An internet savvy individual may have no problem navigating the interesting and intriguing world of blogging. A cyber space novice, on the other hand, may require some steering directions. Below are some helpful tips for the new blogger in setting up their brand spankin' new territory in the world wide web.

1. What type of blog do you want

There are basically 4 blog types. One is the most basic of all blogs where only texts are posted. Another one is the photoblog, where text is combined with pictures (the blogger gives more importance to the photographs rather than his textual message). One more type is the vlog, where online videos are the main media for communication. A popular site for vloggers is YouTube.Com. Lastly, we have the podcast. The podcast is an audio blog where the blogger actually speaks and saves his entry in a downloadable format, rather than in writing down his thoughts. Or a combination of two, three or all of those types of blogs.

2. Know the parts of your blog

Don't follow other's footstep. Find your own way .You can create a new market, product or service then you can sell in online or offline. If you give quality with reliability then people will purchase your product or service.

According to my experience you will be getting approx. 0.10 - 0.15$ per click made on ads. The advertisement you will get it is called as Pay per Click Ads. It means you will get money for each and every click(s) made to that ads, the more user will click on your ads more you earn.

One way that people are making money online is by having several different income streams. This means that you do a bunch of things online that make a little bit of money, which turns out to be a reasonable amount of money when you add them all up.

Each entry customarily consists of the title, the body, and the post date. It helps your reader if they can follow a certain pattern (by title, by date, by category) in reading your blog entries. The presentation becomes much more organized and inviting to read.

3. Create a theme

Although blogging

boasts of letting loose a person's creativity, it does not hurt to establish a certain topic or niche for your blog. It may be about travel, current events, movie reviews, or whatever you may like. The important thing is to stick to your topic to assist your readers in understanding and following your blog as a whole.

Most readers prefer to search and read about a particular blog that talks about a topic that they are interested in.

4. Watch your words

Your blog is your own. You have the power to say whatever you want. However, it is important to keep in mind that publishing it online gives access to just about everybody to read it. Because of that, in cases where you are touching a sensitive or controversial topic, it is still best to exercise prudence and precaution. Be careful of what you are posting about other people and other things.

Blogging is the newest way of linking people together. With consideration and responsibility, it is not far that will be the most powerful tool in human communication.

So have fun and keep those creative juices running.

The internet has redefined how hard it is to make money. At least physically that is. You will not break a sweat building a website, putting top quality products on it, and marketing your website all over the internet.

To make money online, you obviously need certain equipment and the ability to keep it serviceable. A lot of people online do not budget for sudden mishaps or loss of service, or computer problems.

An average internet user comes around numerous Ads during his surfing. Majority of these Ads are of money-making or work at home programs. Have you ever wondered how these companies get so much money to distribute it among people?

Here are some more new blog articles...

Seven Tip for make the Great Blog

2008-03-07T09:59:00.000-08:00

1. Have a Consistent URL
The identity you create for your blog lies in the URL. Once you decide on a URL for your blog, do not ever change it. Every time you change it you need to popularize your blog all over again. Besides, the technical problem is that the search engines and articles that reference posts in your blog have links to the older URL and it can create a lot of confusion and hence lost readership. Choose your URL carefully and stick to it.

2. Choice of subject to blog about
Choose the subject of your blog with care and consideration. Your blog should mirror your passion and knowledge on the subject. Identify whether you will be able to consistently post on the subject. Some topics that are search engine friendly and that never really die out are technology blogs, product related blogs, city centric blogs and money making blogs. There is always news to give your readers and also there are a lot of points to discuss on. More challenging blogs to write are blogs on thoughts, ideas, short stories, poems. In these blogs you have to be able to provide self- driven original content whereas in the previous kind there are other websites from where you can draw inspiration and ideas.

3. High Quality Content can get hard to produce consistently
Posting quality content consistently keeps your readers engaged and makes them come back for more. In the initial days posting is easy since you will have a lot of ideas in your mind. However, delivering high quality content to your readers day after day gets tougher as time progresses and ideas dry up. You need to keep innovating and ideating constantly.

5. Technical know how is required
Lack of technical know-how can hinder you from tweaking your blog and giving it the finesse and feel that you envisaged for your blog. Serious bloggers will have to dabble with HTML, JavaScript and so on. It is this technology that can give the blog the uniqueness, user-friendliness and functionality that makes it stand out. Be prepared to invest some time in learning web technologies. Being search engine savvy can go a long way in getting the traffic that you are looking for.

6. Research, Read, Reflect
Every post is a brand new post. Don’t be surprised that you would have to regularly research on your topic, as there is always something new out there. Read what others have to say and reflect. It involves a lot of hard work, patience, persistence to read content, assimilate and formulate your own content. At times, you should be ready to dig deep within your self.

the last tip ..

7. Expect to ride an emotional roller coaster
Do not expect an easy ride when you blog. You can put in a lot of hard work and then realize that nobody is commenting on your post and on the other hand you will write a one liner and you will have the whole world talking about it. You will have days when you will be banging your head against the wall wondering what to post about and then there will be days you have so many ideas in your head that you don’t know where to start. So be ready to enjoy the ride.

Five Gold Rules to Make Impressive Blog

2008-03-07T09:53:00.000-08:00

To convince readers that you make worth blog, you need to make a first impression. Your blogging reputation may not proceed you, but there are five rules that every blogger should follow–if you want to make a great first impression and grow your audience.

Rule 1: Dress Your Blog to Impress

That free WordPress theme you’re using on your blog might be enough to impress a few readers, but if it’s the same theme used by dozens of other blogs, you’ll blend into the crowd. Just as you’d consider a new suit a great investment for impressing your date, you should consider a custom design a great investment for your blog.
When I first started MarketingPilgrim.com, I used a really bad off-the-shelf theme. Two years ago, I invested in a custom designed WordPress theme. Did it help me dress to impress? Within one month of launching the new design I doubled the number of RSS subscribers and attracted new advertisers–which more than paid for the cost of the theme.

Rule 2: Mind Your Blog Language

Blogging lends itself well to a casual attitude. What does it matter if you don’t spell-check your post? Why worry if you happen to insert an expletive here or there? Well, if you were to turn-up to your first date and subsequently cuss throughout dinner, or utter sentences such as “I is very smart,” what do you think you chances would be of getting a second date?
You should understand that the voice and style you use in your blog posts, reflects on your blogging reputation. Whether you’re hoping to land that new job, attract new advertisers, or just want to increase the number of people that link to you posts, you’ll be judged by what you say in your blog posts.

Rule 3: Always Bring a Gift

If you want to make a great first impression, bring a gift on your date. Likewise, if you want to build your reputation as blogger, you should shower your readers with gifts. Now, I don’t mean you have to give away an iPod every week–although I’ve certainly gained readers with such promotions–but you can give them ideas, tips, and insight that they can’t find anywhere else.
While it might feel unnatural to be so giving, you need look no further than ProBlogger as a great example of giving away the farm, in order to build your blogging reputation. Have you ever known Darren to hold back? Do you ever get the sense he’s not spilling all the beans? Nope, me neither. Darren’s tens of thousands of daily readers proves that having a reputation as a “giving” blogger will make you the hottest date in town!

Rule 4: Listen as Much as You Talk

Do you know what happens if you spend your entire date talking about yourself? You don’t get a second date! The same is true with your blog. Sure, your readers want to hear your advice, thoughts, and opinions, but you’ll build your reputation as a blogger by learning to listen to them.
I know what you’re thinking: “readers are free to leave their comments.” Whoopdedo! Do you actually read their comments? How about responding to them? I make a point of reading every comment left on my blog. If a reader has taken the time to share their thoughts, you might just learn something from them. Go one step further and engage them in a conversation, and you’ll build a reputation of being a great blogger.

Rule 5: Don’t Let the Flame Burn Out
What do you think would happen if you went on a dozen great dates, then didn’t phone the object of your affection for two months? Do you think they’d readily come back to you? So why would you blog consistently for a month, then not update you blog for 8 weeks?
You don’t have to be as prolific in your posting as Darren–who can?–but you should be consistent in your posting. You readers will become comfortable with the frequency of your posting. If you post once a day–or once a month–they’ll get used to that schedule. Stick to it! Nothing kills a romance faster than ignoring your amore’s phone calls, and nothing kills your blogging reputation faster than going quiet without an explanation.

New blog for Beginger

2008-03-07T09:24:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my New blog for Beginger blog.Here you will learn about new blog for beginger tips and how to find good Information.