November 2007 Archives

If you've met me this week, you may notice something's different when I speak. That's because I have an ulcer on the left side of my tongue, about 3mm wide, and it HURTS!!!

I just put salt on it and my eyes are tearing. The pain has been going on since Sunday and this has tensed up the left side of my head and neck. Now the inside of my left ear aches. And I think it's all because of that silly ulcer.

Yes, I've been nagged about not getting enough rest. So sleep, I must. I am also avoiding social events this week because I can't talk properly, I eat slowly and it hurts all the time. So don't mind me if I seem to be more antisocial than normal.

This was apparently considered a lucky omen for Croatia as they beat England in the Euro qualifiers:

Croatia rose to the occasion in their crucial Euro 2008 defeat of England - after an apparent X-rated gaffe by an English opera singer at Wembley.

Tony Henry belted out a version of the Croat anthem before the 80,000 crowd, but made a blunder at the end.

He should have sung ‘Mila kuda si planina’ (which roughly means ‘You know my dear how we love your mountains’).

But he instead sang ‘Mila kura si planina’ which can be interpreted as ‘My dear, my penis is a mountain’.

I think we're getting there.

This was our Hip-Hop contest at Far East Plaza.

I'll be pretty occupied the next few weeks as I'm covering for two colleagues, one serving the country, the other on a well-deserved honeymoon. Blogging may be sporadic while I catch up with email overload. Your patience is appreciated as I assume more responsibilities and figure things out.

Apologies to those who've asked me out for lunch/coffee; I can't promise anything now but I will carve out some time, hopefully.

Facebook status updates have become a new way of responding indirectly to friends. I just updated my status before leaving for home. Then I logged back on at home, and saw this:

Very funny, Nick ;-)

David has an update on Google happenings in Singapore. He shares these tips from Google:

4 Ways to Strengthen Your Business Online

1. Make sure people searching on Google find you easily (more info at http://adwords.google.com)
2. Use AdWords starter Edition and Business Pages (more info at http://adwords.google.com)
3. Improve your website and convert more visitors to a sale (more info at http://google.com/analytics)
4. Earn money from relevant ads on your websites (more info at http://google.com/adsense)

I love using Google Analytics (tip #3) because it offers a comprehensive range of statistics and is much more user-friendly and attractive than many other stats programs, some of which we have to pay for.

But regarding tip #1, I don’t entirely agree that we need Adwords for our websites to be more easily found. It can help, though, if you really need the push in the short run.

I don’t claim to be an uber expert on search engine marketing, but I do have strong opinions on it, so allow me to expand on this.

Before we look into purchasing search keywords, our website’s content must have substance in the first place. That involves having domain knowledge and awareness of the right target audience. The next question is whether we are speaking the right language to this audience. Terminology has to be customer-oriented and not how we, as the organisation, see things.

Next, the website content must be tagged and coded in a semantic way. Page titles and tags like h1, h2 are important. I usually make it mandatory for my vendors to use web standards and keep things semantic, though it is not easy to enforce or upkeep as pages get changed along the way. Old-school table code layouts should be avoided, unless tabular data is being displayed. CSS should be de facto standard - away with messy font tags that just bloat up the code.

Also, maybe it’s a subjective issue but I hardly ever click on the ad boxes on top or beside the actual search results. I know those links were paid for, and there must be a reason why they’re trying so hard to stand out - because they can’t make it to the top 10 or 20 list of search results. If this company has trouble getting its website onto Google’s first couple of pages, it is probably too new, has a low Pagerank, or doesn’t have enough relevant content (in which case I’d say, go back to the drawing board).

It’s probably a vicious or positive cycle, depending on how you see it. If the website was established enough, its company wouldn’t need to advertise so much - just as the top hawkers in Singapore don’t need to advertise their food because word of mouth referrals and good reviews in the press have taken care of it. They can be hard to find, but because people really want what they’re offering, they’ll travel to the other end of the island to get it. If all the advertising in the world doesn’t get you many more customers, then go back to the drawing board and improve your dish, or invent a new one.

On a similar note, I do not believe in paying when your customers can spread the good word themselves. Word of Mouth is so much more credible and effective (see this AC Nielsen report). Which would you rather end up on - a positive review in a Boing Boing post, or an ad in a side column on the same blog? If you could choose to be on TV, would you rather appear on the news itself, or the Sellavision commercial that comes right after it?

The other thing is, if you do buy keywords, be honest. I’ve heard of instances where keywords purchased are not related to the actual content, which would actually turn people off when they realise they’re not getting what they want. The advertiser either doesn’t know the product well, or is insecure and hopes to lure visitors using irrelevant keywords. This does not help build long-term relationships with your visitors.

Before you even start a marketing campaign, make sure your product is inherently good. If so, it will be easier to create buzz and sustain customers’ interest. I prefer doing this rather than spending a bomb on advertisements, most of which people today don’t believe. I can see our own campaigns heading this way, in the form of new blogs, social networks and Youtube.

Quite often, though, we have opportunities to use both paid and unpaid media and these are worth exploring. When combined they can grab customers’ attention through repeated messaging. But to me, PR lasts longer because it can be nurtured. No matter how much money you’re willing to spend at one shot, you cannot buy a long-term relationship that’s been fostered over the years. You may be able to buy attention, but it is an increasingly scarce commodity with a correspondingly lower return on invesment these days. But you cannot buy trust.

In a few campaigns, we’ve reached the stage where we no longer have to try so hard to get the news out, because our customers have been busy making the news themselves - posting comments, linking to us from fan sites, joining our online communities and uploading videos with our names on it. That is the way to go. You can’t “engage” your audience by simply having a lot of “hits” in the first month, bolstered by a massive ad campaign which will end when the money runs out. A true test is whether visitorship can be sustained, through regular, relevant content updates and, if possible, a sincere, personal touch in any possible way.

Easier said than done, of course, but not impossible. It’s certainly not the easy way out. Some will falter and stick to big-bang advertising rather than building a long-term relationship with customers, which is more labour-intensive and less glamorous. But for those who care, it is certainly the best approach.

I picked up Barack Obama’s book, Dreams From My Father, and started reading it this evening. The story of how a smart Kenyan man met a shy American girl in the University of Hawaii is in itself remarkable, considering it was not the most tolerant of times. I came to a section where Obama, as a child, returned from Indonesia (where his stepfather lived) and had trouble fitting in at his new American school. Here is an excerpt to share with you.

While waiting outside school on his first day, Barack met a Chinese boy called Frederick. Up to this point, he calls himself ‘Barry’…

We sat at a table with four other children, and Miss Hefty, an energetic middle-aged woman with short gray hair, took attendance. When she read my full name, I heard titters break across the room. Frederick leaned over to me.

“I thought your name was Barry.”

“Would you prefer if we called you Barry?” Miss Hefty asked. “Barack is such a beautiful name. Your grandfather tells me your father is Kenyan. I used to live in Kenya, you know. Teaching children just your age. It’s such a magnificent country. Do you know what tribe your father is from?”

Her question brought on more giggles, and I remained speechless for a moment. When I finally said “Luo”, a sandy-haired boy behind me repeated the word in a loud hoot, like the sound of a monkey. The children could no longer contain themselves, and it took a stern reprimand from Miss Hefty before the class would settle down and we could mercifully move on to the next person in the list.

I spent the rest of the day in a daze. A redheaded girl asked to touch my hair and seemed hurt whe I refused. A ruddy-faced boy asked me if my father ate people. When I got home, Gramps was in the middle of preparing dinner.

“So how was it? Isn’t it terrific that Miss Hefty used to live in Kenya? Makes the first day a little easier, I’ll bet.”

I went into my room and closed the door.

Masterful storytelling that makes me want to read on.

This chapter has a happy ending. Later on, his Kenyan father visits him and turns the situation around by showing up in class and telling all the students about the history of Kenya and how its people longed to break free from colonial rule. After that, the kids who used to tease Barack treat him with more respect.

Though I am not a massive Radiohead fan, I applaud the band for taking music to the masses in a new way. As you may have heard, their latest album, In Rainbows, is available for free download. If you feel they deserve something, you can decide how much to pay them.

While there's been much dispute between Radiohead and Comscore as to exactly what proportion of users have paid for the album so far, I decided to encourage this new strategy by adding myself to the ranks of those who did pay.

I decided on 5 quid because I felt it should be cheaper than buying the actual CD. Radiohead would have saved on production and distribution costs. They also don't need to pay a record company as the middleman, though they did enlist the services of an online agent to handle transactons.

In time, Radiohead will collate the results from their own website, and the world will learn whether such a business model is viable. My guess is that big Radiohead fans will pay them something. When this happens, other big acts may do the same. It's also the novelty of it all. I probably wouldn't have bought the CD version but I was curious enough to purchase the album this way.

If my hunch is right and Radiohead make a princely profit, this may very well change the landscape of commercial music. Perhaps there really is an 'alternative' pot of gold at the end of this Rainbow.

A while back, I rekindled my experiment with having a store on Cafepress.com, and designed some merchandise for my own store. I recalled Ivan being called a 'Thinking Man' by a journalist (?) last year, thus I decided to design the 'Thinking Cap'.

This one's for you, Ivan!

Last October, someone bought a Thinking Cap but then returned it. I just received an email from Cafepress, informing me that someone else has just purchased the Thinking Cap! Fingers crossed that this time the sale will go through!

I'm only asking for a US$1 commission, which ain't that hot, what with the falling US dollar. But still, it's exciting to see a sale anyway.

You could say it's a feather in my cap.

I have been out of touch with happenings in the Blogosphere lately, but I'd like to send my rather belated congratulations to Rinaz for winning the award for Best Asian Blog 2007! Sorry Rinaz, I meant to give you my vote but was busy and forgot, and anyway it turns out you didn't need my help :-P

If you some of the nastier comments on Tomorrow.sg about Rinaz winning, you'd wonder whether the criteria for having the best weblog involves the blogger being super famous in Singapore. I certainly hope not. That would encourage local bloggers to become attention-seeking narcissicists, only interested in creating sensational news rather than writing anything of substance.

Anyway, among the Second Life Singapore and Ping communities, Rinaz is very well-known. I first knew of Rinaz via a trackback she sent me, and later on we met in real life for a gathering on Second Life (sounds ironic doesn't it?). She turned out to be as fun in person as she was as an Avatar.

And Rinaz writes well and about interesting things, which I feel are important elements of a good blog. I was addicted to reading her story on how she travelled to a distant land to meet her dearest. How romantic! I haven't felt so addicted to reading most other things online or offline.

So Rinaz, here's my congratulations (also via Trackback, heheh).

I was pleased to read about another step forward for the Creative Commons:

Carl Malamud's nonprofit organization Public.Resource.Org and the legal research company Fastcase today announced an agreement that will allow Public.Resource.Org to publish 1.8 million pages of federal case law in the public domain. The archive, which will become available sometime in 2008, will include all U.S. courts of appeals decisions since 1950 and all Supreme Court decisions since 1754... The cases will be marked with a new Creative Commons mark -- CC-Ø -- that signals that there are no copyrights or other related rights attached to the content.

I recall how we law students used to scramble for the same case books on our reading list as our library only had a few copies of each year. We would also hog the library computers downloading journals. At the time, most serious texts were only available via the library, not the Internet. How times have changed in ten years. At least American case law will be easier to access now.*

I also remember how, before I even heard of the name 'Creative Commons', I used to get excited over works that had fallen into the public domain. Over a slow dialup modem in my dorm room, I would trawl the Internet and collect links to texts written by authors long deceased. I think the enthusiasm was due to my interest in literature (as a former Arts student) combined with my growing interest in Intellectual Property.

While revisiting older versions of my website at Archive.org, I dug up an article I wrote, as a law student, on the public domain. I will share it with you in another post soon.

* - digression. I sense a business opportunity here. While companies that are currently selling access to American case law may be starting to sweat at the news, there will be a new demand: for services which help lawyers and students process the information. Say, for instance, you're preparing for a case and you've got a number of precedents to cite. In addition you'd like to find out which of the older cases were cited in newer cases, and whether they were considered by the judges as valid.

It will be complex and laborious but a system that can help bookmark or keep track of selected cases and show the link between them all, would be helpful. Also, ranking may be required. You may wish to cite newer cases as they may have more relevance. As relevant new cases arrive (tagged by keywords), lawyers can be notified - say, via an automated email or by RSS. A company that can tie all these things together can sell this online service based on a subscription model, to law firms. I sense Fastcase does these things at a more basic level, they're at "Web 1.5" in terms of features and they could add a bit more dynamism to take it to "2.0", for want of a better name.

I'll throw down the gauntlet and see if anybody with an entrepreneurial spirit will take on this opportunity.

Having an iPhone locked to a network which doesn't provide 3G connectivity, and is unable to make VoIP calls despite having good wireless networking built in, is like buying a Ferrari and finding that the only thing you can do with it is power your lawnmower. It's nuts - and our regulators have allowed it to happen.

So sayeth the Observer, and I empathise. What's the point of having a state of the art handset when you are only allowed to perform basic phone functions on it, because of the phone company's insecurities?

As mentioned earlier, I was stuck in Second Life limbo after cancelling my credit card details as I didn’t want to continue being a premium member. However they locked me out of Second Life entirely, saying I had to pay them the renewal fee, which I had opted to pay annually.

I couldn’t even downgrade my account until I entered my card details which would result in an automatic payment - which I didn’t want!

So I wrote in. I have to commend Linden Labs for the quick reply to my query, but this situation sounds silly. Read this (I have [deleted] some parts due to privacy issues):

Hello Vantan,

Thankyou for contacting Linden Lab support regarding the issue of wanting to downgrade your account.

I will be able to help you downgrade your account to a basic account but this is not going prevent you having to pay the your annual fee.

Due to our policy, you will still have to pay the $72 because you did not cancel premium membership before your account fees were due.

I am sorry if this causes any inconvenience but it is company policy.

[Security verification questions deleted]

If you can provide me with the above information then I can downgrade your account for you.

If you have any further questions you can contact myself or one of my colleagues.

Regards, [name deleted] Linden Lab support

So this is a warning to the rest of you on paid accounts who are also thinking of downgrading to Basic membership - remember to downgrade your account before cancelling your credit card details!

At this rate I might as well renew my membership for one year! What the heck. I’ll just get lots of Linden pocket money.

After hearing the buzz about Gmail offering IMAP access, but also hearing that this new feature wasn't rolled out to everybody yet, I decided to check if my account had it. Sadly, it didn't look like it and I thought, maybe it's because they're enabling it for the earliest Gmail users first.

Then I checked out the Gmail blog which explains that the feature is actually available for all Gmail users. Then why wasn't it listed under my Settings? Because Google has only rolled it out for those using Gmail with the US language and will be working on the other languages in the next few weeks. I, being the typical Anglophile, had set my account to display UK English and thus had prevented myself from receiving IMAP access immediately.

So I switched to US English and voila! IMAP was enabled.

I'm now watching Thunderbird load up my mails. All my Gmail labels are appearing as folders. Wow, I haven't had IMAP mail since University days. This should be pretty useful.

I just tried logging into Second Life, after a hiatus due to laptop problems and being too busy… only to be told that my account has been disabled! Grr.

What happened: After joining Second Life, I upgraded to a paid account (annual fee US$72) as I wanted to get Linden pocket money and toyed with the idea of buying my own piece of land. I never had the time nor inclination to learn about advanced building, so that didn’t happen. The novelty’s worn off. So I cancelled my credit card details to avoid being charged again this year. However, Linden Labs tried to charge me. As they no longer had my credit card details, they put US$72 on my tab, suspending my account until I pay up!

I logged on to Secondlife.com to fix things. I realised I should have asked for a downgrade rather than just deleting my credit card details - but I thought either way it would’ve worked. But now when I click the ‘Downgrade my account’ link, I get pointed back to the page that says my account is disabled and I must enter my credit card info. When I proceed, I am told that entering my credit card info will lead to a transaction payment. It comes full circle. Bah!

I just sent a note to the Support department. I hope they’ll help me out, even though I’ll no longer be a paying customer. If they can’t fix it and I have to pay, it will leave a sour taste in my virtual and real mouth and rest assured you’ll all get to hear about it!

My colleague Prema and I gave a talk to final year students at the Singapore Management University (SMU) yesterday. It all started when I bumped into Assoc. Professor Susheela Varghese at Podcamp a few months ago, and told her what we were doing in Health Promotion.

I mentioned we had just launched a new Sexual Wellness website. This was probably intriguing as probably not many people would imagine the Gahmen addressing such issues in a direct way (as with my idea of launching a podcast 2 years ago). Anyway she found our activities interesting enough to invite us to give a presentation to her class, and we took on the challenge!

We expanded our presentation’s scope to include many other health issues and campaigns - some ours, some from other countries - to show how persuasion works for different people. Our focus was generally on the youth market, which is very important but difficult to reach especially for a topic like health. Usually, youths don’t worry about health because they’re in the prime of it, until they fall ill or know someone who’s seriously ill. But habits are often formed during one’s youth and I feel it could be more effective in some cases to focus on providing the know-how and environment to foster healthy habits and relationships then. It takes more effort to change one’s behaviour when one is older.

I was interested to hear about Google's OpenSocial API. They have cleverly stepped in to address the proliferation of social networks with different standards and made themselves the central connecting point.

Despite the global popularity of sites such as MySpace and Facebook, the rest of the social network market has been fragmented into a Long Tail which makes it difficult to target a wide range of people in a cost-effective way. The new API will be a master key to unlock easy access to the whole range of networks participating in this initiative.

Having said that, I don't really forsee a major problem targetting the Singapore market specifically, as most of us are probably on Friendster (the older ones), Multiply, Xanga, Facebook (the latest craze) while the more professional networkers are on LinkedIn. Correct me if you think otherwise. However, if we're 'kiasu' (afraid to lose out) we'd welcome the OpenSocial API - isn't it always better to know that we could unlock many other networks now?

Facebook in particular is going to be very interesting over the next year as we move beyond creating Facebook groups and start developing our own apps. A good app has viral marketing potential as it gets forwarded to friends and integrates itself onto personal profile pages, becoming part of that user's identity - at least until the user gets tired of it and uninstalls it. The app has to be well thought through, if not I'd rather not attempt one at all!

We have a Facebook group for Singapore developers, do join if you haven't already. There's an OpenSocial Initiative group on Facebook, and an official forum.

If you happen to be a Facebook developer, drop me a note. It's a new market but we have some ideas.

I was checking my personal email this morning and saw a prayer request from my church. We seldom receive such emails but this was for someone that the whole church would know about. Our missionary and Reverend MWM's wife MH has stage IV cancer and I cannot bear to imagine the intensity of the suffering for them.

As I read the details of her condition, I started to cry. Not exactly from a sense of utter hopelessness because I know it is not this physical world that we should be concerned about, but just from the sense that she and her loved ones must be going through such a trying time at the moment.

Apart from praying for the specific requests all I can say is God's will be done. Through my relatively short life I've seen other good people go (though of course we all fall short of His glory), and while I no longer ask "WHY?" I still feel sad about it.

Hope isn't lost yet, and either way it is all in God's plan. But don't mind me if I look a little subdued today...

What a match! What an atmosphere! What fighting spirit from both teams! What a sore throat I'm going to get from all that shouting!

The match began with Arsenal energy and Man U trying to contain them. After some missed shots from both sides, Wayne Rooney drew first blood towards half time. I felt Manuel Almunia could have done a better job to save it - he looked unprepared. I could imagine Jens Lehmann smirking in his reserves seat, preparing his next snide comment. Fortunately, Almunia made some decent saves in the second half that might keep his position secure for a few more games at least.

So Man U were up by a goal during half time. I pictured Arsene Wenger giving the lads a pep talk. Could Arsenal be the comeback kings again? They were! Within a couple of minutes, Cesc Fabregas found himself unguarded in front of the Man U goal and calmly tapped the ball in. Roawwr!!

Things got more exciting in the second half but neither side made progress. Shots were either off target or saved. It looked like it was going to become a draw. Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger made changes. Wenger brought on Walcott - it's about time! Walcott made some impact by shooting at range and on target - but Van Der Sar caught it. Then Walcott appeared on the other side to prevent Wayne Rooney from keeping the ball.

Then Ronaldo scored! I thought, oh noo, there's not much time left! Just that we weren't sure who exactly scored the goal because the Gunners looked like they were giving a 21-gun salute to Edwin van der Sar. Walcott was the last to attempt a shot. The video playback revealed it was none other than ex-Chelsea defender William Gallas - who has now scored against Man U three times in three different teams! Good for the linesman to have spotted the ball; that would have made a 2 point difference!

What was heartening to see, apart from Arsenal's resilience, was the sportsmanship and respect that was lacking in previous matches between both sides. How can we forget the pizza thrown at Alex Ferguson in the tunnel and the shoves at Ruud van Nistelrooy? But this time Wayne Rooney shook Kolo Toure's hand - no hard feelings. Rooney has controlled his emotions better this season and he will come out a stronger player for it. Tevez didn't make much impact though and Ronaldo was a bit quiet in the first half, getting clipped off by Clichy, but later on he nearly won the game for Man U.

One of the last fleeting moments captured on TV was Fabregas and Ronaldo shaking hands. They are both rather handsome, young, and despite being pretty good at what they do, have potential to become even better. Fabregas has a good chance of becoming player of the year, but I hope the glory won't go to his head. The young Gunners should stay hungry and the world could be in their hands.