Simple is the Reason of My Heart

Is Friendster engineering a comback? A Meeting with Jeff Roberto from Friendster

While most of the hype and buzz have been going on with Facebook and MySpace for the past two years, Friendster has been left out of the spotlight. After all, it was the first social network that came about from the web 1.0. The transition from web 1.0 to web 2.0 for this first social network has been tough. Like Twitter, Friendster lost a lot of audience to other networks from the scalability issue between 2003 to 2006. Yet, all is not lost. Recent trends seem to indicate that Friendster might be engineering a comback through other avenues. Sometime back, I wrote about Friendster's high growth against the other online social networks in Asia. That post has prompted some discussions in the background between Nicholas Aaron Khoo, Jeff Roberto (Marketing/PR Director, Friendster) and myself, since I am interested in the crossover audience between different social networks. Thanks to the Ad-Tech Conference held in Singapore and Howie and his team from The Digital Movement, I managed to meet Jeff Roberto along with several bloggers for lunch in Pan Pacific Hotel,Global Kitchen, Level 3. In that short lunch meeting, Jeff brought me the answer which I have asked in our past email discussions over the web.

Creative Commons in Singapore finally

I have talked about the need for Singapore to adopt Creative Commons sometime back. It has implications particularly on copyright and intellectual property. Finally, CC Singapore is pleased to announce that the draft of CC BY-NC-SA adapted to Singaporean law. The draft (PDF) is now ready for public discussion. The CC Singapore team, lead by Anil Samtani  and Giorgos Cheliotis and hosted at the Centre for Asia Pacific Technology Law & Policy (CAPTEL), has been working with Creative Commons International to port the licenses to local copyright legislation. As part of the public discussion, we warmly invite you to join CC Singapore’s discussion list and share your comments with local and international legal experts. The event "Copyright And The Creative Commons" will be happening in Nanyang Technology University, School of Art, Design and Media on 27 July 2008, from 1.30 pm to 3 pm, part of the International Symposium on Electronic Art 2008. 

 

HP TouchSmart PC Bloggers Event at Brotzeit, Singapore

Yesterday, I was invited along with other bloggers to attend the preview event of the new HP TouchSmart PC at Brotzeit restaurant (which I highly recommend for the Munich Lager beer and the pork knuckles) in Vivocity. The product was unveiled more than a month ago in Germany and Van Tan did an interesting report about this event when she was in Germany for the event.  The official release date of this new gadget is on 18 July 2008.  Other than getting my hands to try a touch screen PC, one of my other tasks is to do a special Geek Goddess episode on the product itself together with Estee, Peter and Michael. It is interesting that more and more companies like HP are now also competing in making the desktop not just being a computer but how the design of the product can fit it with the home.

The Economics about Banning Political Films

I have been thinking about the political films discussion that took place during the Seminar on Internet Regulatory Reform. Two of my colleagues, Alex Au aka Yawning Bread and Gerald Giam have voiced their opinions about section 35 in the Films Act and their reaction to the comments made by Mr Cheong Yip Seng, the Chairman of the Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society (AIMES). Alex Au is worried that AIMES may be trying hard to justify why section 35 should stay after hearing Mr Cheong's point about the high impact factor that a political film can sway how people think after his visit to a conference in Canada. To reinforce his point, Mr Cheong also cited that Japan and Korea were the other two countries that banned political films. On the other hand, Gerald took a different position by arguing that the political films act benefit PAP more than the other opposition parties. In this post, I adopt the relationship between the demand & supply with the impact of a political film to explain why banning section 35 is a worse option for the PAP to stay in power.

Community Moderation: Thoughts from the Internet Regulatory Reform Seminar

Organised by the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, the seminar on internet regulatory reform happened today at the URA Centre. About 50 people attended the event, excluding the organizers and the bloggers who are involved in the drafting of "Proposals for Internet Freedom in Singapore". The aim of this seminar is to present the proposals and at the same solicit some thoughts and comments from the public. Together with Cherian George, Alex Au (Yawning Bread), Choo Zheng Xi, Ng Ejay, Arun Mahizhnan (Institute of Policy Studies) and Mohan Gopalan, we presented the various aspects and sat on a panel to discuss the proposals. In the process, we drew interesting comments and questions from the audience.  After a vibrant discussion, I will like to outline some ideas about the formation of Internet Content Consultative Committee (IC3) mentioned in the community moderation section of the proposal.

From CommunicAsia 2008 to Crunch Network Meetup in Zouk

This week, Singapore hosted the CommunicAsia 2008 in the exhibition halls of Expo. Two days back, I visited the exhibition since the admission is free for anyone. The exhibition encompassed the EnterpriseIT 2008, Broadcast Asia 2008 and Interactive Me as well. Of course, Samsung took the occasion to launch their new smart phone, Omnia in this exhibition. The same day which I visited the exhibition, I managed to arrange a last minute Crunch Network Singapore meet up in Zouk. The meeting is with Greg Kumparak, the MobileCrunch Editor from TechCrunch. So, here are some of the pictures following from the exhibition to the evening meeting.