I went to Bintan Island…

Last week was my horrible week. The work was just too much and work until damn late. Sometime, I think this is because of my work managementt skill has some problem or just because my work is too much. However, It’s definately not a good thing to talk about. I am really burning midnight oil….and feel so tire. Seriously, I don’t know how long can I cope with this stressful life.

So, I decided to went to Bintan Island (Indonesia) for my weekend with my friend. I just wanted to out of Singapore..Out of this stressful place. It was a really nice weekend. I drunk a lot…ate a lot…of course gained a lot also 🙂 Who cares? I just want to enjoy it…because I know when i go back to Singapore..my life will back to hell again.

Ok, talk about Bintan. It is an island which very near to Singapore. It is about an hour by ferry from Tanah Merah jetty. Actually, it is a good place for a short break and to re-charge my enargy. (Although, I have been using it more than 75% already). Goosh,,,I still have 4 days to go for a weekend.

Yes…one more thing…21 April 2007 was my graduation day in Bournemouth University. I didn’t go..and I miss my classmates…so much…!!

A Zapcode

What you need is to “Zap” it with your cellphone. It’s a hot thing in Asia now. Shoppers can download pictures and videos of products just by pointing their phones at advertisements or product boxes to take a snapshot of the “new-age” barcode (ZapCode) then send it to the remote computer, which sends back a picture, video or website link to their mobile phone. These code can be found in everywhere such as in newpapers, on T-shirt, signages, name card, birthday cakes….

Developed in South Korea several years ago…and also become popular in Japan. Many big brands company already using it as a marketing tool such as Adidas, Ebay etc.

User needs to download free software from ColorZip SEA’s website onto his/her cellphones.

This is one of our future ways to get information.

http://www.colorzip.co.jp/en/

Social News Websites…

Social news website allow users to generate virtual newpapers by voting stories on and off their front pages (The Economist, 2 Dec 2006).

As a user/reader, I find the choice of news sites and blogs is overwhelming. And now social news sites can really help us to choose stories and vote for those we find most interesting.

One of the good example of social news website is Digg.com. It allows users to submit interesting new items from around the web, relating to politics, technology, celebrity trivia or anything else. Users can add a warning to an item if they believe it to be biased or inaccurate and also allows people to discuss stories at length.

Digg.com has over half  a million registered users since its launch in 2004 and has been value at over $200m.

The world’s largest media company, Time Warner, to turn its ailing Netscape.com news portal into a social news service.

The front page of social news sites are very different from those found on the traditional news sites. Technology features  heavily, as do humorous , quickly and inane stories, while business, politics and world affairs features less prominently.

Anonymouse.org

Alexander Pircher is a computer science student in Darmstadt, Germany. He has created the Anonymouse.org web site in 1997. Why this web site so special? Who will get benefit from this?

OK…for those users from censorship-dodgers in countries such as Cuba, Iran, North Korea, China and Saudi Arabia. They can simply type a web address into a box on the Anonymouse.org home page and click a button , and the Anonymouse server (rather than user’s own computer) fetches the page and displays it. Maybe it might seem pointness: rerouting data through another server makes for slower surfing, fonts and graphics are slightly skewed and video may not working probably. But for above countries the manoeuvre is anything but pointless, for this redirection allows them to surf the web anonymously. It enables people living under repressive regimes to visit censored websites. More than 3 million people access the web through this web site every day ( The Economist, 2 Dec 2006).

We have been dicussing this topic since last year when i was in my Master course in Bournemouth University. It is a very interesting topic because our class has 3 students from China and 1 student from Egypt. They told us about how thier governments to censor and stop many web sites. As a result, all of them can’t able to surf many web sites in their counties.
Now, with this web site….boys and girls..why not just give a try 🙂

I’m back

Wah. It is so long that I didn’t write my blog. It is about 3 months ++. What did i do last few months…What kept me so busy….blah…blah….

I got a new job in Singapore last December. It is an interactive media agency (under WPP). It’s a well-known design company in Singapore. The company environment is good..only the staff are very difference. However, there are so many things that worth to learn and also contribute in this company. I have many opportunities to work with famous brands such as Nokia, HP, Colgate, Visa, Tiger beer…

I remembered when I was in Bournemouth..I always hope I can work in the good agency…yes..I am here..I should happy i think.

Today, my company had a workshop about digital advertising and the guy talked about Window Live as well. It is cool…the “Live”. Really can see online ads will replace the traditional ads soon or later. And more and more web sites provide user-generated contents for their audiences. Technical advances really give a strong impact in our life now.

my Christmas day in Singapore.

After working a week in my new company that I have 10 days off for the Christmas and new year. It is so fab, isn’t it? 🙂 Well, during the Christmas day, my ex-boss invited me to the Christmas concert. It was a great perfomance.

The Singapore Garden Festival

It was a last day of The Singapore Garden Festiva (25 Dec 2006). My friends and I went to this festival in Suntec Tower. At the begining, I was a bit dissapointed of this festival. The garden designers were not that good…especially a few desingers from Singapore. Only the designers from Australia have a nice idea. This festival are devided to 2 parts which is Level 4 and level 6. Personally, I enjoyed at level 4 because over a hundred species of orchids are found in this area. Overall…I think this festival is still very new in Singapore. It definately needs more time to make it interesting and unique. One more thing, the ticket is quite expensive which is S$12 for adult. What do u think?

www.singaporegardenfestival.com

Media Leaders Series

1 November 2006, 9:30 am to 11.30 am, Suntec Singapore.

I attended the Media Leaders Series in the IDM sector presented by Dr James Canton (Chairman and CEO, Institute for Global Futures). This event was hosted by MDA (Media Development Authority, Sinagpore).

It was a good presentation. Dr Canton talked about the future technologies which will make our life much easier. I was shocked when he showed some of the examples to us about the future technologies. It looks like the recent movie “The Island” and the “AI”. I am wondering wether will these really benefit us or will ruin our future life??!!

When Dr Canton described the emerging business models in digital media that will shade the “always connected” world…It reminds me of one of my MA group project which was called Digital Art Practice (DAP). The project was about how people can not escape from the technology and how we are always connected.

It was a very good seminar and I am glad that I anticipated this event 🙂

Things I want to know about…

:: Google founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin was announcing its purchase, for $1.65 billion in shares, of YouTube, founded by Chad Hurley and Steve Chen.

:: The chief executive of Google : Mr Eric Schmidt.

:: Every day YouTube fans upload 65,000 videos and watch 100m.

:: Google has the largest online network of advertisers, whom it can now refer to YouTube.

:: YoTube has 4 times as many visitors as Google Video; according to comScore, another research outfit, YouTube streams 9 times as many clips as Google video.

:: Google’s mission is “to organise the world’s information”. A lot of information happens to be in video form.

::YouTube’s value to Google is not its technology, but its audience and its brand, which no amount of clever programming can duplicate.

(The Economist, 14 Oct 06, pg 81-82)

Telephony

Skype really helps me a lot. It was a great help when I was in Bournemouth. It is a good way to contact friends or families once I have paid for my broadband subscription. Really, I have to thank to Niklas Zennstrom, the co-founder of Skype (Skype sold itself to eBay for $2.6 billion last year). Many people believe that in the very near future traditional fixed-line telephony will be overtaken by voice-over internet calls (VOIP). VOIP’s far lower costs and higher efficiency induce many people to use it. VOIP is cheaper because instead of establishing a dedicated circuit to connect two callers, it encodes the telephone call as a 2-way stream of data packets that are sent over a high-speed internet connection. This encoding can be done either by a computer running Skype, the most popular VOIP provider, which now has more than 100m users; or it can be done by a small box, called an analogue terminal adapter, which allows a standard telephone to be plugged into a broadband connection (The Economist, 14 Oct 2006).