Global Voices 2005 London Summit

This is Day 2 of serious work for me in UK: Global Voices 2005 London Summit, which is held at Reuters World HQ, Canary Wharf. Here is the participants' list, and here's the webcast.

I will try to blog as much as I can while the conference carries on. The Internet link to Malaysia, where Screenshots' server is hosted, is embarrassingly slow.

* * *

In his opening remarks, David Schlesinger, Reuters Global Managing Editor, says the 150-year old news organisation is looking at blogs in an engaging way.

Global Voices Online is now one of the major resources of global information for mainstream journalists. Co-founder, Ethan Zuckerman, says GVO is opinionated and does not present the cliched 'balanced' reports of global events, but it strives to provide transparent and diverse blog topics as seen from citizen journalists' point of view.

GVO Co-founder Rebecca MacKinnon simplifies it as a platform for global conversations.

Ethan, who presents GVO's traffic statistics, it's 8th on Google Page Rank, says this is not the time to screw up. In line with this, a managing editor, possibly the only fulltime staff for GVO, is being recruited, with funding coming from Reuters.

GVO: Best of both worlds

Is the "blogging vs. journalism" argument still valid? GVO believes there can, and must be, room for both in this world, and that the world will be better for having both.

In this session led by Rebecca, with input from Jeff Ooi (Malaysia), Ndesanjo Macha (Tanzania), Dina Mehta (India), Georgia Popplewell (Trinidad & Tobago), David Sasaki (Americas Editor), Onnik Krikorian (Armenia), Ben Parmann (Eurasia Blog), Lisa Goldman (Israel), and Dean Wright (Reuters Senior Vice President and Managing Editor for Consumer Services, who joins us via video-conferencing from the US), we explore the potential for synergies between professional journalists and citizen-bloggers. Some random thoughts which we will string together whe the day concludes:

• How do journalists and bloggers interact in the world outside the US and Europe?


• How can bloggers become journalists and journalists become bloggers? How do the two learn to work together and respect each other?


• How can we combine the value of professional journalism with the power of citizens’ online conversation to help all members of the human race understand each other better?

I narrated the latest blogosphere developments in Malaysia, choosing to highlight Oon Yeoh's article in which senior editors were interviewed for their perspectives about bloggers. Bloggers don't consider themselves journalists, but we want to give context (Dan Gillmor visibly nodded at the corner of my eyes) to news in print that, at times, is outright spin-doctoring for the political masters, and at worse, real stories on real issues don't get out.

Mean Wright jumped in via video-conferencing to say that, as far as Reuters is concerned, bloggers and journalists share a symbiotic relationship - we need each other. For international news organisations, which have to "parachute" their news anchors into diverse regions when news break, they need the context to reports on issues and events, and bloggers who have intimate understanding of local environment often become, reliable sources to news reporting. That, Dean says, is the current reality in news reporting.

Neha and Ory Okolloh brought up the issues of journalists in India and Kenya, respectively, who lifted bloggers' content without giving the credit, and issues of plagiarism ensued.

On the other hand, some journalists in the conference hall say blog is an extension of journalism, though it's no secret that journalist feel threatened by the presence of bloggers. Some say journalists now feel more comfortable by taking out 'objectivity' and use the first person to give event and slice-of-life stories an eye-witness account.

Central Asia, where press freedom is often repressed, is warming up to blogs as a compliment to journalism, two practising journalists from Armenia say.

Dan Gillmor says there shouldn't be a sense of competition between journalists and bloggers. Journalists shouldn't feel threatened as they are a competitive species. Should there be competition, it's basically financial by nature and revenue for media organisations face erosion.

Rounding up, Dean says Reuters is in the 'conversation' business, so it's esseential that this Gloval Voices conversations are carried on.

Break for lunch.

What makes a successful blogosphere?

The session is led by Ethan Zuckerman, with input from Roba Al Assi (Jordan), Ory Okolloh (Kenya), Neha Viswanathan (Global Voices South Asia editor), Sokari Ekine (Sub-Saharan Africa editor), Iria Puyosa (Venezuela), Bun ThaRum (Cambodia), Enda Nasution (Indonesia), Andy Young (SiberianLight), Hossein Derakhshan (Iran).

There are very interesting insights being shared. Neha spoke of the tendency among bloggers in India who behanve like Technorati/page rank whores, where bloggers scratch each other's back to push online visibility.

It is said that media in India and Venezuela are taking bloggers very seriously.

Despite less impressive Internet infrastructure, Bun ThaRum reports that Cambodia is blooming with bloggers who write in English, though the number is small compared with other Southeast Asian countries.

The discussion later zeroes in on questions like... (1) Why is it that some countries have developed vibrant local blogospheres (Iran, Jordan, Cambodia etc) while others haven’t? (2) What conditions are required and what outreach can be done by the Global Voices community to help enable and encourage blogging in communities that could greatly benefit from this new citizens’ medium?

Hossein says, perhaps, we need 'big name' bloggers to lead the charge.

Then, Ethan asks the question whether bloggers are documentarists?

The final segment, The future of the Global Conversation, induces the most divergent views.

Key question: How can Global Voices and potential partners in professional and citizens’ media work to build a more democratic, equitable Global Conversation - a conversation in which all people who want to speak not only have a safe and accessible way to do so, but also a chance of being heard?

I was too engrossed reflecting on the opinions raised that I slacken on typing them out.

Hossein raises the question of commissioning writers to maintain readability of the content. I find this very relevant.

Global Peace: Bloggers to get media tags

As I am attending two blogging related events in London, I received news via TV Smith that four bloggers back home will be given media status to blog during the Perdana Global Peace Forum 2005 organised by the Perdana Leadership Foundation, December 15 - 17.

These bloggers are to cover the conference as media representatives from the blogosphere, and they may conduct one-on-one interviews with the speakers subject to their availability.

More... several seats will also be allocated to other bloggers as conferece participants. Bloggers who which to attend as conference please TV Smith or Mack Zulkifli for details.

Yesterday, TV Smith held a discussion with Zarina Abu Bakar, General Manager of the Perdana Leadership Foundation and Shamsul Akmar, the Head of Media on the logistics. The arrangement is that postings on the four bloggers' blogs regarding may be 'selectively' replicated on the blog section of the official conference site, with linkbacks and credits.

Event photography will be done on a 'common pool' basis, but bloggers who are attending as forum participants may bring their own cameras or use their own pics in their blogs, if they so wish.

I feel there is no dearth of bloggers who are advocates of peace-building efforts. As for the four media bloggers, by gaining media status to blog during the event allows bloggers to play a significant role in supporting the objectives of the Perdana Global Peace Forum 2005.

To make it a meaningful outing, we expect the bloggers to remain objective and focus on intellectual critiques of content and not the speakers or roleplayers. Good judgement in the matter of content and opinion posturing is absolutely required.

I thank the organisers for allowing TV Smith, Mack, yours sincerely and a yet-to-confirm female blogger this honour and collective responsibility.

The organisers have set up a blog at website perdana4peace.org/blog/html.

No evil...

More quotation from Bard, and I'm not saying I had somebody in mind:

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones."

Oon Yeoh did a stock-take on my journey as a blogger in the past three years and came up with a feature in this month's Chrome magazine. It tells no evil.

Here's the link. I wonder the 4th picture was used in the print version.

Bloggers beware!

In the wake of two bloggers and one forum commenter having been punished in Singapore for what they wrote online, Asst Prof Warren B Chik of Singapore Management University wrote The Five Commandments for Bloggers:

1. Thou Shalt Not Defame or Spread Malicious Falsehood


2. Thou Shalt Not Negligently Miscommunicate


3. Thou Shalt Not Breach Thy Contract
   - Contract for sale or services
   - Employment
   - Confidence and privacy


4. Thou Shall Not Steal


5. Thou Shalt Not Commit Crimes

It's a must read for budding bloggers in this part of the world. Full text here, related pieces here and here.

Teresa's blog

MP Teresa Kok (DAP: Seputeh) has stood out as the guardian for the aggrieved Chinese nationals who were subject to alleged abuse during Police custody.

Read her blog for first-hand insights: http://teresakok.blogsome.com.

Beppe Grillo's blog & fullpage ad

Claimed to have been "financed by thousands of Italian citizens", blogger Beppe Grillo took out a full page advertisement in International Herald Tribune November 22 (Page 7).

He wants to find out if there is any other country in the world which has 23 members of Parliament having been convicted of a variety of crimes and yet allowed to sit in Parliament and represent their constituents. The advertisement proclaims:

If a Country like this exists, we Italians would like to propose a "twinning".

If there is no such State or Country we ask the world to help us understand why the 23 parliamentarians, already convicted of crimes by the Italian Judicial System, and whose crimes are recorded in my blog www.beppegrillo.it, sit in the Italian and European Parliaments.

The names of the 23 Italian parliamentarians Grillo says already convicted of crimes in Italy is available at

www.beppegrillo.it/clean_up

Why waste big money to advertise in IHT, an international paper printed in 31 countries including Malaysia? Beppe Grillo says:

This because none of the international papers ot magazines that I have contacted is willing to publish them.

Think about it. Access.

Tunisian Bloggers Meet

Global Voices contributor and blogger Mohamed Marwen Meddah, aka "Triple M", has been the lightning rod in Tunisian blogosphere. He and several bloggers have been nurturing an intimate community - the Tunisian bloggers meet regularly face-to-face.

Picture courtesy Subzero Blue aka Triple M

Rebecca MacKinnon and I joined them for the 8th Bloggers Meet on the last day of WSIS 2005. It was a nice cosy place called Biwa, in Les Berges du Lac, a posh commercial area invested by the Saudi Arabian. It's also the only district in Tunis which does not serve alcohol.

It was my honour to have met up with this group of fun-loving Tunisian bloggers alongside international guests Mitsuteru Nishio from the Dominican Republic, and Isam Bayazidi from Jordan.

There are so many names to remember, it's easier to recognise them by their blogs, namely Adib, Mouse Hunter, Infinity, Evil Drako, Blogeuse, Jaz in the city, Tom, AquaCool and, of course Triple M is Subzero Blue.

Just to bring you the moods...

Dr Samoud Adib and Mitsuteru Nishio

Mohamed Marwen Meddah and his beautiful wife, who is also a blogger

Jordanian blogger Isam Bayazidi

Despite Arabic and French being the lingua franca, this group of Maghreb (northwestern Arabia) bloggers write mostly in English.

Dr Samoud Adib (picture above), who is described by his fellow bloggers as a 'salsa dancing veterinary doctor blogger', is a proponent of maghreblog.net. I remember him as the one who gave me a warm, brotherly cheek-embrace.

James Wong in blogosphere

My neighbourhood friend in Subang Jaya, James Wong Wing On, quietly started his blog November 6, and only informed me yesterday.

This is great because who among we bloggers have interviewed people like Chin Peng, not once but twice? Or witnessing reformasi and the rise and fall of Anwar Ibrahim as history unfolded?

James Wong and Chin Peng, 1998

James' blog, christened Freedom in Solidarity, is hosted at http://jameswongwingon-online.blogspot.com/

For a start, James has uploaded images, excerpts and travelogues of his past sojourns as a member of the 8th Parliament, a former senior and award-winning journalist, writer, author and strategic analyst rolled in one.

I am excited in knowing that he has finally decided to blog, so I ask him about his blogging plan. he says:

I will upload some of the old photographs first before I launch into more current topics. The short photo-essays serve the purpose of telling big stories in shorter and more lively presentation. The uploading of older photographs will take one or two more weeks.

Way to go, James! You will be a beacon for fellow online writers, and a lighting rod to bringten up Malaysia's cyber-space!

'NJ Wolf' out-foxed

Kit has migrated from Google's Blogspot to WordPress.

Of late, Kit's blog has come under a series of abusive attacks by an Internet minion - Kit Siang calls it the "New Jersey wolf/wolves" - and decided to out-fox it by migrating to the new angine with effect from 00:10 hour yesterday, November 11.

Discarding Blogspot, Kit's new URL is now at: http://blog.limkitsiang.com.

The MO (modus operandi) of this NJ Wolf is sickly low-blow. Hiding behind anonymity and multi-masks including "cyber-impersonation" (and this blogger's callsign, Jeff Ooi, wasn't spared), the minion was out to discredit the blogger community with inflammatory commentaries. I quote Kit Siang:

The IP of the self-styled "wolf" is 68.162.13.33, from the same New Jersey IP which had hosted the previous four wolf attacks on my blog. – including incendiary and inflammatory comments, impostor postings impersonating bona fide commentators to create ill-will and havoc among the bloggers and dispatching pornographic URLs.

Against my natural instincts, I have to adopt the Wordpress-powered blog which requires first registration to provide some form of control and security for the blog and bloggers, although it can be no sure-proof protection against those determined to create havoc on the blogosphere.

Some blog readers were alarmed at my namesake being impostored and alerted me. Thank you for that. But experienced bloggers who know my MO know that I normally don't leave commentaries in third party's blogs, not being arrogant but for want of time.

The only exceptions are my convicted space in Global Voices Online, and several personal friends' blogs, which are a handful.

As a random thought, I think intelligence monitoring teams know where to locate the NJ Wolf.

Expression under Repression... ( 4 )

Issue #4: Internet Governance: What's on the plate?

Though I have strung up most of my thoughts, it would be appropriate, too, to invite your kind input and perspectives for my participation and presentation at WSIS 2005 Tunis next week, pertinent to the civil society aspect of Internet governance and freedom of expression.

To help crystalise your thoughts, here's a loose mind-frame of things I would want to cover, in three main parts, ideally from the Malaysian context:

1. "Local Repression, Global Lessons"
   
   As Screenshots readers are operating off Malaysia and from foreign countries, probably, you may like to base on what you have personally experienced or read about, to share your perspectives on a global issue of your choice, and discuss constraints to free speech in your respective local environments. Also tell us ways your friends/you yourself have been able to combat these restrictions. Share the news and opinions.
2. "Internet Filtering: Realities and Myths"

   Probably, you have read my earlier blog on Reporters Without Borders' initiatives rallying notable investment funds and assets managers to pressure US technology companies who help repressing regimes in gagging the freedom of expression on the Internet to rethink their modus operandi.

   So, here's the context: As the Internet becomes an increasingly important tool for content distribution, individuals, organizations and governments are taking steps to limit access to content available online.

   For example, in Malaysia, the NSTP headquarters in Jalan Riong under the leadership of Group Editor-in-Chief Kalimullah Masheerul Hassan, has deemed it fit to block the Screenshots' IP address - essentially an Internet filtering exercise - to bar its junior journalists from accessing this blog since June 2004.

   The mockery made of Internet governance in Malaysia is that, this same Kalimullah is also one of the new fleet of board members appointed, in April 2005, to sit on MSC Development Corporation which promises its customers the MSC Bill of Guarantee, one of which is "Non-censorship of the Internet".

   So, I invite you to look at the larger context, that is: What's the current state of government-sponsored internet filtering around the world? What are the similarities and differences between commercially available filtering software and government mandated filters? How transparent are governments in their use of filters?

   I really treasure your input as I have two other overseas speaking engagements, later this year, on the topic of Internet filtering, one of which is sponsored by Reuters's Global HQ at Canary Wharf, arranged by Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School.

Please share your facts, knowledge and your thoughts at length.

3. "Freedom of Expression - Limits and Absolutes"

   This is one issue I am passionate about and I have blogged about it frequently.

   While I advocate the "Freedom of Expression" and won an award for it, I believe the Internet is not a legal vacuum, and that we should approach and leverage Internet - a powerful networked communications tool - with a strong sense of responsibility.

   Admittedly, you have the absolute right to differ.

   While articulating your opinion and belief, perhaps, you would like to guide me to explore more on some larger and related issues, such as: To what extent is "Freedom of Expression" a universal principle? To what extent is this principle limited by local concerns for political stability, societal values, national security, etc.?

   On the other hand, ( 1 ) does defending freedom of expression mean defending a "right" for extremists to speak online? ( 2 ) Are there limits we're willing to accept to freedom to expression, or ( 3 ) is this an absolute freedom that doesn’t allow compromise?

If you prefer to give your input in privacy and full confidentiality, please kindly email me. Otherwise, you may drop your responses in the "Conversations" section of this blog.

Many thanks in anticipation.

Expression under Repression... ( 3 )

Issue #3: Corporate Responsibility and Freedom of Expression

US technology big boys - Cisco Systems, Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft - are under close watch for what they contributed towards suppressing freedom of speech!

The recent revelations of the role allegedly played by Yahoo! in the inprisonment of a Chinese journalist didn't go unnoticed. Civil societies around the world are concerned by allegations that some U.S. companies in the Internet sector are cooperating with authoritarian governments to censor speech and imprison dissidents.

A group of 25 investment managers, research houses, foundations, and religious investors have gathered to call on Internet businesses to publicly state their support for freedom of expression worldwide.

The 25-strong grouping, which collectively represents over US$21 billion investment funds and asset management for organisations from America, Canada, Europe, Australia and others, has followed a Reporters Without Borders (RSF) initiative to endorse a joint statement (view PDF here)that states their commitment to freedom of expression on the Internet.

Besides, they have also agreed to monitor the operations of Internet businesses in countries noted for repressive regime.

According to a press release from Reporters Without Borders, the joint statement is targeted at companies such as Yahoo!, Cisco Systems and Microsoft that help the Chinese authorities censor the Internet, or operate online surveillance systems.

At the press conference held at the Overseas Press Club, New York, yesterday, Boston Common Asset Management, LLC and Domini Social Investments LLC, two firms that have supported Reporters Without Borders' initiative from the start, took centrestage to explain why their respective institutions are committed to the principles of the declaration, underscoring the business risks the IT sector companies will face if they collaborate to suppress freedom of opinion and expression.

Boston Common Asset Management was represented by Dawn Wolfe, Social Research and Advocacy Analyst, while Adam M. Kanzer, Director of Shareholder Advocacy, represented Domini Social Investments.

The text of the statement and list of signatories: Download here.

Backgrounder

At the press conference, Lu Kun, the wife of Chinese cyberdissident Yang Zili, appears for the first time in the United States to attest to the fate awaiting dissident Internet users and website managers in her country.

In May 2003, her husband was sentenced to 8 years in prison for creating an Internet website advocating democracy - a case reminiscent of the one involving Shi Tao, who received a 10 years prison sentence in April for posting data considered to be a "state secret" on an Internet website based in the US.

The Chinese police managed to identify the journalist based on information provided by the Internet server hosting his e-mail account at Yahoo!

Reporters Without Borders has on several occasions condemned the ethical lapses displayed by certain Internet sector companies operating in repressive countries.

Yahoo!

The organisation wrote to Yahoo! in July 2002 asking it to explain why it helps Chinese government agencies responsible for censorship. The California-based Yahoo! has for years agreed to censor the Chinese version of its search engine, an arrangement that allows, among other things, searches for such word strings as "Falungong" or "human rights in China" to display only content from official sources.

Reporters Without Borders also said it tried to get in contact with Cisco Systems, Yahoo! and Microsoft in December 2003 in the hope of having the opportunity to discuss the consequences of their activities impacting on the freedom of expression. RSF's letters received no reply.

Subsequently, the RSF resorted to other channels to put across its views. It got in touch with investment funds which are existing or potential shareholders in these companies.

Boston Common Asset Management, a US investment company that practices Socially Responsible Investment (SRI), was the early endorser. It was joined soon after by Domini Social Investment.

Cisco Systems

These two investment companies began by writing to Cisco Systems chief executive John Chambers to request more transparency about the type of equipment and training programmes his company has sold to China in the past 10 years.

According to RSF, many statements and documents indicate that Cisco Systems, which manufactures and distributes Internet infrastructure equipment, has provided the Chinese police with technology that allows it to censor the Internet and monitor people online.

However, Cisco Systems ignored the request. Boston Common and Domini then decided to draw up a shareholder resolution in which they reiterate their request for information on Cisco's activities in countries that are known to flout freedom of expression.

This resolution will be voted on at the next general meeting of the company's shareholders on November 15.

Corporate Responsibility

Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders collaborated further with Boston Common and Domini, to draft a "Joint Statement on Freedom of Expression and the Internet", which was unveiled yesterday.

Signatories to the joint statement affirm that respect for free expression is one of the criteria they will take into account when deciding where to invest.

They add that they will step up their monitoring of Internet sector companies whose business activities have an impact on the free flow of information online. And they also undertake to support resolutions favouring free expression that are presented at shareholders' meetings.

With the statement endorsed by 25 investment firms, Reporters Without Borders hopes that other investment companies will join this initiative, especially traditional funds that do no specialise in ethical investing.

Notably, RSF also expresses its disappointment over the lack of interest shown by European investment companies, of which only one has agreed to sign on thus far.

Reporters Without Borders points out there has been a great deal of comment of late about such cases as the Chinese journalist, Shi Tao, who got a 10-year prison sentence on the basis of information supplied by Yahoo!, and Microsoft's agreeing to censor the Chinese version of its MSN Spaces blog tool.

Apart from Yahoo!, Cisco Systems and Microsoft, other companies have been found to participate in online censorship and surveillance in China.

Google, for example, decided in July 2004 to exclude any "subversive" website from the Chinese version of its news search engine.

Meanwhile, Reporters without Borders has also been monitoring the activities of Fortinet, the company that installed Internet filters for the Burmese junta, and Secure Computing, which did the same in Tunisia.

Expression under Repression... ( 2 )

Issue #2: Bloggers and blogs under siege for various reasons

AFRICA, Egypt: October 26, Egyptian police have detained a 21-year-old blogger Abdolkarim Nabil Seliman, allegedly for his anti-Islamic and anti-government writings, and confiscated his books and copies of his articles.

Seliman was detained three days after posting an article on his blog commenting on the violent riots that erupted when thousands of security forces clashed with streams of angry Muslim worshippers in front of a Coptic Christian church over a play put on by Christians deemed offensive to Islam.

The play had gone unnoticed when it was first performed at St. George's two years ago.

* * *

ASIA, China: November 2, China authority shut down pro-democracy writer Wang Yi's blog (http://zhivago.tianyablog.com) just days after it was nominated for the "Freedom of Expression" category in a blog contest (www.thebobs.de) being organised by the German public radio station Deutsche Welle.

The details...

CAIRO, Egypt:

Egyptian police have detained a blogger allegedly for his anti-Islamic and anti-government writings, and confiscated his books and copies of his articles.

The blogger is Abdolkarim Nabil Seliman, a 21-year-old law student at Al-Azhar University, the world's highest seat of learning for Sunni Muslims. He was arrested on Oct. 26 and his whereabouts are not known.

Seliman belongs to a pious Muslim family - his parents were performing umrah in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, just days before his arrest.

Another blogger, Malik Moustafa, closely followed Seliman's detention and accused followers of the fundamentalist Islamic Salafi movement in Alexandria of being behind the arrest.

Moustafa said the arrest followed articles in which Seliman accused the Salafis of inciting the latest sectarian tensions in his neighborhood of Mouharm Bay.

Seliman was detained three days after posting an article on his blog commenting on the violent riots that erupted when thousands of security forces clashed with streams of angry Muslim worshippers in front of a Coptic Christian church over a play put on by Christians deemed offensive to Islam.

The play had gone unnoticed when it was first performed at St. George's two years ago.

Quote from Associated Press:

Titled "The Naked Truth of Islam as I saw it in Mouharm Bay", Seliman said of the riots: "Muslims revealed their true ugly face, and appeared to all the world that they are at full of brutality, barbarism and inhumanity."

In addition to his anti-Islamic writings, Seliman posted several articles blatantly attacking Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak regime and describing it as a "symbol of dictatorship".

The AP says it is the first security crackdown on an Egyptian blogger, a growing community that has flourished in Egypt over the last couple of years.

Sources here and here, the Arabist Network and Global Voices Online.

BEIJING, China:

November 2, China authority shut down pro-democracy writer Wang Yi's blog (http://zhivago.tianyablog.com) just days after it was nominated for the "Freedom of Expression" category in a blog contest (www.thebobs.de) being organised by the German public radio station Deutsche Welle.

The nominees to this year's DW "Freedom of Expression" blog award are:

1. China (Overseas): China Digital Times


2. Ethiopia: Chronique déplaisante d'une dictature ordinaire


3. Egypt: Manal and Alaa Bit Bucket


4. China: Wang Yi's microphone


5. Iran: Hanif Mazrooie (The blogger spent a month in prison in September 2004)


6. Iran: Parastood


7. Columbia: Colombian realities


8. Tunisia: Yahyaoui

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned the censorship and called for the immediate reopening of this blog.

"We want to point out that the Chinese constitution is supposed to guarantee free expression," the press freedom organisation said.

"In a country where self-censorship reigns, we should salute the courage of the few bloggers like Wang who dare to publicly protest against government bans."

The company that hosts the Tianya website closed the blog down on the orders of the Internet surveillance bureau in Hai Nan province (southwest of Guangzhou). When Internet users now try to access the blog, they see an error message saying it is "no longer accessible".

Wang is a teacher at Chengdu university in the southwestern province of Sichuan and member of the international writers' association PEN. Initially, he created the site to publish his writings in one place. He gradually turned it into a blog dealing with sensitive subjects. One of his last articles was about a campaign by peasants in Guangdong province to remove a village chief accused of corruption.

The authorities had been trying for six months to block access to the blog.

Expression under Repression... ( 1 )

Issue #1: Who should control Internet?

When the second and final phase of World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) convenes in Tunis November 16-18, the main task is to put into motion the Plan of Action adopted by 175 participating countries during the WSIS Phase One held in Geneva, 2003.

There are two key agendas for WSIS2005 Tunis, namely to finalise the model for Internet governance; and the mechanisms to finance programmes designed for overcoming the digital divide.

The part on Internet governance has since developed into a tussle for the ultimate control of the Internet. The global community are divided in their chosen overtures, splitting the US and the EU into opposing halves. Making the issue even more contentious is the emergence of countries like China, Brazil and Iran, which advocate the Internet to be placed within the ambit of the United Nations. Non-governmental organisations around the world, which particularly scorn at China’s track record in human rights abuse, are fearful of a clam down on their freedom of expression should Internet shift from the civil society-managed networks to a UN-managed agency.

Secondarily, the choice of Tunisia, a dictatorially-run democracy where dissident writers, journalists and bloggers have been jailed by the authorities, as the host for the world summit did not provide much comfort for the civil society. For context, read Global Voices Online, Reporters Without Borders, Committee to Protect Bloggers and Boing Boing.

So, who should control the Internet?

Screenshots will follow the development of this critical issue at close range as this blogger participates as a panel speaker in one of the seminar tracks (parallel event) in WSIS2005 Tunis, with accreditation from the Berkman Center for the Internet & Society, Harvard Law School.

From the information kit, it gives the impression that security and protocol will be strict and less than friendly. However, I also learned that with this accreditation, a participant from my category will enjoy "functional immunity" in accordance to Article IV.3 of the Host Country Agreement of United Nations summits, which will ensure that I participate "with complete independence in the second phase of the Summit", which effectively means I shall enjoy "immunity of legal process in respect of words spoken or written and all acts done by them (the Summit participants) in their capacity as participants in the second phase of the Summit".

By the grace of the United Nations, the immunity from legal processes is NOT limited in space and time. As such, I shall endeavour to make sense of these privileges which I have yet to familiarise with.

Meanwhile, let’s take a look at the key issues involved in the ensuing dispute over who governs the Internet.

A September meeting held in Geneva to formulate a way of sharing Internet governance, so that global politicians could unveil at the WSIS 2005, ended with a stalemate.

The European commission, and countries from other groupings, are warning that if a deal cannot be reached in WSIS 2005 Tunis, the Internet will split apart. Viviane Reding, the European IT commissioner gives a context that the Internet is dominated by one nation, and warns that if a multilateral approach cannot be agreed, countries such as China, Russia, Brazil and some Arab states could start operating their own versions of the Internet.

On the other hand, America demands to maintain a key role in the Internet it helped create through its Defence Ministry via the ArpaNet initiative, the precursor to Internet that we have come to immensely benefit from, today. The US further argues that transferring control of the Internet to the United Nations would stifle innovation with excessive bureaucracy and may help repressive regimes curtail free expression online.

In his argument, Michael Gallagher, President Bush's Internet adviser and head of the national telecommunications and information administration, believes the EU overtures are seizing on the only "central" part of the system in an effort to exert control.

Apparently, the US is referring to the one core technicality that governs the operation of Internet - the current role of the US government in overseeing the Internet's address structure grouped under the domain name servers (DNS).

The DNS is a network of thousands of computers, layered on top of the Internet, and all DNS machines ultimately report to 13 root servers, which hold the most basic Internet routing information structured over the Internet Protocol (IP). These 13 servers, many are located outside the US, are run redundantly by a variety of organisations, ranging from the US military, to private corporations, and to a European non-profit group based in Amsterdam. The DNS and all the root servers, in turn, are overseen by a not-for-profit under contract to the US Department of Commerce - the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

On the record, in June this year, the Bush Administration made it clear that it intended to retain its role overseeing ICANN, thus reneging on a pledge made during Bill Clinton's presidency. The US also emphasised that since the creation of ICANN, it has not once interfered with its decisions.

So what would happen if WSIS2005 failed to reach an accord and a rival state-led Internet is launched? David Gross, who headed the US delegation at the Geneva talks, said untested models of internet governance could disrupt the 250,000-plus networks, which allows over a billion people to get online for 27 billion daily user sessions - all using the same technical standards (TCP/IP). That is discounting the fact that Internet architecture is also built on a robust IP addressing system that includes root zone files known as top-level domain (TLD) names.

It is to be noted that ICANN has the authority to decide what new TLD names to create and who should run the existing domains in consultation with a panel called the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC). Those familiar with Internet history have no excuse to not know that ICANN's GAC is currently chaired by Malaysia’s Mohamed Sharil Tarmizi, a nominee from MCMC. (See this blog entry where Sharil and I were parodied by Joi Ito, another ICANN board member.)

Interestingly, in practice, it is the GAC that exerts more pressure on ICANN than the US department of commerce ever has. For example, it was at the GAC's urging that a recent request to create more generic top-level domain (gTLD) names, including .xxx for adult sites, was reviewed. The US commerce department does not have the power to sanction or veto ICANN's decisions.

Amidst the protracted debate, certain sectors of the international community, including countries like Iran, Pakistan and other prominent control-oriented states, seem intent on creating a new governing council for the Internet to which ICANN would be accountable, and Internet content is a subject for surveillance. That’s where the fears of the civil society arise as the remit of this council appears broad enough to restrict free speech on the web.

As the EU plan draws applauses by states such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, online activists emerge to express their misgivings. One of them is the former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt, who wrote in his weblog:

"It seems as if the European position has been hijacked by officials that have been driven by interests that should not be ours.

We really can't have a Europe that is applauded by China and Iran and Saudi Arabia on the future governance of the Internet. Even those critical of the United States must see where such a position risks taking us."

Watch this space!

World Bank wakes up to blogging

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz reads blogs.

In fact, Wolfowitz regularly sends his staff members links to what he has learned online, says Jeff Jarvis.

Yes, the World Bank has taken the first venture into blogging with Tim Harford and Pablo Halkyard co-writing the Private Sector Development Blog, code-named id21.

And here's the first question the World Bank blog tackles:

Blogs. What does an obscure format which started with computer geeks have to do with development?

Tim and Pablo's answer:

Here's how blogging will change both the developed and the developing world.

First, blogging improves the quality of debate...

So, World Bank wakes up to blogging and takes Global Voices seriously. Via Rebecca MacKinnon.

New blog... Help it grow!

Someone who wants to see a better Malaysia has started a new blog:

http://corrupted-malaysia.blogspot.com/

Please help it grow... if it told the untold truth.

Thanks Earl Ku for the pointer.

Bloggers, Big Ads and IBM India

UPDATED VERSION. Neha Neha Viswanathan just alerted me that The Hindustan Times, an icon in the Indian mainstream media, has picked up the issue datelined Mumbai. It, however, doesn't explicitly highlight the issue of Freedom of Speech.

If you know of any institute of higher learning in Malaysia that has linked up with the Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) or one Aarindam Chaudhuri, please alert me.

* * *

ORIGINAL POSTING:

This is very unfortunate for Freedom of Speech in the largest democracy on earth!

Gaurav Sabnis, an Indian blogger in Mumbai, had to resign from his job at IBM October 10, after linking to and praising an article criticizing an educational institute, named the Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM).

Because that controversial institute happens to be an IBM client!

Gaurav was threatened with a lawsuit when he was sent an email by IIPM, October 4, to remove any posts that questioned the institute's claims on academic achievements and students' performance. To defend his position, Gaurav resigned from IBM.

However, Gaurav put it on record that he had resigned on his own accord because of "some really bizarre threats that were apparently made by IIPM to IBM".

IIPM attracted the attention of the online community when it bought a series of huge advertisements in the newspapers -- definitely not a norm in resource-strapped India -- about "how wonderful they are, and how their students get to go to the sun and moon for final placements".

Well-knowned blogger, Rashmi Bansal of Youth Curry, was one of the driving forces behind the JAM magazine that exposed IIPM's corporate ethics. She first pointed to the article JAM had written about IIPM, which answered a lot of questions but finally boiled down to one person, Aarindam Chaudhuri, or AC, whose background/ credentials are extremely suspect.

AC, an author and management guru rolled in one, is the founder of IIPM.

In the debates that ensued since June 2005, IIPM and AC were subsequently accused of lying and cheating the students.

Not surprisingly, the mainstream media ignored the issue completely.

"Nobody bites the hand that buys adspace", says UK-based Neha Viswanathan, the person behind the famous Indian Tsunami Relief Blog.

Now, what we heard was that even Rashmi was at the receiving end of malicious anonymous comments. According this blog, IIPM "began spamming Rashmi's blog like crazy" with "people pretending to be ex-IIPM students".

There were even threats coming from IIPM, allegedly warning IBM that their students would burn the ThinkPads that IBM had supplied to the institute.

Many blogs, including Sambhar Mafia and Desi Pundit, have been following the developments closely. A lot of Indian blogs have been rallying behind Gaurav to lend him support.

With the gathering force of Indian bloggers, IIPM is now the fifth most searched blog topic on Technorati.

Global Voice has the story.

Big Corporate Bullies

According to my friends at Global Voices, this isn’t the first instance of Indian bloggers facing the wrath of corporate houses and big organisations.

Neha, in another of her blog entry, reminds us that the latest episode brings us back to the same question:

In a country whose USP is the Biggest Democracy, where has the Right to Free Speech disappeared? Is it easier to bully a blogger than a magazine or a Main Stream Media publication? Does a blogger have any rights?

In Malaysia, I know of one large advertising agency, whose clients became the frequent subject of my blog, has lobbied his fraternity to gag me. MackZul recently has a vivid personal account of this at a meeting organised by KPMG.

I am waiting for this Datuk Big Bully in the 4As to pull his guts to come face me personally.

I will fight back. And I believe I won't be alone, globally speaking.

Yahoo! adds blog to news search

With Yahoo!, you can no longer differentiate what's news and what's blog.

Early this morning Malaysia time, Yahoo! added blogs to its news section - within 24 hours after it introduced Yahoo! Podcasts.

The portal adds links to blog entries alongside major media news stories, as well as the ability to do a blog search.

From now on, in Yahoo! News, blog links will appear next to news stories from major media web sites. Red Herring says this further institutionalises what was once mainly a grassroots publishing phenomenon. Even photos in Flickr is cached for Yahoo! search.

Yahoo!

Yahoo! Podcasts

Yahoo! today launched a special site for Podcasts.

For now, you can search, subscribe via RSS, and download MP3-encoded grassroots-produced radio shows. But soon, says Yahoo!, you will have your own tools to help make your own podcasts.

Try it out at http://podcasts.yahoo.com (Beta).

Singapore: Blogger jailed for making racist remarks online

This is what I posted on Global Voices Online last night:

Two Singaporeans accused of posting racist remarks online have been sentenced to jail today, reports ChannelNewsAsia tonight.

Benjamin Koh Seng Huat, 28, was sentenced to one month’s jail, and separately, Nicholas Lim Yew, 25, was sentenced to serve one day in jail and a maximum fine of $5,000. Both were charged under Sedition Act.

Earlier, Nicholas Lim was wrongly reported by the media as a blogger. It was later found out that he had actually posted a disparaging comment about Muslims in a web forum for dog-lovers.

However, Benjamin Koh, who works at a kennel taking care of dogs, allegedly made similar racist comments on his blog, Phoenyx Chronicles, on www.upsaid.com. He pleaded guilty to the charge.

In passing sentences, Senior District Judge Richard Magnus said the two had crossed the red line by wantonly breaching the basic ground rules. He said passing a deterrent sentence was necessary so that such offending acts are tackled early and contained.

The judge said callous and reckless remarks on racial or religious subjects had the potential to cause social disorder, regardless of which medium or forum they are expressed, as every Singapore citizen and resident must respect the other races in view of Singapore’s multi-racial society.

He added the right of one to propagate an opinion on the Internet is not and cannot be an unfettered right.

The third person, a 17-year-old student blogger, will have his case heard on October 26 . He has earlier been charged on seven counts of promoting ill-will in Singapore under Chapter 29 of the Seditious Act.

It is a known fact that, charged with sedition, Singaporeans face prison terms of up to three years if convicted.

Early responses to today’s jail sentence can be found here and here.

MyKad @ Tokkok

If you'd missed the May debut, here's TV Smith's plugging for a beer or two off the 'master of niamahs'.

The Voice swears and curses at the naked card when the counter reads: NOMBOR GILIRAN UNTUK HARI INI SUDAH HABIS.

For budding 'MackZuls'...

UK-based Malaysian blogger Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad has put up a dummy's guide for budding MackZuls who want to start blogging on current affairs:

Here's the 'why':

I have a few friends who are outspoken, articulate and opinionated about current affairs – but do not blog. Some are in fact regular blog readers.

I think that’s a shame – because for many individuals, blogging is the easiest, cheapest and effective way for us to put our ideas to a readership which is the whole wired world!

Nik points out the BIG C about current affairs blogging: Credibility:

Many opinions and views are subjective matters, and therefore bloggers can take one opinion or another, which is neither right nor wrong. But when you write about current affairs, credibility is crucial. Make sure you know what you write about.

Pay heed and benefot from it.

Kit's blog down

Politics 101 Malaysia says the security of Kit Siang's blog has been compromised through unlawful access and the template has been destroyed.

A temporary blog is in the process of being built.

Debates continues on 'Big Brother'-ing the blogs

NST journalist Chow Kum Hor apparently didn't work hard enough to get the critical information to fill his Op-Ed piece today, titled: Where the arm of the law isn't long enough.

In a side-bar story on Page 18, Chow referred to an offensive commentary left by reader "Anwar" in Screenshots that, misleadingly prodded by Berita Harian and The NST, led to Umno Youth Khairy Jamaluddin demanding that this blogger apologise for allowing it to be published.

To put the record straight, this blogger stood to his ground till this day and denied Khairy the apology that he wrongly solicited.

Today, Chow quoted Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) corporate communications head Adelina Iskandar, who the reporter contacted this week for an update, as saying that the case "is now before the deputy public prosecutor".

If Chow had plied his trade a little harder, he should have no difficulty in finding out that the AG's Chambers and the DPP's office had taken a decision on the investigation papers, and that decision has been conveyed to MCMC in May this year.

Not to be accused of usurping the journalist's rice bowl, I shall leave it to Jalan Riong to correct the shortcomings in the said Op-Ed piece.

However, I am glad that, for the first time, Jalan Riong has acknowledged that BEFORE Berita Harian ran the October 2 frontpage story that vilified this blogger, and three consecutive frontpage leads thereafter...

Ooi had earlier removed the posting and blocked the anonymous "Anwar" from his website.

I had also heard that bloggers writing in English gave a cold shoulder to Utusan Malaysia, which attempted to do a story on the same topic.

Last week, AP's Sean Yoong interviewed me for a feature story on the subject: Asian bloggers fear government backlash, which was picked up by ZdNet Australia and Philippines' INQ7.

* * *

In his Op-Ed today, Chow Kum Hor spoke to blogger MackZulkifli who said if cyber-inflammer "good man" can be traced and charged, "it will serve as a reminder that surfers are not completely anonymous online. Then, people will be more cautious about what they can or cannot say".

MackZul also wanted the Government to require all cybercafe patrons to register before using the facilities to post seditious messages online.

To that, Deputy Internal Security Minister Chia Kwang Chye, warned computer users against testing the Government’s resolve to nail down criminals on the Internet. Chow concludes:

Now that two police reports have been lodged over the posting of seditious messages online, the ball is in the authorities’ court.

It is up to the police to send a strong signal to Malaysian surfers that they do not tolerate abuse of the Internet’s freedom and scorn for the nation’s laws — whether from "anonymous" surfers or otherwise.

* * *

Two days ago, I spoke to two Chinese online portals, namely Malaysiakini (Chinese Edition) and MerdekaReview, to give a context to the police reports filed by MackZulkifli and Peter Tan on the seditious commentaries posted by "good man" on their blogs.

I want the Chinese audience to understand the issue clearly and to pre-empt any misconception. Already, the two bloggers have become blamed for dragging the authorities to police the online freedom space for speech.

I told both the Chinese portals that Internet is not a legal vacuum, and specifically in Malaysia, illegalities offline remain illegalities online.

On the other hand, generally, Malaysian bloggers cherished the new-found space for free speech offered by Internet, and bloggers are merely approaching their blogging mission with a strong sense of of social responsibility.

Consider it as a pre-emptive strike for self-protection, but I do see that these two bloggers had the courage to draw the defined line that separates responsible bloggers from cyber-arsonists who hide behind nicks and anonymity.

Secondly, we do not want things to get out of spin and trigger another round of witch-hunting spearheaded by Berita Harian and The NST, spmething that happened to this blogger last October.

Besides, blogosphere in Malaysia does not warrant a spillover effect of the Singaporean crackdown on bloggers, invoking the Sedition Act.

In MerdekaReview, I found concurrence in two fellow online advocates, Sonia Randhawa and Fu Xiang-hong. However, in Malaysiakini, Penang-based activist Ong Boon Keong takes a contrarian view, which I translate:

Some bloggers who have won awards or built up their reputation over time have become overly obsessed with protecting their status and image, and decidedly attempt to withdraw themselves from the anonymous Netizens, if only to boost their own credibility.

They have been overly angkat diri (self-adulating), and immediately withdraw into self-protection mode when threatened. The higher they rise, the more conservative they become.

Ong maintained that reporting the inflammatory writers to the police would result in negative effect. If other bloggers emulate by filing similar police reports, he said, that would justify police interference, and ultimately, Internet freedom would be rendered as narrow as that already found in the mainstream media.

Now available: RSF Handbook for Bloggers & Cyberdissidents

Reporters Without Borders has given Global Voices a sneak peak at the Handbook For Bloggers and Cyberdissidents before its official Thursday release.

Click here to download the full PDF booklet.

Thanks to Julien Pain for his hard work on this project. Rebecca MacKinnon says it is a valuable gift to the world’s bloggers.

In Rebecca's words, it's a guidebook for people who want to be serious participants in the emergent online global conversation: How to set up a quality, credible blog. How to get it noticed. And.. if you’re in a country where there government might not like what you’re saying, how to avoid getting in trouble when you by-pass the information gatekeepers and talk directly to the world.

Quotes from Julien's introduction to the booklet: "Blogging can be revolutionary in countries where freedom of speech is not respected"...

Blogging is a powerful tool of freedom of expression that has enthused millions of ordinary people. Passive consumers of information have become energetic participants in a new kind of journalism - what US blog pioneer Dan Gillmor calls “grassroots journalism… by the people, for the people” (see chapter on “What ethics should bloggers have?”).

Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest. Plenty of bloggers have been hounded or thrown in prison. One of the contributors to this handbook, Arash Sigarchi, was sentenced to 14 years in jail for posting several messages online that criticised the Iranian regime. His story illustrates how some bloggers see what they do as a duty and a necessity, not just a hobby. They feel they are the eyes and ears of thousands of other Internet users.

On the other hand, Rebecca raises two critical questions: ( 1 ) Are you comfortable with the term "cyberdissident" attached to bloggers? ( 2 ) Are you blogger-ready to face the political and legal consequences? ( 3 ) Does freedom of expression allow you the rights to copyright violation and plagiarism?

On the second issue, she points to the two bridge-blogs that I have posted in Global Voices lately:

In the next edition, I’d love to see a couple more sections. In one, I’d like somebody to address the issue of what I call “consequence awareness.” I’ve discovered in my exploration of the international blogosphere that many bloggers start blogging - even anonymously on tools like Blogger - without really thinking through the consequences of what they’re doing. Are they taking enough precautions to protect themselves from being discovered? Are they prepared to deal with the consequences of their own speech? Not only for speaking the truth on their blogs, but also if they unfairly or inaccurately accuse somebody of something nasty? I’ve observed that many bloggers start blogging without thinking these things through, because many people still harbor the impression that cyberspace is a free zone where anything is possible. As many are learning the hard way, that’s not the case. In Singapore, two bloggers were recently charged with sedition for racist comments online, and this is now sending waves of fear through the Malaysian blogosphere.

It will be good if Malaysian bloggers spent some time going through RSF's bloggers' guide and Rebecca's questions. They give a context to what blogging is all about if we meant it as a stretegic tool to institute change for the better in the way we think in the knowledge-based society. Civility and social responsibility are not a void.

RSF Bloggers Guide... content summary

Reporters without Boundaries (RSF) will release September 22 The Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents for sale in bookshops and for Internet download in five languages (English, French, Chinese, Arabic and Persian).

Here's the content summary:

1. Bloggers, the new champions of freedom of expression
   Julien Pain
2. How to become a blogger
3. What's a blog?
   Pointblog.com
4. Choosing the best tool
   Cyril Fiévet and Marc-Olivier Peyer
5. How to set up and run a blog
   The Civiblog system
   Citizenlab
6. What ethics should bloggers have?
   Dan Gillmor
7. Getting your blog picked up by search-engines
   Olivier Andrieu
8. What really makes a blog shine?
   Mark Glaser
9. Personal accounts

   Germany - "We promote civil and human rights"
   Markus Beckedahl

   Bahrein - "We've broken the government's news monopoly."
   Chan'ad Bahraini

   United States - "Now I can write what I think"
   Jay Rosen

   Hong Kong - "I kept my promise to those who died"
   Yan Sham-Shackleton

   Iran - "We can write freely in blogs"
   Arash Sigarchi

   Nepal - "We tell the outside world what's happening"
   Radio Free Nepal

10. How to blog anonymously
    Ethan Zuckerman
11. The language of blogging
    Pointblog
12. Beating censorship and protecting your e-mail
13. Technical ways to get round censorship
    Nart Villeneuve
14. How to ensure e-mail is truly private
    Ludovic Pierrat
15. Internet-censor World Championship
    Julien Pain

* * *

This Saturday, I will partner Sonia Randhawa of Centre for Independent Journalism Malaysia (CIJ) to conduct a workshop themed: Writing for the Internet. It's organised by Southeast Asian Centre for e-Media (SEACeM).

Priority is given to communication/outreach officers of NGOs or civil society groups.

Defensive blogging... ( 2 )

I have put up the Singapore crackdown on bloggers, and Malaysian bloggers' "pre-emptive strike" on the GVO radar-screen. Elian Diodati responded with a wiki. Julien Pain re-posted his earlier message (Guide for bloggers and cyberdissidents) on GVO.

Ex-NST Mathew Maavak (Panoptic World) has a posting on p2p.net (Thanks blogger SK for the alert), which hints at the authority's turning pages of Psyops Manual for Beginners:

Commonsensical questions can be an irritant. Anonymous posts can be more damaging than an article on a registered internet news site. So, kill the blogs. [...]

Here is what the manual would suggest:

Create a situational crisis to achieve targeted results. Ramp up confusion, induce fear, hint at mayhem and, finally introduce controlled dissent.

The situational crisis in Malaysia would be the race and religion card. The real crisis, as I mentioned, is different.

Matthew talks about fragging and splitting the bloggers - an act, he says, that gained "unusual sympathisers" from Jalan Riong, where "One particular blog is denied access at the New Straits Times".

He finally points to GVO which provides anonymity tips for "bloggers living under regimes that do not respect freedom of speech".

Apparently, Julien Pain is reading from the same chapter - the Anon Blog.

Third blogger charged in Singapore

The Singapore government has charged the third blogger on seven counts of promoting ill-will in Singapore under Chapter 29 of the Seditious Act.

The blogger is Gan Huai Shi, a 17-year old student. He had allegedly maintained a racist blog which he called The Second Holocaust.

This is the context given by Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on September 17, a ChannelNewsAsia story picked up by Beijing:

"This is the message, it is not acceptable. It is against the law, and the Sedition Act specifically puts it down that you are creating distrust and animosity between the races, and we will act according to the law."

He said Singapore takes multi-racial and multi-religious harmony seriously and the government will take action against anyone who makes racist remarks.

Last week, the Singapore government invoked the Sedition Act, the first time in 10 years, to charge bloggers Nicholas Lim Yew, 25, and Benjamin Koh Song Huat, 27, with sedition for posting racist comments online.

Bloggers lodge police reports

UPDATED VERSION. Bloggers Peter Tan and Ameer Zulkifli yesterday lodged reports against "good man", an anonymous writer who posted seditious messages on their blogs.

The report was lodged at the Brickfields police station, Kuala Lumpur, reports New Sunday Times.

* * *

UPDATED: "good man" responded by posting another long missive (the 34th commentary) on Peter Tan's blog at 01:07 PM, September 18, 2005. The troll remains spoky with his thoughts about bumiputra.

Another blog-buster

MackZulkifli is the latest target of anonymous commenter nicknamed 'good man' who posted a seditious message in his blog at 8.30am September 16.

Today, the Malay Mail gives a frontpage lead comparable to blogger Peter Tan's angst which was similarly made Page One material yesterday.

MackZul is reported to be lodging a police report today. He also called on responsible bloggers to notify the police of seditious messages posted in their blogs.

Other bloggers are expressing their grave concerns over seditious messages posted by Internet trolls like 'good man'.

Bloggers who are affected by good man's seditious messages in their weblogs are welcome send me screenshots of the offensive message and together with the relevant IP address and the time-stamp. We can together plot out the pattern of the postings and the sources.

Peter Tan turns 'blog-buster'

UPDATED VERSION. My friend Peter Tan (picture below), who blogs on petertan.com/blog, wants an Internet troll who goes by the nickname of "good man" to face the wrath of law.

"Good man" has written a seditious message in the commentaries section of Peter' blog while he was attending an on-site seminar for the disabled, and was disconnected from Internet for several days.

When he was alerted by a friend of the offensive commentary, Peter, who is a paraplegic, had to get his web-host to shut down his blog as he could only attend to the matter after completing the seminar.

Today, Peter goes on the Malay Mail frontpage to say this aloud:

"I'm keeping this one (message) for the authorities. This has gone too far and I want the person who did it to be accountable.

"If this (offensive commentaries by blog readers) is allowed to go unchecked, it will give a negative impression of bloggers."

Peter will lodge a police report today, and furnish the IP address of the culprit to the police so that they can nab him.

This blogger was also interviewed for the Malay Mail story, and I gave a simple guideline:

Know the law and do not flout it. Bloggers (and webforum and website owners) need to comply with the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998. A simple rule would be: Whatever is illegal offline is also illegal online.

"If someone posts something offensive, it is up to the owner of the blog to delete it. Do not allow people who hide behind nicknames and anonymity to abuse the Internet. Bloggers who have been affected sould work with the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to trace the culprit."

That's why MackZul and I have been pressing hard for social responsibility on the Internet. The incidents in Singapore where two bloggers have been charged for sedition, is not a consequence to our stand.

The case is simple. The online speher is not a legal vacuum. Remember that.

* * *

UPDATE: Politics101Malaysia has an update of weblogs and forums that had been spammed by similar troll. The victims include Lim Kit Siang, quicktopic, and other forums.

Google Blog Search

Blog is going to get more visible with Google launching Blog Search several hours ago.

Try it out: http://blogsearch.google.com.

Blog Search is also Google’s first significant move in the blog arena since the 2003 purchase of Pyra, the publisher of Blogger.com that powers blogspot.com weblogs.

However, we don't really know whether Google Blog Search will ultimately develop into a blog-only web search now that the blog search sector is nominated by smaller outfits like Technorati.com, Feedster.com, and icerocket.com.

Some early responses:

• The Blogherald said Google’s Blog Search tool was faster than some of its main competitors, but lacked the depth of some of them, pointing out it only indexed about 8 million blogs.
• Dave Winer, one of the pioneer bloggers, criticised the Google tool for only indexing items with headlines, but praised it for acknowledging its use of his weblogs.com web indexer as a source of blog items.
• A group of Slashdot followers are hoping this signals a change in Google's page rank algorithm to give blogs less relevance.

One thing is for sure: The interface for Google Blog Search is like the DNA that runs in the family - It's beta, it's spartan.

Defensive blogging

This may be relevant to Malaysian bloggers who have been following the case of two Singaporean bloggers who were charged under Sedition Act for publishing racial and racialist content.

Julien Pain, who heads the Internet Desk of Paris-based Reporters Without Boundaries, has just sent me an excerpt of "Guide for bloggers and cyberdissident". The full version will be made available online on September 22.

The guide for bloggers and cyberdissidents

Blogs get people excited. Or else they disturb and worry them. Some people distrust them. Others see them as the vanguard of a new information revolution. Because they allow and encourage ordinary people to speak up, they're tremendous tools of freedom of expression.

Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest.

Reporters Without Borders has produced this handbook to help them, with handy tips and technical advice on how to remain anonymous and to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each situation. It also explains how to set up and make the most of a blog, to publicise it (getting it picked up efficiently by search-engines) and to establish its credibility through observing basic ethical and journalistic principles.

In Malaysia, it has been prominently stated that...

The Online environment is not a legal vacuum. In general, if something is illegal "off-line", it will also be illegal "on-line". In this matter, the relevant existing laws apply.

Now you see why Screenshots and BrandMalaysia have been talking about upholding the Social Responsibility of Internet and Online Content aggregators on an acute manner, pointing to the guidelines included in the Content Code.

In Singapore, bloggers have recovered from their initial stun and started to respond to the situation there.

It doesn't mean that bloggers over here shouldn't be on-guard of things moving in the background.

MIA & Streamyx Report No. 4263486

I went MIA (missing in action) the last two days.

Deja vu! My Streamyx at home went blinking, and finally dead, since 7.00pm Friday evening. The service was only recovered around 2.30pm on Sunday. By then, I have made other arrangements to fill up my weekend, as I can't expect my family to endure my blogging from a Starbucks wifi spot.

I couldn't get through 1300-88-9515 on Friday as the queue was rather long. However, I managed to get through the VADS-operated call centre at 8.00am Saturday morning.

To NK (Streamyx Call Centre) who escalated my complaint (Report No. 4263486) to Rozian (Streamyx Cyberjaya) and Izan (Streamyx Brickfields) the same day on Saturday, many thanks.

To Michael at Streamyx USJ, who called me Sunday noon to assure me the line would recover by 3.00pm, many thanks. The line came back at 2.30pm.

Here's the chronology of events, and what I think should have been done better:

• 7.00pm, Friday September 9: DSL connection went unstable, dropline every few minutes
• 9.15pm, Friday September 9: DSL connection went dead.
• 9.20 - 9.35pm, Friday 9: Called 1300-88=9515. Couldn't get through the queue.
• 8.01am, September 10: Izan at 1300-88-9515 picked up the call within three rings. Went through the initial Q&A; to trouble-shoot -- including ( 1 ) Do you use splitter? No, I don't; ( 2 ) Do you use TM-supplied modem? No, I don't. It's my own Aztech, 7-month-old; ( 3 ) Can you switch the modem off and on again after 15 seconds? Yes, I've tried several times before this, but I can try again... No, it won't work; ( 4 ) Can you hold while I check if there's a service outage in USJ/Puchong exchange... No the service in USJ is OK, let me escalete your complaint to my superior.
• 10.25am, Saturday September 10: Izan of TM Net Brickfield called to check if my DSL has recovered as he could see on his side it was running OK. Affirmative OK.
• 10.30am, Saturday September 10: Rozian of TM Net Customer Service SMS-ed to check if her staff had contacted me. I said service had recovered.
• 10.36am, Saturday September 10: Called Izan to inform him the DSL connection went dead again. Told him it's highly possible that there was a fault at the USJ/Puchong exchange that connects me to Streamyx. He said it's 50-50 chance that fault may lie at the exchange or my CPE (Customer Premises Equipment).
• 11.05am, Saturday September 10: Izan called to inform me he may have to despatch a technician to my house on Monday. I again asked him to check the "pizzabox" near my neighbourhood or the DSLAM at USJ/Puchong exchange.
• 12.05pm, Saturday September 10: Informed Rozian that the DSL connection went dead again. She replied she would get her staff to pursue the matter.
• 12.00 noon, Sunday September 11: Michael of TM Net/Streamyx USJ called to assure that the DSL connection will be recovered by 3.00pm. The fault is confirmed an interface card attached to the DSLAM that links to my account has gone kaput.
• 2.25pm, Sunday September 11: Michael called to informed me that the DSL connection has come back alive. Ask me to switch on my PC and modem to confirm.
• 2.30pm, Sunday September 11: Called back Michael to confirm the DSL connection was running fine.

Caveat: My Streamyx account carries my wife's name as username. I had designed this so that the notoriety of Jeff Ooi as a username will not induce neither favourable nor discriminating treatment by TM Net staff.

My only wish: The infrastructure audit at the exchange level should be carried out at periodical interval and the status report must be linked as live data to the network operations centre (NOC) and the customer service monitoring panel.

That will save a lot of ding-dongs in trouble-shooting and service recovery.

10-week blog on swapping lives

Do cultures conflict?

Dewi, a 23-year old from Jogjakarta from Central Java, will swap life with Violet, a 19-year old from Sydney for 10 weeks. A blog is being built around the 70 days of life-swapping.

Violet will explore issues ranging from sexuality to the rise of terrorism, besides testing the perception that Muslims are dangerous and unpredictable people. Simultaneously, Dewi documents in Sydney the impact of swapping her Muslim culture, family and friends with Violet.

Their blogs have entered Week I and Week 2.

TV station SBS Australia will air a special documentary on October 6.

Via Global Voices Online.

Meeting Streamyx Team

'Pleasantly stunned' were the words when YS Loh and I walked into Chatter Restaurant in SS17, Subang Jaya, Tuesday night.

Least did I realise Michael Lai had pulled together his CFO and the senior management team - a total of 14 people from the technical, network operations (Cyberjaya & Brickfields), sales and marketing, customer service, regulatory and corporate communications departments - to meet up with us bloggers.

All pictures taken by YS Loh before other bloggers arrived.

For a start, it was a great face-to-face meeting. TV Smith, MackZul and MENJ were the three other bloggers who were present. I will update in details tomorrow.

Kit is now one of us

It's at limkitsiang.blogspot.com.

In his sixth entry, he talks about the 1957 Proclamation of Independence, and the gulf between promises and realities.

Keep on blogging, Kit! With you blogging, we are having a pair of able hands to help us push the sail.

Echo chamber?

Are bloggers merely preaching to the choir? There is an interesting topic by Jason Lim on cicak.com. Quote:

Observers, on several occasions, have pointed out that socio-political blogs in Malaysia tend to attract like-minded people who are only a minority of Malaysians. A tiny minority at that.

"Preaching to the choir," they call it. Only people who have activism already thrusting in their veins would seek out websites like Malaysiakini and JeffOoi.com, and spend hours a day refreshing webpages to see if the witty-yet-intelligent comments they made appear on blog-entries and whether anyone has been flaming their comments.

Why bother with the preaching...

Read it. The stinger is in the last paragraphs.

Screenshots on OBG

Screenshots and Malaysian bloggers are featured on Oxford Business Group - August 22: The New Blogocracy.

Malaysian blogs spotted

The are two Malaysian blogs that made it to the RSS Search Engine's Feedster Top 500 for August - on the lower rung.

Thanks blogger LiewCF for the pointer.

Oh My God

The Senyum Kambing cartoon in Mingguan Malaysia yesterday has this dialog:

A: Rafidah minta media supaya ingat pada Tuhan.
B: Jika dari awal semua orang ingat kat Tuhan, tiada masalah AP.

Mackzul stared at the cartoon and came up with a oneliner:

"Sebelum buat kira-kira dengan Allah, marilah kita langsaikan hutang dengan manusia dulu."

Punchy line it is.

Bloggers' track that's less travelled

After blogging for close to three years, I thought I should start to give blogs and bloggers a fresh context.

Last month, with the help of fellow Anak Malaysia who run the Malaysian Forum, I had a roundtable with a group of dynamic knowledge workers in Palo Alto, California to share my thoughts about blogging within the Malaysian context. It was an honour and a great experience having frank conversations with my fellow countrymen and women who are scholars from Stanford and San Francisco universities, and those who graduated and established their professional practice in the Bay Area.

Today, I will give an evening talk to the Malaysian Chapter of the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA), themed: Blogging: Freedom of Speech vs Social Accountability.

September 8, I will have another evening talk with a group of young PR consultants as a part of the Public Relations Consultants Association of Malaysia’s (PRCAM) SpeakEasy programme. The theme: Blogging, Beyond the Politics.

Mr Tang Hangwu, who is now in Cambridge University in UK, has also planned for me to hold a joint faculty seminar at the Law Faculty, National University of Singapore (NUS), themed: Blogging and freedom of expression sometime in September.

I think bloggers should outreach to the communities of practice to give blogs a relevant context in a knowledge-based economy. There are critical thinkers who should be networked together to influence change in society and economy.

Today, I will also begin a new journey, in the virtual borderless world no doubt, with Global Voices Online, a project at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School.

Peak Traffic

Here is a snapshot of the latest visitor traffic to the Screenshots frontpage, excluding second layer pages and frontpages cached by the ISPs, as measured via Sitemeter. Site summary is available here.

There are now four peaks in Screenshots visitor logs, with the first one registered around October 2004, when this blogger was unfairly vilified by Berita Harian as frontpage lead for four consecutive days in October 2004.

This was followed by the December 26 killer tsunami, the March 29 Nias Earthuake.

I am still speculating on the reasons for the latest peak in June. There must have been a variety of incidents that happened concurrent with the recognitions accorded by RSF Freedom Blogs and PPS/Malaysian blogger community.

Many thanks for your support. That also makes blogging such a tough outing.

PPS: A good problem is still a problem

Bloggers who ping to Project Petaling Street (PPS) please take note. Aizuddin has an urgent message for all of us:

Reducing PPS bandwidth utilization

PPS popularity has shot through the roof these past 2 months (thanks to all those who make PPS their daily visit!). However, this success is creating its own set of problems for us: bandwidth utilization is very, very heavy. In access of 20GB as of last month. Sheesh. And its all just text!!!

One way to reduce this problem: don't copy and paste the source code for the PPS buttons/banners onto your blog. If you do this, then everytime someone visits your blog, you're actually leeching PPS bandwidth to display the image. More than 5GB of bandwidth was used in this manner last month.

To rectify this problem, please download the PPS button and save the image file onto your blog or onto some server space you have access to. This way, you will reduce the load on PPS.

Your kind understanding is most appreciated in this matter.

Posted by Aizuddin Danian at July 1, 2005 11:36 AM

Sorry Aiz, I now realised I am one of the biggest culprits!

Screenshots on NPR

I've just finished a live talkshow (from 10 to 11pm Malaysia Time) with National Public Radio (NPR @WBUR Boston), which linked up Rebecca MacKinnon from Boston, Toronto-based Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan (Hoder) from Brussel and this blogger from Subang Jaya, Malaysia. Topic: Cyber Dissidents.

The show was hosted by Dick Gordon, produced by Jennifer Ehrlich.

We talked about blogs and bloggers, their derivatives and how they bring about change in the opinion space. The idea behind Global Voices Online, which Rebecca co-founded as a platform to bridge bloggers around the world, was given its context when we three spoke from three different continents, live!

Here is the URL to the audio archive (RealMedia required). Also tead the synopsis for the show.

Screenshots has also done three live interviews with two other overseas radio stations in May/June:
- Radio Australia (ABC) on blogs
- Radio Singapore International (RSI) on blogging
- Radio Singapore International on higher education in Malaysia

Bloggers have arrived... for the wrong reasons

It's like losing your innocence. Many an unknown blogger can no longer go around town posing as 'just a guy with a blog'. The US federal regulators now want to see how bloggers are financed during election campaign.

In other words, bloggers have arrived.

"One sign of having arrived is when government regulators start wanting to poke their fingers into what you do," says Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, founder of www.DailyKos.com.

Moulitsas was called to testify at a hearing yeasterday on a Federal Election Commission (FEC) proposal that would extend some campaign finance rules to the Internet, including bloggers. He urged the FEC to take a hands-off approach.

As it is, US bloggers are now lobbying the establishment to protect their livelihoods from federal regulations. Via CNN.

Thanks reader My015 for the alert.

Thank this man, and I thank Kalimullah

It was a great party last night. Two years ago, nobody would have dreamed that Malaysian blogosphere can be this lively and so much fun!

We must thank this man, Aizuddin Danian (picture left), for connecting the dots. We must thank him for the vision, and for single-handedly putting up a Grand Central Station (remember New York) that watches thousands of bloggers passing through to greet and meet, and to congregate for the next stations.

Because of Aiz's fine work, we are strangers and yet we are long-time friends.

Here's the earliest pings to Project Petaling Street (PPS) with lots of photos:

• Kimberlycun (Thank God! I held her hands, so silky soft, a big achievement for me this lifetime ;-) ...


• Jefferi Chang (Wished you were here, Kota Kinabalu!)


• Midnite Lily (Who came after having dinner with the boss)


• Mackzulkifli (who was the live wire of the night, part-time MC at Charlie's Place, off Jalan Bukit Aman)


• Sixth Seal (who begged the highest number of cheeks in pix)


• Of the Flesh (to whom we took a rain cheque for beer)


• KYSpeaks (who still thinks he's a newbie but no...)


• IreneQ (when's War of the World preview?)


• ShaolinTiger (Tell you, he hacked The Star emails)


• Messy 'confused' Christian (she interveiwed me when I hadn't heard of blogs!)


• Cyber-red (my dear, I am speechless too!)


• Wingz Rojaks (who caught Kenny Sia's pants down)


• Suanie (she wants to hump SixthSeal and Kenny Sia!)


• niki@nicsters (he, like me, met minishorts)

The list of new pings at PPS will surely grow as Malaysia wakes up this morning.

* * *

Words of wisdom. Aiz reminded all of us, despite the three awards, it wasn't meant to be a contest. It's just a record of the traffic that passed through the Grand Station for the year last. His job was to trace the footprints left behind by the bloggers transitting the cyber highway via Petaling Street (grand central) station as an intimate observer.

Pejalai from Sarikei has this record:

- Simon - Neophyte Blog Of The Year Award
- Jeff Ooi - Ping Of The Year Award
- Kenny Sia - Blog Of The Year Award

Thanks to all Malaysia bloggers/readers for voting "Screenshots vilified on Berita frontpage, by Jeff Ooi" as the Ping of the Year. It means the particular blog entry about how mainstream media tried to fix this blogger culminating with the threat of ISA has generated the highest interaction within the Malaysian blogosphere throughout 2004.

For that, I also have to thank Kalimullah Masheerul Hassan (in this article) and
Hishamuddin Aun (who gave me 4 consecutive days of frontpage leads in Berita Harian without getting facts from the subject it condemned) for making me famous.

Yes, I built that into my "thanksgiving speech", not because Malaysia newspapers had tanked, but because it gave us the reference point to discern between good and evil.

Thank you Kalimullah!

* * *

Last but not least...

Sultanmuzaffar, it was a pity we didn't get to talk much. But it was really great you made it there!

Thanks Sharizal for taking late orders and cleaning up the place.

* * *

Driving home, the greatest satisfaction of the night is that, Malaysian blogosphere is growing. Steadily growing!

In the wee hours, the voice of "Mahatma" Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) kept ringing:

First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you,
then they fight you,
then you win.

It's not a political statement, really.

Even if it was, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

Happy Birthday, Ping Ping Ping!

Project Petaling Street celebrates its 2nd anniversary today!

Congratulations and many happy returns of the day!

Malaysian blogosphere, especially Project Petaling Street, has now become a subject of academic study at Cambridge UK by Tang Hang Wu, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore. (See bio here, here and here.)

His paper, Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom: A Malaysian Case Study on Blogging Towards a Democratic Culture, was presented at BILETA (British & Irish Law, Education and Technology Association) recently. The paper can be downloaded in PDF, here. Click MORE! to read the excerpts.

Please note that Tang also throws a challenge to Malaysian bloggers: When are you going to have your national level bloggers conference?

Read pages 17 ~ 18 of his confenrence paper before or after coming to the bash tonight. The Star In-Tech will be there!

Excerpts:

It could be argued that Project Petaling Street is one giant echo chamber comprising of elite, well-educated, English speaking and technologically savvy Malaysians. Unfortunately, this is a serious criticism which cannot be overcome easily in a country like Malaysia where many languages are spoken.

It does not seem feasible to construct a monolithic and multi-lingual blogging movement as bloggers and their readers would naturally tend to write and read in the language that they are most comfortable in. Despite this criticism, the creators of Project Petaling Street seemed to have stumbled on a strategy to ameliorate the effects of the creation of a further echo chamber within its community. Project Petaling Street by collating the titles of a huge number of blogs (all with very different perspectives) on a single website forces the blog owners and readers to move out of their own respective echo chamber. This is because a reader who clicks on a title and blog shown in Project Petaling Street has no idea what the blog is really like.

Further, the interaction among bloggers and readers have often lead to very lively and sometimes heated debates which is the converse of an echo chamber. Another important lesson to be learnt from Project Petaling Street is that we should encourage all forms of blogging not just libertarian bloggers. Even mundane personal journals do encourage a democratic culture since they promote the sharing and exchange ideas. And as demonstrated above, personal journals might take on a political flavor at certain times.

Thus, the experience of Project Petaling Street clearly shows that the setting up of a national blog aggregator is immensely beneficial to encourage blogging activities.

Malaysian ( blog ) Idols

Star Two features blogtal PetalingStreet.org and four popular bloggers today, namely: Peter Tan, Claire 'Minishorts' Khoo, Tew Hui Suan and Kenny Sia.

This is a secret recipe to stardom, from Kenny:

Sia started the blog in January this year as a tool to communicate with his overseas friends. However, it soon became one of the Malaysian blogosphere’s most popular blogs, mostly due to an infamous post on April’s Fool’s Day where he made fun of a score of famous bloggers, including Malaysia’s Jeff Ooi and several Singaporean bloggers.

Since that wicked post, he has seen his website registering more than 3,000 visitors a day, which has motivated him to come up with similar posts to make people laugh.

I really look forward to meeting my 'Malaysian Idols' this Thursday night, June 23.

Come join us at the PPS 2nd Anniversary Bash - which will be held at Charlie's Place, Kuala Lumpur. Three awards judged by the Malaysian blogging community, namely Blog of the Year, Neophyte of the Year and Ping of the Year, will be announced during the bash.

It's on BBC News

BBC News World Edition carries a story on RSF Freedom Blog Awards:

The best weblogs on the net which defend freedom of expression are recognised in an online poll.

Thanks Jonathan K, K Sundram (Italy), IT Partner and sorespot for the alert.

* * *

BBC News also ran a story recently on Global Voices Online, with which Screenshots is associated (listen to the Skypecast.

Screenshots voted as "FREEDOM BLOG', Asia

Last night, Screenshots was pronounced the FREEDOM BLOG, Asia.

Prof. Jay Rosen, who keeps a blog called PressThink, wins the FREEDOM BLOG for the Americas. Responding to the results, he gave a context:

It's a serious honor to share that page [...] especially with Mojtaba Saminejad of Iran (whose story of imprisonment is told here and here) and Screenshots...by Jeff Ooi (see Dan Gillmor on Ooi's struggle with the thought police in Malaysia.) For them, international recognition is vital... [...] Web voters and Reporters Sans Frontières did a great thing, an important thing by recognizing Mojtaba Saminejad and Jeff Ooi.

The award is jointly organised by France-based Reporters without Borders (RSF) and the Germany-based Deutsche Welle's Best of the Blogs (BoB) Awards.

Screenshots is among the 10 blogs from Asia shortlisted for the Freedom of Expression Blog Award. The other Asian blogs shortlisted are from a Chinese residing overseas, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, two from North Korea, three from Nepal, and an Irish from Singapore. The selection criteria is available here.

The Asian blogs, together with 50 others, are regarded as defendents of freedom of expression in six regions: Africa and the Middle East, the Americas, Asia, Europe, Iran and International.

These 60 blogs are presented in English (25 blogs), French (3), Russian (1), Arabic (3), Farsi (21), Spanish (3), Italian (1) and German (1).

The award organisers had put in place a mechanism to prevent vote-rigging throughout the two-month voting period. There is only one award winner in each geographical category.

Results of the competition for best blogs defending freedom of expression, each in their own way, are as follows:

ASIA

Screenshots
www.jeffooi.com
Country: Malaysia
Language: English

AFRICA AND MIDDLE EAST
Joint winners

Shared Pains
http://kabul2.blogsky.com
Country: Afghanistan
Language: Farsi

And

Al Jinane
http://www.emarrakech.info/prana
Country: Morocco
Language: French

EUROPE

ICT lex
http:/www.ictlex.net
Country: Italy
Language: Italian

AMERICAS

Press Think
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink
Country: United States
Language: English

IRAN

Mojtaba Saminejad
http://8mdr8.blogspot.com
Country: Iran
Language: Farsi

INTERNATIONAL

Netzpolitik
http://www.netzpolitik.org
Country: Germany
Language: German

Winning is not everything. As you have seen, all 60 nominees stand monumentally for their own beliefs and devotion.

When I accepted the nomination on April 7, I said:

"If you think Screenshots qualifies for your endorsement, please vote - NOT FOR ME but for the meaning behind it."

I think those who had voted must have shared the same belief. I'm obliged and humbled to pay tribute to all voters from Malaysia and around the world, I sincerely thank you for your votes of endorsement, not for me, but to uphold the freedom of speech in the little sphere that we have.

More information about the awards :
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=12326
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=13098

* * *

Messages came through while I was asleep, many thanks, but the honour goes to all bloggers who have soldiered on despite the various impediments:

• Jun 15, 21:43hr: Julien Pain, RSF Internet Freedom Desk, France


• Jun 15, 22:25hr: Steven McDermott, www.singabloodypore.blogspot.com, UK


• Jun 16, 02:20hr: Riaz Razak, UK


• Jun 16, 05:11hr: Rebecca MacKinnon, www.rconversation.com, Harvard/ Berkman Institute for Internet & Society, USA


• Jun 16, 07:54hr: Ganesh Sahathevan, Australia

Rebecca and I had a live Skype-chat a moment ago. I will post the link when the Skypecast is up on Global Voices Online.

In the interview, I plug for blogs and bloggers, but I also emphasise that the privilege of freedom of expression comes with a strong sense of responsibility, all the time.

Minions in the Umno-owned mainstream media which had viciously tried to pin me down for "insulting Islam" have been proven grossly wrong -- not by me, but in history by the international media fraternity.

Demise of 4th Estate weblogs?

What's happened to the journalist-bloggers at theSun?

The last three blog updates by theSun's major journalist-bloggers as at today:

( 1 ) P. Gunasegaram: May 17, Apr 28, Apr 25
( 2 ) Jackson Ng KS: Apr 8, Apr 4, Mar 27
( 3 ) Oon Yeoh: April 28, Apr 21, Apr 12
( 4 ) Danny Lim: Mar 29, Feb 14, Jan 23

If it's a case of 'hidup segan, mati tak mahu', then Nexnews Media, which owns the blogs-in-the-portal, must deal with it at once.

The cob-web generated by theSun's four main 4th Estate bloggers certainly causes a dent in the goodname of the fledgling blogging community in Malaysia.

Already, Singapore's Sarong Party Girl has dropped her covers and MackZul isn't pleased. Bad branding for good bloggers, he says.

Mid-year blogger meets

June will get to see many blogger get-togethers.

This one, the 10am Meet at MidValley, organised by SK and Peter Tan, has many woken up from their Sunday slumber and yet they didn't complain.

* * *

We are looking at another do - the PPS 2nd Anniversary Bash - which will be held at Charlie's Place Kuala Lumpur on June 23.

On the night, three awards judged by the Malaysian blogging community, namely Blog of the Year, Neophyte of the Year and Ping of the Year will be announced.

Contact Sharizal Shaarani ( sharizal [at] sharizal [dot] net ) for menu and headcounts!

Good photo-taking

When you take photos, whether using a professional SLR or a point-and-shoot camera, make sure your pictures tell vivid story.

These two by blogger Julee Ng ( http://julee.blogspot.com ) are simply excellent. Crime scene: Ayer Keroh/Melaka expressway.

CAPTION: This 18-wheeler bugger almost killed us.. well... kinda. He suddenly cut into our lane without signalling beforehand, forcing my dad to brake suddenly causing my head to knock against the window. The bugger was dangerously tailgating other vehicles too.

CAPTION: At one point, the bugger was doing more than 120kmj -_-"

In the second picture, I have highlighted the speedometer to let you feel the engine rev. The original picture is availabe at Julee's blog.

One great thing about Malaysia: You may have the blackbox or speed limiter, but our mentality will beat them all.

Thanks TV Smith for the alert.

The Contractor

What do you think of this picture I called "The Contractor"?

Had the green zinc hoarding been a little more battered, and the slit-window showing the old Merc a little wide open... okay, if the boots were Pua Chu Kang yellow - that would be perfect composition.

More in the "High Street and Back Alley" series. Caution: Always go in group, don't shoot alone.

Indian govt recognises bloggers

If you are a serious blogger, the Indian government may just open its doors to you, reports Times of India.

Principle Information Officer Shakuntala Mahawal was quoted as saying India is in the process of framing rules for granting accreditation to Internet journalists and bloggers for the first time, taking a reality check on an evolving world of net writers who could shape opinion and who have already been granted access to official corridors in countries such as the US.

But rest assured, bloggers are not about to replace the mainstream media anytime soon - a US finding.

Thanks little bird for the pointer.

Teh-tarik, kurang manis...

I took a respite to trace the origin of fine tea and teh-tarik, and came home with a photo-story of 22 images. (Medium-sized resolutions, broadband preferred.)

• Cameron Highlands... ( 1 )


• Cameron Highlands... ( 2 )

Also, please tell me what you think of this simple story-telling. Thanks.

On the road

Sparse posting in the next few days, subject to Internet availability.

The dream job

It's advertised in Jobstreet, closing date June 7.

Thanks reader Yu Siang for the pointer.

Screenshots on Italian TV and Aussie radio

Last month, RAI, the Italian state television, was in town with a 3-member crew to produce a 50-minute documentary on Malaysia. It will be aired over RAI3, the station's cultural channel, soon.

Looking at their shooting script, it looks like a showcase on the different aspects of social, political, economical and cultural life in Malaysia through stories and interviews.

Screenshots and this blogger was interviewed on Malaysia's quest to be an economic powerhouse in the digital age, and the menace of digital piracy that makes the American government awry. I also talked about related aspects like striking the difficult balance between the need to guarantee property rights and the freedom in promoting information and knowledge.

It was a pleasure meeting up with the crew comprising a producer, a journalist and well known director, Francesco Patierno. They promised me that they will "mix the journalistic eye together with the poetical eye of the director" and come out with a balanced presentation about Malaysia without any bias against differing opinions.

I heard the Penang Chief Minister and the CEO of Globetronics were interviewed for perspectives from the 'Silicon Island'.

* * *

Yesterday, I did a long distance phone interveiw with Radio Australia, the international service of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

We spoke at length about the popularity of the South Korean website OhmyNews, a networking I built at the Harvard Conference last December.

There's one interesting aspect raised by the reporter, Huey Fern Tay. OhMyNews' contributors bear responsibility for their articles even though a team of copy editors try their best to check the facts before publishing the pieces. She asked whether I exercise the same methodology in my community website www.usj.com.my and take editorial responsibility over its contents.

I am told the interview will be published sometime next week on ABC's website: www.abc.net.au/ra/asiapac.

I hopes these two efforts help in promoting Malaysia as a thriving, emerging knowledge society in the region.

* * *

Glad to announce that, two days ago, Screenshots served up the first 2-millionth unique visitor to its frontpage since migrating from Blogspot to its own domain name on May 21, 2003.

I hope to touch more people in the future.

Baby fingerprinting: Readers' views on BBC Radio 5 Live

Cheers to the 23 Screenshots readers who wrote in to the blog topic: Do you agree to have your babies marked down at birth?

Some of your comments in Conversations were read by KL-based Jonathan Kent over BBC's Radio 5 Live’s Up All Night programme this morning (night time UK).

That's to illustrate how much your voice is being heard halfway across the globe on the debate over baby fingerprinting.

Aisehman is back

This must be the most stimulating news since Saturday, after I got so upset trying to reconcile Malaysia's graft-fighting effort and the manner taxpayers are being taxed and proceeds squandered by the corruptors.

Aisehman, the famous yet anonymous blogger whom I admire, is now back in action after a short hiatus.

He emailed me last night saying that it's "time to get back to the frontlines (www.aisehman.blogspot.com).

He promised me it's "going to be a long, hard slog". I promise I will make sure he keeps that promise.

May Day Trip... ( 2 )

To be frank, we drove to Janda Baik, and I, in particular, was in search of the holiday home that Dr Khir Toyo allegedly owns. This is the route I took.

In answering to reader Moo_t's guesses at our GPS reading, we got up to a vantage point (note the mid-sky cloud in the TNB pylon picture?) somewhere near Bukit Tinggi via the lesser-used old Bentong Road...

... to take these two photos:

We finally ended up meeting with a Jumbo and its siblings.

TV Smith has a 9-image photoblog. Perhaps, others who made the trip are in the midst of uploading theirs now.

All images taken with a Nikon D100 and a 28-200mm Nikkor F/3.5-5.6 AF-D lens attached with Nikon UV filter and a Tamron CPL.

Not my fault

I am facing Streamyx problem right now. Updates later today.

Joi Ito in KL

I went to KL Bloggers Meet & Dinner with Joi Ito (April 18) straight from office without a camera. So, I had to depend on Joi's photo-posting on Flickr, a company he invested in.

It must NOT go unmentioned that Alex Lam (left in this picture) is a perfect host and he had the house under perfect control.

Here's the photo-story Joi uploaded this morning before he left KL. he uses a Canon EOS Kiss Digital. There are 3 other photos here and 17 others here, but he needs some help to affix names to pictures. (I have the same problem.)

A pleasant surprise at the dinner was that 'Mr Brown' and James Seng, two major bloggers from Singapore, made a road trip and got into town purposefully for the gathering.

(James works at the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, in charge of Next-Gen Internet, Information Exchange and Open Source technologies. He and Mohamed Sharil Tarmizi of ICANN - (the guy caught by Ito while "yelling at me to shut up") - who is also Senior Advisor at the Office of The MCMC Chairman, are known to each other for years.

Mr Brown is a columnist at Today, and once awarded Singapore's best blogger title without even having to run a blog! James says the Brown Cow is also the guy who 'caused' Singapore and Malaysia to tegang urat over water supply issues ;-) Brown's Flickr collection is available here.

I am glad we had a jolly good time among a jolly good bunch of jolly good people - some of them are wonderful blog readers who make a blogger's life worth living.

(Psssst... I finally met Jillian Young, Andreas AlwaysWOW and KaZ in person.)

Jialat liao... forgot to ask Mr Brown to send manberries to Cowboy Caleb!

Meet Joi Ito, April 18

Alex Lam has finalised the venue for the bloggers' dinner meet with Joi Ito next Monday (Apr 18).

Date: Evening of April 18 (7.00pm onwards)
Venue: Al-Marjan (Arabian and Persian), Lot 415, 4th floor KLCC. (Next to Spring Garden restaurant)
Meals: Buffet at RM43+ per person

Eighteen people have indicated they will show up.

Don't be a hero. Blog safely

I learned from Rebecca that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has released a guide: How to Blog Safely. She picked it up from Curt Hopkins of the Committee to Protect Bloggers.

The document addresses the question of how to blog from countries where this could get you in a lot of trouble, says Rebecca. (Seeking revenge, however, is another matter altogether.)

Have you heard of "onion routing"? Visit EFF's Tor Website and technical wiki.

Vote for 'Freedom of Expression Blog'

Screenshots is among the 10 blogs from Asia shortlisted for the Freedom of Expression Blog Award.

The award is jointly organised by France-based Reporters without Borders (RSF) and the Germany-based Deutsche Welle's Best of the Blogs (BoB) Awards.

The other Asian blogs shortlisted are from a Chinese residing overseas, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, two from North Korea, three from Nepal, and an Irish from Singapore.

The selection criteria is available here.

The Asian blogs, together with 50 others, are regarded as defendents of freedom of expression in six regions: Africa and the Middle East, the Americas, Asia, Europe, Iran and International.

Bloggers and allies of Global Voices Online shortlisted for the award are: Rebecca MacKinnon (NKZone) and Jeff Ooi for Asia category, Hoder (Editor:Myself) for Iran, Ethan Zuckerman (My Heart's in Accra) for International, Dan Gillmor and Jay Rosen for Americas. Friends at the Committee to Protect Bloggers are also shortlisted for International category.

These 60 blogs are presented in English (25 blogs), French (3), Russian (1), Arabic (3), Farsi (21), Spanish (3), Italian (1) and German (1).

The RSF urges Internet-users to participate in the online voting by selecting only one blog in each category.

NOTE: There is a mechanism to prevent vote-rigging. ( 1 ) You need to vote your choice here, by filling in a valid email address. ( 2 ) You will receive an email from the poll organiser and you MUST reply to that email by clicking on the specific URL listed in the message in order to make your vote count.

Voting closes on June 1, 2005 and the prize-winners will be announced two weeks later.

If you think Screenshots qualifies for your endorsement, please vote - NOT FOR ME but for the meaning behind it.

Cast your vote online here!

Blogwatch on unrest in Southern Thailand

A colleague of mine has switched his golfing trip to Songkhla to Kota Kinabalu. Fears have heightened as 15 months of unrest is spreading in Thailand's southern provinces. Check today's papers - here, here, here and here.

Reader S Ahmad recommends a blog by Sittha Lertphaiboonsiri, which is available at Bangkok-based ForumAsia. The weblog is named Conflict in the South of Thailand. URL:

http://www.forumasia.info/southernthailand

which will be re-routed to:

http://babylon.servershost.net/~forumasi/web/blogs/

I was informed that Sittha is attached to the Thammasat University. He is conversant in Bahasa Indonesia - complete with the accent - and has adopted an Indonesian name for himself. He is Chinese, Catholic and Thai. A good candidate for bridge-blogging.

Joi Ito to visit KL

Technology investor and blogger Joi Ito emailed me that he will be in KL for three days in mid April. Alex Lam also told me - their emails crossed - that he is trying to organise a dinner get-together for Malaysian bloggers on the day Joi arrives on April 18.

Sign on the Joi's wiki (registration required) if you feel like joining us.

I have been reading Joi's blogs on emergent democracy since 2003, but I only first met him at the Harvard meet last year. He helped draft the Global Voices Online manifesto.

I guess you must have realised that Joi has invested personally in MovableType (the weblog engine the runs Screenshots), Technorati, SocialText, flickr etc, and he sits on the board of Creative Commons.

His Malaysian link is Mohd Sharil Tarmizi from MCMC - they both sit on the board of the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Web traffic

Half a decade after the dotcom bust, there are Malaysian minions who still CAN'T differentiate between unique visitors, pageviews and... the idiotic 'hits' to quantify web traffic.

I don't know about you, but I feel a little embarrassed.

TV Smith 'hangs' himself... upside down

Was it a cocktail overdose of this and this?

Look here!

Malaysia in spotlight... good reasons

Both Peter Tan and TV Smith have been picked up by media watchers in the US and France for their blogs about the Richter 8.7 Nias Island quake.

For those who don't understand French, here's the bebelfish.

New York Times reporter John Schwartz contacted me at 03:03hr Tuesday as he was looking for leads within the first three hours after quake - probably he couldn't find any reliable updates from Malaysian news portals, and there was silence in Jakarta.

John was particularly interested in the first-hand witness accounts from the quake zones. I pointed him to QuakeBloggers' IRC channel and MackZul gave him two chunks of chat log.

So, if you think Peter is a self-confessed moron (read Instapundit's one-liner and Jeff Jarvis's accolades), hold on a second. The bigger ones are probably here.

Labour of love...

This could probably be the FIRST photoblog in the world to display Hulme.F1 Champion 1967 - the Kiwi rival to Ferrari and Porsche - in pictures.

For the last two years, New Zealand's Supercar Limited and Massey University have been developing the Hulme.F1 Champion 1967 in secrecy.

Named in honour of New Zealand's only Formula One World Champion Denny Hulme, the Hulme.F1 Champion 1967 is a jaw-dropping racing machine designed for road use, says CY Leow.

CY - a confirmed sucker for photography and fast cars - alerted me on March 18 after securing the invitation to the official launch held in Wellington today. The gameplan is to make his photoblog the first in the world to carry the photos of this Kiwi Dream.

This is how he laid the groundwork, made some sacrifices, in order to make it happen:

I did all this for the love of photography and fast car...

Yes, the car itself was enough to get me pulling all my stops and started calling friends to see if I can be at this event. Well, thanks to the kind souls Public Affairs of Massey University, I WAS THERE! [...]

To bring you this post, I left work early at 3.30 pm (loss of pay) to prepare my gear. My wife and me left the Great Hall at 9pm and we had a late dinner. I called Jeff at 10.15pm and at 2am my time, I am still e mailing pictures! All for love of photography and interest... try it sometime! :-)

To accommodate the 5-hour time zone separation, I had to lock myself up in the lonely hotel room to get his pictures up while others are enjoying their happy hours!

Now, go over to CY's Photoblog to take a look at the Kiwi Dream.

Not our cup of tea

Nanjing blogger Christina keeps a very nice photoblog called Chinese Tea. I think her caption for this photo is outrageous.

She says these two young kids, aged 12, are the leaders of "God's Army" lurking in Malaysian jungle. How can the image of Malaysia be perceived by the world to such distorted extent? Opportunity for some global PR somewhere?

Thanks reader Julian Lim for the alert, and SongPerk for pointing us to the original source, which is more than four years old:

http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/2001/0129/thai.burma.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1123568.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1121333.stm

MackZul gets a tribute in theSun

Congrats Mack! Oon Yeoh talks about you in his column today: Police learn about blogs (theSun, March 19). Read this before getting on my flight this morning!

By the way, it's also an opportune time to announce that a former daily blogger is now deputy news editor of theSun and editor of Sun2Surf.com. That's very mainstream.

Indonesia probes 3G license sale

Has investment risk heightened in Indonesia's cellular market? Three recent reports:

March 14: Govt Probing Cyber Access Stake Sale

According to a Dow Jones report quoting Bisnis Indonesia, the Indonesian government is probing the sale of a 60% stake in PT Cyber Access Communication to Hong Kong's Hutchison Telecommunications International Ltd. (HTX).

The Information and Telecommunications Minister Sofyan Jalil was quoted as saying that the government will revoke the company's license to operate the country's first third-generation (3G) mobile services if the sale violates regulations.

"They (Cyber Access) easily got $120 million," the minister said. Sofyan was also quoted as accusing Cyber Access of acting as a mere "license broker."

HTX is a unit of Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. It announced late week that it will pay Charoen Pokphand Group Indonesia - a Thai-based telecommunications group - $120 million for the stake. CP Group will hold the remaining 40% interest in Cyber Access. The deal, however, still needs approval from the Indonesian government.

Cyber Access holds licenses for nationwide operations of 2G and 3G mobile services in Indonesia, but it currently doesn't provide mobile services.

March 15: Maxis changes proxy in Indonesia

March 15, Maxis Communications Bhd announced that it was dominating Teleglobal Investments BV, a wholly owned subsidiary registered in tax-haven British Virgin, to replace East Asia Communications NV, another subsidiary registered in the Netherlands, in the group's conditional share sale and shareholders' agreements with Indonesia's PT Aneka Tirta Nusa and PT Natrindo Telepon Seluler that were entered into on Jan 19. Via The Edge FinancialDaily, March 15.

The changes were signed by the parties involved in a novation agreement on March 15. Maxis also said that it had received Bank Negara’s green light for its proposed investments in Natrindo.

March 16: Maxis' Indonesian plan disrupted?

Oriental Daily News (March 16, Pg BS3) - whose business section is the most respected among the Chinese press in Malaysia - quoted industry information as saying that there were parties actively lobbying the Indonesian government to cancel the licenses issued to LIPPO/Natrindo to operate nationwide telecommunications services.

Jan 19, Maxis entered into an agreement with Indonesia's PT Natrindo Telepon Seluler, owned by the LIPPO group, to the subscription of new shares representing 51% of the enlarged share capital of Natrindo for US$100 million (RM380 million) cash and a shareholder’s loan of US$150 million to Natrindo over five years.

Oriental Daily, which quoted several analysts, said Maxis have to abort the share sale agreement with LIPPO/Natrindo if the rumour is confirmed.

People in the know and who hold Maxis shares, please feedback.

Blogging is life-threatening... ( 3 )

Mack agrees that blogging is a minefield. "I reckon I should know, up close and personal," he says.

Reflecting over several incidents affecting Malaysian bloggers, he has a thought for the book on Malaysian blogosphere we are co-authoring.

"We should et aside a portion of the fund to help bloggers understand the legalities in blogging, lest they err.

Good intentions should come with good knowledge of where we tread, and I suspect many in Malaysia are really not aware of the lines they might be crossing. It can harm you in more ways than one. Hence, educating bloggers should be one key way of protecting them from themselves.

I can't agree more. Our publisher would appreciate that, too, I reckon.

Latest warung?

Have you been here?

One among the 40-pix galore.

Blogs: The Invisible & The Hyperlocal

Related to this blog:

• Veteran journalist YL Chong a.k.a. desiderata - who is a regular Conversationist in this blog - has started a blog 24 hours ago.

  Visit him at http://desiderata2000.blogspot.com/.

• MCMC corporate communications head Adelina Iskandar -- who highlighted to Malaysiakini that Malaysian bloggers who have faced harassment and invasion of privacy by those responding to postings on weblogs have recourse to protection under the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998, Sections 211 and 233 -- also keeps a weblog. She has been blogging since 2003 if I am not wrong. I also know of many other officials in MCMC who blog on a variety of topics.

  So, MCMC should be a qualified resource to give a Blogging 101 tutorial to the cops who visited MackZul in his home "to learn about blogging" (Malaysiakini, Mar 16).

  At the time I blog this, bukitaman.blogspot.com, bukitaman.typepad.com, and xanga.com/bukitaman are still available.

Bloggers-to-be -- be they the invisible (dark blogosphere) or the hyperlocal (linking within communities) - can choose any blogging community from the following:

Via Blogcount.com.

Blogging is life-threatening... ( 2 )

India may be the flourishing place for print media, but not media criticism.

Pradyuman Maheshwari - one of the few noted media critics in the world's biggest democracy - criticized the Times of India on his Mediaah Weblog recently.

In retaliation, the Times serves him with a seven-page legal threat for libel related to the paper's MediaNet initiative - where businesses can actually buy photos and profile stories in the Times' editorial section -- what it calls "edvertorials."

Just a threat and it works. Maheshwari decides to close his site, as he has a day job running the daily Maharashtra Herald in Pune and doesn't have the resources to fight back.

Details in Online Journal Review (OJR).

BACKGROUNDER. As of March 2003, the Registrar of Newspapers for India reported there were 55,780 newspapers in the subcontinent, with 3,820 new newspapers registered in the previous year and 23 percent growth in overall circulation. And the Times of India, owned by the Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd., is the king of English-language newspapers with a circulation north of 2 million and readership of over 7.4 million people, according to Wikipedia.

Cops visits MackZul to 'learn about blogging'

Has the Malaysian blogosphere become so influential that it has attracted the authorities - including the police department - to learn more about it from a local blogger?

According to Malaysiakini, a four-member team - two police officers and two unidentified government officials - visited blogger MackZulkifli (www.brandmalaysia.com) to "understand the latest development of weblogs".

What stands out glaringly throughout the 'interview' is that the team also kept on asking Mack why he continued blogging if there was no income from it.

"I said there was an income from the Google ads which amounted to about US$30-40 a month, which was a negligible sum for me as I am earning about RM20,000 a month from my present job. Blogging is an interest," said Mack as quoted in Malaysiakini.

Just an illustration of the 3-hour conversation Mack was engaged in:

The team came to Mack’s home in Subang Jaya on Monday and spent three hours there posing questions on the weblog and how to control its contents.

Mack said the 'interview' was held cordially and the team insisted that it was not an investigation.

"They told me this is something unofficial and I have a choice not to talk to them," he said when contacted yesterday, adding that he agreed to talk as "I have nothing to hide".

"I have not done anything wrong. So why not talk with them? My blog does not focus on politics or religion. It’s all about logic," he explained.

However, he conceded that he was not comfortable as to why he was chosen for the interview.

"I don't feel threatened," he said, adding that under any circumstances, the bloggers should not be victimised.

Mack is taking a break from today, and Faris a.k.a. Professor Serba Tau will take over the blogging for a while. No worry, Mack seems to still believe in blogging as he says this: "I believe that a medium must remain in perpetuity, even if messengers change. The medium is ultimately more important."

When contacted by Screenshots, Malaysian Human Rights Organisation (HAKAM) secretary-general Elizabeth Wong said there is no such thing as an 'unofficial' interview, nor should this be seen an form of cooperation with the police.

"This is plain and simple harassment, since they can get a tutorial on weblogs from MCMC (Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission) and other institutions," she said.

"HAKAM is following up on this incident," added Wong.

This blogger was also quoted by Malaysiakini today:

"I think this is a very worrying trend when more bloggers are being interviewed," he said when contacted.

"The influence of weblogs is sizable although we can't quantify it. That is why I think they want to learn more about it. It also sends us a signal that we are under watchful eyes," he added.

On March 1, MCMC corporate communications head Adelina Iskandar was quoted by Malaysiakini as saying that Malaysian bloggers who have faced harassment and invasion of privacy by those responding to postings on weblogs, have recourse to protection under the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998.

She cited Sections 211 and 233 of the Act as the provisions that provide protection to individuals.

Blogging can be life-threatening...

I have to warn bloggers that, contrary to rhetoric hawked by advocates of freedom of expression, blogging can be a life-threatening affair:

( 1 ) When Apple Inc. gains the upperhand, and many precendents are set.
( 2 ) When the enforcers want to meet you over a closed file.
( 3 ) When domestic pressure is invoked against you (yesterday's event on someone in Malaysia, no URL).
( 4 ) When you get hatemails and trolls infesting your blogs.
( 5 ) When even online heavyweight like MGG gets his temple demolished.

Mackzul's 02:50hr blog does tell something. Is he sleeping well, blogging?

* * *

Curt Hopkins, director of The Committee to Protect Bloggers reports this morning that Ali Abdulemam and his two fellow moderators of BahrainOnline have been released by the Bahraini authorities without needing to post bail.

However, the charges are still pending.

Sharing means...

Mackzulkifli started the hardwork, sowed the seeds and didn't let the land fallow. When fruit bears, he disowns some to make me a beneficiary.

I am honoured but indebted, inspired yet fearful that I might not measure up.

For I write more like a Joe Public...

I am truly humbled. I just hope that the more we share, the bigger the share shall become. For all.

From White House to everywhere

Received an email from Terrance Heath, Blogmaster of EchoDitto, Inc. early this morning - it's about Garrett Graff and blogging the White House.

It’s been an exciting few days. Little did we know when EchoDitto Vice President of Communications Garrett Graff, in his capacity as contributing editor of MediaBistro's Fishbowl DC, began his quest for a White House press pass that it would turn into the kind of media frenzy it’s become. Since posting about his victory on Friday, and his debut in the White House press corps on Monday, Garrett has literally been everywhere; print, radio, and television.

So what was it like? What does it mean for blogging? Garrett took some time away from his insane media tour to post his thoughts on our company blog, and record a podcast about the experience as well.

Take some time to check them out while we’re waiting for the dust to settle. There’s still plenty to talk about, and plenty of questions to ask and possibly even answer. What does it mean for bloggers and blogging? Is it a watershed event or a blip on the radar? Has anything changed? And if so, what? It took just one blogger, Garrett, to nudge the door open, but it’s probably going to take a lot more to figure out just where we are now.

Regards,

Terrance Heath

For context, read here.

Punditdrome's 30 blogs

Glad to be in the company of 29 others on the Main Page.

Scott Ferguson says the blogs are selected for popularity, topicality, or anticipated interest to the user community.

Screenshots on MSNBC's BLOG's etc

The URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6409077

March 1: "Jeff Ooi, whose blog we leaned on heavily for tsunami coverage is..."

Quit blogging... Aisehman

When blogger Aisehman mentioned his tormenting dark days on March 4, I thought he was enduring the blues warding off office politics. Biasalah, or so I thought.

Then, 49 hours later, he threw in the towel and quit blogging.

I refused to accept it, hoping that he will recover.

No, looks like it's not going to be. His personal email, for which I am honoured and very grateful, hints that he's determined. No reasons were given, just the casual one: "I've had enough and I'm calling it a day."

Aisehman and I started blogging almost around the same time, in tumultuous 2003 - Invasion of Iraq, change-of-guards at Putrajaya. He has been an inspiring blogger to me, I cherish his wits and hawkeyes for issues few people could discern from news hypes.

But now, Aisehman announces that his blog will remain online only until the end of the month. He will take it down after that.

I knew he meant it, for his banner says: "...tidak ada tempat dalam pentadbiran saya untuk pemimpin politik yang "cakap tidak serupa bikin": Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, 9 Jan 2004.

He told me in excitement, last year, when he first heard of those words and promised to link them up there for as long as it takes.

Now that a year has gone past, his perception may have changed somewhat.

That he has become fatigued and capitulated (I am using a strong word), and yet he wanted me to "remain undeterred by your detractors and continue what you're doing on Screenshots" - it's a very sarcastic, though very fond, farewell.

We need bloggers to inspire each other to soldier on for whatever belief that we have for knowledge-society. I hope he understands that while his heart beats for his wife and children.

But I may be wishful, and like him, may throw in the towel one day. I am just equally tired and burnt-out.

RSF to honour blogs defending freedom of expression

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontières) is searching for blogs - their bloggers neede not be named - which have track records of defending the freedom of expression. They will then be shortlisted for an online vote to choose the best.

"We want to draw attention to the importance of weblogs in countries where the traditional press is under the control of the authorities," the RSF says.

All blogs, irrespective of language, will be considered. Even blogs by professional journalists will be accepted. Nomination submissions should be sent by e-mail to internet@rsf.org.

I hope you spare some thoughts for Iranian blogger Mohamad Reza Nasab Abdolahi, and his pregnant wife and fellow blogger, Nasjeh Omidparvar, who have both been arrested.

The same thoughts should also go to Bahrain's web forum moderators at BahrainOnline - Mohammed Almosawi, Hussain Yousif and Ali Abdulemam who are now behind bars.

Details here and here.

Quit blogging

Not me. It's Michael Ooi and Dr Liew. Both.

One says, "Something went very wrong in my life."

The other says: "Something has happened to him, and apparently, I'm involved as well. I'm not able to reveal much about this due to some liability issue which may affect my career. If this is not handled with due care, I might not even be able to leave the country for my trip to Japan. [...] We are currently contemplating of taking legal countermeasures."

Squall is concerned. So are we. What's up?
______________

OH NO. Michael Ooi declares he has to take down his blog and leave blogosphere for good; and Dr Liew says his "blog will now officially cease its operation..." It's the latest decision after a 3.00am phonecall yesterday.
______________

And then, April 1 comes immediately after March 7. 81 comments so far.

So, I kena conned. So was Buaya69.

Thanks Dan and Carlo

I never expect to hear this from Dan Gillmor, but I am all thankful:

Jeff is... working in a place that is not terribly fond of liberty, though it's way ahead of most Islamic nations on the freedom scale. He and other threatened grassroots speakers deserve our support.

Read Dan's blog, he talks about 'thought policing' - in both Malaysia and America.

And my heartfelt thanks, too, to Italian blogger Carlo Felice for his kind words - though it's written in Italian and both of us have not met.

It's all because of Global Voices Online that we get to cross the bridge and greet each other.

WSIS 2005: Listening well and acting right

Malaysia will be joining other progressive countries in the world to participate in the second phase of The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which will be hosted by the Government of Tunisia, at Tunis, from November 16 to 18, 2005.

Malaysia was also a participant in the first phase of WSIS held in Geneva, hosted by the Government of Switzerland, from 10 to 12 December 2003.

WSIS is driven by the United Nations and the International TeIecommunications Union (ITU) with the objective to address the broad range of themes concerning the Information Society where a Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action has been adopted by the participating countries.

I met several WSIS Phase Two participants during my trip to India recently, and exchanged information on how each other's country is preparing for this Summit in their respective context.

Moving forward, WSIS Phase Two will endeavour to put the Plan of Action into motion. So far, various working groups have been set up to find solutions and reach agreements in the fields of Internet governance and financing mechanisms. With nine months left before the Tunis Phase, the organisers convened the second meeting of the Preparatory Committee - or commonly called 'PrepCom-2 of the Tunis phase' - from February 17 to 25, 2005, in Geneva, Switzerland.

That's where I find the input from Reporters Without Borders (RSF) delivered during PrepCom-2 very enlightening. It was presented by RSF's Head of Internet, Julien Pain. I have a connection to him as he, no doubt we being strangers, offered me strong moral support when I was beseiged last October.

RSF, a non-profit dedicated to the wellbeing of reporters, was willing to put me on their radar screen even though I am not a practising member of their fraternity. Here are the five-point recommendations, as Julien explained during the PrepCom-2 press conference, that RSF is proposing on the Freedom of Expression on the Internet. I picked it up from The Committee to Protect Bloggers.

I want you to take note of his fifth recommendation, which impacts bloggers:

1. Any law about the flow of information online must be anchored in freedom of expression as defined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
2. Internet users alone must decide what material they can and wish to access online. Automatic filtering of online content, by governments or private firms, is unacceptable. Filters must only be installed by Internet users themselves and only on their personal connection. Any policy of higher-level (national or even local) filtering conflicts with the principle of the free flow of information.
3. A decision to shut down a website, even an illegal one, must not in any circumstances be taken by the site's host or any other technical provider of Internet services. Only a judge can ban an online publication. A technical service provider cannot therefore be held criminally or civilly responsible for any illegal material posted on a hosted website unless the service provider refuses to obey a ruling by an impartial and independent court.
4. A government's civil or criminal powers are limited to content hosted on its territory or specifically aimed at the country's Internet users.
5. The editors of online publications, including bloggers and those running personal sites, must have the same protection and be shown the same consideration as professional journalists since, like them, they exercise a basic freedom, that of freedom of expression.

Let me quote him further as he expounded on the rise of blogs and bloggers:

"Everyone can be a content provider on the Internet. The rise of blogs confirms this trend. During the recent tsunami that devastated southeast Asia, the bloggers were the first to act as eyes and ears for the rest of the world. They were faster than the traditional media and often provided news and information no other media were able to get.

"But I would like to stress that non-professionals - those who have personal sites, the bloggers - do not have anything like the same rights as journalists. And this applies both to democracies and to authoritarian regimes.

"It is unfortunately very easy to close down a blog or censor a webpage. The authorities just have to contact the company that hosts the online publication - assuming that company is located in their country - and pressure it to close the site. If the host company is located abroad, the authorities can always make it inaccessible by blocking its domain name or IP address.

"For example, the US authorities were responsible for the confiscation a few months ago of the London-based servers of Indymedia, an alternative news site, without any explanation being given to those in charge. This kind of seizure would have been unthinkable in the United Kingdom in the case of a traditional media - a TV station, a radio station or a magazine. But because it was an electronic publication, it seemed to pose no problem. What's more, there was little coverage of this case in the traditional media.

"If this kind of measure is taken in democratic countries, it becomes hard to criticise authoritarian regimes for their Internet censorship policies.

"The democracies should set an example and treat online publications with the same respect as other media.

"There must be a change in attitudes. The democracies must show that they henceforth view online publications in the same way as any other news media. Nowadays, it is often on the Internet, by cyber-journalists and bloggers, that the battle for free expression is being waged.

"But right now help us to obtain the release of the 70 cyber-dissidents and bloggers who are in prison around the world, by putting pressure on the regimes that crack down on free expression."

Last night, alpha-blogger Jeff Jarvis (picture below) made me 'famous' again by voicing his concern about me on MSNBC's Connected: Coast-to-Coast alongside Monica Crowley and Ron Reagan (yes, his son!)

Thanks Trey Jackson for the head-up. The video can be viewed here.

My sincere thanks also go to Glenn 'Instapundit' Reynolds, Ethan Zuckerman (Global Voices Online) and Sonia Randhawa of Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ) for looking up for me.

Incidentally, in Global Voices Online, Rebecca MacKinnon has also written a nice little blog about RSF's delegation of cyber-dissidents who urged the United Nations to uphold its credibility by upholding internet governance.

I am glad Malaysia is a member of the UN, and a participant of WSIS 2005. I have no doubt my country is listening well and acting right.

For Arash and Mojtaba

I am following the US timezone to observe February 22 as the "Free Mojtaba and Arash Day" recommended by The Committee to Protect Bloggers.

Arash Sigarchi is still in Lakan prison in the Iranian city of Rashat.

Fellow Iranian blogger Mojtaba Saminejad has been released from prison in Tehran but still faces charges.

They have both been deprived of their liberty by the Iranian government for expressing opinions on their blogs. This is an act in defiance of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

If you wish to make known your concern for the wellbeing of the Iranian bloggers in custody, you may email this blog to HE Mr Mohammad Ghasem Mohebali, Ambassador of The Islamic Republic of Iran to Malaysia, at 1 Lorong U Thant Satu, Off Jalan U Thant, 55000 Kuala Lumpur. Tel: 03 4251 4824, 03 4251 4830.

Or email emb@iranembassy.com.my.

A former Iranian blogger detainee, Sina Motallebi, credited the efforts of bloggers for his release. Let’s do it again - for Arash and Mojtaba.

Screenshots will observe a day of silence.

Tsunami blogs: Global Top 25

Pure hind sight.

Screenshots was ranked 22nd among Top 25 most referenced blogs in the world - one notch higher than Slashdot - during the tsunami catastrophe as tracked by Intelliseek's BlogPulse.

BlogPulse is an automated trend discovery system for blogs and blogosphere that has indexed over 3.5 million blogs in its database thus far.

This blog was cited 101 times among other posts mentioning "tsunami" during the time period captured. These blogs are regarded as key influences of tsunami-related discussion which include some of the same political bloggers that fueled discussion during the U.S. 2004 Presidential election — Instapundit, Daily Kos, PowerLine Blog, Captain’s Quarters, Little Green Footballs, Juan Cole and others.

The independent analysis says bloggers, unlimited by geography and powered by easy blog-publishing tools, quickly sprang into action to provide information that was otherwise impossible or extremely difficult to find or disseminate at time of crisis. By so doing, over a period of days and weeks, blogging had moved yet another notch from novelty to acceptability.

Via Mackzulkifli, who also earns his place in Blogpulse.

My friend, Ethan Zuckerman, a fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center, has a showcase analysing the blogosphere by using BlogPulse's data to research into the relationship between media attention given to a country and its economic and developmental factors. The analyses of this relationship are visualised by producing maps that indicate the degree of attention given over time. See here.

CY and CNY greetings

CY Leow soaked in a 32C sunny day last weekend to bring you glimpses of Chinese New Year being celebrated by the ever growing Asian community in Wellington - there was a colourful street parade, with the Mayor tagging along - to usher in the year of the Rooster. There was a lot of fun and noise.

Look at the cute little NZBC [ New Zealand Born Chinese ;-) ] all decked out in traditional Chinese costume.

Thousands of onlookers who thronged the parade were given traditional "Ang Pows" (Red Packets), but you have to find out what's inside!

What is Chinese New Year without the traditional lion and dragon dance?

"But, where is the dragon head?" you may ask.... Cheers! CY has an explanation...

I wish you know the fact that CY brought out all his gears that could break the back and knee -- his Canon D60 digital camera with lenses of 15 mm fish eye, 17-35, 28-80 and 70-200 zoom -- and laboured on to bring you the 10-picture album with a personal greeting:

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR to all!

Go to his photoblog, now!

Travelling

I have chosen India as the first country to visit in 2005. I am current visiting Karnataka state with a stopover at Asia Force Source in Bangalore. Will also visit Tamil Nadu in this whirlwind trip.

Blogging is on 'best effort' basis.

Mack hack-ed!

Mackzulkifli told me his blog site came down at 4pm. It's been hacked.

His boys have since recovered the web services and scan the log traffic to sniff for unauthorised intruders.

Quake alert trackback

Japanese site Earthquake Alert (Seisme Alerte), which claims to have predicted the Dec 26 Richter 9.0 earthquake in Sumtera, trackback-ed to Screenshots yesterday. It also predicted yesterday's aftershocks in Sulawesi and the Andaman.

Gunning down new bloggers?

Ad hominem master says I have never been kind to new bloggers. He's wrong.

I met Pummkin in the first 10 days of her blogging life, over scone and Hainanese coffee. The same night, Jan 19, she blogged her 9th entry: Handling of Spam & Spiders For Dummies.

She got an immediate response from Stacy Martin, the Privacy Officer here at Plaxo, with a lengthy but polite explanation in her comments section.

A debutant blogger (she calls herself a former cattle show participant :p ) getting kudos from Plaxo which has 5 million members!

Somebody, not me, has inspired her to blog, apparently.

Ferryman's blog up again

The login problem that disabled me from updating Ferryman (摆渡人), my weblog-in-Chinese, has been overcome (thanks EL Ho).

Piracy. I have uploaded a new piece on piracy of books that caused Professor Yu Qiuyu, a celebrated scholar and historian in and outside China, to quit writing. He fought the piracy cartel single-handedly for 10 years, only to attract attacks from not only the profiteers but scholars of his own kind, and mainstream journalists.

I contrast it with a different piracy scene in Malaysia.

I must admit that, my knowledge of Chinese language has been rusting away for the past two decades (?), to get back writing again is tough. The next challenge is, I am still clumsy and not up-to-speed when it comes to using the Chinese language word proccessor. It's quite a painful experience (relative to blogging in English), really.

Dreaming of Chinese & Jawi. And time is a constraint. I don't think I can have the time to pick up Jawi (which I learn alongside Chinese) again, whose form in calligraphy is something that greatly admires me, and for which I have a feel of kinship. Both Jawi and traditional Chinese write from right to left, but the gracefulness of the artform lies in the wrist of the calligrapher. When you finish the stroke in one breath, you hit sunyata, a void that's yet so full.

* * *

Hubby-Wifey. Reader twotablet has this idea for his wife:

Hi Jeff

Just for fun... I'll get my wife to converse with you over at your Ferryman blog while I hang out over at screenshots ;-)

She is proficient in Mandarin but quite "illiterate" in all things tech, blog included while I try to make some sense in this internet mumbo-jumbo.

What to do... I'm "illiterate" in Mandarin. Got her to translate for me. Sigh...

Thanks Twotablet, I think that's a marvellous idea for cross-boundary (language-speaking) exchange of information and experience. How come I have never thought of that, starting from the households of Internet-enabled knowledge generation like you? Cheers!

Bloggers top tech trends for 2005

Fortune (January 2004) features 10 tech trends to watch in 2005.

Trend No.1: Why you can't ignore bloggers.

Blurb: "Freewheeling bloggers can boost your product - or destroy it. Either way, they've become a force business can't afford to ignore."

The also-runs:
( 2 ) Roku, the digital media
( 3 ) Is Wintel out of gas?
( 4 ) Genetic medicine's next big step
( 5 ) Cellphone - wireless 'Swiss Army knife'
( 6 ) Snooping technology: Kiss privacy goodbye
( 7 ) China abandons piracy
( 8 ) Irq's robot invasion to keep GI's safe
( 9 ) Brain-scanning to track your desires ($$$)
( 10 ) Nuclear power plants make a comeback in US

Eight blog personalities are featured:
( 1 ) Xeni Jardin (Boing Boing) who ridicules Microsoft's blog service
( 2 ) Ben Trott who co-founded Six Apart (MovableType which powers Screenshots)
( 3 ) Mena Trott, pioneer blogger who co-founded Six Apart/MovableType
( 4 ) Marissa Mayer, search service and blog maestro at Google
( 5 ) Jonathan Schwartz, Sun president whose blog is techies' must-read
( 6 ) Jason Goldman, who runs Google's Blogger service
( 7 ) Robert Scoble, Microsoft software evangelist who writes its best blog
( 8 ) Jason Calacanis, who owns Weblogs Inc.

Ferryman's ride

I am humbled by the warm reception given to 摆渡人 (Ferryman), my weblog-in-Chinese which had a 'soft launching' January 15. I cherish it very much. It peps up my confidence tremendously as, I know, I would be enjoying the camaraderie and engaging conversations with a lot of K-generation folks in a globe-spanning context. I am very excited, really. We will certainly tap into the network of Global Voices Online.

Unfortunately, I may have to upset you a little as I faced login problem this morning. So I won't be able to upload the Ferryman's blog until the problem is overcome, perhaps when I get back home later tonight.

Very sorry about the Ferryman's lousy boat ride. I'll try harder next time.

'Is Jeff Ooi racist?'

I met up with Mackzulkifli last night. It was a conversation rather than a Q&A.; And this popped up.

Meet the Zionist, the Anti-Semite and the Racist Chinaman, three-in-one.

At the rate the labels are being conferred freely like the 'latukships' from Mindanao, it won't end with just three. Will it?

Mack got a good ta pau (take-away) on his way back... his last slide.

Mack does a brain scan

Surfing during lunch, I found Mackzulkifli (Brand New Malaysian) - who did the clever Flashblog themed 'Blogger vs. Journalist' - has come up with a brain-scan for Ng Kee Seng's blog dated January 11.

Mack, are you both an adman and psycho-analyst by day? Do more of this and the guffaw will hit Google PageRank jackpot whenever the world surfs the Net.

Meanwhile, Tariq Kamal aka T-Boy detracts with a contrarian view on we-blogs and you-blogs. A good read that's very eloquently crafted.

'Blogger vs. Journalist' Flashblog... from Mack

The above blog entry from a Fourth Estate blogger, who uses God's name to manufacture innuendoes against bloggers at large, has probably triggered a refined way of trackbacking to the spin-doctors.

Blogger Mackzulkifli has started a clever, multimedia genre called Flashblog. The first episode is dedicated to the Fifth Estate: Why blogs are harmless?

The SWF (Shockwave Flash) presentation looks at people overcome by emotions, envy and hate, among some human traits, and especially those who hide behind words of religion. Especially those, Mack attenuates.

On journalists, Mack reminds that they, too, are human.

Some are great people, some are average Joe's you might see getting drunk in the pubs and some are...

(He means plain AH. Go find out yourself).

Don't miss out his last slide pinholing the various forms of news presenters in town (some are news-makers themselves), to whom he asks - probably as an advertising practitioner who 'job-hazardly' looks at branding at intimacy range:

So if you are a journalist, editor, chief editor or plain old staffer, why get angry at criticism. You dish out plenty yourself. Unless you are an egoistic person, so full of yourself that you believe you are infallible and above the norms of society.

Like all good Fifth Estate bloggers (bloggers who blog using their own resources without being financed, for example, by mainstream media), I believe Mack will devote another Flashblog to lend a soapbox to the brand called 'mainstream journalists'.

That would be an exemplary show of believers in THINKING ALLOWED, THINKING ALOUD. You don't talk about, but you have to satori it.

BARP and beyond the noise

This blog is crafted out from an earlier blog to give it a proper context.

Now back to this:

Regarding newsroom posturing, besides acknowledging the inhabitants' liberty to spew scorn on detractors by calling you racist, or insinuating you as God's gift to journalism, you just have to agree with them their right to speak. That's the cardinal rule of grassroots media.

On the other hand, to shield yourself from their venom, retreat to the calm and non-violence of of Ghandi's Salt March. Subscribe yourself to the principle of "agreeing to disagree". I believe this is the basis for THINKING ALLLOWED, THINKING ALLOWED. It's not to be talked about, it is to be 'satori-ed'.

Last Friday, blogger Mackzulkifli foresaw what was looming at the mainstream palaces and alerted me to his blog entry: This Uncalled for Battle of the Senseless. A good, civil read.

And I heard well what Guest Blogger Radha K. Vengadasalam advised me over pizza on ways to handle an attack served on soaked noodles - just keep cool and be magnanimous. (A little bird has a more explicit description for this, but I am not going to repeat that, here).

Why is T. Ananda Krishnan so important to a certain journalist? I DO NOT KNOW.

But I do know that many are ignorant of what has been indexed in the Screenshots wiki which archives two years of blog topics by categories, which discussed beyond the corporate governance at two specific public-listed companies favoured by some parties - Astro and Maxis. In the past two years, we discussed service satisfaction issues pertaining to Malaysia Airlines, TM Net/Streamyx, AVIS Malaysia and even Maybank2U.com, and these brought on engaging and enlightening conversations among my readers, some of which have gone to resolve positively the issues raised. For example, Malaysia Airlines, despite the initial misgivings among the readers over Flight MH193, had come up smelling like a rose for feeling duty-bound to rise to the occassion in customer service. For that, Screenshots rounded it up with accolades and nobody told me to do so, because I am duty-bound to give credit when it's due! Read here for evidence!

Another extended conversations Screenshots readers had was the protest against Maybank2U's intended levy of RM12 per year for online banking services. Screenshots was among the FIRST to break the news, and it finally snowballed into Maybank's voluntary postponement of the new ruling. Click here for the evidence with scores of blog entries stringed together.

Again, why is a certain journalist so protective of only Ananda-linked companies? Unfortunately, I can't comment about it because I DO NOT KNOW.

But what I do know is that, that scribe has conveniently overlooked the positive conversations we have had with Malaysia Airlines, for example, with so many Screenshots readers involved in the participatory discourse that ultimately benefitted everyone, particularly people who had pledged to continue travelling on Malaysia Airlines. To reciprocate Malaysia Airlines' customer-sensitive approach, I made sure that I fly at least a sector of my long-haul flight to the Harvard Conference via MAS last year.

More! What I do learn from my little birds in the Press these few days is that, there can be a cosy nexus between mainstream newspapers and the Big Advertising Revenue Providers (BARP) whom newsrooms may have to kow-tow to, one way or another.

A media pundit once told me, Puncak Niaga, Syed Mokhtar and Gamuda seldom advertise in the business-sheets, so you get more freehand whacking them - more than BARPs like Citibank Credit Card or TM Net/Streamyx - if you want to.

I am not naming names. Since we have entrenched moral guardians of the Fourth Estate manning the posts, or so they professed, I can't help Thinking Aloud that this will very unlikely happen in any of our Malaysian English press. We just need to take them even at their face value. No argument here.

That said, it servers no productive purpose to waste my time on having petty squabbles with the 'journo-bloggers' at the Fourth Estate, especially those trapped in their archaic paradigm. They are so miserably pathetic that you don't even need to dignify them by answering.

By the way, pardon me if you may already know it, Internet has this powerful feature. You can either hit DELETE key or ignore any of the spin-doctors without giving them a damned wink whether they are furiously angry with you, or missing you. Just key in another URL and jump to the next webpage.

You can use Internet to turn the equation. That's mainstream media's future, today.

摆渡人 - The Ferryman's blog

You may have noticed that, on this frontpage, I have activated the link to the weblog-in-Chinese that I have been toying around since coming back from the Harvard conference last December.

Isaac Mao, a Shanghai-based blogger and technology investor, and I promised each other we should do something to bridge Malaysia with the world's BIGGEST blogosphere-in-the-future, and vice-versa. It's challenging in terms of environment for expression as both countries are learning to grapple with globalisation and to leapfrog from the current third world development stage. For China, the new dawn of democracy - and in relation, the freedom of speech - makes building blogophere as a new form of expression an even more daunting task. The second objective is that of an e-evangelist. It is also a part of the Global Voices Online project we refined with the help of Rebecca MacKinnon and Ethan Zuckerman, and many others.

Currently, if I am not wrong, there are no networked blogs-in-Chinese in Malaysia. So, I will be peddaling towards an even 'niche-r' target audience before conversations can be established with Isaac and the vast CNBlog community that he helped propogate.

For a start, I'd like to learn and to keep on rowing back-and-forth in order to activate that bilateral and multilateral flow of information, knowledge and culture in a globe-spanning context through blogs. Hence the name of the blog-in-Chinese: 摆渡人 (The Ferryman). Traffic must come both ways, learning from each other.

I really appreciate EL Ho for setting up the server, Dr 'Hurricane' Liew for helping me overcome the UTF-8 charset issue, and Kevin (Shanghai) for the inspiration and encouragement.

I have wanted to get it up-and-running to coincide with the launching of People's Daily International Edition in Malaysia this February 1. It's a big milestone for multilateral knowledge flow. In the past, it used to be AWSJ, IHT, USAToday and Asahi Shimbun that have overseas editions circulated in Malaysia on adaily basis. Pak Lah's administration must have seen the benefits of bringing People's Daily here. I hope Kompas, Koran or Tempo from Indonesia will be next.

Admittedly, there's a lot of cosmetic works to make 摆渡人 more presentable. For the time being, let the content count. I'm confident, once populated, it should evolve into a borderless community from here. Thousands of Malaysian knowledge workers are scattered around the world, I hope to leverage both Screenshots and Ferrymman to help connect these global voices, online.

Last but not least, I must also confess I have two big problems: ( 1 ) No time; ( 2 ) The last occasion I had ever written in Chinese was some two decades ago. The language must be rusty as I don't even speak it much, though I read in Chinese. Please help me correct my grammar and vocab if I have gone wrong anywhere. I know how tough it can be for a self-taught student of the Chinese language, like me. And I certainly have to count on the little birds to feed me information.

I may dabble blogging in Bahasa Malaysia if I can get myself more organised. It will most likely be a hobby blog to feature my lovely country seen through my camera lenses.

* * *

I am learning the studio recording software fast. I hope to start Podcasting sometime after the Chinese New Year. But that will be very occassional releases as it requires listeners, Screenshots' audience, to ideally have broadband.

* * *

My other project is to coach some senior citizens - people who have been there, done that - to blog. It will likely be named Grand-Daddy.com. ;-)

* * *

That roughly sums up this year's journey on blogging for me, besides counting my lucky stars to bring sufficient three square meals on the table.

Is 'Thinking Aloud' allowed?
You have to first define 'God's gift to journalism'

As expected, some of theSun's bloggers got riled up. This time, it comes from a senior whose writings I list in my wiki out of respect and, often times, reverence.

Last June 29, this particular senior journo gave a presentation at the University of Sydney's Research Institute for Asia and the Pacific (RIAP). I was told he was cornered by a Malaysian who attended his talk, which touched on the patronage system in Malaysia, and challenged his perspectives. Subsequently, I was put on the email loop by this dissenting voice from Sydney. To be fair and professional, I emailed, gave this journo sufficient time (as he has yet to return home), talked over the phone when he got back, and - MOST importantly - verified the facts with this senior, who later gave me a debrief and a copy of his Powerpoint. I ended up writing a non-judgmental piece - exclusively right here in Screenshots - to provide a context to the entire argument. It was only posted on July 5, solid five days after I had given this senior journo all the benefits of doubt that he, like anyone else, rightly deserved.

My story is still archived here. It answers whether 'Thinking Aloud' is allowed.

This senior didn't call me afterwards. Neither did he thank me nor was I expecting one. I assumed that, at least, he did not disagree to what I had blogged about the issue, which I regarded as largely a journalist's personal observation, and in juxtaposition against an invited counter-response from the audience. It was a conversation - remember Dan Gillmor - among intellectuals. There was no right or wrong, or black and white. Just shades of gray that befits an intellectual discourse.

And through the process I had approached the matter, I thought this senior journo would have had an inkling of how a consummate blogger behaves before he blogs.

Sadly, this time, distortion starts where judgmentalism rises and reasons fail.

Regrettably, Jackson has received a backhanded and tasteless welcome from "Malaysia’s most influential blogger" but that’s par for the course for Jeff Ooi occasionally although he mostly does a good job.

Jeff’s motto, prominently displayed on his website, says Thinking Allowed, Thinking Aloud. But try thinking aloud when your thoughts disagree with Jeff’s and then see if indeed thinking is allowed – thinking allowed only if you agree with Jeff, otherwise don’t think aloud. I know because I have been his target before for no other reason than that my views did not match his.

Come on Jeff, surely Malasia's most influential blogger and one of the pioneering ones who was invited to an international blogger’s conference in Harvard, no less, surely you can give more encouragement to a new blogger with 27 years experience in journalism instead of raking up a story that you are not in position to know much about, your little birds notwithstanding? Remember the saying "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone?"

No, Guna, that's not a good reason to pick on to pursue an intellectual discourse, much less an engaging conversation. It's a spin. Nothing but a miserable spin doctor's spin.

The issue is this, and I am ready to think ever louder over it:

SOURCE: theSun, Ng Kee Seng's second blog entry updated: 11:46PM Tue, 11 Jan 2005

Barely have you slipped into the third day of blogging and you start manufacturing innuendos on people - "(especially bloggers) who get carried away and behave like God's gift to journalism" - and instigating people to "tell that to Jeff Ooi", ending with three exclamation marks!

Look, who has the first stone cast?

One can't help but thinking aloud that it's but a sincere extension of what you did to Dr Lim (Keng Yaik) last April, a 'shafting words down the minister's throat' frontpage, bylined story which was only to be retracted a day later. In the published errata, even theSun editors agreed that Dr Lim - the one made to look bad in the story as having dictated terms for the proposed MCA-Gerakan merger - was not the exact person the reporter, someone with 27 years' reporting experience, had spoken to directly for attributed quotes.

The fact is, people knew - and remembered - exactly just that despite the lapse of time.

It's a pity that not many journalists within theSun realised its management has included Screenshots in its broadcast list for the press release (view original document here) to announce the first shipment of tsunami relief supplies to Sri Lanka.

Screenshots obligingly published the story here, complete with an officially-sourced photo, without any attention-grabber, much less priding itself being a God's gift to the old media.

So, can we henceforth stop using God's name to attribute journalism?

Will you, Band of Brothers out there? There is a distinct difference between bloggers of the Fourth Estate and The Fifth.

Somebody 'tok' my back?

That person... who made theSun blush by shafting words down Dr Lim Keng Yaik's throat, only to retract it the next day. Nevermind if it's akin to watching the B-grader movie "I know what you did last April" (sic) again once in a while.

Welcome aboard! From crime to politics to "behaving like God's gift to journalism". Twenty-seven years in print journalism is always a good start for blogging, whichever way you look at it. If all else fails, try business desk.

Thanks to the regular little bird, who tipped me off and told me very clinically about soaked noodles. He said that softie texture may too easily be misconstrued as being ED. I will try to crack the code someday. :-0

Sneak Preview: Screenshots on wiki

Blogs present content in a reverse chronological order and this makes searching for archive materials a tedious job.

I hope a wiki extension to Screenshots will make up for this shortcoming, while I tag along the wiki wave in case Wikipedia continues to cause a change in experience for those who surf the Internet for information and knowledge.

Preview page is here. You may like to leave your message regarding this wiki here.

I plan to roll out two new extended features - Podcast and 摆渡人 - to this blog soon. They are all aligned with the concept of Global Voices Online I committed to at Harvard last December. Now I grasp for breath.

Fighting Corruption: 'Silence is deafening'

Blogger Mackzulkifli has taken the trouble to run a Boolean-gateway supposition on Screenshots SMS Poll #1, complete with a spreadsheet.

Read his excellent blog entry here. He seems to have a strong message for us to chew on:

• The voice - a mere 0.6% of aggregated domestic readership on Screenshots - is but a whimper, and the overhelming silence was simply the loudest statement made.


• People, especially city folks rather than country mice (more 012 than 019), are lethargic in getting their voice heard.


• The silent folks may be of the opinion that whatever the SMS Poll does, it serves a purpose of novelty, as "the more mainstream media has failed in it's quest to make acountability and transparency an issue, compared to being shot in the foot. Of course that is what blogs should fail too".

Where's the beef?

Mackzul says the characteristics of the poll options, many overlapping (and they came from none other than prouncements by Pak Lah), are meant to sample the diversity of demands and connect it to real human beings, and the Boolean method helped.

"Behind those numbers is someone who is moved enough to key in a response. He should be taken seriously," he added.

Was the spirit of jest added to communicate, effectively or otherwise, the compelling result this poll has delivered? There could be one that's particularly worrying, Mackzul reiterates: The silent majority.

It's your call, entirely. You get what your deserve.

Tsunami blogs: Focus now on survivors

UPDATED VERSION. Locating missing foreigners. Tsunamipenang.blogspot.com is shifting its blog's focus. It started with featuring news and relief efforts in Penang, however, as the chaotic situation there has since stabilised, the blog is now focusing on helping foreginers locate their Malaysian friends whom they fear could be missing or have lost contact with.

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Motivating survivor stories. Blogger Rick Von Feldt emailed me to inform that phukettsunami.blogspot.com has been enjoying amazing visitor support. He now calls his a Tsunami Survivor blog.

He has just added NEW SURVIVOR STORIES section. One recent, first-hand story comes from Luke Simmonds. This chap was sailing, was washed up on shore, helped people who were bleeding, got on a plane, saved a little girl – and is starting to assess what has happened to himself. And he is still missing people. Click here.

There is another another about a woman who helped to save 50 people!

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Aid Rush to Sigli, Aceh. Blogger Graceshu informs Screenshots that Pusat Komunity Masyarakat - KOMAS, an NGO based in Petaling Jaya - has also set up a weblog at http://aceh-relief.blogspot.com/

It chronicles efforts of KOMAS-SEAPCP (or the South East Asia Popular Communications Programme) in Emergency Relief Mission (ERM) which provides medical aid to tsunami victims in Aceh, concentrating at the northern villages that are over run by refugees and survivors.

Our first exploratory team went to Sigli a couple of days ago with our own supplies, and another KOMAS director just left this morning with more medical supplies. These are all recorded in the weblog, together with photos.

We are expecting more first-hand reports and observations from our doctors out in the field sometime next week. The next relief mission is on 27 Jan - 7 Feb. This team consists mostly of medical personnel.

Although this is a regional effort, SEAPCP has deisgnated KOMAS to be the lead agency to organize these missions because of the languge similarities between the two countries.

* * *

Fabulous photo stories. Architect Choen Lee, whom I recognise as a notable creative photographer, was at the North Port, Klang, among friends January 4 to help load relief supplies to Sri Lanka and Aceh organised by the Buddhist Maha Vihara in Brickfields, KL. His commentaries in Screenshots is available here.

He has a gallery of nice photos on tsunami relief here.

Here's his jottings:

While out-of-fashion clothing items are causing some problems, medical items are in very short supply. If there's nothing material you can give, offer your hands. Related NGOS, ranging from religious associations to medical aid groups are always looking for volunteers. Help where you can.

This thought just came. What do the survivors eat and drink from? Broken plates and rusty mugs? What do they cook with? It would be funny cliche way when the survivors receive tonnes of canned food with no means of opening them.

Choen was at the TUDM base in Subang yesterday to record the first flight of supplies to Aceh coming from our governmental agencies, accompanies by members of the Malaysian Red Crescent Society and SMART (disaster recovery team). Click here.

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Beyond the Space Odyssey. Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey who is leading a retired life in Sri Lanka, survived the tsunami. He has updates on his website, here.

Pew: Blog readership surged 58% in 2004

Take the Screenshots SMS Poll #1. What's the priority agenda the Prime Minister should focus on this year? Help us get a quantifiable measure of public opinion, don't poll twice. If you have polled, please pass the word around. Click here!
_____________

According to the latest report by from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, blog readership increased sharply by 58% between February and November 2004 in America.

This is despite the fact that 62% of adult American Internet users still so not know what a blog actually is.

The story is, according to Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & Amercian Life Project, blogs are catching on - not just on the creator side, but also on the demand side.

To be exact, blog readership took off in 2004.

In November 2004, Pew reported that a new weblog is created every 5.8 seconds. That roughly translates into 15,000 new blogs every day.

Around the same time, David Sifry, Technorati's chief executive, said the number of blogs has reached over 8 times bigger than the 500,000 blogs it measured in June, 2003. The company now tracks some 4 million blogs worldwide, including Screenshots.

Read the details here, here and here. And Google News today.

Thanks Marco Hiirata, matny and TV Smith for the pointer.

UPDATES: James Burton has a story in Asia Times on bloggers who make waves (pardon the pun) recently in forging a tribal news network. Screenshots and the Citizenry Aid to tsunami-hit Kota Kuala Muda are featured.

Tsunami: We shall overcome

Autism Awareness Campaign Blog, Sri Lanka

This is Autism Awareness Campaign International Appeal. Please visit:

http://www.autismsrilanka.blogspot.com/

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Dollar-for-Dollar from blogger

From: Anders Jacobsen
To: jeffooi.screenshots@gmail.com
Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2005 04:21:23 +0000
Subject: Linking to Red Cross creates automatic donation

Hi there, Jeff

My name is Anders Jacobsen and I'm a fellow weblogger. I recently donated US$150 to the Red Cross Tsunami appeal, and to make things more interesting I've upped the stakes and am challenging other bloggers to give (money, obviously) but also to link from their blogs to a list of well-known aid agencies. The aim being to help those agencies get more website visitors and increase the donations even further.

For ever blogger linking (HTML code and details available on the page here) I'll give a dollar to Red Cross. That's the easiest dollar given in a while don't you think?

I'd be grateful and happy if you would consider posting a link on your blog. Should you not wish to, that's fine too of course.

Kind regards
Anders

* * *

There's warmth in chilly Hong Kong

From: Cheaw Mun Wai
To: jeffooi.screenshots@gmail.com
Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2005 09:13:29 +0800 (MYT)
Subject: Tsunami coverage in HK

Dear Jeff,

Just read your blog today and saw your blog entry regarding TK Kang's volunteering effort at Causeway Bay, HK. I just arrived at HK and I'm staying at Causeway Bay, and true to Kang's email, his booth was filled with people, and being that it was a Sunday, the crowd was unimaginable.

Tsunami coverage on the news is quite detailed. On the large screen displays usually used for ads, sometimes they'd broadcast some news coverage on the tsunami, and people would just stand there watching.

Seeing all this makes me realise what a caring lot HK people are, especially when it comes to these kind of things.

--
Regards,

ADJ @ Cheaw Mun Wai
www.lowyat.net

* * *

Silent Movie

Mackzulkifli has a message, from people to people. That simple.

Screenshots in 2005

What next? That's the question I asked myself on the way back from attending the Harvard Conference last December.

Several ideas. They will be executed with a participatory model in mind. As Screenshots enters its third year, I want these Conversations among people -- one-to-many, many-to-many, and few-to-few -- to be expanded and extended to other forms of the convergent technology platform, from the pervasive to the route less travelled.

I hope to roll them out phase-by-phase, strategically with broadband in mind. We will start with one that's almost a no-brainer. Stay tuned!

Dan Gillmor's new blog

Dan Gillmor has officially left SJ Merc as of January 2005. He has also started a new blog at TypePad.

Click http://dangillmor.typepad.com (Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism). His second blog entry appears today: New Year, New Role.

First Aceh tsunami website?

This is probably the first Aceh Tsunami Disaster website. It's bilingual and hosted on a wiki-like platform off UK. Apparently powered up today, the content is still being developed.

http://aceh.abangadek.com

It also looks like a spin-off of textile merchants - comprising siblings H. Asri Rukun and H. Harman Rukun - based in Jakarta's Block M.

Meanwhile, the bilingual website for Media Peduli Bencana Tsunami is available at http://www.airputih.or.id/en/. Via SEA-EAT.

Pass the word around.

Tsunami: Blogs and such

Two Malaysian bloggers who came face-to-face with tsunami were mentioned by The Guardian yesterday: apapaje.blogspot.com and Ronnie Tan.

TV Smith has set up Malaysia & Regional Tsunami Disaster Information & Resource Page at Malaysia Central.

Oon Yeoh has a new classification for blogs: incestuous blogosphere.

Via Jeff Jarvis:

NBC blogger and journalist Kevin Sites has left Iraq to cover the tragedy in Thailand; first blog's here.

Punditguy - Screenshots mentioned him on December 29 and he trackback-ed the same day - has been slapped with a huge bandwidth bill for sharing the tsunami videos with the world. He has set up a PayPal donation box to seek help.

Tsunami videos are now hosted at www.waveofdestruction.org, and a mirror of Cheese and Crackers.

Tsunami blogs: Very contagious!

Remember SEA-EAT - the South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami weblog - I mentioned on December 28, hours after its creation? It has become the grand station for people looking for tsunami rescue and relief information.

CMP's InternetWeek.com (you must read it for itsights) describes it as the latest example of netizens' ability to form fast volunteer organizations. Quote:

The three-day old blog has clocked 100,000 site visits as of Wednesday, noon PST. That's an extraordinarily high number; 1,000 page views in a single day is pretty good for most blogs.

The blog was started by Peter Griffin, a writer and blogger located in Bombay, India, soon after the tsunamis hit on Sunday, and assisted by Rohit Gupta, and blogger and marketing consultant Dina Mehta, also based in Bombay (Mumbai).

They coordinate via cell phones, Instant Messenger conference room, e-mail and YahooGroups. Why Blogspot? Because they are seasoned users of the Google-owned blog engine - Griffin has three Blogspot sites, Gupta has five!

It is now open to anyone who wants to contribute, with over 50 people now providing content from all over south-east Asia. Several hundred SEA-EAT participants - from New Delhi to New Jersey - are sorting through the information on the blog and pouring it into a wiki on the Wikinews server.

SEA-EAT provides information on where to send donations in cash or goods, volunteer, and information about the ongoing disaster. Recent posts include information about a new, dedicated web site set up by the Sri Lanka tourist board; hotline numbers to find missing people from India, the Maldives, Seychelles, Sri Lanka and Thailand; a 24-hour helpline for missing persons from South Africa; and information on how Americans and Canadians can send assistance to Indonesia.

Meanwhile, in hard-hit Sri Lanka, a separate blog, ChienSansFrontiers is posting firsthand accounts from disaster areas, sent from disaster scene via SMS.

I hope http://tsunamipenang.blogspot.com will populate the something similar.

What's your Top 10 tsunami stories? Try Julian Matthews.

TSUNAMI ANIMATED. There's no way Myanmar was not badly hit. View this National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) animated movie in QT.

Photographer Hellmut Issels, who shot the pictures when Tsunami struck Phuket and had them uploaded online within an hour from his room, has attracted interest from newspapers throughout the world, including both newspaper companies in Singapore. His ad-hoc gallery is available here.

Tsunami victims: 'What if we were them?'

JEFF OOI: Kota Kuala Muda was one of the earliest casualties in my opening blog on the tsunami catastrophe - at 5.00pm on Sunday. I am glad Ashwar has done something meaningful to a kampung I am so familiar with, but now so distant in fading momories. Ashwar is making another round of collection and the final collection time will be at 5pm, 31st Dec 2004 at Dataran Maybank, Bangsar as his team of volunteers hope to send the items to the kids before school starts.

Sure you hear him ask: 'What if we were them?'

Guest Blogger
Ashwar Abd Aziz
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 14:30:10 +0800

My personal experience at the Relief Centre, Kota Kuala Muda, Kedah Malaysia 29 Dec 2004

On 27th Dec, my father, a committee member of Kedah Disaster Relief Association, phoned me up and told me about the situation of the victims there. He asked me whether through my 4x4 offroad friends we could gather used clothings, books, stationeries and second-hand school shoes to be donated to the victims. And I said "Yes, I will try my best." He told me that the sight of the disaster area and the plight of the victims can easily shed tears to our eyes. Houses being completely destroyed, victims left with only the clothes they wore, belongings destroyed, either by being washed away or damaged by mud.

I then immediately sent SMS to close friends (about 20 of them) and within minutes, they responded. My offroad friends, Amir of Malaysian Offroaders, Alyna and Rate from Land Rover Owners Club, Rahman of Petronas Adventure Team (PAT Oscar Lima) and Aziz of Malaysian Amateur Radio Emergency Services called me up and told me that they were contacting their friends and members to organize collection of clothings and schooling items for the victims.

Yesterday (29th Dec 2004) at about 3 am, myself and PAT Oscar Lima members went up to Kedah, in five vehicles. We reached Kedah at about 8am and contacted ASTRA (Malay Northern Amateur Radio Association) member, Zul (9W2TQ) who lent his support in taking us there at the disaster area and put us in contact with their members stationed there.

We reached Kota Kuala Muda Primary School (turned into a temporary relief centre and shelter for the victims) at about 11am. The area was heavy with activities. Police personnel was everywhere; protecting the disaster area from unwanted theft, traffic control and protection of the relief centre. The Fire and Rescue personnel along with Civil Defence were stationed everywhere especially at the affected seaside villages (which have been completely evacuated for precaution).

It was a sad sight at the school; victims were placed in almost every available classrooms as well as the school's canteen, bicycle sheds and hall. A Jaya Jusco lorry was seen parked by the roadside delivering supplies.

We brought our vehicles into the school compound and were immediately surrounded by village folks and children, trying to have a peek at our cargo. We immediately looked for the person-in-charge but he was no where to be found. We then got hold of the affected village heads and gave our donations and cargo to them. We then mingled around with them, listening to their personal accounts during the incident, the problems on addressing their urgent needs and on having to build their lives from scratch. Everywhere I looked, I could see women with tears, mothers staring at us with "help us" look and fathers trying to get latest news on the help promised for them.

One thing I note was that there were irresponsible unaffected village folks trying to get their hands on the freebies and financial aids as well. Due to this, we make sure that our cargo was delivered to the affected village heads.

We then asked for and obtained permission from the Police to visit the affected villages some 3 kilometers away. The sea was something like 700 meters away from the houses and one could imagine the force of the waves that hit the houses. The closest houses facing the sea were the ones badly hit. Most were completely destroyed either by being totally washed away (except for the cemented floor or walls) or damage. Mud which were brought along by the waves filled the houses and damaged all the household items and furnitures. Some villagers were seen scooping the mud out from their houses (there were dead fishes in the mud!) or gathering items that still could be used. The brick markers at the muslim graveyard were 45 degree tilted (main picture above). Cars and small boats were either pilled up or stacked up together at trees, houses and paddy fields. Only cranes could tow them out.

One sight that touched me (I managed to take a photo of it, below, top photo) is that a family taking shelter from the sun under a tree next to what's left of their house (bottom photo). The mother was putting her son to sleep in a makeshift bouncer under the tree.

All these make make we the much more harder situation in Acheh and Sri Lanka where 60,000 and 25,000 were reported dead. Acheh is the worst where visuals from the TV shows 2/3 of the town itself were completely destroyed. It makes me think WHAT IF WE WERE THEM?

I do hope that this disaster would make us realize that such catastrophe can struck anybody. No race, colour, nation or religion can eacape. It can be you next.

To those who have answered donated and contributed, I wish them thank you. I can't believe that my simple SMS has spreaded (thanks to my friends) and has received tremendous response.

Thanks to the individuals who have contributed. I wish the companies, private businesses can contribute in our noble and sincere help. I also wish that help and contribution is sincerely given beyond the boundries of your race, religion and nation.

We are concerntrating our effort in gathering

• school items such as bags, uniforms, shoes, books for the school kids,


• Sarongs for the elderlies


• Clothing and items for babies and toddlers


• Toiletries (new ones)

WE DON'T TAKE CASH OR CHEQUES!! Buy something instead and gave them to us.

From my observation yesterday, I think we have more than enough used clothings fro the victims in Kedah. The ones that we have now will be sent to Acheh as we believe they need more than we do here.

Our final collection time will be at 5pm, 31st Dec 2004 at Dataran Maybank, Bangsar tomorrow (we hope that we can send the items before school starts). We also need transportation to send the items to the relief centre in Kuala Muda Kedah. If you think you can contribute your time and vehicle, feel free to be there at Dataran Maybank.

This effort is done on individual basis and does not in any way involve any corporations, govt institutions etc.

All photos featured here are courtesy Ashwar Abd Aziz.

Tsunami: Good words for bloggers

Thanks the Star In-Tech team for their frontpage story highlighting Screenshots and Malaysia bloggers, aggregated via Project Petaling Street, who rose to the occasion to fill the "information void of the moment".

Similar good words were generously said in The Inquirer (via LowYat.net's ADJ) and Rebecca MacKinnon's RConversation, an extraorinaire in Global Voices Online whom I met at Harvard recently.

There is also a mention of Screenshots in Times Online pertaining to Myanmar's silence over the extent of homeland damage despite the military junta's messages of commiseration to neighbouring countries.

I hope Malaysian blogosphere will go to greater heights from here. Take pride in what you do, the world is watching.

FOOTNOTE: There are many emails and good readers' articles being held up over the days. I will sort them out one by one. (Ashwar, yours is a thunderbolt which I will publish earnestly.)

Tsunami: Penang blogs

Reader Andy Lee emailed me this morning to inform that he and a group of Penangites set up a blog last night to help disseminate information and channel donations for the tsunami victims of Penang.

Please take a look at http://tsunamipenang.blogspot.com/ and help pass the word around.

Andy can be contacted at bravogila@hotmail.com.

Singapore Straits Times today makes a mention of Lucia Lai who chronicles the Penangites' efforts to help victims pick up the shattered pieces of their lives at jogalong.blogspot.com.

Tsunami: A tragedy within a tragedy

A tragedy can't be more morbid than this - it didn't even make it to the headlines:

The train with call-sign Samudradevi, or Queen of the Sea, left Colombo Fort station shortly after 9am on Sunday for its regular run to the southern city of Galle.

It was full even by Sri Lankan standards. As many as 1,700 passengers crammed its carriages or hung from the sides. For most of its length the railway runs close to Sri Lanka's west coast, sometimes within sight of the beach.

Without warning, two hours after leaving Colombo, most of the train's hot and swaying throng were dead. A giant wave roared through the trees and threw the carriages off the rails, filling them instantly with water.

Look at the awesome satellite photo of the tsunami hitting Sri Lanka, and more.

Via BuzzMachine Jeff Jarvis, quoting The Guardian.

UPSIDE DOWN. New York Times' David Carr reports that news-gathering has gone upside down:

Bob Calo, an associate professor at the graduate school of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, said that there had been something of a reversal in the news-gathering process. "If you think back, news gatherers would get the story and then commission a photographer to go and get the pictures," he said. "Now we have flipped it around to where reporters are chasing the pictures, trying to create some context for what viewers are seeing."

As a result, Jeff Jarvis says TV networks are falling over themselves to buy tourist video that captures the instant power and horror of the tsunami. Hence you get to such tsunami-in-action pictures and videos.

Tsunami: Are you OK, Myanmar?

Ethan Zuckerman at WorldChanging 'trackbacks' to show concerns over a muffled Myanmar. Besides offering two possibilities for the curtailed info-flow, here's the grim picture:

Democratic Voice of Burma, a Burmese dissident news service based in Norway, reports earthquake damage to a college building and a historical pagoda in the Irriwaddy region, as well tsunami damage to the Coco Islands, located south of the mainland in the Indian Ocean, just north of India's Andaman Islands, where at least 5,000 are reported dead.

Roughly 1,000 people lived on Coco Island in 1990. How many died and how many survived Sunday's tragedy? We may never know. And if the generals in Rangoon know, they're not telling.

The sooner the military junta steps out with the truth, the sooner relief supplies could be apportioned and dropped into the impoverished country.

Have any of the oil-rich Arabian countries contributed to relief funds, yet? Read today's Washington Post editorial.

SEA EAT Blog

There's one group blog from India that makes good use of Blogspot free hosting to disseminate information on multinational disaster relief efforts. It's called The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami, or SEA EAT Blog, for short, created by Anand and Zigzackly last night (Dec 27).

URL: http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/ (via Donna B of Pyjama Pundits)

Tsunami traffic

Screenshots experienced a tsunami-surge in visitor traffic yesterday as the world woke up to realise the globe-spanning calamity.

This time, much of the visitor traffic came from referrals from alpha bloggers like Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit), Jeff Jarvis (BuzzMachine), John H. Hinderaker aka Hindrocket (Power Line), Command Post and many others who 'trackbacked'.

Holiday makers of many nationalities were caught in the tsunami offguarded, and that was what I most feared as I stayed glued to Internet and BBC World, and blogged on throughout Sunday evening. I thought I had wanted to piece the unfolding events together in a chronological manner, and to observe how the governments and authorities manage the crisis, the spin-doctors and profiteers manipulate the event, and media report the first draft of history.

But the death toll defeated me. It's been a never-before kind of catastrophe for my lifetime.

Via Bloomberg, as at December 27, 2004 15:49 EST (Dec 28 04:49hr Malaysia Time), the United Nations said 24 countries have joined "an enormous relief effort" following a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunamis and flooding that killed more than 23,000 and destroyed towns from Thailand to India.

As we thumb through the morning papers today to read the first batch of the tsunami-in-action pictures and survivors' first-person accounts, I hope I have been of service to the global Netizens during the early hours of news-breaking.

Tsunami: Dan Gillmor starts donation drive in blogosphere

UPDATED VERSION. Bloggers know no geographical boundaries when it comes to hearing global voices.

Dan Gillmor has just sent off a donation to the Red Cross to help the survivors of the earthquake and tsunamis that have struck south Asia. Please help if you can, he pleads. Betsy Devine has responded.

BuzzMachine Jeff Jarvis, who visited Screenshots and discovered Bangkok blogger Ron Morris, has put the tragedy on his radar screen. So have Glenn Reynolds and Command Post, respectively.

Malaysian blogger MackZulkifli - now residing primarily at www.brandmalaysia.com - is having second thoughts about sending his money to NST and has set up his donation campaign, instead. He begins with a personal pledge of RM5,000.

(Oh no... someone just said, derma secara ikhlas; don't do it because Pak Lah is from Penang.)

BBC News updates at 04:58hr GMT (12:58hr Malaysia time) that more than 12,000 people are known to have died in the underseas earthquake and tsunami catastrophe. The toll from the disaster is set to spiral in the worst-hit areas of Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia and Thailand.

So, why not consider donating to Red Cross, as victims in the four countries may need alms more urgently. Mack also targets Red Cross as his campaign's recipients.

PRIORITIES & URGENCY. Faced with priorities and urgency, Japan decided to send its earliest disaster relief team - a 21-person delegation including doctors and nurses - to Sri Lanka on Monday to provide aid and support to residents in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami. Separately on Monday, Japan's Red Cross Society announced plans to provide 100 million yen (US$965,000; euro713,000) to pay for relief efforts in the disaster-hit areas. Via an AP story.

DONATIONS & AID: THINK GLOBAL.

The International Red Cross in Geneva issued an initial appeal for donations of 7.5 million Swiss francs (US$6.7 million; euro4.9 million) in cash, relief goods or services for the next six months, reports AP.

Here are some heart-warming gestures from a globe-spanning context, via AP reports picked up by Star Online:

• Australia: On Monday, Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer pledged 10 million Australian dollars (US$7.7 million; euro 5.69 million) to international aid agencies coordinating relief efforts.


• Britain: Three charities - Save the Children, World Vision and Christian Aid - were flying out teams to help workers already in Sri Lanka and India and sending money to region.


• Italy & EU: The Foreign Ministry's crisis unit was coordinating EU aid efforts, and Italy, Sweden, Germany, France and Britain were sending teams of technical experts and rescue workers.


• Germany: The German government released euro 1 million (US$1.35 million) in emergency aid funding. The German branch of UNICEF said it was giving euro 100,000 (US$135,000) for victims of the tidal waves, and appealed for more donations.


• Austria: Relief officials and charities such as Caritas and Volkshilfe issued urgent appeals cash donations.


• The Netherland: The Dutch Red Cross was flying in blankets, tents and medicine, with priority going to Sri Lanka, said Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman Esther van Damme.


• Brussels & EU: EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Luis Michel said it was important to bring aid "in those vital hours and days immediately after the disaster." The 25-nation EU will deliver euro3 million (US$4 million) in emergency aid as a start.


• United States: A White House statement on Sunday said American aid efforts were already underway in Sri Lanka and the Maldives.


• Greece: The Foreign Ministry said a C-130 cargo plane was ready to offer assistance.


• Kuwait: The government said it was sending US$1 million in aid.


• Spain: The Red Cross said it was designating euro36,000 (nearly US$50,000) in emergency funds.


• Switzerland: The charity Swiss Solidarity started accepting donations for the disaster areas, while Caritas Switzerland and the Swiss Red Cross released 400,000 Swiss francs (US$350,000; euro258,000) in aid.


• Venezuela: The government was also preparing to send in a rescue team and goods.

* * *

A wiki on the Boxing Day tsunami is being developed.

Merry Christmas

Glad to see the world as One.
If not today, perhaps someday.

Anti-Copycat

Try this if you suspect your website content has been plagiarised:

http://www.copyscape.com/

Thanks Prema for the pointer.

Global Voices Online

My bloggers friends in the US are evidently very passionate about how to sustain the energy we have created at Harvard Law School, and about how to build bridges out of blogosphere that connects people of diverse cultures, but who share a common belief in freedom.

Here comes the collective great work, post-conference:

THE MANIFESTO

We believe in free speech, both in protecting the right to speak and extending access to the tools of speech. We define speech broadly to include many media that facilitate expression.

The broadest right of free speech has always extended primarily to those who owned technology for publishing and distribution, beginning with the printing press. It is now possible for anyone to publish, broadcast and have access to a distribution channel via the Internet. It is our goal that everyone who wants to speak can be heard.

We believe in the power of direct connection and the freedom to connect. The bond between individuals from different worlds is personal, political and powerful.

We seek to create bridges that cross the gulfs that have traditionally divided us. When we cross these gulfs, we understand each other more fully, work together more effectively, and act more powerfully. With these bridges, we can do together what we could only dream of doing alone.

Direct connection is its own reward. However, in a world full of challenges, it is also the best path to building a future that is freer, fairer, more sustainable and more prosperous.

While we're all committed to our own work as individuals, we also recognize our common interest and goals. We each speak for ourselves, but we're all in this together. We pledge to respect, listen to, assist, and learn from one other. We are Global Voices.

Then, there's

• the wiki transplanted from Hoder's to Berkman Center by Ethan Zuckerman;


• the concise audio recap (5.6MB in MP3) by Ben Walker and Rebecca MacKinnon (my conversation has been edited into the concluding portion, with key points on global understanding enclosed in the Manifesto);


• the excellent conference report by Rebecca MacKinnon, again, published via Personal Democracy Forum, which serves as a beautiful companion to the audio report;


• the wonderful column from Dan Henninger, deputy editorial-page editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal who spent a whole Saturday at the Harvard Internet conference with us, listening to bloggers talk - something he described as 'the real revolution brewing' - and putting Malaysia bloggers on his radar screen.

But the words of wisdom about blogs ("American influence" is the great white whale of the 21st century), I must confess, came from BuzzMachine Jeff Jarvis, quoted by Wall Street Journal:

"This is not about causes or organizing people. It's about us creating these tools and then simply having faith in people who use them elsewhere to do good."

We ought to connect Malaysian blogosphere with the larger global conversations.

We are Global Voices.

Selling Gmail on eBay

Are there ethical issues involved by auctioning free Gmail invite for solid cash?

Go to eBay Malaysia, key in "Gmail" in Basic Search window (or click here), you will get 28 Gmail invites on auction, with the bid ranging from 50 sen for one to RM50 for eight.

Gmail that comes with 1Gb storage is supposed to be free, though by invitation from Google Mail.

Thanks reader I.J. Albert for the alert.

What comes out of Harvard meet...

Time to take stock of what bloggers have achieved over the last few days at Harvard Law School. I think, the most compelling outcome is the on-going conversations at Global Voices Online. Lots of good things have spawned, and spun-off, after the three days' meet.

Thanks to Rebecca MacKinnon and Ethan Zuckerman for being great co-conspirators, and Berkman Center and staff members for being such good hosts (not mentioning they put me in the same hotel that Bill Clinton stayed during Boston DNC).

What Ethan says is certainly shared by most of us:

It was amazing and inspiring to watch participants from Iran, Iraq, South Korea, Latvia, Malaysia, China, Kenya, Poland, Canada and both the blue and red states of the US find common ground. Whatever differences we have, we are united by the belief we all benefit from hearing more voices online from all around the globe. And we're remarkably diverse, creative and free with ideas for how we might make that happen.

On Dec 11, Ethan also gave me a full 10 minutes (or more?) to talk about www.USJ.com.my (since 1999), Screenshots (since 2003), PetalingStreet Project (since 2003) and thousands of Malaysians who blog in Malay. I made a special mention of Malay blogs like sultanmuzaffar.

Ethan flashed live pages from these Malaysian websites through the LCD projector as I talked in Pound Hall 101, which was connected to WiFi broadband. There were many Q&A; responses to the Malaysian grassroot online scene. (I will try to upload a video clip of how Ethan caught me off-guarded when I get back home.) Transcripts of the GVO sessions are made available courtesy of Harvard's SJ.

NEXT STEP: Joi Ito and Jim Moore joined voices to erupt a Manifesto, while Ethan and Alex Steffen will knock out a mission statement of sorts to sustain the energy. Andy Carvin is already talking about preparing for the second World Simmit of Information Society (WSIS) 2005 to be held in Tunis.

JIM MOORE. I was amazed listening to Jim Moore talk about Sudan with such conviction, and tried to find out more (pardon the pun) on his bio. He is the same Dr James F. Moore who authored a 1996 best-selling book, The Death of Competition: Leadership and Strategy in the Age of Business Ecosystems (HarperBusiness). The Wall Street Journal awarded the book five stars and selected it as one of the top books for entrepreneurs published this decade. His earlier Harvard Business Review article "Predators and Prey: A New Ecology of Competition" won the McKinsey Award for best article of 1993.

This is the kind of quality people bloggers are associated with. Obviously, bloggers aren't exactly guys in pyjamas. (But then, much to Pyjamaheedins' galore, Jonathan Klein has since joined CNN.)

I am going to go home with this sophia (layman's word: 'new wisdom').

On the road again

I have checked out of my hotel at Cambridge MA and at large again. Internet connection may be on as-and-when basis and Screenshots updates will be sporadic.

It seems that Malaysian community in both Harvard and MIT is small, less than two handfuls I was told, but I know of an effort to set up an South East Asian Caucus among young men and women who are pursuing their post-grad education here. I met several of them who hail from Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. They have kindly organised and hosted me at a lunch talk at Harvard's JFK School of Government yesterday. It's been included as a part of the School's Leadership Talks series. This is indeed a bonus after having been hosted by Harvard Law School.

More on this later.

BTW, any major news in KL apart from the floods in the East Coast? I really didn't have the time and energy to trawl Malaysia's online news portals since landing here.

Shamelessly, a self-appointed e-Ambassador

Another cherished moment while I am in Cambridge MA is that I had the opportunity to open up channels for initial discussion with my host, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, to suggest that they include their research efforts in helping promote ICT in Malaysia's public universities.

We are talking about, perhaps, finding ways to unleash the resources inherent in a cluster of IPTAs, and to restrategise on transforming our public universities into breeding ground for ICT innovation rather than mere ICT adopters.

The MSC implementation, while trying hard to woo foreign technology owners to relocate some of their R&D; programmes into Cyberjaya and to boost eulogised numbers on monetary output, may have disasterously disengaged our own hotbeds for ingenious innovations from the technology food-chain. Our IT faculties may still be teaching out-of-time syllabi, and students churning out thesis and project papers on cookie-cutter shortcuts.

To turn that around, a new policy framework must be put in place, vision must be sharpened with a strong sense for results delivery. We must think world class and do world class. And I have never wavered from the belief that our public universities - talent factories that nurture competent human resource relevant to market needs - should be networked along the model of distributed and/or grid computing in order to churn out super-computing results that are far greater than the sum of the total.

However, I must qualify that these are solely my wildest thoughts and I never used them when I discussed the prospect of Berkman Center researching into Malaysia. Facts-finding and due diligence process are in order before a paper could be prepared for more meaningful discussion.

Off hand, I have two names to forward to Berkman Center. When I return, I will talk to these two persons, and perhaps several more, to seek their consent to help move this agenda forward.

I took a video clip of Professor Charles Nesson who talked with a visionary accent about the blogosphere moving beyond the Internet as a networked conduit for knowledge pursuit in a global-spanning context. It's 70MB in file size, so I can't possibly post it here for download until I have it resized.

BRANDBAND. Unashamedly, I played the role of a self-appointed e-ambassador (forgive the pun) for Malaysia. I have talked aggressively - both at the podium and during small talks on the sideline - on the business opportunities available in Malaysia's broadband Internet market. I am sure, Malaysia's current 1% broadband penetration is a fact that was easily picked up by the audience as potential, compelling business opportunities.

With broadband as the lowest common denominator for residential Internet access, we will see lots of our wish list come true ahead of its time. More on this later.

MESSENGER. To reader Alex Lam: I have fulfilled the role of a Messenger by conveying your regards to Ethan Zuckerman (co-engineer of Tripod in the mid 1990s). Yes, without prompting, Ethan mentioned about Lycos' sponsoring of the Malaysian Olympic team that won a silver for badminton. And, we also talked about the time when Anwar Ibrahim sympathisers populated Tripod websites.

Did you guys last meet in Indonesia?

Dan Gillmor leaving Merc

The ground-breaking news that Dan Gillmor told us about during dinner last night - it's finally out on Dan's blog: He'll be leaving the San Jose Mercury News next month to work on a citizen-journalism project - the emerging grassroots journalism that he wrote about in his first book.

Quotes:

Something powerful is happening...

Keep in mind that this project is now in what's known as the seed stage. It's not an operating entity yet, though I expect it will be. But we're some time away from that, with many issues to resolve in the meantime.

A friend who knew about this ahead of time asked the question I'm sure some others will ask: "Are you nuts?" I hope not. Of course, I am leaving one of the best gigs in journalism. The Merc has been incredibly good to me. There are so many talented and good-hearted folks here. I hate the idea of leaving. But I'd hate not trying this even more. Obviously, there will be much more to say in the days and weeks ahead...

Dan's colleagues Matt Marshall and Mike Bazeley were the earliest to post about his departure before an official announcement about his "transition" was made. Apparently, Dan had called them from Boston - where Dan is attending the same conference as I am - to share the news, and they just couldn't hold back their dismayed feelings.

Evidently, Dan's fans are equally surprised but appreciative of his move. Congratulatory messages poured in by the hordes.

The Merc also ran a breaking news on Dec 9, local time, while Joi Ito is expecting an OhMyGillmor.

Dan's blog is currently hosted by Merc as an editorial feature. While saying that he won't quit blogging, Dan has yet to determine where the site will shift to in the long term.

This is how he autographed my copy of his book yesterday:

From one new media guy to another. Keep going!

That should be inspiration to bloggers at large in a globe-spanning context.

Audio Blogs... Emerging Democracy

Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN Bureau Chief for Beijing and Tokyo, gave valuable input to Oh Yeon-ho's keynote address.

Having covered East Asia for a number of years, Rebecca has a keen observation on how Internet impacts politics and how it has brought change to the region.

She said such transformation will be prominent in emerging democracy. Whenever and wherever there were hurdles in the political spheres, the prowess of technologies will be harnessed to result in change and reforms.

She cited South Korea and the Philippines as two examples. Listen to the audio recordings, here and here (wav files).

She watches North Korea very closely.

Audio blogs... 'Citizen Journalism'

Today at Harvard Law School's Austin Hall, I had the honour of sharing my thoughts responding to Oh Yeon-ho's keynote address on Citizen Journalism, or what Dan Gillmor describes as 'Grasstroots Journalism - By the People, For the People'.

January last year, Christian Science Monitor featured OhMyNews as "the marriage of a fledgling democracy and broadband technology (that) has spawned a precocious new media child in South Korea that would have been unimaginable 15 years ago".

In his opening address, Berkman Center's John Palfrey emphasised that South Korea is the first country on the planet where the Internet had a serious impact on the outcome of electoral politics. But why South Korea?

First and foremost, Oh said, Korean readers were immensely disappointed with the conservative mainstream media. They wanted change, they wanted alternative media to thrive.

Secondly, the whooping 75% broadband penetration makes it possible for OhMyNews to deploy multimedia, always-on intercative news services. OhMyNews now has an Internet TV.

Thirdly, South Korea is geographically a small country which makes news gathering relatively swift. South Korea being a uni-polar society, issues are abundant for tapping.

However, the most critical factor that made OhMyNews meaningful is that the young, reform-minded generation of Koreans, ranging from 20's to 40's, are now constituents and active partipants in the change process.

Oh said Koreans have paid huge prices by remaining silent in order to survive. They paid in curtailed freedom struggling against military dictatorship in order to install democracy. They paid in immense agony living in a divided nation after the Korean War in the 1950s. They again paid in bloodshed during the 1980 Kwangju Massacre. No external aggressors, but internal rife.

The Massacre became the new awakening for the Koreans. University students took to the streets, demanding accountability for the Massacre. Many, including Oh, were thrown in prison. Looking back, Oh prided himself, alongside his generation, as the "Children of the Kwangju Massacre".

It has also been a long march on the road to democracy and liberation from military rule - something that Rebecca MacKinnon described as the emerging democracy, citing the Internet as a critical catalyst.

In the 2002 election, underdog candidate Roh Moo Hyun became the first ever president elected through a successful Internet campaign.

Oh concluded his address by stating that OhMyNews has changed Korean media and Korean politics. Would it impact politics in other countries? That was the question he threw at the largely American audience that won him a lingering ovation.

Here are two 'un-remastered' recordings of Oh's presentation:
- OhMyNews and its 35,000 'Citizen Journalists'
- Children of Kwangju Massacre

The recordings were made using Olympus Digital Voice Recorder VN-480PC, stored in wav files.

Season a-changing... Remembering Basho

Maple leaves shed their green, strewn;
Young winter sets in on West End.
A haiku blogs in transit.

Pictures taken with Olympus C60 sponsored by Olympus Malaysia throughout my trip.

The Da Vinci Code

I had bought Dan Brown's book for reading on flight. But what was intended as bedtime reading of snippets got me engaged. I have reached chapter 83 by the time I boarded the plane.

It's a fiction about cryptic treasures in the Louvre (Monalisa, the Last Supper, IM Pei's Pyramid), the Holy Grail, Mary Magdeline, the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei.

Brown's illustrous description of the Eiffel Tower, a symbolism of sorts for France, is available in Chapter 3 (page 17). He even has an erotic version for what used to be the "sore-thumb".

Also, got this interesting quote from the book (Chapter 101, pg 450):

When a question has no correct answer, there is only one honest response.

The gray area between yes and no.

Silence.

Good maxim for politicians. But they need to crack the code somehow.

Knowledge Society... ( 2 )

The hotel gives me two morning papers. Financial Times and New York Times.

I had expected only one, perhaps Boston-Globe, though both papers are owned by the same group.

Perhaps, we could pick up something on precision advertising. The complimentary Financial Times is sponsored by Quantum Leap Corporation.

Headlines: Nextel - which pioneered the "push-to-talk" walkie-talkie style mobile telephony that Maxis adopted - is negotiating a merger with Sprint.

If that happens, the merger with combined 40 million subscribers will see the creation of a No. 3 mobile operator in the US, behind Cingular and Verizon Wireless, respectively.

Sprint has 23.2 million subscribers, Nextel has 15.3 million.

In comparison, Cingular - which took over AT&A; Wireless last month - has 47 million subscribers and Verizon has 42 million.

We talk everything in size and numbers in America. How's mobile in China for now?

TV Smith, you are right!

I discovered, like what TV Smith had, that once set on Bluetooth headset and Bluetooth PC dongle, I can no longer talk over skype using the embedded mic and speakers on the notebook.

What gives?
___________

GSM is supported by AT&T;/Cingular in Boston, so a tri-band cellphone can get international roaming via Maxis here. But I only use Maxis for SMS, and largely skype to talk as broadband is everywhere in Harvard.

Maxis Wwon't get extra ARPU from me, that's for sure.

Knowledge society

It's Christmas mood everywhere in London. A time for peace and a time for gifts. These are two window dressings on Waterstone's Picaddily as I was waiting for the doors to open.

See, people are promoting books and new year wish lists with food for the brain!

Several good titles on paperback are going for the price of three for two, including Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code (I finished reading it on flight!). Michael Palin has a hardcover travelogue on Himalaya going for 20 Pounds, and a DVD for 19.90.

But, by and large, books in London are priced higher than at MPH KL, and the Pound-Sterling conversion to Malaysian Ringgit at this time of the year didn't help much to my pockets.

Finally, I decided to pick up Dan Gillmor's book in Boston, which is cheaper than if I bought it in London. (And last night, the HBS at Harvard Square was ready to give me a reader privilege card to encourage me continue buying books though I just parted US$26.20 for the first purchase.

Oh ya, TESCO Metro is everywhere (even along Regent Steet) that Sainsbury stalls are facing stiff competition. But a tuna sandwich is still 2 pounds five, tough for Malaysian blokes holding the ringgit, and travelling overseas when ringgit peg is still digging in.

So, whoever crave for knowledge in a jiffy - to stay abreast with the First Wprld - will have to remain idiots and dummies as the ringgit peg continues to impoverish the emerging Knowledge Society.
___________

Another unaccomplished mission in London is failing to find anything exciting on educational CD-ROM for my daughter. Hope I have better luck elsewhere.

Woke up to skype with a few friends (better quality than most cellphones!) It's good that I refrained from alcoholic drinks on flights and jetlag isn't brutal on me.

Dan Gillmor

Met Dan Gillmor, my blogging role model, at the Harvard/Berkman Center VIP Dinner welcoming the speakers a while ago.

He told us (Oh Yuen-ho, Rebecca MacKinnon, Jeff Jarvis etc) he has made a major decision, recently. It's so ground-breaking that I think it's appropriate for him to make the official announcement by himself.

But it will definitely push the sail further for bloggers and blogging.

Tonight, it has also been an honour to meet up with the Father of Cyber Communities, Craig Newmark of CraigList. We stay on the same floor, same hotel.

I am glad the BuzzMachine recognises me, the Malaysian blogger.

I am blogging 11 hours later than Malaysia time. Gotta sleep now.

Merry Christmas

CY sends over some pictures he took yesterday - a high-tech 'Carol by Candle Light' in a stadium.

To the digital shutterbugs, CY gives us great shooting tips. Click here to see how difficult a task can be when you have to face the challenge of a 'daylight-to-dusk-to-night' lighting condition, shooting from ISO 100 to 200, then to 400, 800 and finally ISO 1,000!

Try that on film!

'4-letter word' tops Merriam-Webster's vocab list

It's spelt as BLOG.

Merriam-Webster, the US dictionary publisher, has chosen "blog" as the No. 1 Word of The Year 2004 as it heads the list of most looked-up terms on its sites - Online Dictionary, Online Thesaurus and Collegiate.com - during the last twelve months.

Headlines worldwide:
- BBC News: Why 2004 was the year of the blog
- CNN: Publisher: 'Blog' No. 1 word of the year
- CNet News: 'Blog' top word of the year

Thanks readers YW Loke, matny and NHB for the pointer.
____________

BTW, DO YOU Skype?

Can Journos and Bloggers both survive?

That's one of the blunt questions that cropped up during the recently concluded BloggerCon III held at Stanford Law School.

Online Journalism Review's Staci D. Kramer sums it this way:

The constant drumbeat of the notion that blogging and journalism are mutually exclusive -- that one can or will replace the other, that one is better than the other, that they don't require each other to exist -- damages all involved.

Journalism and blogging are not monolithic. They are not mutually exclusive and they can't be for either to survive. Not all bloggers want to be thought of as journalists, although, as I heard often at BloggerCon, many are using or want to make the most of public access to information and government. [...]

Meanwhile, some very good journalism is being committed both by professional journalists who blog and bloggers who choose to be citizen journalists. I define the former as someone who trained to be a journalist and/or someone who makes his or her living as a journalist. (Personally, I prefer to think that anyone who claims to be a journalist is also opting to adhere to generally accepted journalism ethics and standard journalistic practice. Otherwise, why call yourself a journalist? It's not like it's the most respected occupation these days.)

This is what blogger Claude Muncey has noted from the session, some 'new' wisdom:

What journalists can learn from bloggers:

• you can blur the line between the personal and professional without corrupting the process;


• you can learn to improvise in real time;


• how to have a conversation with their readers;


• to be humble - you don't know everything.

What bloggers can learn from journalists:

• the value of leg work;


• the nature of accountablility;


• that editing is a good thing;


• to be humble - you don't know everything.

The term 'citizen journalists' is getting louder by the day. Enough to chew for the time being.

'Blog' revolution across China?

When Issac Mao (Shanghai) and Zheng Yunsheng (Fujian province) met online and started CNBlog.org in late 2002, China had 67 million internet users.

Today, it has more than 90 million, and most are hungry for information.

Mao enjoys a large following among Chinese bloggers. He has transformed himself from an Intel engineer to be a successful high-tech investor and uses his blog to gather donated books for rural schools.

While others see blogs as a tool to promote social change in China, is Mao a blogger with a political agenda?

Quote from NewScientist.com , in a report by Xiao Qiang, blogger and director of the China Internet Project at the University of California at Berkeley:

Asked whether he has a strategy to expand blogging under China's censorship regime, his response is Taoist: "What is our strategy? We do not have a strategy. But the information flow in the blogosphere has its own Way. The Way is our strategy: personal, fast, connected and networked."

I look foward to meeting up with Mao and Xiao Qiang in the next few weeks.

China blogs: Timidity reigns

Dan Gillmor says if a free-speech media arises in China, it might well start with bloggers.

Last week, Gillmor visited Fudan University and spoke in a graduate-level class about the rise of citizen-journalists who use increasingly low-cost and powerful digital media tools, and met with some student bloggers. This is his observation:

Shanghai, an amazing city that seems to grow a new skyline every year and has become the commercial center of a vast land. Freedom of expression, the heart of political freedom, is making considerably less progress.

The government continues its paranoid surveillance and steering of the traditional media and Internet. Dissidents are still being jailed for online activities. Yet technological trends may be working in favor of freer speech. It won't happen overnight, needless to say, but if a free-speech media arises in China it might well start with bloggers.

But how is China's blogosphere for now? Gillmor sensed that a certain timidity reigns.

Via Isaac Mao via Global Voices Online.

Blogger Kevin Sites videos Falluja killing

Broadcast journalist aka combat correspondent Kevin Sites, whose blog was ordered shut when he was on CNN payroll to cover the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 (Screenshots: here, here and here), is headline news again for the video he took of a US Marine shooting what appeared to be an unarmed prisoner in a Falluja mosque.

You should read about his position and the circumstances around his taking and releasing the video, as he talks down to 'Devil Dogs of the 3.1':

So here, ultimately, is how it all plays out: when the Iraqi man in the mosque posed a threat, he was your enemy; when he was subdued he was your responsibility; when he was killed in front of my eyes and my camera -- the story of his death became my responsibility.

The burdens of war, as you so well know, are unforgiving for all of us.

Via Dan Gillmor's eJournal.

Sites is currently a freelance solo journalist on assignment for NBC, which allows him to blog while on-the-job.

Malaysian blogger to speak at Harvard conference

This blogger has been invited by the Harvard Law School to speak at an international conference on the Internet, which will be held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, next month.

The conference, organised by Harvard Law School's research arm Berkman Centre for Internet and Society, will discuss key issue-based Internet campaigns, emerging business models and new technologies that are affecting politics throughout the world.

Titled 'Votes, Bits and Bytes', the conference will also look at the blogging phenomenon and how it has affected the political and media landscape.

One of the highlights of the conference is to look at South Korea's OhMyNews.com portal as a case study of Internet's influence over politics.

Speaking together with me at the panel discussion on this case study will be Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN bureau chief for Beijing and Tokyo; Stephen Ward of the University of Salford and Oxford Internet Institute; and OhMyNews founder Oh Yeon-ho.

OhMyNews, a collaborative online newspaper with a readership of two million and more than 26,000 registered "citizen journalists", has been credited with playing a key role in sweeping President Roh Moo-hyun to power.

I really look forward to meeting up with Rebecca. She has just started the BloggerCorps. The first organization seeking volunteers from BloggerCorps is Onevoice blog for Mideast peace! They need volunteers from New York City, Ramallah, and Tel Aviv.

The following day, I will partner Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan, a.k.a. Hoder, in leading international bloggers at a session on promoting the global 'blogosphere'. This session will form the input for Global Voices Online, a cyber-movement which the conference is aiming to establish.

Recently, Hoder and other Iranian bloggers faced some death threats coming from a blog called Islamic Army. So, Hoder and I must have a lot of things to share.

Last but not least, I will certainly mention about the Malaysian blogosphere, especially the role of PetalingStreet.org in aggregating Malaysian bloggers and their voices.

My trip is hosted by Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

More details:
- Star In-Tech: Pushing the 'new' Fifth Estate
- Malaysiakini: M'sian blogger to speak at Harvard conference

This is the almost finalised schedule.

Bridging blogs in globe-spanning context

This December, I look forward to meeting Iran's Hoder (Hossein Derakhshan) to shoot at the breeze, and to exchange ideas about building a blogging community in a globe-spanning context. Recently, Hoder faced death threats against him and other Iranian bloggers coming from a blog called Islamic Army.

I also look forward to meeting the three Iraqi blogging brothers (Dentist Mohammed, 35; Doctor Ali, 34; and Dentist Omar, 24) and to learn from them how to "bridge blogs". I think Kenyan blogger Ory Okolloh would also enlighten me on how she uses digital tools to build links between people in different countries and cultures.

And Dan Gillmor and Joi Ito would be present, I was told.

Joi Ito, in particular, is enthusiastic about the idea of "Blogger Corps" mooted by Rebecca MacKinnon (former CNN Beijing/Tokyo bureau chief):

For early blog-adopters, blogging was an end in itself. For the activist community, blogging has to be an effective means to a concrete end.

In the final wrap-up session of Bloggercon III, I suggested that socially conscious members of the blogging community (of all political persuasions) might want to organize a "Blogger Corps." Through it, bloggers could donate their time to help poorly funded activists or non-profit groups to figure out what blogging tools are right for them, set up blogs, and develop effective blogging strategies.

More of the big picture later.

Blogging-on-the-move

These pictures were taken by TV Smith when he was driving around KL's Central Business District at about 5.55pm just now.

It's not an issue of whether Mutiara Hotel has caught fire or was spewing pollution into the air.

Instead, it's a simple demonstration of how bloggers could network together, using day-to-day communications tools to blog ahead of old media.

This is what we did.

TV Smith took the photos with his Olympus 8080, found a parking slot, powered on his notebook computer, downloaded the images from the Compact Flash card and resized the JPG with Photoshop to suit my specs.

He then hooked up his Celcom-GSM mobilephone to the notebook via the Infra-red connection. With Internet connected via 019-3001519, he sent the images to my email account at jeffooi.screenshots@gmail.com, followed up with an SMS alert.

Meanwhile, I remained desk-bound to compose this blog, and to make phonecalls to Mutiara Hotel to verify what the smoke was all about.

The beauty is we did all this blog-loop using a 9.6kbps GSM connection - far more cheaper than what GPRS would charge for data transmission.

The only catch: We need to shorten the time-lapse between TV Smith's on-the-scene image-gathering and my ultimate uploading of the blog after verifying the facts.

BTW, Mutiara said the smoke came through the chimney connecting to the boilers. We didn't know why the boilers were billowing black smoke instead of white one, though.

Salam Aidilfitri

Save your muruku and ketupat...

Screenshots is taking up one table in support of Malaysiakini's 5th Anniversary Dinner this November 27.

There are already five seats taken for the Screenshots table. We need five more to fill up a table for ten. Each seat goes for RM60 (subscriber's rate secured by this blogger).

Interested, please email me to book your seats so that I can pass over the ticket to you.

World-renowned Instant Café Theatre (ICT), a comedy group famous for its parody of Malaysian politics, will feature two of its 'Weapons of Mass Delirium' at the Malaysiakini bash. Crowd favourites Jo Kukathas and Patrick Teoh will be there to present their side-splitting comedy skills in a 40-minute sketch.

Malaysiakini CEO Premesh Chandran says, to date, hundreds of the anniversary dinner tickets have been sold to readers, subscribers, donors and fans who have helped the independent news website survive and thrive against the odds.

Senior members of government, leaders of political parties, media members and the diplomats are also expected to grace the event, he added.

Happy hunting 120

CY Leow laments the passing of great cameras the way I do locomotive trains.

Last week, he read with sadness that Tamron is discontinuing the BRONICA camera range, and his long liaison with the 120s, right from his Illustrative Photography studies at the RMIT through his professional career.

Rummaging through his press clippings through the years, CY found the 1980 NST calendar to which he contributed three pictures.

Here's one of the shots that was done in good old Penang. The script was a road side market stall, sounded simple, but the preparation!

He remembers Cathie Khoo (center), the NST Creative Manager, was there to arrange the vegetables with her art dept staff for the shoot. The lady in kebaya holding an umbrella was the model. Location was a lane beside the Pulau Tikus market in Penang.

Did you notice that car with PG 18 plate!

More on CY Photoblog!

Server upgrade... RM11,609.83

As at 07:55hr today, the Screenshots Server Upgrade Fund stands at RM11,609.83. It was RM8,659.06, some 15 days ago, on October 22. This is 72.56% of the planned target. Thank you folk!

Work in progress is available at this blog entry.

Irrespective of whether we will hit the target fully, the fund will stop receiving contribution by November 30. To know more about the campaign and how you could contribute, please visit this blog.

Video-Blog. Now that we have additional resources on the new server, I am attempting to create a new feature called Video-Blog.

Taking note that the point-and-shoot digital camera nowadays comes with short movie-clips feature that allow you to capture live events playable on Microsoft Media Player and most mpeg players, I'd like you to send me your recordings of colourful Malaysia.

Topics can range from express buses that defy Ops Sikap; police cars which double-park; beautiful cuti-ciuti Malaysia sceneries; to nice, cute human-touch topics that pull our heart-strings, especially during the coming festive seasons.

If you can feature movie-clips on national integration, I'd be most delighted.

Screenshots will publish them, and you retain your copyright 100%.

Abnormal traffic in October

Screenshots visitor traffic had an abnormal surge in October due to several days of unwarranted publicity which I have learnt to cope.

This is a graphical illustration of the traffic pattern which captured almost a quarter million pageviews last month:

Compare the October traffic with the last one tracked at end-September, the month Anwar Ibrahim was acquitted. Highest daily page views (excluding pages cached at various ISPs): About 8,000 on September 3, and 16,000 on October 5.

I hope to get back to normal visitor traffic to allow me track the organic growth of this weblog.

'Pak Lah's Faves'

Inspired by the Pak Lah PraiseFest currently running on mainstream media, satirist TV Smith has come up with a parallel parody.

I have difficulty in answering 3 of the 10 questions. Could you help out?

Q3: Favourite relative:
- Son
- Cousin from China
- Son-in-law

Q6. Favourite quote:
- "Work with me and not for me"
- "We are equal, we are all Malaysians"
- "There is no deal"

Q8. Favourite spokesman:
- Kal
- Wong
- Ho

Hit here for full list of his possible faves. Also, TV Smith MIGHT have a double-speak for prizes.

Screenshots on Francophonic sphere

Le Nouvel Observateur, the largest weekly news magazine in France, is in the midst of producing a 2-page map showing concise capsules of weblogs around the world. It will be complemented with an article featuring a few selected weblogs from all over the world, ranging from personal diary to journalism, politics, arts, travel etc.

Screenshots has been spotted and contacted for this feature. It's good to know that this blog has grown from Anglophone to Francophone.

Queen of Sky, grounded for blogging

Call it Blogger-Hazards!

Queen of the Sky (QofS), otherwise known as Ellen Simonetti, is fighting to keep her job. The flight attendant has been suspended indefinitely without pay by her employer, Delta Air.

The crime? Blogging with pictures of herself in uniform (picture left).

She supposes that her employer must have had "a problem with some very TAME pics of QofS posing on the airplane with no passengers on board" which she has since removed from her blog.

She has a comment though: "The most risque photo shows QofS with a couple of buttons of her uniform shirt undone :O If the Pope is still reading her blog, QofS thinks even HE would approve of these pics."

However, Ellen's diary has evolved into an anonymous semi-fictional account of life in the sky. Before you view her blog - which has been renamed: Diary of a GROUNDED Flight Attendant - please beware that it may be deemed as a blog sprinkled with narcissism.

Oh yes, she's also a Kerry-Edwards supporter.

If you talk bad about President Bush...

Ever wonder why USA - the world's only superpower - was placed 22nd in the Reporters Without Borders' Press Freedom Index 2004?

In the so-called 'Land of the Free', the Secret Service can even harass a blogger who pokes fun at President Bush in a weblog or in a satire. This is how she-blogger Annie pleads, and how she mitigates the unenviable situation by erasing all that she has said that "offended" the-power-that-be in USA (but Google cache remains):

At 9:45 last night (October 27, US Time), the Secret Service showed up on my mother's front door to talk to me about what I said about the President, as what I said could apparently be misconstrued as a threat to his life.

After about ten minutes of talking to me and my family, they quickly came to the conclusion that I was not a threat to national security (mostly because we are the least threatening people in the entire world) and told me that they would not recommend that any further action be taken with my case. However, I do now have a file with the FBI that includes my photograph, my e-mail address, and the location of my LJ. This will follow me around for the rest of my life, regardless of the fact that the Secret Service knows that I am not a threat.

Obviously, I cannot link to the original LJ post that I made, because I have removed it from my LJ to protect myself and those who commented in that thread from receiving any further visits from the FBI.

I apologized for the miscommunication, though I did *not* apologize for voicing my opinion of George W. Bush. I will never apologize for speaking my mind. I will, however, apologize when I say something wrong way and for unintentionally offending/threatening someone, because I am an extremely nonviolent person.

You can read her 7-point pleads at LiveJournal, which she describes as "A word to the wise". But in summary, she says, "What happened to me happened because someone on LJ reported me to the FBI".

Sounds familiar? It makes (Nazi's) Gestapo and the (Communist China's) People's Red Army pale by comparison.

TV Smith, don't say you have not been fore-warned. ;-) I had been!

Thanks readers Tiara and Prema for the pointer.

Racism is out in 'God-zone'

There was an anti-racism march up the New Zealand parliament house in Wellington on Saturday. To understand how all this came about, go and read Scoop, Stuff.co.nz and NZ Herald (here and here).

CY Leow was at the scene to capture the colours of the protest march and rushed out the story till 4.00am in the morning to Screenshots. Little did he realise that we were in the midst of migrating to the new server and posting was stopped over the weekend.

A time-specific delivery but somehow it's delayed for 48 hours. A thousand apologies.

BTW, racism is not welcome anywhere in the world.

Like one of the protest placards says, racism is so 'last century'!

Visit CY Leow's photoblog here.

Screenshots now in Myloca

We migrated the entire archive of Screenshots to Myloca on Saturday - on the new server. This will be the main site www.jeffooi.com. You should notice a relatively faster download speed for Screenshots by now.

The existing old server will now serve as a mirror at DataOne Asia. This will be www2.jeffooi.com. Some physical upgrades will be done soon to keep it running as a back-up.

We let both the sites up over the weekend so that there was no downtime for Screenshots, except for the "Conversations" real-time feedback function, which was temporarily disabled.

Unfortunately, several ISPs around the globe took more that 24 hours to propagate the respective IP addresses accordingly. So, I took a rest yesterday so as to avoid stranded postings as the propagation process was going on.

The next step is to upgrade the Movable Type content engine from version 3.0D to version 3.11 (or even version 3.12 which was just released). This version of the software would allow manual moderation of all commenters' commentaries. You may not like it, but I don't want another 'Anwar-wannabe' and ISA threat to disrupt my daily blogging.

A change in feel-and-look will be launched, targetted for January 1, once Screenshots runs on MT ver. 3.1x - which means more personal weekends will be burnt on the technicalities!

Missed blog

109 & 901. The Sultan of Pahang conferred a total of 109 datukships and 901 other awards in conjunction with his 74th birthday yesterday.

New Straits Times Press group general manager for editorial marketing and communications Datuk Ahmad A. Talib and Berita Harian group editor Hishamuddin Aun are among 65 recipients of Darjah Indera Mahkota Pahang (DIMP) which carries the title of "Datuk".

Mingguan Malaysia has a debatable headline on the record numbers.

'Question Mark' Time

According to Nexnews Group Executive Editor P Gunasegaram, he will only post his first blog on Monday (Title: ?Time), but a preamble is in order (October 22, 7:41pm). Quote:

"If bloggers can become journalists of sorts, perhaps journalists can become bloggers of sorts."

Guna has a weekly column in The Edge, titled: Question Time. "The main aim of this blog, like the column, is to highlight, question, discuss and provoke thought on issues of public importance – and perhaps to have some unstructured fun, humour and satire along the way, whenever that’s possible," he says.

Guna accepts comments via e-mail. The rationale:

If you read my piece in Question Time this week, you will already realise that comments that I choose to publish will be edited to remove defamatory and seditious remarks, as well as immoderate language – in other words, only fair comment is allowed.

After the attrition effect, theSun is having four bloggers, EBITDA, for now.

Blogosphere is getting interesting! We will see whether talk is cheap.

Server upgrade... RM8,659.06

As at 07:75hr today, the Screenshots Server Upgrade Fund stands at RM8,659.06. It was RM8,491.25 ten days ago on October 12. This is 51% of the planned target. Thank you folk!

I have, according to the plan, installed the new server, with the Linux OS and all related programmes fully loaded last weekend. We will steal time to execute the planned Screenshots data migration ASAP. Downtime will be kept to the minimum.

The next target is the new web-hosting contract which is due by Dec 1 - about 40 days' time. For strategic reasons, the new server is now co-located in Cyberjaya, the nerve centre of MSC.

To know more about the campaign and how you could contribute, please visit this blog.

Growing blogs

People in my neighbourhood, Subang Jaya, are taking a serious look into weblogs now. The latest to come is from MackZulkfli. He's probably the first advertising man in Malaysia who blogs consistently, in impeccable, persuasive English. Check out his blog at www.lookseasy.blogspot.com.

I hope this community keeps growing, and I'm glad blogging has spread to Sungai Buloh. Zainal Kassim, a dad of three angels (and the 4th is on the way!) has a nice blog at www.c-bok.blogspot.com.

By the way, Zainal is a parent who blogs in Bahasa Malaysia with pride.

TIPS FOR BLOGGERS. One of the easier ways to populate a weblog is to cling on to the blogger community. Link your blog entries to high-traffic blogs via 'Trackback' will direct spill-over traffic to your site, and people will bookmark your URL to visit you regularly.

Blog of the Week... across the Causeway

Singapore's Computer Times (part of Singapore Straits Times) was relaunched as Digital Life yesterday (Free subscription required).

Screenshots was picked as the Blog of the Week in the 'inaugural' issue. The story features this blogger as 'Agony Uncle', in the context of Maxis chocolates.

(Damn it... Free publicity for Maxis! ;-)

Joe Blog in memory

Today is the first anniversary of Joe's passing, one year to the date.

I have no doubt Malaysian blogosphere would rock harder if Joe ( www.joe-blogs.blogspot.com ) were still around with us in person.

Thanks reader Silky Arianna for the reminder.

From: Silky Arianna
To: jeffooi.screenshots@gmail.com
Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2004 23:55:12 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: In remembrance of Johan Ismail

Dear Jeff,

Tomorrow will mark one year of Joe’s demise. How things could have been different now if he was still around. He might have laughed at some of the goings-on that happened in Malaysia and to you recently. And not to mention giving his two-cents worth on the crazy happenings lately.

I would appreciate it if you could pen something about him in your blog tomorrow. This past one year made me realize that the thoughts of "what-joe-would do/think in certain situation" managed to keep me sane n keep me on my toes. I did go visit him once in a while n offer him some prayer.

I’m still missing the brother I lost on 18 October last year. He’s still around in spirit and may God rest his soul.

Please take care of yourself too.

Caught in the jam

Now I know why TV Smith was caught in the terrible long queue on his way to Melaka last Saturday.

Picture courtesy © TV SMITH at www.mycen.com.my/duasen

The who's who in the Q-line is so long that The Star has to run it from Oct 9 through October 15.

UPDATE: Regarding titles, Transparency International's Tunku Abdul Aziz has an open letter to the Royal Highnesses.

Journalists & Bloggers

Folk in Subang Jaya e-Community, my neigbourhood, starts to take a look at the difference between journalists and bloggers.

Thoughts from Maczulkifli, super-biker tupai (ex-journo) and Cindy Kee are quite revealing.

She got back her blog

Chia Ai Lin emailed before 7.00am this morning informing me that she had recovered her weblog. Blogger.com has reset her username and password.

October 9, Screenshots highlighted Chia's case where a cyber-thug had hijacked and defaced her weblog, demanding a laptop computer as ransom

Good for you Ai Lin.

Spring has arrived...

CY Leow rushed to the Wellington Botanical Garden to catch the first glimpse of spring last weekend.

"... air was especially crisp and COOL... We knew spring is here when we have to remember to "fast forward" our time piece one hour on Saturday night and we know spring is here when the BIG FAT bumble bees start to circle the flowers to satisfy their sweet teeth (do bees have teeth?).

It is only in spring that tulips are at their full glory at the Botanical Garden... so I took out my Canon D60 digital which has been in hibernation all winter and head for the garden.

"Spring is NEW LIFE... like these cute ducklings in the pond."

CY called me up from Wellington last week to extends his regards. Thanks mate.

Server upgrade... RM8,491.25

As at 08:05hr today, the Screenshots Server Upgrade Fund stands at RM8,491.25. This is 51% of the planned target. Thank you folk!

I have, according to the plan, placed an order for the server, RAID-compliant. I expect the Linux OS and all related programmes to be fully loaded by this weekend, and data migration for Screenshots will begin ASAP, subject to my webmater's voluntary time. Downtime will be kept to the minimum.

The next target is the new web-hosting contract which is due by Dec 1 - about 50 days' time. For strategic reasons, I plan to shift the hosting to Cyberjaya, the nerve centre of MSC. The move is also to leverage on the clusters of '3 X 155Mbps' backbone bandwidth available there. For this, I have to engage a managed service provider to help me full-time on the maintenance and security surveillence aspects. I am negotiating on the rates.

To know more about the campaign and how you could contribute, please visit this blog.

P/S: Is there anyone out there who can help me design a CSS for the new feel and look? Please email if you wish to volunteer. Thanks.

TV Smith

We had some beers over lamb-balls and he got me chatting away. Nice chap he.

Don't be a (cyber) hero

If Fazamania is indeed the moderator of Cari.com forum, the person must have taken the pre-emptive steps to warn people who take advantage of the Internet and use it negatively. A forum user who dissents the moderator's warning has been banned.

Take it as a good move. I hope the moderators at Catcha Forum would do the same in no time.

Let's support the non-violent Internet Freedom campaign, but let's be mindful that we have a duty to promote the Positive Use of Internet so that we are not termed as 'e-public de banana' to the outside world.

Do not go through what I have been unfairly subject to the last one week.

Secondly, I don't want to see any more Old Media fellas to wrongly equate weblogs with web-forum. Wikipedia is quite easy for idiots and dummies.

Thanks reader Fei Leong for the pointer.

Cyber thug

Even a blog belonged to UTM student Chia Ai Lin could be hijacked and defaced. The message: Maaf. Site ni kena ambilalih org.

See http://ailinchia.blogspot.com/.

The ransom? The hijacker hinted at a laptop computer.

Must tell Google to enhance the security features of the Blogspot engine it bought over in 2003.

Thanks reader Freddy Toh for the pointer.

Cyber 'Salt March'

Here's four pints of Manuka Honey to heal the wound people say a Might (the Spin-Doctors) had inflicted on a Right:

1. Charter 2000-Aliran: Malaysian Media Monitors' Diary:
   - Blogs versus mainstream media, Malaysian style
   - Take it easy on blogger Jeff Ooi
2. MGG Pillai:
   - A kerfuffle over Islam Hadhari
3. Letter to Malaysiakini:
   - Screenshots controversy a non-affair

No apologies, but just read... People, READ!

Gandhiji and his band of marchers walked 25 Days to complete the 241 miles some 75 years ago. Be inspired.

Blog on, guys! This is the cyber Salt March - a non-violent struggle for Peace, Justice and Internet Freedom.

Please email this page to spread it far and wide.

Server upgrade... RM6,779.37

GET THE RIGHT PERSPECTIVE AND MAKE ONLY INFORMED DECISION. Go to this October 2 blog to read details on how facts have been distorted by certain media.
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As at 08:00hr today, the Screenshots Server Upgrade Fund stands at RM6,779.37. This is 40% mark of the planned target.

In view of the new scenarios Screenshots has been put through lately - surging traffic included - I can't place all eggs in one basket. So, I will work within the same budget estimates but to have a second new server as off-site back-up. This means I have to squeeze my supplier a little tighter (Sorry, Boss ;-)

The next target is the new web-hosting contract which is due in 50 day's time (Dec 1). For strategic reasons, I plan to shift the hosting to Cyberjaya, the nerve centre of MSC. The move is also to leverage on the clusters of 'n X 155Mbps' backbone bandwidth available there. For this, I have to engage a managed service provider to help me full-time on the maintenance and security surveillence aspects.

Last night, NeighbourhoodWatch.net.my, a non-profit community network in USJ-Subang Jaya that promotes neighbourhood security and wellbeing, donated RM500 to this fund. Their contribution has helped the Fund to test the RM7K line. Some 20 community leaders were there to witness the handover of the donation. It's certainly heartening to know that I have the understanding and support from my own backyard. Thank you, folks.

So, we are now left with 60% more to go.

To know more about the campaign and how you could contribute, please visit this blog.

P/S: Some Malaysians who are now working and studying overseas have asked me to set up a PayPal account. I will have to check how the deposit can be repatriated into Malaysia as our country is not on PayPal's high trust list at the moment. It doesn't allow the repatriation facility yet. Credit card is bad as it sucks away a maximum of 5% as 'middleman' fee.

My sincere appreciation

GET THE RIGHT PERSPECTIVE AND MAKE ONLY INFORMED DECISION. Go to this October 2 blog to read details on how facts have been distorted by certain media.
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UPDATED VERSION. I wish to assure you that, in Malaysia, common sense somehow prevails after the wild dust has settled.

As of yesterday, I believe the unfair accusations against me in certain media has been adequately dealt with, both in private and public eyes.

The minister solely in charge of overseeing online content has given a clear direction for the issue to be resolved appropriately. I believe his decision will be given due respect by the relevant parties.

I knew I had to handle this "life-threatening crisis" with knowledge and wisdom. I did just that over the last few days, and I must say I am humbled by the unreserved understanding and goodwill showered over me. I think I owe them my sincerest appreciation.

FRIENDS IN POLITICS. I thank the many BN leaders for helping me explain all the facts relating to the confusion. They, however, prefer to remain anonymous but they did ensure that I was given a fair hearing.

I thank Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang for his press releases which offer valuable perspectives on the issue. I thank PAS Youth chief Salahuddin Ayub and deputy Information chief Husam Musa (Press Statement: here) for their understanding and empathy, and buying me lunch.

FRIENDS IN NGOs AND LEGAL CIRCLE. I thank HAKAM for extending me legal counsel and an attorney on stand-by. Their offer of help was swift, alerting me on all sorts of Do's and Don'ts.

I thank a prominent criminal lawyer, who prefers to remain anonymous at the moment, who will represent me on pro-bono basis. He said this in the presence of a common friend, a respected senior journalist.

I thank Reporters Without Borders and Centre for Independent Journalism for their concern over my wellbeing.

FRIENDS IN MEDIA CIRCLES. I thank all of them, from both the Old Media and the New Media. I understand that they prefer anonymity as they are either practising or former journalists in Malaysia who are easily identifiable. Some of them are veterans in similar if not worse situations, and they willingly share their experience with me.

FRIENDS IN DIGITAL FORENSICS. I thank all of them for helping me pinpoint the exact location of the network and cache devices from which the offending commenter 'Anwar' has posted his remarks that caused all my woes. This, plus other critical information, has been deposited in several locations for safe custody and retrieval when needed.

FRIENDS WHOM I HAVE NEVER MET! I thank you for your kind emails, petition-online, and online commentaries. I will read all your messages when I am free. I cherish them all.

FRIENDS IN BLOGOSPHERE. I reserve my special thanks to the last - but not least - to all of you. I understand that you don't always agree with what I say in Screenshots, you sometimes even poured acid on my viewpoints. But when faced with unprecedented challenges to bloggers alike, you have lent me your words of comfort. Thank you very much, I cherish it.

There have been scores of emails I didn't have time to read in the past five days. I will do some catch-up and try to reply all of them.

Moving Forward

POSITIVE USE OF INTERNET. The benefits that we can derive from this unnecessary ruckus is that we should all be committed to promoting the Positive Use of Internet, an area I had been exposed to when Datuk Suriah Abdul Rahman was the deputy secretary-general at the former Ministry of Energy, Communications and Multimedia.

Categorically, I will not condone offensive postings like 'Anwar's'. I hope my fellow bloggers would remain committed to continue promoting this principle. Bloggers will ultimately earn respect in the knowledge-based society if we do it well.

For the record, yesterday, I was contacted by the Monitoring & Enforcement Division of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission and had a preliminary discussion with them. They requested for my assistance in the investigation and I had obliged without any hesitation.

As for the parties that had pointed their accusing fingers without verifying the facts, I urge them to stop all allegations and await the outcome of MCMC-Mimos investigation which is on-going.

REGULATORY FRAMEWORK FOR ONLINE MEDIA. This ruckus kicked up by the old media revealed their shallow knowledge of Malaysia's regulatory framework for online content in relation to the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 and the relevant industry codes and guidelines. Blatant ignorance of the cyberlaw among Old Media practitioners has allowed them to bark up wrong trees, hurling accusations recklessly and causing irreversible harm to innocent people. This must be stopped. Do more of this and it will just tarnish Malaysia's reputation as a key proponent of progressive cyberlaw in the world.

Because of that, the entire media fraternity may now have to decide how best they want to uphold the integrity of their profession in truthful reporting that are pertinent to the application of cyberlaw. However, it is also true that media consumers like us can only conceive our perception about them. It's best left to their peers to judge the rotten apples among them.

BLOGGING ON... TV Smith intends to talk to me on how we could move on from here. So, hang in there, folks.

Bloggers sans Frontières

GET THE RIGHT PERSPECTIVE AND MAKE ONLY INFORMED DECISION. Go to this October 2 blog to read details on how facts have been distorted by certain media.
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Times must have changed. Reporters sans Frontières (Reporters Without Borders) says it is equally concerned over the wellbeing of an unknown blogger, even though he is not a practising reporter.

Julien Pain, who is in charge of the newly created Internet Freedom desk (Bureau Internet et libertés), told this blogger that his responsibilities entail the monitoring of freedom accorded to online news and magazines and all forms of online publications.

For those uninitiated, Reporters Without Borders defends imprisoned journalists and press freedom throughout the world, as well as the right to inform the public and to be informed, in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Based in Paris, Reporters Without Border has nine national sections (in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom), representatives in Abidjan, Bangkok, Istanbul, Montreal, Moscow, New York, Tokyo and Washington and more than a hundred correspondents worldwide.

I do not know if, besides Iran, this is the first instance Reporters sans Frontières extends its concerns to a blogger from Asia. But for now, it has become RSF's frontpage lead.

I was taken aback when RSF contacted me to express their concern yesterday. How did they get my phone number?

But I told RSF I am fine, not too worrying for now.

'Unknown blogger' made it to SlashDot

GET THE RIGHT PERSPECTIVE AND MAKE ONLY INFORMED DECISION. Go to this October 2 blog to read details on how facts have been distorted by certain media.
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Screenshots was given a first-class ticket to Slashdot, the Common Hall of Online Utopia.

• Flight Schedule: Tuesday October 05, 03:03PM (US time).


• Flight Commander: Michael "from the keyboard-is-mightier-than-the-sword dept".

Unbelievable in the past, but now a reality for an 'unknown blogger'. It's about 'Thinking Allowed; Thinking Aloud'.

Trackback and pass it on, folks!

Thanks reader Numb Prick for the pointer.

Other international coverage on the 'Unknown Blogger':

• South China Morning Post (October 5, 2004): Internet row tests PM's free-speech credentials (Baradan Kuppusamy)


• Asia Times Online (October 2, 2004): Money politics rears its ugly head (Anil Netto)

Unknown Malaysian bloggger sighted in Canada

GET THE RIGHT PERSPECTIVE AND MAKE ONLY INFORMED DECISION. Go to this October 2 blog to read details on how facts have been distorted by certain media.
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An unknown Malaysian blogger and Malaysian blogs sighted in Canada.

Using a Screenshots' screenshot, the blogger also quotes a tongue-lashing incident, heard by all newspapers but only picked up by Malaysiakini.

Trackback and pass it on, friends!

BTW, if you have time, who don't you check-out National Lampoon: Jalan Riong ( http://jalanriong.blogspot.com )?

New kid on the blog

GET THE RIGHT PERSPECTIVE AND MAKE ONLY INFORMED DECISION. Go to this October 2 blog to read details on how facts have been distorted by certain media.
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Read the new-born blog: Malaysian Lampoon: Jalan Riong ( http://jalanriong.blogspot.com ).

Blogsite description: "A Collective Satirical Blog in Support of Freedom of Expression of Bloggers. Can *YOU* handle the spin??"

Got it from Petaling Street. Fooji and Najah were ahead of me.

Server upgrade... RM4,181.61

GET THE RIGHT PERSPECTIVE AND MAKE ONLY INFORMED DECISION. Go to this October 2 blog to read details on how facts have been distorted by certain media.
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UPDATED VERSION. Today's visitor traffic exceeds yesterday's as at 5:30pm.

As at 13:30hr today, the Screenshots Server Upgrade Fund stands at RM4,181.61.

To know more about the campaign and how you could contribute, please visit this blog.

View today's traffic here (statistics change almost real-time) and Malaysiakini letter here.

When you get my email, please reply

GET THE RIGHT PERSPECTIVE AND MAKE ONLY INFORMED DECISION. Go to this October 2 blog to read details on how facts have been distorted by certain media.
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With so much spin going on in the country - and you know who are the good, the bad and the ugly - there's now no excuse for any online villagers not to know Screenshots.

Despite the mounting negativism, I think there are many positive things that we can craft from it and benefit from it. Having learned a lesson in spin-doctoring - like mine, which they didn't teach in my MBA classes - any worthy strategic thinking people would like to turn threats into opportunities.

Reading into Richard D. Aveni's management theories, I believe we are now global villagers. We need to compete strategically in a hypercompetitive environment in order to survive.

I have started to email several noted personalities - I expect them to be online - to gather their thoughts on current and forward planning issues that may be useful to propel Malaysia into the league of the First World.

I choose to use the email, and perhaps complemented with live phonechat if I have to clarify certain things, simply because my resources are scarce as this blog - as in most blogs - is a oneman show.

Secondly, the respondent/interviewee can have time to compose their thoughts so that they don't step on their own banana peels. They can even have ghost-writers writing on their behalf and. admittedly, I will have no control over their resources.

Thirdly, both the respondent and I will have the same copy of the email (PDF, if necessary), which I will publish verbatim. That will ensure none of us can sabotage each other with twisted and distorted facts after it goes online.

Stay tuned, as my interviewees are personalities in their own right. At least, I see them as esteemed, respectable people worth talking to.

Abnormal traffic

GET THE RIGHT PERSPECTIVE AND MAKE ONLY INFORMED DECISION. Go to this October 2 blog to read details on how facts have been distorted by certain media.
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Today's traffic surged abnormally while I have been away from Internet for over 12 hours. Hope nothing untoward has happened in my absence.

* Visitors and pageviews are based on the frontpage. The stats also exclude Screenshots pages readers downloaded from caches kept by major ISPs.

My apologies

GET THE RIGHT PERSPECTIVE AND MAKE ONLY INFORMED DECISION. Go to this October 2 blog to read details on how facts have been distorted by certain media.
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Dear Screenshots readers,

You may experience a slowdown in download speed when you access Screenshots today. This may be due to the increased visitor traffic since yesterday, and again this morning.

I am very sorry for the inconvenience. You may have to put up with the server congestion for the time being. As my resources - server speed and bandwidth - are rather limited, I am afraid I would not be able to provide much improvement in the immediate future. But I will try and see how this problem can be mitigated even it's just that little bit.

A thousand apologies.

Server upgrade... RM1,999.31

GET THE RIGHT PERSPECTIVE AND MAKE ONLY INFORMED DECISION. Go to this October 2 blog to read details on how facts have been distorted by certain media.
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As at 07:50hr this morning, the Screenshots Server Upgrade Fund stands at RM1,999.31.

To know more about the campaign and how you could contribute, please visit this blog.

An ode

That's an ode from TV Smith. Reproduced with permission. You may read it with this June 1 context.

My appreciation goes to Lim Kit Siang for telling off people who bark up the wrong tree.

And my appreciations also go to all "peers in the small world they live in and the limited followings they have in" what's called Project Petaling Street, namely Weekend Notes, David Teoh, direneeds.org, Aizuddin Danian, cassitha filiformis, Idzlan Zakaria, SashiWeb, Najah Nasseri, ashsownmind, sinark... thanks for holding the flag up!

Dare you?

You may withstand Berita Harian's kapak kecik and the "hitting below the belt" tactic, but dare you tell your son this?

Courtesy Johnny Ong & TV Smith - January 2, 2004

Server Upgrade... RM1,570.96

As at 08:10hr this morning, the Screenshots Server Upgrade Fund stands at RM1,570.96.

It grew from RM818.68 yesterday where there were Aussie Dollars flowing in and when a reader put in an auspicious RM38.38. I wished he had put an extra 8 at other unassuming places ;-) But no amount is too small to cherish!

To know more about the campaign and how you could contribute, please visit this blog.

(I gained a lot of inspiration from Citizen-Nades' article: Rallying for a common cause. Hope the petrol and chicken price hikes won't dampen this campaign-lah.)

Traffic up

Screenshots reached a new height in visitor traffic yesterday, with September registering the highest reach in terms of unique visitors and page views. The last peak was in March, during the heat of General Election 2004.

But the highest one-day traffic was September 2, the day former DPM Anwar Ibrahim was acquitted.

But what a pity, on that day, I was incommunicado as I was attending an industry function and didn't get to blog until 5pm!

Indicative of the detailed traffic analysis can been viewed here. It's not definitive as it doesn't take into account Screenshots pages readers downloaded from caches kept by the major ISPs.

Thank you for your roaring support, folks!

Server Upgrade... RM818.68

As at 08:30hr this morning, the Screenshots Server Upgrade Fund stands at RM818.68.

(Nice little number to begin with because reader surfur17 has put in RM68.68 ;-)

To know more about the campaign and how you could contribute, please visit this blog.

To love Malaysia is to feel Malaysia in you

My September 17 blog entry on travel photography was meant to provoke CY Leow into a fit so that I could solicit another series on beautiful Malaysia that we both love so much.

Boy! He fell into the "entrapment" I laid for him ;-)

After going through those "downloadable digital images" hosted on Tourism Malaysia website, CY's initial excitement turned into frustration and anger! Well, much as I had expected.

He said:

I am angry because, as a Malaysian, I am ashamed that we are showing THE WHOLE WORLD such badly taken TRAVEL PHOTOS which are supposed to ATTRACT tourists to Malaysia, not forgetting that tourism is worth BILLIONS of Ringgit!

And we show everyone a half-hearted, half-baked project! I rest my case!

Sensing too much of fuming would do no good for his heart and blood vessel, she showed us TEN SHOTS that he took while he was still working in Malaysia.

This is one of them:

The Prime Minister's Office building framed by the stunning looking main gate. A 14mm wide angle was used. But consider the circumstances this shot was taken:

This was actually a "grab shot", I was refused entry by one of the guard at the gate and when he pushing the gate shut, I spotted the composition and took two grab shots. Are you ready?

And yes, CY is home-sick because of the gourmets' delights!

"Look at all those mouth watering hot and spicy dishes! Man I missed the famous nasi kandar of KAYU! Can't wait till December to satisfy my greedy indulgence when I am in KL!" he said.

There are eight more stunning pictures depicting beautiful Malaysia in vivid colours, including the Shah Alam mosque by night taken from the roof of a hotel. A "very susah" shot, not recommended for those afraid of height and weak knees, he said.

Don't miss it!

Would you donate to bloggers?

Blogging doesn't pay, even in the US.

According to Houston Chronicle, Vermont-based blogger Jeff Soyer, who runs a blog at Alphecca.com, pleaded for donations on his blog last month alongside an image of a tip jar topped by gun-toting cartoon character Yosemite Sam.

"Ten bucks buys a box of bullets or feeds my cats for a week"

"By next week this domain could belong to a porno site."

"Maybe you folks think that would be a better thing. I'm starting to think so, too."

It was only after other bloggers linked to his request did he receive enough donations to pay the $117 for a domain name and a year of Web hosting fees.

Yes, blogging doesn't pay, even for the most prominent bloggers in the US.

If there's any blogger who may strike it rich, it must be Andrew Sullivan.

The former editor of The New Republic, yes Andrew Sullivan, is the high-profile blogger who takes American Express and PayPal payments and posts an address for cheques or money orders.

But he has this to say: "I've managed to pay all my expenses and an intern and give myself a minuscule salary, thanks to the generosity of my readers."

"I couldn't live off the blog alone, and I see no prospect of that happening in the near future, despite having one of the biggest audiences."

Sullivan told Ellen Simon of Associated Press that he currently makes his living through freelance writing and speaking.

Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds, a law professor who writes a popular conservative blog called Instapundit.com, earns advertising dollars through blogAds.com. The company says some of the bloggers it represents make $120,000 a year from ads or US$1,000 a month.

On this, Sreenath Sreenivasan, professor of new media at Columbia University, comments that: "There's a very tiny percentage of people who are making anywhere close to a living from blogs."

If Screenshots were to pass the hat around to collect donation to upgrade its aging servers and renew the high-bandwidth hosting contract, will it fill up? ;-)

The Scorpions still sting

UPDATED VERSION. TV Smith and I managed to catch the Scorpions at close range at Stadium Merdeka last night. We had good company among other fans.

Courtesy of BMG Malaysia, our tickets brought us to vantage points and sonical sweet spots so near the stage.

Though the concert proper didn't get to start until 10.00pm, the Scorpions gave us almost 2 hours of solid rock - most of the numbers I can't relate to. Their repertoire has obviously grown beyond my varsity days. But they managed to pack it to still sting.

TV Smith recounts in his blog that the older audience was still waving trusty Zippo lighters in the air.

This is in contrast to "the outstretched arms of the younger audiences who were clutching new-fangled mobile phones with video recording feature".

I saw it, too, especially when beret-donning Klaus Meine was classic-rocking yesteryears' hits like Always Somewhere, Holiday, You and I, Wind of Change, Still Loving You and When the Smoke is Going Down.

Certainly, there has been a strong wind of change in between the x and y-generations. (Didn't see any PAS protesters though.)

How I wished I could sneak in my Nikon D100 instead of the BenQ 3.2mp compact digital toy I borrowed from my 7-year-old daughter.

(And TV Smith was cool enough to just bring a Compact Flash, thinking that he could shoot on my Nikon and store on his CF. The babycam stores on SD lah... ;-)

Here are some shots, sans the power of zoom:

P/S: Rudolf Schenker was playing some of the Scorpion hits on a Fender Strat (see bottom picture). Great, seducing Boss Chorus sound!

It's has been months I last licked my humbucker Ibanez. I will get stung again in the next few days.

Blogs give Dan Rather '60+1 Minutes'

September 8, CBS News anchor Dan Rather cited a document, claimed to be a memo type-written in August 1972, as proof that George W. Bush did not fulfill his National Guard duty more than 30 years ago.

CBS said the memo was written by Bush's commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who died in 1984.

Rather's claims aroused the scepticism of a blog commentor at FreeRepublic.com.

Nineteen minutes after the "60 Minutes II" broadcast began, blog commentor TankerKC noted that the documents were "not in the style that we used when I came into the USAF... Can we get a copy of those memos?"

Less than four hours later, another blog commentor, nicked Buckhead, posted at FreeRepublic.com, pointed to "proportionally spaced fonts" used in the memo and concluded that the documents Rather cited had been drafted on a modern-day word processor rather than a typewriter.

In other words, forged and faked.

"I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old," Buckhead wrote. "This should be pursued aggressively."

Aggressively pursued it was, in no time.

The next morning, Minneapolis lawyer Scott Johnson, who co-authors PowerlineBlog.com using "The Big Trunk" nick, was tipped off by his reader about Buckhead'sposting. Intrigued, he put a link to Buckhead's post.

Then the floodgates opened, says Los Angeles Times.

The effect was the same as Screenshots readers who jumped in to comment and offer information on common issues.

This is what lawyer Johnson posted, gathering from his readers' responses:

"Several have pointed out that the Executive line of IBM typewriters did have proportionally spaced fonts, although no reader has found the font used in the memos to be a familiar one or thought that the IBM Executive was likely to have been used by the National Guard in the early 1970s.

"Reader Monty Walls has also cited the IBM Selectric Composer," he continued. "However, reader Eric Courtney adds this wrinkle: The 'Memo To File' of August 18, 1973, also used specialized typesetting characters not used on typewriters. These include the superscript 'th' in 187th, and consistent ' (right single quote) all parentheses in original used instead of a typewriter's generic {minute} (apostrophe). These are the sorts of things that typesetters did manually until the advent of smart correction in things like Microsoft Word."

Meanwhile, Charles Johnson, a Los Angeles musician-turned-conservative-blogger of the LittleGreenFootballs.com fame, posted the results of his own investigation on Powerline.

The LittleGreenFootballs Johnson wrote that he had opened Microsoft Word, set the font to Times New Roman and used the program's default settings to retype a purported Killian memo from August 1973.

"My Microsoft Word version, typed in 2004, is an exact match for the documents trumpeted by CBS News as 'authentic,' " Johnson wrote, posting images of his creation and the CBS document.

If you are familiar with typography, the Times New Roman font itself predates computers - it was designed in 1932!

The floodgates opened wider.

Within 90 minutes of that post, Drudge Report picked it up and the bloggers' "investigative reporting" was instantly made known to a million people and, all of a sudden, became a legitimate story.

In fact, PowerLineBlog was temporarily offline because of the the ensuing traffic.

Why is Drudge Report so powerful, you may ask. Well, it was Matt Drudge who took a lead role in the first reports on the relationship between then-President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky - way before Newsweek ran the story. The rest, as they say, is history.

And all of a sudden, relevance of mainstream journalists was put on a spot. They now have to tell whether the blogosphere is "an underground world of ideological venting or a source of legitimate news".

They had to scrambled to consult with experts to check the validity of the documents. The claims of seemingly legitimate analysts posting commentary online could not be ignored, says The LA Times.

One thing is for sure. Blog power is contagious.

Paul Grabowitz, professor of new media at the University of California at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, says this in The NY Times:

"Blogs have been characterized as places where people just go to mouth off, but what this brings out is the ability of blogs to actually help report a story."

Jim Jordan, a strategist for independent Democratic groups opposed to Bush, has this to say via LA Times:

"It was amazing Thursday to watch the documents story go from FreeRepublic.com, a bastion of right-wing lunacy, to Drudge to the mainstream media in less than 12 hours."

"That's not to say the documents didn't deserve examination. But apparently the entire thing was cooked up by a couple of amateurs on Free Republic. The speed with which it moved was breathtaking."

By Friday, September 10 morning, readers of mainstream papers like The New York Times, the Washington Post etc, woke up to articles that were quoting analysts raising questions about the CBS documents. There were others who demended seeing the originals to judge the memos' authenticity.

Rather withdrew to a defensive stance. On Friday, he opened his evening news broadcast by defending his Wednesday expose, and producing an analyst who vouched for the memos.

But at the same time, one man who Rather had said would corroborate CBS' report — retired Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges, Killian's direct supervisor — digged the dagger deeper into Rather's heart. Hodges told The New York Times that he did not think the memos were real.

While Bush inched a notch ahead of Kerry on the popularity poll, blog commentors wrote to FreeRepublic to hail 'Buckhead', who told The New York Times:

But once I posted the comment to Free Republic I was no longer working alone, and that is the real point of the story about the story about the story."

But then, another blogger commentor was quick to write back: "How do we know Buckhead is really not (Bush's political advisor) Karl Rove..."

CY 'revisits' 9/11 memorial site

The world's remembering 911 again.

CY Leow was watching a documentary on TVNZ that explained why and how the twin tower collapsed tonight. It prompted him to dig into his piles of old negatives to come up with more shots of the World Trade Center that I did not photoblog last July.

WTC were two very imposing buildings. At ground zero, it was downright impossible to take a full shot of the towers! CY took this shot with a 17 mm lens. He says the closeness of the two buildings would give castrophopic nightmares!

Click here to view his other shots of the WTC which, eternally, could not be re-created.

Gmail now

I am taking advantage of (Google) Gmail's 1GB storage and mail search capabilities. Starting tonight, all alerts to in-coming commentaries will now be forwarded to Gmail for easier sorting in the future. (BTW, the first email to flow into my Gmail inbox is from CY Leow).

From now on, you may email me at jeffooi.screenshots@gmail.com.

However, I am still maintaining jeffooi@usj.com.my as a signature email, though it has become a daily spam target.

Must thank the little bird journalist who gave me the Gmail referral. Terima kasih daun keladi!

Malaysia kena clone-d

Satirist blogger TV Smith observes that Malaysians like to take short-cuts in life:

"Can Malaysia leapfrog into developed country status, skipping a few crucial classes along the way? We try to buy our way in, as always."

Please be sure to see how the foreigners have 'cloned' our franchises over the years. ;-)

Please tell us what you don't already know.

Penang blues

I didn't realise that an innocent email to CY Leow when Wellington was pounded by a winter storm last Friday has solicited his home-sick blues... and a 16-image collection of his fondest memories of Penang.

Penang folks like us should treasure this labour of love... CY spent some 7 hours of blues looking through his archive to give you his very best!

This is a shot of the Penang Bridge in 1985, long before it was opened to traffic.

CY said:

To enhanced the dragon like curve of the bridge, I shot with a 20mm on my F3P. It was at that time that I noticed an eagle has made himself a home on top of one of the mast.

The shot was used in a two page spread in The Star, for their 28th National Day Special pull out, reproduced below:

CY is particularly fond of this shot as he recalls:

Stunning display of PHOTO POWER in 1985! You are wondering why the colour is still so brilliant? Well, as far as I know there are only THREE copies of this spread left! They are in MINT condition, kept in my portfolio box all these years.... yes, they had as much travelled as us! From Penang to KL and back then to Wellington, Singapore and back!

I had them laminated 2 years ago... I now possess two copies. I gave away one as a "getting to know you" present to a good friend. I hope he takes good care of it :-) Because that is one "treasure" that even The Star museum DOES NOT HAVE!

Have you ever seen the Penang Bridge in this setting?

It's CY's 'parting shot' in the series. He combined the Penang Bridge shot and a Karori winter sunrise shot in Photoshop. Two layer masks and two gradient fill were also used to create what he calls "Penang 2025"...

"I hope our dear island will not come to this," he retorts.

Click here for details.

MonZoom?

Is there a real-life argument to pitch that a digital camera is BETTER than the film one?

Legendary photog CY Leow has a "MonZoom" test... errr, zooming along a Bangkok monsoon drain aboard a F1-liked motorbike-propelled craft, shooting with a Canon D-60 digital fitted with a Canon 15mm fish-eye at 1/20 sec... Yes! one-twentieth-of-a-second to "freeze" the motion.

Oh ya, you have to hold the camera above your head, pointing downwards to "shoot blind"!

Go to his photoblog to view another montage of the Bangkok "water-market" shots, and see how photography enthusiasts give their comments.

My jaw dropped, because at 1/20 sec on relatively fast-speed rocking boat and yet the Old-hand's hand didn't shake a bit!

How Democrats credential the bloggers

The New York Times says Democrats Convention staff members had to visit the blogs of every applicant who sought accreditation. The finalists were chosen based on three announced criteria: readership, professionalism and originality.

"It was very difficult," said Peggy Wilhide, communications director for the convention. "It was a new medium."

How do US mainstream jounalists view bloggers' presence in the presidential election process? Quote NY Times:

Some observers are uneasy with how the convention is expanding the definition of journalism.

"I think that bloggers have put the issue of professionalism under attack," said Thomas McPhail, professor of media studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, who argues that journalists should be professionally credentialed. "They have no pretense to objectivity. They don't cover both sides."

Even so, large news media organizations are paying attention.

"I'm intrigued at the way that bloggers and blogs have forced their way into the political process on their own; that's why I want to incorporate the blogs into our coverage," said David Bohrman, Washington bureau chief for CNN, which is coordinating with Technorati, a blog-tracking service, to provide online commentary for the convention.

But group blog Many2Many says the NY Times is running scared by demeaning bloggers as web diarists. (Thanks reader mwtwong for the pointer.)

I touched on this briefly in my interview with 8TV (on air tonight or tomorrow).

UPDATE: Aizuddin Danian calls Screenshots a left-wing blog.

Democrats Convention: 35 official bloggers; Wonkette blogs for MTV

Was it because Howard Dean played the role of internet insurgent and pioneered the use of weblogs in his campaign? The Democratic Party has accredited some 35 bloggers to cover the convention at Boston this week.

More, even traditional news outlets like the Associated Press news agency will have a blog, written by veteran political correspondent and Pulitzer Prize-winner Walter R Mears.

Blogger Ana Marie Cox, better known as Wonkette in blogosphere, has a reverse media manoeuvre as she will be providing convention commentary for MTV.

Other new trends in American media-politik:

• Media Outnumbers. Journalists will outnumber delegates three-to-one at the Democratic Party convention with 15,000 reporters of various stripes aiming to cover every angle.
• Network Withdrawal. In 1952, the US television networks broadcast the conventions nationwide for the first time, providing "gavel-to-gavel" coverage of some 10 to 13 hours a day.

  This year, the three major broadcast television networks - ABC, CBS and NBC - all plan only one hour nightly of television coverage and will not provide any coverage on the Tuesday of either convention.

• Cable Power: CNN plans nightly coverage until early in the morning each night and is moving key shows to Boston and New York during the conventions. Fox News Channel plans to expand its coverage by a third this year.

BBC News titled the news items Bloggers go mainstream at US conventions, calling the species "those irreverent internet commentators".

Thanks reader Lyn for the pointer.

TV Smith's satire plagiarised again!

Remember TV Smith's satire piece: The Naked Card, which was plagiarised last year by Singapore's TalkingCock.com and IDG Hong Kong's editor?

The former apologised early and kept its bead, the latter apologised too late and lost his job.

Blogger Rajan R emailed me Saturday of his discovery that TV Smith's work has been plagiarised again, this time by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the American individual rights and liberties fighters group founded in 1920.

In the Union's official website, ACLU has created a Flash-animation using TV Smith's famous parady on pizza ordering that gave the authority unsanctioned possession of the purchaser's personal data.

Thanks too to blogger Suresh Gnasegarah who sent me a similar alert.

As a measure to preserve evidence, we have asked blogger Dr Liew to help extract the Shockwave Flash file, which I shall host in Screenshots in case the URL in ACLU expires for some reasons. Download file, sized 333kb.

Sky Fire

CY Leow particularly loves this shot for its "Star War"-like effect! He shot this before he swicthed over to the D60 digital camera!

But how do you take shot like this when you have to expose for either the cloud or the houses below it? The difference in exposure of the sky and houses are at least SEVEN stops apart!

CY Leow has a clue, and he also had a winning-shot for Singapore Press Holdings which "kept his Picture Editor" job.

Click here for details of what he conceived as "Double Scanning" and "Out Of The Square Thinking"!

Chasing the rainbow

How many rainbows have your captured on camera so far? CY Leow, a legendary photog now in his early fifties, has only got it four times in his lifetime!

He says: "There is something special about rainbow that I love, partly because it is so difficult to capture on film; well... most of the time you do not have a camera when you see one!"

He came home early today... it was a glorious sunny winter day... yeah! This is what he emailed me a while ago:

You can't beat Wellington on a fine day! Two hours later the whole scenario changed, it started drizzling and very cold Southerly invade. Then the dark cloud broke and the sun came through... by instinct I knew this is the perfect atmosphere for rainbow formation!

I ran up my deck to get my D-60 digital and just in time to capture this rainbow from my deck. Like most rainbow, the spectacle lasts only a few seconds.

Almost breathlessly, CY says: "This is only the FOURTH rainbow I have ever captured all my photography life! I shot with a 17-35 zoom at ISO 100, underexposed two stops and in camera RAW format."

CY Leow shares with us his three other rainbow shots, and tips on how to capture that decisive moment.

Happy rainbow hunting! There's always your pot of gold out there.

I thought bloggers should know this

I noticed reader/blogger x_guy who, in good faith, was given a TypeKey access to post commentaries in Screenshots, has posted an offensive message to hurl accusations on this blogger without substantiation, and to comment on blog entry titled: Is 'Umno Democracy' a lost cause? without thematic relevance.

I do not know what's his intent.

But in the wake of such repeated Internet abuse on Screenshots, I feel obliged to revisit the context I once wrote on a blogger's responsibility, July 5:

There has been a proposal for Screenshots 2 from a Canada-based reader which I received June 29, and to which I replied:

Thanks for your offer but I don't think blogs should work this way. [...]

Good bloggers are no Gollum... To be taken seriously, bloggers cannot hide behind anonymity and hurl bricks.

And certainly, of all intent and purposes, a blogger should not blaspheme the entire blogger community by hurling wild accusations in the name of freedom of speech.

To put the record straight, this is what the archive in Screenshots has captured about the moniker x_guy:

Both IP addresses 65.95.236.143 and 65.94.130.114 are trace-routed to Toronto-based Nexxia HSE ppp3683868.sympatico.ca, and Bell Nexxia MTL-HSE ppp176952.sympatico.ca, respectively.

So, where's the beef?

If x_guy wants the Ring, he can go grab it from Gollum in the firepit.

If x_guy wants to seek fame at the expense of Screenshots, then he has to labour it on his own, and not to leech on my blood.

But until and unless blogger x_guy reveals his identifiable identity - like what Jeff Ooi of Screenshots has been persistently doing right from Day One - I don't think we should dignify him by responding further to his inflaming flame - in this blog or elsewhere.

For the record, I don't intend to ban the x-guy moniker for now, though I can if I want to.

'Screenshots 2'

There are people who strategically confused "commenters authentication" with censorship, and copied my blogs onto so-called Screenshots2.

While I don't mind Screenshots getting "pirated" (I must have done something right at the cyber-boxoffice), I am glad that Mr Someone has helped create a sewerage pond ala IWK to flush my blog of scornful filth.

There has been a proposal for Screenshots 2 from a Canada-based reader which I received June 29, and to which I replied:

Thanks for your offer but I don't think blogs should work this way.

Screenshots stands for credibility and integrity, hence I dare to publish my name, email contact, my photo and even the place where I host the server in Malaysia. Come get me if you think I have offended you, or else come debate with me in a transparent manner where THINKING is ALOUD, and THINKING is ALLOWED. [...]

In case you do not know, my firm belief is that I am here to make a difference (in the positive use of Internet and Cyberactivism). And the first point of differentiation would be that I should be accountable for what I blog.

Good bloggers are no Gollum. And I am still trying very hard to be a good blogger. To be taken seriously, bloggers cannot hide behind anonymity and hurl bricks.

Here's a perspective from a Screenshots reader who was invited to view Screenshots 2:

From: [ Hidden by Jeff Ooi ]
To: X Guy < x_guy121@yahoo.com >
Subject: Re: Thinking Aloud, Talking Allowed!
Date: Sun, 4 Jul 2004 11:31:29 -0700 (PDT)

Dear X_Guy,

As I type this reply, I am not too certain if your action qualifies as copyright infringement or plagiarism. Perhaps not even any of the above. I like the innovative solution to jeff's problems though.

I doubt I will be signing up for typekey. I think I am just lazy. In any case, Jeff has the perogative to do whatever he likes since it is his blog, and it is my call to whether I should sign-up to participate.

Afterall, Jeff decided to have some new rules to his game, and it is up to us respectively as whether we want to play.

I think that's fair.

More often than not, there is no perfect solution to problems in life. You win some, you lose some. I appreciate your mirror site. In fact, I feel that even if you minus the contents from Jeff and simply create a discussion space with the necessary links would also suffice. In any case, I think your effort shouldn't go unnoticed, however many (or few) responses you might (or might not) generate. It IS a novel solution for those who wishes to express their views (or pure flames) without being subjected to Jeff's scrutiny and approval (which is time-consuming and counter-productive anyway).

I see a win-win situation here.

Keep up the good work for greater speech freedom guys.

Gosh! Come to think of it, Screenshots may have made a blog history.

TypeKey problem identified

It was my fault. I had missed out a 'back-slash' at the critical places of the MT publishing template and it had caused many TypeKey-ready readers to be denied of posting their comments into the 'Conversations' section of this blog.

1,000 apologies.

TypeKey problem?

The "Conversations" section of Screenshots was re-opened yesterday. I have since received several emails which alerted me about problems in posting "Conversations" commentaries in this blog. This is despite their having signed up as a TypeKey user for authentication. The error message reads like this:

"The site you're trying to comment on has not signed up for this feature. Please inform the site owner."

I do not know for sure what had caused the difficulty. My speculation is that there could have been a service outage at TypeKey at the point those affected readers tried to post their comments. Could people familiar with TypeKey please share their experience here?

The other point I wish to alert you is that Screenshots requires all TypeKey-registered users to present their valid email address when posting their commentaries to this blog for the first time. Or else, you will not get through the first bar.

Remedy is to login to your TypeKey account (www.typekey.com) and change your profile and to enable your email address to presented to Screenshots. Remember, non-Yahoo! and non-Hotmail email accounts will get less priority to get through my approval as you have to wait for a manual email authentication proces. I can only do it when I am free!

For those about to sign up for the TypeKey authentication, a free service hosted by MovableType inovator in the USA, here's some pointers.

Sign in from Typekey.com or click on the "Conversation" link on any of the Screenshots blog entry. You will be greeted with a pop-up window.

( 1 ) The top-half looks like this:

Remember, you must provide a valid email at the time of registration.

( 2 ) The bottom-half of the Typekey sign-in page looks like this:

Follow these steps:

1. Decide your Public Name, nickname or handle.


2. Enter the numbers and letters (usually 6 digits) you see in this image. This step is to prevent automated robots from signing up for TypeKey accounts.


3. DO NOT "generate a Typekey token for your blog". This is only relevant to people who runs a weblog using MovableType platform and want to authenticate his/her readers for comments registration purposes. Readers at large don't have to do this step.


4. You must enable (check) "I agree to the Typekey terms of service".


5. Then, click "Sign Up"

By this stage, you would have received an email TypeKey sends you to your registered email, asking you to activate the TypeKey authentication account. Afterwards, you could use this account to post comments to any weblogs in the world that runs MovableType, like Screenshots. Sign-up once, use many.

However, please be reminded that you still need to wait for the blog owner, eg Jeff Ooi for Screenshots, to authenticate you further before he approves to allow you to post a comment for the first time in his blog (after the MT3.0D).

And as a mater of fact, an approved user can always be banned depending on circumstances.

To protect your privacy, TypeKey has also capabilities to allow you publish or hide your profile. You can change the profile status after log-in to your Turnkey account.

I hope this helps in your understanding of how TypeKey works. Read the FAQ if you still have doubts.

Let's multiply

I am humbled by the pedestal that Malaysiakini gives me though I really don't know how the descriptive was arrived at.

I just hope there would be more Screenshots sprouting in Malaysia - with more bloggers who would put up real identity and identifier to discuss issues and topics that bug Malaysian psyche.

And, yes, we need to tell 'em Big Mind Big People and Gollum alike that this is a generation for 'Thinking Allowed, Thinking Aloud'.

'Conversations' re-opened

Screenshots has migrated to a new engine, MovableType 3.0D.

Everything remains the same except that commentators to the real-time "Conversations" section will have to pre-register each with a valid forwarding email. Just follow the auto-prompt when you hit the "Conversation" link.

ABOUT TYPEKEY. This authentication process is hosted by Six Apart's TypeKey, which is the same creator for MovableType.

As it's a third party hosting by Typekey, Screenshots and I will not retain, on our servers, any particulars about the email database deposited by the pre-registered commentors.

One of the key benefits of TypeKey is that by registering once, you may use the same username/password to comment on ALL blogs in the World Wide Web that run on MovableType publishing platform, which includes Screenshots, Jeff's Photoblog and CY Leow's Photoblog.

You may like to note that I have a hierarchical preference for email addresses which are dispensed by ISPs or bona fide business organisations over those coming from Yahoo! or Hotmail. You may refer to TypeKey FAQ for details.

MOVING ON. To Screenshots and I, the key benefits of TypeKey authentication is ( 1 ) to prevent mercenaries and ronins to abuse Screenshots as a zombie to spew filth and scorn, hence disparaging all thorough-bred bloggers; ( 2 ) to prevent spam.

Overall, this helps Screenshots to continue promoting the positive use of Internet the bloggers' way.

Last but not least, I'd like to thank EL Ho for spending his precious time to help me execute the migration to MT 3.0D. He has been providing me the anchor in the world wide web since 1999.

P/S: We were struggling with the migration for all three blogs on the cue of June 30 cut-off point, many Mailbag and Guest Bloggers materials were held over. Apologies.

Screenshots intimidated?

This blogger received an email from reader dkudos:

From: dkudos@yahoo.com
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 17:16:34 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Got Intimidated?
To: jeffooi@usj.com.my

Hello Jeff

Judging from the recent “shut-off” (disabled “comment”) and the relatively “lame” blogs, I kinda suspect you are being intimidated with lawsuits. I write to offer some help… What say you, lets create a mirror (or almost mirror) site for Screenshot, [ JEFF OOI: It's Screenshots! ] called it Screenshot 2 or whatever and the purpose is really for your fans to comment in the “Screenshot 2” instead of yours. You will openly accused this Screenshot 2 of stealing your blog’s content and announce you plan to start a litigation, keeping making noise from time to time so as to promote the “copied” blog and that way, your fans get to utter whatever they want, just like the same old way Screenshot was designed for and at the same time, you are not legally liable … Sound good?

1. You may just sit back and let me start Screenshot 2 (and you monitor the comments?) or


2. You start and run the proposed Screenshot 2 and I will help you perhaps to act as the “bad guy”… just let me what you might need?

I have very limited time to offer and my writing skills is almost zero, so it is best if someone else canlook after the posting and comment bit.

Regards,
D'Kudos

My immediate reply:

Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 08:47:27 +0800
From: jeffooi@usj.com.my
To: dkudos@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Got Intimidated?

Thanks for your offer but I don't think blogs should work this way.

Screenshots stands for credibility and integrity, hence I dare to publish my name, email contact, my photo and even the place where I host the server in Malaysia. Come get me if you think I have offended you, or else come debate with me in a transparent manner where THINKING is ALOUD, and THINKING is ALLOWED.

No, I have not been intimidated with law suits. If it ever comes, I have a gang of lawyers who will defend me pro-bono.

In fact, I am upgrading my real-time "Commentary" functions so that only pre-registered commentators could post their comments in my blog.

In case you do not know, my firm belief is that I am here to make a difference (in the positive use of Internet and Cyberactivism). And the first point of differentiation would be that I should be accountable for what I blog.

Good bloggers are no Gollum. And I am still trying very hard to be a good blogger. To be taken seriously, bloggers cannot hide behind anonymity and hurl bricks.

Cheers!

Jeff Ooi
Email: jeffooi@usj.com.my

P/S: I am sure I have not revealed the confidentiality of dkudos as it's a moniker sent through a Yahoo! mail.

Bloggers gets media credentials for US presidential election

As the 2004 US presidential election moves into a higher gear, with the summer's political conventions all lined up, both the GOP and Democrats are pondering over a new phenomenon: Will bloggers be credentialled for on-site coverage the same way mainstream journalists are allowed?

The topic is developing in Google Web (about 11,500 search returns) and Google News.

According to an AP story picked up by USA Today (June 21), the Democrats are holding true to their "party of inclusion" billing vis-a-vis the bloggers, and will offer media credentials to a handful of bloggers.

More than 50 bloggers met last Tuesday's deadline to apply for the Democratic National Convention credentials, convention spokeswoman Lina Garcia. Among the bloggers who have applied, an undetermined number will be selected based on originality, readership level and professionalism.

She said the Democrats consider blogs important for engaging younger voters and expanding journalism to the citizenry. But that won't make the credentialing easy.

Bloggers with Democratic credentials will get the same access as any other media to most of the FleetCenter in Boston. If they need assigned spaces, they'll be asked to pay for phone, furniture rental and other expenses just like mainstream journalists.

On the other hand, the GOP - considered "late to the game" and is wary of bloggers, who tend to be less predictable than mainstream journalists - now appear serious about granting some access.

It is noted that, for traditional media, both big parties generally rely on rules established by committees of journalists for getting passes to cover Congress. But no such procedure exists for blogs.

Meanwhile, some of the bloggers seeking credentials say their coverage plans involve little more than going where the mood takes them. Their personal accounts are unfettered by editors — and most don't pretend to be objective.

Here are some of their remarks:

• Michele Catalano of The Command Post, a mostly news-as-it-happens blog, said she'll cover the Aug. 30-Sept. 2 convention at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan from outside if necessary.

  Catalano is 31-year-old, based in East Meadow, N.Y.

• Scott Schmidt, 28, a GOP activist who blogs from Los Angeles, said he has traded e-mails informally with convention officials about getting inside.

  But Schmidt is not waiting. As a backup, he sought credentials as a guest of the California delegation.

• Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, whose Daily Kos is among the most visited political blogs, said: "We don't have those constraints, which provides for more colorful coverage... If I want to use profanity in a post, I'll use profanity."

  Moulitsas, a 32-year-old from Berkeley, Calif., has also applied for Democratic credentials. He said he would "probe and pry and look in corners that the political press isn't looking."

• Australian blogger Tim Blair, 39, said many bloggers will wade through the largely scripted events, looking for fresh ways to expose the "pandering and stupidity and ... unpredictable madness" on the sidelines.

  Blair is trying to attend both conventions through a freelancing magazine gig.

Are bloggers mainstream fro now? Not quite yet, said said Jonathan Dube, who blogs about online journalism.

QUOTE: "This is a real landmark for the legitimacy of the blogger and a testament to their growing influence. That doesn't necessarily make them mainstream, simply because not enough people are reading them right now." UNQUOTE.

Thanks readers Attilla the Hun and Dr John Postill for the alert, and travel2165 for a pointer to Salon.com on June 21.

Mailbag 20040623

From: Polis, England
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 09:12:15 +0000

Hi Jeff

I just want to comment on the cost of living in the UK if compared to Malaysia.

Some like Azahan prefers to use what they call the "Big Mac" index in that they compare the price of Big Mac's around the world. I prefer to compare it with the starting salary of a fresh graduate here and in Malaysia.

In the UK the starting salary varies on your field of studies, job sector and grade. if you could achieve a 1st or a very high 2nd Upper class, you stand a very good chance in landing a job at one of the top consultancy firm that would pay you around �30k - �36k a year, some even pays a signing on fee! Premier firms like Mckinsey pays even more. On average, the starting pay would be around �20k - �24k a year.

A brand new Ford Focus 1.6 would costs around �10k and a decent 2 bed house in lets say, Nottingham, would set you back for around �100k - �120k. 2nd hand car market is excellent and you could get a 1995 Mercedes C220 for around �5k. So all in all, you could fairly easily get a good start in your working life.

Compare this with Malaysia, where the average starting salary would be between $20k - $24k a year. Brand new Kancil around $40k, house maybe aorund $180k. Of course you could get a much cheaper house and this would depend where you stay and work, also to include potential toll charges which are hardly in existence in the UK.

Handphone line rental is also much cheaper, for �30 a month entitles you to a free 200mins call to any landline and mobiles and the phones are usually free!

I've not included cost of living in this which is much cheaper (newspaper only costs around 40p, a can of coke 35p). Again, this is just a rough estimate and its not straight apple for apple comparison. More like apple and manggis!

Guest bloggers

I wish to do two things in Screenshots: A 'Send-me-your-photos' campaign and a 'Guest Bloggers' column targetting Malaysians currently based overseas.

Photoblog. The first is to leverage the proliferation of digital camera as everybody can now shoot wherever you go. In the process, you may have captured that definitive moment that tells a thousand words. I will publish them in Screenshots' photoblog, and the photog still owns the copyright.

For tips on photography, please browse through the work of legendary photog and picture editor, CY Leow, who has been partnering Screenshots since last year.

I am merely following what BBC News initiated February last year.

Guest Bloggers. Some 30% of Screenshots visitors come from overseas, most of them are knowledge workers, academics and students who are Malaysians.

If you are now residing overseas, especially the first world countries, I wish they could send us you observation and musing that contrast Malaysia, and tell us how far off, or how far near, we are on becoming a First World country.

I shall start off with a guest column by Johnny T, who is now based in Germany.

CY Leow... the Spider man

They shoot spider, don't they? Here's from CY Leow's latest photoblog:

I saw this creature outside the Brisbane airport window framed against a glorious Australian sunrise.

Shot with the very expensive Kodak DCS560 six mega pixel digital camera that Kodak Malaysia loaned me. Thank you Kodak :-) The lens was a Canon 80-200 EF f2.8 plus a 1.4 extender.

The effective focal length was actually more than 280mm because of the "ccd effect". Full aperture was used. The camera was supported with a Manfroto Carbon monopod. Image was interpolated with Fractal Print Pro.

Find out more about JAL and Roos. Here.

Housekeeping

As you already know, there are a handful of mercenaries and ronins - one a graveyard-shift sub editor, and the other a jobless nobody who claims he has legal Ph.D in theology - who can't argue on facts and rationale and resort to calling me names. Morons, yellow shit, racist. And the "theologist" calls me Pig, several times.

Friends of Screenshots asked me not to go down to their level but to deny them from posting scorns using nicks and false emails, and run away with character-murder.

I obliged but this is where the blog publishing engine failed me. ( 1 ) MT 2.63 that I use can't handle pre-registration of posters so that they can be authenticated; ( 2 ) It also does not allow me to close the feedback function of specific blog entries - you either (a) close all or (b) open all; ( 3 ) It enables feedback mechanism to be closed for new blog entries but not the older ones.

Not to mention older entries of this blog were robot-spammed several hundred times by peddlars of online viagra, and ego/libido enlargement tools.

So, taking the cue from killuminati of sixthseal fame, I have decided to opt for 2(a) and close the feedback mechanism entirely while I try to mitigate the technology issue over the weekend.

One is to migrate MT3.0 Developer Edition, which still have bugs; ( 2 ) Use MT2.6x version and port it with TypeKey.

I will consult Aizuddin Danian to tap his experience. He has implemented TypeKey.

I don't expect my views will meet accord all the times, as it's everyone's birthright to dissent. But I was foolish to think that people who use Internet and interact with Screenshots would behave like me: expose the name, a bona fide forwarding email and a picture for identification. No, Gollums would do none of those. They must troll with their back bent backwards.

So, you may be inconvenienced for a few days now that the circus is off-limit to the mercenaries and ronins. To make up, have a cold beer - air kelapa muda for those who shun the ambre liquid - with me today, anyone?

Yesterday, LiewCF blogged that 3,000 Blogs (were) Shut Down Without Notice by blog and RSS pioneer Dave Winer.

I'll go take a cold beer

I got the sender's consent before I post this email:

From: [ Sender 2 ]
To: "Jeffooi"
Cc:
Subject: Fw: private
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 22:06:44 +1200

----- Original Message -----
From: [ Sender 1 ]
To: [ Sender 2 ]
Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2004 5:58 PM
Subject: private

hey [ Sender 2 ],

there's a bet going on that jeff ooi will be in trouble within 3 months' time. i poked my nose to seek whether it would be some isa thingy or whatever, but the hints came that he could be set up.

jeff had better be careful of informations fed to him. he might catch the bait that could land him in big time trouble; or lawsuit. he had better check, doublecheck, triplecheck all informations before he decides to blog them.

dangerous time for him if he's not careful.

[ Sender 1 ]

Thirty minutes earlier, I received a SMS from a little bird saying the same thing, from a different angle.

Perhap I will write a will, then the coroner will know where to sniff. ;-) Or to consult H'ng Hung Yung and Andy Ng - if I can locate them - and to ask how they 'died' on the job.

It's a little sticky as we are dealing with Gollum..... my preciouuuuuuuuuus.

UPDATE: My Movable Type 2.63 blog engine couldn't pre-register readers who want to post to the realtime interactive feedback section, and this weakness has given room to people who shout profanities at this blogger, rather than at the issues this blogger picked to blog.

I will try to get that done over the weekend.

Have no Screenshots for breakfast

Reader Arusa alerted me a new context to some excerpts of a Sunday column that Kalimullah Masheerul Hassan wrote about press and freedoms in China and Malaysia, which I reproduced for the readers' reading pleasure:

What has changed in China, you would wonder. No access to information? God, aren’t we lucky in Malaysia that anyone can slander another on a blog, websites and through the SMS and poison-pen letters? [...]

The greater freedoms would come. It would be an irreversible process. There would be a day, not too far in the future, when China would have the freedoms that Malaysians have taken for granted. [...]

Everyone is an expert. There are journalist wannabes who attack editors like The Star’s Wong Sulong and people like me, expecting us to guide editorial policy the way they think it should be.

Never mind that they have never been journalists for even a day but they have opinions on everything.

When Sulong, Ho Kay Tat, Gunasegaram of The Edge and I don’t do what they do, we are libelled and slandered. Even racial slurs are thrown at us.

And these "good men" talk about Press freedom? God forbid they ever have a say in decision-making or head a newspaper. [...]

An editor at another newspaper who has been on the receiving end of some venomous attacks says that if we are nice to the "bloggers" and acknowledge their "power", they will lay off us.

But senior editors at other newpapers and I do not believe in being intimidated by such petty slander and racial slurs, painful though it may be.

We have discussed this many times and we see great hope and expectation in Abdullah’s openness and commitment to greater freedoms.

The Malaysian Press has it much easier now than in recent memory, and the atmosphere is, to be unimaginative in my choice of words, great.

And just like China, I believe we will see greater changes in the area of Press freedom in the months and years to come.

That was June 1. Fifteen days later, access to Screenshots was barred at the New Straits Times computer networks and journalists at Jalan Riong could only read this blog out outside of Balai Berita.

To me, that's not even an iota of my problem. If Jalan Riong believes ignorance is bliss, so shall it be.

On my part, I have long declared my capitulation to the Internet as far back as June 1995. I recognised at that time, some 9 years ago, that I have been totally defeated by Internet and the Informed Society that it brought forth.

If I can't beat it, I might as well join it. So I thought.

Google breakfast, lunch and dinner. On the other hand, there are trappings when one offered oneself to be a humble subject in the Internet era. This can be testified at the Grand Central Station of Internet content - Google.

• Today, if you google "jeffooi", you will be returned with 6,390 search results. If you google "Jeff Ooi" (within inverted commas for specific search), you will get 5,320 returns.
• BTW, I got 194 returns when I googled "Kalimullah Hassan". Much less if you googled "Kalimullah Masheerul Hassan" - it returns only 16 searches.
• "Tan Sri Abdullah Ahmad", Kalimullah's predecessor, returns 353 googles search pages. "Brendan Pereira" gets 576 google returns.
• In comparison, "Wong Chun Wai" gets 776 google searches, while "P. Gunasegaram" gets 138.
• How about other Group EIC on Google? "Wong Sulong" gets 229 google returns while "Ho Kay Tat" gets 85.

Where's the beef? Smart Jalan Riong journalists, if you can't use a proxy (Expert Dinesh/Alphaque suggested this and this) for Internet access in your newsroom, tell Kalimullah Google will still halal your search for Screenshots entries on its banks of cache computers.

Click on the link "Cached", which normally appears after the intro paragraph and the URL to the relevant page, and you can rread Screenshots from Google's cache/memory without requesting the page from my server whose IP address NST has blocked.

The drawback is that Screenshots content you get may not be as realtime.

In draw this on foresight. In the Internet age, I believe it's good for every one in the knowledge loop to apply for its citizenship ASAP. I don't think even the Last of the Mohicans of pen-pushing journalists dare revolt against the Internet. With a pervasive might, it now rules over me and my generation, so we might as well make the best out of it.

However, by having Screenshots blocked, I still have to thank Kalimullah - philosophically - for giving bloggers this recognition as a chronicler and transmitter of contextual information.

On the other side of the world, TIME magazine (Cover-date: June 21, 2004) stated in a media special: Meet Joe Blog, that more and more people are getting their news from amateur websites called blogs. Why? Because they're fast, funny and totally biased, TIME says.

But then, in Malaysia, you don't have to eat press freedom for breakfast, do you?

'Screenshots not allowed in NST'

Thinking not allowed.

An editor in The New Straits Times sent me this email. I have deleted the sender's identity for obvious reasons:

From: [ Hidden by Jeff Ooi ]
To: jeffooi@usj.com.my
Cc:
Subject: Kalimullah blocks Jeff Ooi Website at NST
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2004 10:01:47 +0100 (BST)

My dear Jeff,

I am an editor of the New Straits Times. This is to inform you that the Group Editor-in-Chief of the NST, Datuk Kalimullah Masheerul Hassan has ordered the computer technicians at NST to block your website so that NST staff cannot gain access to it.

The computer technicians have now installed a firewall which prevents us from reading your articles.

So much for Press freedom, freedom of speech, transparency, fairness etc etc that Kalimullah has been preaching!

The fact is your articles which criticised him on his supporting for Astro and Khairy Jamaluddin, were a bit too true and too accurate that he could not take it anymore. [...]

Bravo Jeff! We support you all the way. Let the truth prevail.

Thank you.
[ Hidden by Jeff Ooi ]

June 2, Screenshots reported that the NST ranked 16th among the Top 20 trackable networks that accessed this weblog for the period from May 13, 2003 through May 26, 2004.

The Group EIC at the No. 3 English Paper has also spewed scorn at bloggers in his column on two occasions. For context, read my June 1 blog: Prayers from Beijing: 'Big Brothers and Mainstream Press unite!'

Already, there are readers' feedback sent to other blog topics - here and here - as I was late in uploading this entry.

I have taken some time to authenticate the source. Things are not looking clear at this point in time.

My email is back to normal

My regular email account at jeffooi@usj.com.my - down since May 27 - is now back to normal. I delayed announcing it so that I could test it for a few days.

Please use this email to reach me from now on. Thanks.

Think again, Perry Mason

I discovered something interesting (it smelt rats!) while I was checking my administrative backend last night.

Feedbacks which came in to give a posturing for Perry Mason and CASSA in our discussion on "What OKT knew but didn't tell you ...( 3 ) would have appeared quite normal had it NOT come from one particular IP addy ported at a Streamyx node in Shah Alam.

Here's the evidence with the IP addy and the timestamp:

I have more findings. If Perry Mason needs to know more, please get Kirby to make tea as I want him to know that his master has made a mistake - a grave mistake - if he attempts to use Screenshots to spin-doctor any private agenda.

I will expose more digital forensics if necessary. It's too early to talk about vindication for Perry Mason, whoever you are and wherever you may exist. But your 'digital DNA' is strewn all over my server and I can't miss it.

Watch this space.

Venus transits blogger's path

This afternoon, planet Venus crossed the Sun's path for the first time since 1882, or 120 years ago. TV Smith got a shot of it at 15:00hr.

Source: www.mycen.com.my/picturestory/ � 2004 TV SMITH

This is what TV recorded after sweating out for his "shot of a life-time", using a 8mp digitalcam SLR:

No living person today has ever witnessed such a phenomenon. Seen above as a small black speck against the sun, this very rare event, known as the Transit of Venus, occurs only twice in this century. The second and last Venus transit of the 21st century will be eight years from now, in the early morning of June 6, 2012. If you missed that again, wait till 2117.

But taking the shot is a big challenge: You have to cut down the powerful solar light, no matter if your digicam is equipped with the lowest ISO 50 setting and highest shutter speed/aperture combination. It is still too bright.

Go to his site to learn the trick, and be warned of the perils posed to naked eyes.

There is an AP photo taken at the Malaysia National Planetarium in Kuala Lumpur today, and picked up by International Herald Tribune.

Don't take bloggers seriously

I've read the article: When Bloggers Commit Journalism that TV Smith recommended. It was compiled by Online Journalism Review senior editor J.D. Lasica.

It's thought-provoking as various hard questions were asked: Should bloggers and those in traditional media engage in a dance of fear and loathing, or do both sides stand to gain from the other? Should blogging be taught in journalism classes?

What makes the article so engagingly readable is that those questions were hotly debated and explored in depth by noted scribes and bloggers in the US, namely veteran blogger Rebecca Blood (author of The Weblog Handbook); Dan Gillmor, business columnist for the San Jose Mercury News; Scott Rosenberg, managing editor of Salon; and Meg Hourihan (co-author of We Blog).

The caucus where those questions were tackled was held in September 2002 - some three months before I started Screenshots - at the University of California Graduate School of Journalism. It was participated by 75 journalism students and members of the public.

Almost two years have gone past since the caucus concluded, but one thing I know for sure. Such thoughts being hotly debated in the US have yet to reach the shores at Jalan Riong, Jalan Chan Sow Lin or Phileo Damansara or even Jalan 51 PJ.

Hence the Beijing Prayers Syndrome. From now on, bloggers must rank Public Enemy No. 1 - ahead of bureaucrats and politicians and in that order - so that "editors do not get labelled anarchists for doing the right thing" in the mainstream press.

Actually, bloggers are not to be taken seriously. At least in Malaysia.

I do not know if I have been singled out as the prime target as the blogger journalists love to hate - surely TV Smith can tell to a certain level of truth - but Screenshots and I are rudimentarily harmless to mainstream media, however coloured and discoliured they may be.

Here are the reasons:

1. My sphere of influence is not only limited, but I am seeing the bell curve being shaped.

The above is a traffic-log analysis of Screenshots visitors captured on May 30, 2004 at 17:53:17hr. It covers visitor traffic from May 13, 2003 through May 26, 2004, midnight to midnight, excluding Screenshots pages downloaded through the cache kept at the major ISPs from which the readers established their Internet connectivity.

The graphic shows the number of visitors who viewed Screenshots and how long they stayed. The information is split up into time increments based on the duration of the log file. Visitors are typically tracked using the cookie that's been defined or by their IP addresses.

I considered the spike registered during February-March as an indication of people who were seeking information - online - during the run-up to General Election 2004. It has tapered off to a more realistic traffic pattern after the election euphora has worn off.

Incidentally, too, Screenshots saw increased readership while the NST experienced a 13.3% decline during the corresponding period.

Drilling down further, I also learned that over the one year past, Screenshots has established a solid converging touchpad for its unique visitors, online villagers whom I regard as die-hard info-seekers. But they are miniscule by number at half-a-million mark, or 487,368 to be exact.

In comparision, walk-in or casual visitors - some may be consistent visitors but were captured as casual visitors as they may have logged in from dynamic IPs - totalled some 1.7 million, or averaging 4,500 visitors per day.

This, again, is excluding visitor traffic who had downloaded Screenshots pages from the caches of the ISPs, instead of requesting them from my server.

When you read the Screenshots visitor traffic in conjunction with the daily readership at the English papers reported by Nielsen Media Research (NMR) - Star: 960,000, theSun: 155,000, NST: 278,000 and Malay Mail: 125,000 - Screenshots is chicken-feed.

So what "intimidatiion" bloggers pose to mainstream press editors?

2. In the numbers game, Internet is not invincible in Malaysia.

Take a look at the chart below and you'll know what I mean.

Over the one-year-period, Screenshots managed about 1,895,970 page views (impression), or average 4,989 pageview per day.

Unlike what was reported on NST Online at the recent AGM, I don't consider hits seriously to quantify the value in visitor traffic though Screenshots registered 16,879,502 hits in the last one-year period.

This is because a 'hit' only denotes a single action on the Web server as it appears in the log file. A visitor downloading a single file is logged as a single hit, while a visitor requesting a Web page including two images registers as three hits on the server; one hit is the request for the .html page, and two additional hits are requests for the downloaded image files.

Admittedly, while the volume of hits is an indicator of Web server traffic, it is not an accurate reflection of how many pages are being looked at. So, bloggers would need to do a lot more to bring in the pageviews and unique visitors in order to be of any influence in shaping public opinion.

Compound that to the low Internet penetration in Malaysia, you must be convinced that bloggers are not to be taken seriously. But it baffles me why someone would rank bloggers as Public Enemy No. 1 ahead of bureaucracy and politicians?

3. Top 20 Visitors - only three are from networks in Malaysia

Over the year, I have also collected a group of IP addresses and/or domain names and analysed their relative activity level visiting Screenshots. Due to the fact that my traffic analyser software does not cookies to track visits on the site, I was not able to differentiate between hits from different visitors of a same IP.

In general, here are the Top 20 authenticated networks - excluding the Malaysian ISPs - through which Screenshots received its bulk of visitors totalling 16,879,502 over the last 12-month period:

1. 203.194.159.191 - ICDSOFT LTD, Hong Kong


2. 66.151.128.23 - Internab Network, Georgia, Atlanta


3. 147.128.2.36 - Alantec Inc, Australia


4. 66.117.144.218 - LanMinds Inc. Berkeley, California


5. 192.169.41.44 - Technet/PacNet, Singapore


6. 165.21.154.14 - Singnet.com. Singapore


7. 165.21.154.13 - Singnet.com. Singapore


8. 165.21.154.10 - Singnet.com. Singapore


9. 165.21.154.15 - Singnet.com. Singapore


10. 165.21.154.9 - Singnet.com. Singapore


11. 165.21.154.16 - Singnet.com. Singapore


12. 165.21.154.8 - Singnet.com. Singapore


13. 165.21.154.17 - Singnet.com. Singapore


14. 165.21.154.11 - Singnet.com. Singapore


15. 165.21.154.12 - Singnet.com. Singapore


16. 203.106.2.202 = New Straits Times Press, Malaysia


17. 202.184.114.36 - Star Publications, Malaysia


18. 69.20.16.43 - Rackspace, San Antonio, Texas


19. 209.11.36.147 - Globix Corp, New York


20. 219.93.8.8 - Government Integrated Telecommunications Network, Putrajaya