Come back up already!

Yeah right. You've been down for five hours now.

This WiMAX thing... and the quest for broad(er) band

Unless you've been hiding under a rock somewhere, you're probably sick of hearing about WiMAX for these past 2 years. Indeed, the initial euphoria seemed to have died sometime mid-last year.

Yet, shouldn't we get excited again as we stand on the cusp of a WiMAX launch very, very soon?

Well, I was at a briefing recently by one of the WiMAX licensees (I've been asked not to reveal the company name, but it should be Pretty Obvious since they get coverage in the media almost every week) and hearing the WiMAX plans does make me excited to a certain extent.

Mainly because, if everything goes according to plan, we'll have a viable alternative to TMNet's Streamyx. If not, we'll get this.

Here's a run-down of facts I heard and saw (on the presentation):

1. The WiMAX provider will not compete in the mobile space (as in mobile internet like 3G) but be based off a box and targeted at home connections - a la Streamyx.
2. Speeds and packages will vary from 400 kbps to 2 Mbps. These are theoretical maximum speeds and actual usage experience may vary, but the company says it will do better than Streamyx in making sure you actually get performance that's very close to the package you bought.
3. There will be a one time installation charge (or not, if you don't need technical help to setup the box) and monthly subscription with a contract minimum of two years. No details on pricing were revealed except that it's "very competitive" to what's on the market. My guess is anywhere from RM 68 to RM 120.
4. There will be a return policy (i.e. "guarantee"). If you don't like it, you'll get to return the box within 45 14 days and cancel the subscription. You lose an RM50 processing fee because of the now "used" status of your box. Refunds should be disbursed within 45 days. Here's hoping this policy doesn't land the provider into trouble like Izzi.
5. There will be a "Fair Usage" policy - (i.e. manipulation of bandwidth) - to ensure everyone gets a fair amount of usage and an equal usage experience. This kind of throttling has never been admitted by Streamyx although many people have suspected its happening. This provider gave a very specific account of the policy. Packet shaping won't happen until a user has exceeded 30GB worth of traffic, so I guess it's pretty reasonable. However, the other issue altogether is the fact that many companies (yes, including Streamyx) advertise "unlimited" access whereas in the US, throttling is actually seen as "limiting" access. So, whether it's credible for any ISP (Internet Service Provider) to say they offer "unlimited" access really depends on what you consider "unlimited". For more info on this issue, read this.
6. Will signals deteriorate if it rains? The answer was "well, it should have some effect, but testing shows that bandwidth did not go down. Not by much."

So, will WiMAX be your life-saver? Well, I'm actually for it as any alternative to Streamyx is a good thing. Yet, with WiMAX services now only being rolled out, and with the strategy being to make it a home based service, I have my doubts as to whether any wireless-based technology will be adequate in the near future for home broadband access.

What I'm saying is that already around the corner is Fibre To The Home service which will net us at least 10 Mbps in speed (yes, now we know what those Japanese people are enjoying). On the very high end, you'll get 100 Mbps even. In fact, this should be the news story as the government is investing heavily into ensuring we get fibre-optic services by 2010. Don't forget LTE (the next step from 3G / UMTS) for the mobile too.

On this backdrop, it does seem that WiMAX will have to make the most of this two year lead over FTTH to consolidate its position in the home market. More importantly, plans should already be afoot to move WiMAX out of the home market space, to the mobile market as I would think once Fibre comes in, it would be basically no-contest for WiMAX.

But the question ultimately boils down to this - "should I get WiMAX?" The answer is: depends on where you live and if the signal's good enough. Also, how angry has Streamyx made you?

Notes on Corporate Blogging: MAS' Blog

Read this story yesterday in The Star. So what did you think about our national airline launching what's possibly the first local company employee advocate blog in Malaysia?



Sounds like a step in the right direction for the corporate acceptance of new media if you ask me. But a closer reading of The Star's headline "MAS blog to push sales" is more telling than perhaps its meant to be.

The following is just my two sen as a consumer and I'd doubt if it was sage or expert advice. I couldn't help but notice how most of the posts seemed to be about:
1. Rising costs of living - thus tied to how MAS is helping people save money.
2. Internal programmes and how helpful and interesting they were.
3. A post about MAS' current promotions

I'll say this as constructively as I can: As a reader I felt that the content on the blog (which may have really jsut been honest postings by MAS staff) sounds like cleverly orchestrated topics meant to tell the story that MAS would like to tell.

Now, that's not a wrong objective to begin with; in fact, that's precisely the point - the blog is an outlet to tell consumers your story and make us understand you better. But I'm trying to say it reads like it was cleverly orchestrated and not organic enough.

Why? Because your average reader doesn't want to hear how fun an internal training programme was. We want to hear views on issues, internal programmes that translate to external results, sneak peeks of your upcoming products etc. etc.

Secondly, I would also like to see comments turned on with minimal moderation (except for abusive flaming).

In both respects, I think Dell does a great job with its direct2dell blog. For one, focuses on the people inside Dell and gives them a free-hand in posting topics that don't necessarily relate back to the companies' products. Of course, when it does have to do with products, we get additional thoughts and notes on Dell's thought process. More importantly, consumers have the opportunity to write back to the company and have Dell respond directly on the comment threads. To Dell's credit, they've not deleted many posts (evidenced by some nasty comments still online).

I particularly like how Dell responded to a rumour that it was phasing out its XPS line of gaming PCs earlier this year thru using the blog. Very web 2.0. Though I must say, Dell could do better in actually responding to the comments.

As more and more companies start adopting blogs and the like to engage customers and the public online, I think the early forays have taught us at least one thing. The blog is a big opportunity to actually engage consumers in a conversation; that means information flows both ways. Many corporates are still iffy on this as the possibility (and inevitability) of nasty comments are always present, but I'd say don't be put off. If people aren't complaining on your blog, they sure are complaining in other online forums. Ignorance isn't bliss. So kudos on MAS for the blog, but let's have some comments enabled!

davidlian live on lively!

Exit Second Life. Enter Google's Lively.



So Google launched it's Second Life would-be challenger Lively yesterday to much aplomb. I've taken it for a spin and I must say, it's actually pretty darn good. Leaps and bounds over the experience I had with Second Life in my first hour.

But whilst people are comparing Lively to Second Life, I actually wonder - is Lively more akin to The Sims Online (now called EA Land)? Simple interface. Effortless item placement and ready-made building templates. Numerous ways to connect with people and zip from room to room (so long flying). And thousands and thousands of people just waiting to be talked to (or not) and whom you'll meet just but once in your lifetime.

But by far, for me, the winning feature has got to be the fact you can install a widget to the side of your blog, and have people visit your effortlessly from within the same page as your blog. This has got to be the killer feature for Google.

Why? Well, quite frankly, because I've always hated booting up a programme to log-in to virtual worlds (life Second Life). Now that I can do it from the convenience of my own blog (or anyone elses blog for that matter), I AM fascinated by what virtual worlds can do. The number one hurdle has been cleared.

Am I singing too much of Lively's praises? Well, yes. I reckon as with any interesting new toy, the novelty will wear out soon and problems will surface. But for now, one hour's passed and I'm still loving it. That's quite a record, really.

The Bottle Neck

There was a famous old saying in the tech industry: "Design the software, the hardware will catch up." Hardware used to be the bottle-neck for computing. Processor speeds weren't fast enough, RAM wasn't enough, powerful computing was the size of a classroom.


Today, IMHO, there's a new bottle-neck: internet speeds. Think of the wonders we could achieve. We dream of so many applications - live-streaming video, hi-definition movies, instant download services etc. etc.

Dreams. But the reality is we're stuck waiting 45 minutes to download a 60 MB patch. I'm just waiting for another solution to come along so I can ditch Streamyx already. (And I heard, an alternative might soon be on the way.) :/

Digital shift makes radio like never before

The music industry just isn't what it used to be decades ago. In your dad's time, an artiste asking a radio station to pay royalties was unheard of and would promptly result in the artiste disappearing from radio waves and seeing CD sales tank.

Today, CD sales are tanking anyway. And the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) wants radio stations to pay up. Simple logic really. It used to be that both the recording industry and radio stations had a symbiotic relationship. Radio stations get to play songs for free and make money off selling ads. The recording industry got free publicity from radio stations and sold CDs to make money.



In about 40 years, this has changed. Today, CDs are not the only way people buy music and radio is no longer the only way for people to hear about a great act. The internet means word-of-mouth is much more effective and distribution doesn't have to be physical.

So, along comes the RIAA with the idea that since it no longer relies on radio to make CD sales, and since, this essentially means the radio stations are making money for free off their content, they should get a cut of the advertising revenue. Genius!

This has stoked quite a lot of debate, and while its a sad situation for radio, I do think that industries do need to adapt to the realities ANY social shift incur upon them. In this case, the internet, the proliferation of personal media players and the digitisation of music have put the radio stations in a spot. But if the old business model breaks, then the new business models must come on.

My suggestion would be that radio stations start thinking about how to disassociate proprietary content from music. Funny hosts, witty scripts and the opportunity to interact is what makes most of the charm of radio. With music now being such a personal thing, and iTunes helping people sample and enjoy songs much more than ever, radio stations need to think of making relevant content.

What about a couple of talk show podcasts? Quality content people can listen to anytime, anywhere. Or branching out to video?

We're certainly seeing that now in Malaysia with the effort Media Prima puts behind developing gua.com.my but there's definitely a long road to tread. Still, with the ruckus the RIAA is creating in the US, it'd be wise for radio broadcasting industries in other countries to start preparing for the inevitable - when a media consumption format starts to go the way of the dodo.

About PR people dealing with bloggers

Sometime ago, Text 100 (that's the name of the agency I work for...there, it's out) conducted a survey in Asia Pacific amongst bloggers. Today, the survey results are out and if you're interested in reading the results, click on here.

I'm going to cop out, be a bit lazy, and post the below points taken from the Text 100 Social Media Release (click to see videos, pictures etc.) that's going out along with the survey:

• In what is believed to be the first survey of its kind conducted in Asia Pacific, this survey highlights the similarities and differences between bloggers across APAC and their preferences for working with corporations and PR agencies.

• In a positive sign for the communications industry, 84% of respondents welcome contact from public relations practitioners and the corporations they represent.

• Electronic communication is king for APAC bloggers: 58% preferred email, followed by online comments on their blogs, as the preferred means of contacting them.

• Similarly, emailing of press releases and interviews or discussions ranked in the top two as the preferred formats for receiving content (67% and 60% respectively).

• APAC bloggers are not particular about who they engage with, but prefer to talk with active bloggers and whoever is closest to the story – not necessarily the traditional spokespeople.

• Two thirds (67%) of respondents spend less than 8 hours of their working week on blogging.

• Bloggers concerns included receiving unsolicited spam from PR agencies, and were frequently critical of the content they received, feeling it was inappropriate and unusable.

• While most bloggers ignore traditional press releases, 88% were aware of so-called Social Media Releases and indicated they were in favour of using elements such as videos, quotes, pictures and links from these releases in their posts.

• Text 100 surveyed bloggers it knew and those referred by friendly bloggers, not wanting to spam people it didn’t have a relationship with. Text 100 feels the views of the survey’s sample pool are a fair reflection of influential news, technology and bloggers across Asia Pacific.

My personal two cents on the survey and its findings goes like this:

• The survey is not conclusive and it doesn't claim to be. But it provides a useful and interesting perspective on communicating with the blogosphere. Personal experience tells me that personal experience is still king. Different bloggers vary vastly in how they'd like to have you communicate with them - if you're a PR person like me, its your job to figure what's the best way.
  
• There are a lot of the opinions in the survey shared verbatim - they could be from one, two or ten bloggers. You cannot generalise these opinions, but you should make note of them as there will be bloggers you meet who may share or disagree with these opinions. Again, I personally think the fact that the blogosphere is vast, varied and plural means that there's definitely going to be difference of opinion, and often, a very sharp difference.
  
• What Shaolintiger said is useful. Above all, bloggers are human beings and the best way to treat a blogger (like myself and yourself) is to ensure you do so with a good dose of respect.
  

Unique cyberspace identities - an impending conundrum?

For some reason today I went and activated my myspace account again, and tried to claim my own unique myspace URL.

Barely, crossing my mind, I typed in: "http://www.myspace.com/davidlian" I tense up for a moment in anticipation... and am greeted with the reply - "URL taken."



What? Now, I'm not necessarily a narcissist but I guess I've come to take for granted that the cyber-moniker davidlian would be uncommon enough to be automatically mine. It's not like it's as common as John Doe, right? (anyone actually called John Doe out there?) But fact as it is, there are many other Davids out there, and Lians, and apparently David Lians too!

Here's the conundrum. As more and more social networks, internet services and things-to-sign-up-for pop up, do you find yourself more and more often using the same username / login? Do you start hearing people call you by your "callsign" / online-username / identity / cyber-moniker? (ST or FA anyone?) Have you come to identify with that one name?

If it's yes, yes, and yes, then you're just one more person that's part of the unifying-internet-identity trend. With open-source projects like OpenID, corporate driven unification programmes like Microsoft Passport or the YahooID, and alliances like Google's OpenSocial being drawn up, it seems everyone is driven to having just one ID and one password.

Here comes the cruncher, what happens when you aren't the first davidlian to sign up for that brand new OpenID account? Or that new OpenSocial account? Yeah, you'd end up adding numbers to the back of your username (like davidlian82 for my MySpace) - but you've lost the pristine-ness to your online name.

Will this lead to people then signing up for just about every service there is "just in case"? I just might - heck, the davidlian in OpenID is mine already. Will there be cases of ID-squatting just like cybersquatting?

Will this then lead to stricter policing of "dead" IDs? davidlian on MySpace hasn't logged in since October 2007. I haven't logged into my Friendster for ages. Should unused accounts that age for more than 3 years, be de-registered so that other people who may use the same ID can have a shot at having their preferred one?

On another note: does anyone realise myspace always tells you the person whose page you're visiting is in your extended network?

Socialising.

I got a tweet sometime yesterday saying:

PuppyL0ve @davidlian Hey David Lian hahahah, guess who this is?? GIVE UP? j/k I just saw your page and wanted to know if you would Follow me?

Okay, so I mused a bit and for the sake of curiousity, I clicked "follow" and checked out her profile a bit. There was a link to a manifesto on her site, and here's an excerpt:

Well; since many of my fellow twitters thought I was some kind of spam bot here is the YOUTUBE code I promised.

Now BEFORE I START - there is a difference between being efficient and being a spammer. I would like as many followers as possible, and in turn I will follow those people. I post interesting and helpful information about how to get exposure on the internet for FREE! No catch, no sale, no pitch - just providing helpful information.

So if you haven't yet "FOLLOW ME" and the tips & info will keep coming.

If you want to read the rest of it, click here.

It occurs to me that socialising today now more than ever is a numbers game. When I was a kid, the sole objective of school was to see how many friends you could get. Infantile gangs were formed to play 'catch' or 'police and thief' during recess.

Today, my friends have grown up to form gangs on Facebook so they can bite each other whilst at office or throw Jedi mind tricks around. And then you have the Fight Club where the more socialised you are, the better your chance of winning.

The numbers have crept up throughout the years. My meagre posse of eight in primary school days has now expanded to over three hundred people on Facebook and about a hundred or so on Twitter. Some of which I've never uttered a word to in person for over a year.

So have we turned the social into a mathematical race for increment? Quantity over quality?

Well, I've added Lisa Lange.

Update: Firefox 3.0 Final downloadable now (4 hours ahead of schedule?)

Update!!! 9:03 PM KUL Time

Thanks to Jayce Ooi for this. Apparently it's confirmed that you can actually download FireFox 3.0 right now. All you have to do is a simple switching of the URL to download the current Firefox 2.0 from http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-2.0.0.14&os=win&lang=en-US to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.0&os=win&lang=en-US.

If you don't wanna know the technicalities, just click here.

Here's a screenshot, looks pretty much like RC2 / 3, except, for some reason, it appears cleaner to me:

FireFox 3 Download Day today (err.. 10 am PDT, 17 June)

Hello everybody, in case you haven't already heard, FireFox 3 is right around the corner (about 15.5 hours away). For Malaysians, this will be 1:00 AM Wednesday.

In case you haven't heard also, there's a community marketing online campaign going around encouraging people to download FireFox 3 en masse today (17 June 08) in an attempt to set a Guinness World Record for most downloads in 24 hours.

Personally, I'm wondering how the FireFox community is planning to keep its servers up because at current count, 1,422,008 people have already pledged to download FireFox 3 within the first 24 hours its available. And I'll be one in queue.

Internet Explorer 8 and thoughts on web browsers

The browser wars are here again. With Firefox 3 just around the corner, Flock rolling out version 1.2 just weeks ago, Opera letting the world know 9.5 is "coming soon" and Safari...well, let's just say they are "in the running"; Microsoft's announcement earlier this week that Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 will come in August seems to indicate that the time has come yet again for the browser wars to ignite again. This time though, the audience has changed and the focus along with it.



In the last round, security issues took centre-stage and underdog Firefox scored big against Microsoft's Internet Explorer thanks to this.

This round, we're looking at kids who've grown up on the internet, are immersed in the new-fangled web 2.0 world and want, above anything, a powerful browser that puts all their favourite social networking tools at their fingertips.

Witness Flock, social web browser extraodinaire, whose key selling point is the built-in interfaces it has for social networks like Facebook, Flickr, Blogger, Twitter, MySpace etc. Undoubtedly, Flock should be the winner, right? Err... no, not in my opinion. My brief test of Flock quickly showed me how having too many features and too much integration can be problematic in itself - the direct result being a cluttered interface.

So when I heard of the Microsoft announcement, I thought to myself "it's probably time to check out what the folks at MS have up their collective sleeves." And off I went to download my copy of Internet Explorer 8 beta 1.

Thoughts on IE8

Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 comes with two shiny new toys that more tightly integrate Web 2.0 activities into the browser. The first of these, which I happen to like very much is Web Slices. Essentially, a Web Slice is like a graphically enhanced RSS feed, or a frequently updated portion of a page, cleverly coded, so you can preview that portion of that page without actually surfing to said page.



So, for example, the above picture shows a small 'slice' of the StumbleUpon homepage (the 'internet buzz' section) without having you to surf over to StumbleUpon to check out what has recently been 'stumbled'. Quite intuitive. You could also cut a 'slice' of your Facebook homepage and have it update you on your friends' latest updates.

The second key feature is what Microsoft calls Activities. What it really means is "stuff you can do from the right click menu." Okay, so actually this feature isn't really new and you can already do many things off a right-click with the appropriate plugins in FireFox and / or Flock. And to be honest, most of the couple of Activites in Microsoft's current line-up are just boring stuff tied to their services which no one uses (Blog on Spaces anyone?) There are useful ones, like "Share link via Facebook", which lets you instantly share the page you're on by posting it up on your Facebook page.



But still, I applaud the inclusion of functionality like Activities into Internet Explorer 8 simply because it validates the shifting of the web towards iteration 2.0. It validates what all of Microsoft's competitors have been doing. Who are we kidding? Internet Explorer will probably still be the web browser the majority of people will use because it's the one they find installed on their PCs. And by integrating Web 2.0 functionality into IE8, soon web-behaviour will shift towards the Web 2.0 dream the geeks and geekettes have been having.

Future of the browser

It's clear that the new frontier for war on the browser front will be waged on how well web-browsers can integrate Web 2.0 functionality. Each combatant manages this differently. Firefox gives you very base functionality, but has a fantastic plug-in system that let's you customise almost indefiitely. IE8's slices and activities show's some innovative thinking from the software giant. Flock tells me too much of a good thing can be bad.

What people will soon have to consider though is how much more heavy these browsers will be thanks to this new functionalities. I've heard horror stories of FireFox 3, and even the latest release candidate 2 is considered bloatware by many. To the uninitiated, this simply means that your computer slows down every time you open up an internet browser. The more it slows down, the "heavier" your browser is.

Secondly, most of these "social" browsers will collect private and personal information about you and insist that it's stored on your computer. Of course, you have the option of keying in all the passwords to your GMail, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, MSNLive, and Yahoo! accounts again if you like. But I suspect not very many people would. The danger in this is obvious, as we pander for the convenience having a socially-integrated web browser brings, we put ourselves at the risk of having much of our security information stolen. Sure, it's already happening now with saved passwords and cookies, but imagine a single browser piecing together your multiple identities on the web and then having all that data stolen? Even more dangerous, how about passing your laptop to a colleague to use and when he / she pops open the browser, he / she gets greeted by some very private Facebook messages?

Thirdly, with the rise of mobile devices, more and more emphasis will be placed on the "content" of the site and not the webpage itself. Sure, the browser will be relevant for a long time coming, but what about those mobile devices that basically let you browse what you want on the web without having to actually browse? For example, my client Nokia, has been developing some pretty cool S60 apps like Share Online which allows you to check out and comment on your own or your contacts Flickr photos without actually logging onto Flickr through a browser. Or Twibble, which I use as my main means of staying connected to Twitter without actually browsing over to Twitter. In fact, a lot of the integration of Web 2.0 functionality straight into the browser actually helps you get around actually "browsing" the page.

Just some thoughts to think about as we move into the next wave of Internetting. :)

Craig Barrett talks about Education and Technology

Posting a video that I took yesterday. Craig makes some really interesting comments, if you can look past the Intel Classmate plugs. Would have posted this earlier but made the mistake of recording it in High Quality on my N95 which resulted in a 212 MB file!

Let's start a conversation about Rakan Cyber.

This bit of today's page two story in the New Straits Times caught my attention:

[Besides that], said Ismail, a new arm called Rakan Cyber, would be added to the seven others in Rakan Muda soon.

One of the main reasons was to reach out to the new generation through cyberspace - a sphere in which the Barisan Nasional government has admitted it was lagging behind.

"A lot of blogs these days paint a negative picture. That's why we are coming up with these positive blogs," he said.

To counter blogs that are "negative" let's bring out some "positive" blogs?

In the age of the conversation, I can't just help but feel that these steps are anchored in the age where "media is propaganda."

Let's have a conversation. Your thoughts please?

Maps on Ovi

Client had another interesting video crossing blogs today. Personally, I'm impressed (nothing to do with me working on the account), this is just what I need when I'm planning a holiday in Australia :).

Proper stories here and here. What do you think?

Maps [check], GPS [check], Internet [check] this is what I'm gonna do in Brisbane.

This is awesome. I'm inspired. When I go to Gold Coast and Brisbane next month, this is what I'm going to do.



Okay, first off, Stavros is a fictional character Nokia created for this pretty (clever) online advertising campaign. But the technology is real. Yeap, you can download Nokia Sports Tracker, use the built in GPS on your N95 or N82, and send the routes you've walked and photos you've taken online. Perfect for chronicling your adventures. You can even create the map and embed it on your blog; check here.

So what I'm gonna do is try doing this whilst I'm in Aussie-land with the wife and see if it's really as simple as its made out to be. Hopefully, I'll come back with lots of pictures and interesting routes to try.

Jason, Robin, Ernest, interested in seeing if we can map a couple of mountain bike trails and post them online?

Of course, in case you didn't already know, in the interest of full disclosure, Nokia is one of my clients but I am not writing this post for anything remotely job-related.

So did you study blogging in Uni?