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Thursday, May 30, 2013 By Abhijit

Website alternatives

I saw a popular Singapore website worried about the new rule.

Sites which report or comment on Singapore once a week on average and get more than 50,000 unique visitors a month will need an annual licence and have to post a S$50,000 bond.

The Online Citizen is worried it may not be able to raise the money if asked to get a licence.

Its readers and its creators, of course, would be sad to see it go.

But are stand-alone websites as important as they used to be now that we have social media?
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Monday, March 25, 2013 By Abhijit

Google+, minus Google Reader

Google Reader is being shut down because people are not sharing enough content on Google+, says a former Google Reader product manager. The Reader was being kept alive to drive content to Google+, but it did not do so, says Brian Shih, speaking from his own experience.

Google’s big hit in social media has been YouTube rather than Google+. In a blog post last week, YouTube announced: “YouTube now has more than a billion unique users every single month.”

Powering this growth, it said, is Gen C (C stands for content) – youngsters born between 1988 and 1993 — who, according to the Google Agency Blog, watch YouTube “on all screens, all the time”.

That brings YouTube neck and neck with Facebook which reports “more than a billion active users as of December 2012.”Continue Reading

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Sunday, September 16, 2012 By Abhijit

From Nipplegate to quipping and tweeting

Google should have blocked the YouTube video insulting Prophet Muhammad which led to  the anti-US fury in the Muslim world and the death of the US ambassador to Libya. But, at the same time, we need a lively social media.

Facebook surely erred in temporarily shutting down the New Yorker Facebook page over what the magazine called Nipplegate.  What’s so objectionable about this New Yorker cartoon showing Adam and Eve?

New Yorker Adam and Eve

New Yorker Adam and Eve

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Saturday, September 8, 2012 By Abhijit

Singapore Conversation

There’s so much to learn from Singapore. It is using social media to canvass public opinion. The government has launched a Facebook page (OurSGConversation) and a website (https://www.oursgconversation.sg/) encouraging Singapore to share their views on national issues. The Facebook page, for example, asks:

What kind of home do you want Singapore to be? How do we tie our hopes and our hearts to our home, no matter where we go in life? What are the things that make Singapore unique to you, or that make you proud of Singapore? How do we build the best possible future home for our children?

No longer can critics say Singapore has a paternalistic government with a “Father knows best” approach where the government decides what’s best for the nation. Even if it were true once, Singapore seems none the worse for it as one of the most prosperous, developed countries (all right, city-state) in Asia Pacific. Since the 2011 general election, however, the government has become more responsive to the people.Continue Reading

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Saturday, January 7, 2012 By Abhijit

Singapore: A government attuned to social media

Singapore used to be called a nanny state. Now it has a government attuned to social media.

Singaporeans still get their news from the mainstream media, we are told. That may be so. But the mainstream can no longer ignore the social media. Not when even the leaders have Facebook accounts.

The use of social media can backfire, as Grace Fu found when she aired her views on the proposed pay cuts for ministers. The Senior Minister of State for Information, Communications and the Arts wrote on Facebook:Continue Reading

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Tuesday, August 5, 2008 By Abhijit

The Straits Times and the online competition

Thank you, Online Citizen, for linking to my previous post. Yes, I read The Online Citizen from time to time to get a different view from what appears in the Straits Times. And another Singapore blog I like is My Apple Menu. Why? Just visit the site and click on the Reader and Tomorrow tabs. On any day, it’s more interesting than the Straits Times because there are links to the most exciting posts from publications such as Slate, Salon, New Yorker and the New York Times. This is the kind of competition the Straits Times faces on the Net.

And MyAppleMenu is just one of the myriad choices readers have on the Net. On delicious today I was reading Polymeme, a memetracker covering a range of topics and issues like any newspaper. The difference is while newspapers publish their own and syndicated content, memetrackers and social media sites like delicious, Digg, Reddit, Wikio and memeorandum post links to various publications. The reader still ends up visiting the original publication if he is interested in the story and everybody gains. The reader gets his story and the publication gets more traffic.

The importance of memetrackers, social media sites and news readers like FeedDemon and Google Reader can’t be overstated. I have been shy of social media sites like Facebook so far because I need some privacy, but if anyone is serious about getting attention online, he or she can’t have a walled garden. No website is an island to adapt John Donne’s famous line; it has to open up. Even CNN runs comments from other blogs through Sphere. I know. I have seen my posts appear once or twice. And I am just a flea on the Net, hardly noticed at all.

The Straits Times is the authoritative source of news about Singapore. It has good journalists whom we have come to trust and respect. But it has to raise the bar online. Today I read a fiendishly clever piece on morality which appeared in the New York Times’  magazine. On delicious, I saw a post from ReadWrite Web on the future of blogs and an article from BusinessWeek on cloud computing. The Straits Times could still do what it does best: provide authoritative news and views about Singapore. But Internet users are spoilt for choice. I certainly expect more. 

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Monday, December 31, 2007 By Abhijit

The best of 2007

This has been the year of Google. It has had far more impact than the other internet giants even though Microsoft launched Windows Vista and is adding lots of bells and whistles to Windows Live. Yahoo seems to have lost its way. Sad, for I love My Yahoo, the pioneer news aggregator. Here are my personal favourites for the year.

Favourite online newspaper

The New York Times. I still try to check the Guardian almost every day. But the New York Times has much more content and is more balanced. The Guardian is innovative, but some of the articles in the Comment Is Free section seem to be written to provoke controversy.That’s fine if the writer can deliver one-liners like Maureen Dowd or is funny and inventive like John O’Farrell or passionate like Robert Fisk. But O’Farrell is no longer a Guardian columnist and Dowd and Fisk write for other papers. There are Guardian columnists I like, but more about the Guardian some other time. Meanwhile…

Favourite newsreader/ news aggregator

Google Reader. So clunky when it was launched two years ago, it’s now absolutely indispensable. No better way to keep track of the news and the blogs.

Favourite start page

My Yahoo! I am old-fashioned. Netvibes is innovative and I like the My Universe feature. And for blogging perhaps there can be no better start page than iGoogle. It can be customised to deliver all the information one needs to blog on any subject. But My Yahoo! is simple and can be personalised to carry all the news and blog feeds one wants. It’s easy to use and extremely useful.

Favourite techie/bloggy blogs

Digital Inspiration, Lorelle on WordPress, ReadWriteWeb, Blog Herald and Lifehacker (in no particular order). Not that I need or understand every hack suggested by Digital Inspiration or Lifehacker, but I check them almost every day. Indian Amit Agarwal who created Digital Inspiration is a blogger one must read to keep up with the technology and learn new things about blogging and social media. He is highly informative, full of useful advice, writes simply and is very reader-friendly. Lorelle; VanFossen shares all those qualities; Lorelle on WordPress is a must-read. I also enjoy reading Richard MacManus and his ReadWriteWeb. He is really passionate about social media and Web 2.0. Blog Herald is good reading once again thanks to contributors like Lorelle VanFossen.

Finally…

A word of thanks to Time Goes By and The Blue Sloth. And how could I forget Mausi? I have had little time to blog or read blogs most of this year, but I remember their kind comments when I started. It’s so nice when someone has a good word for you. I am sorry I have seldom responded to any comments recently. Even though I get them so rarely, I have been too busy or too lazy. Of course, I should respond to anyone who takes the trouble to read me and post a comment. Sorry. Thanks go out also to three bloggers in Singapore who posted encouraging comments when I started. They would know who they are. I have never met any of the people I am thanking. That’s the funny thing about blogs or any kind of writing. You get to like strangers and think of them as friends.

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