Blogscapes

This may not mean much to anyone else but me, but thought I’d just like to announce that Blogscapes has passed the 10, 000-hit mark!

Frankly, when I started the blog late 2006, little did I know then, that the compulsion to maintain the blog and write regular posts would be with me, and so it has! Here’s to 10, 000 more hits!

Yesterday, I wrote about Malaysian blogger, Raja Petra being jailed for sedition. Anyway, to follow-up on that post, he’s now agreed to post bail.

And it’s none other than his 54 year-old wife, Marina Lee Abdullah’s words, “I want you back” that helped Raja Petra change his mind. No doubt, his wife is concerned about his welfare and deteriorating health in jail especially when he’s embarked on a hunger strike.

Well, looks like there won’t be a need for any more candle light vigils for him.

I’ve been reading the book by Ted Demopoulos entitled “What no one ever tells you about blogging and podcasting”:

The book is a compilation of blogging and podcasting tips that  he’s compiled based on his interviews with successful bloggers and podcasters. Ted Demopoulos is particularly interested in seeing how blogs and podcasts add to the marketing/businesss mix of companies.

I have picked up some interesting tips such as using stats counters like Blog stats and Sitemeter (which I have since added) to help provide more info on the blog’s readership, as well some useful reminders about the need to include links and blogroll.

He also mentions an important point about the need to ‘listen’ to what’s out there in the blogosphere as well. All too often, bloggers are caught up with blogging and tend to forget to read others’ blogs. You can only join in the conversation in the blogosphere by reading, leaving comments or emailing the bloggers, and inviting them to read your blog and leave comments too. Thus, disabling a ‘comments’ feature is a big no-no, according to the author and the people he interviewed.

You can also read more about Ted Demopoulos’ thoughts and musings on technology, business and their intersection in his blog, The Ted Rap.

In the book, the writer also shares some useful blogs to read, and I’ll share some of the useful links here with you:

 Marcom Blog

InfOpinions

Buzzoodle

BlogWrite for CEOs

Practical Blogging

Copyblogger

Bloglogic - news from the blogosphere

SEObook

Podcast Roundtable

Talkr - Letting blogs speak for themselves

It’ll be worth your while to check out the above links!

A few days ago, I blogged about how blogging could be bad for your health. In a way, I have come to realise how true some of the health risks mentioned about blogging are.

On a few occasions recently, I have been online for a few hours straight, blogging, Facebooking, MySpacing, Youtubing and all, and you know when you are online, some times the time just flies by! And sometimes when that happens, I don’t realise that I’ve been stuck in the same position, and you guessed it, major cramps and backache!

And I’m sure that doesn’t even come close to what professional bloggers experience, esp the two bloggers, Russell Shaw and Marc Orchant, who died of heart attacks.

There’s good reason for bloggers to take note of blogging hazards and take care.

And that reminds me, time for a vision break and the laptop is starting to cramp my thighs!

I came across this unsettling albeit interesting article on NY Times online” In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop . 

The article talks about professional bloggers who blog away at home almost non-stop as they are paid by the posts, many of whom are suffering. There have been two casualties so far: Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack just two weeks ago, and another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary in December. Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.

One common area between them is that they blog about one of the most competitive categories inblogging, which is ”about technology developments and news”. There is a ”vicious 24-hour competition to break company news, reveal new products and expose corporate gaffes”.

Many other bloggers also mention they have ”weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet”.

With more money and influence found online, it looks like this scary trend is set to rise?

Perhaps, there should be a mandatory rest period for time-out and exercise that could be in built into all blog hosts, so that bloggers are reminded to focus on something else every half an hour!

Last Sunday, while attending a book launch by local writer Christine Lim Su Chen (a collection of short stories, The Lies That Build A Marriage: Stories of the Unsung, Unsaid & Uncelebrated in Singapore) at the Arts House, I picked up a copy of the Singapore Writers Festival programme and was pleasantly surprised to see bloggers getting a platform in the festival to share about their craft, just as other writers and poets who had sessions to talk about their works.

In fact, on the very same day, there were two talks by Mr Miyagi and Mr Kenny Sia in the Chambers at the Art House on How to Make Money without Really Trying and Minding your Ps and Qs: Blogging Etiquette. That evening, there was also a talk on The Fine Art of Food Blogging (yes, why not talk about one of Singaporean’s first loves?) and World Wide Web of Words - Literary Blogs. There was also something on Reel Blogging.

Unfortunately, I was not able to be at two places at the same time. Perhaps there will be a recording of the sessions put up on someone’s blog or on the website itself?

But what struck me was that to some extent, this goes to show that bloggers (well, at least some of them - I mean I see the usual names … Mr Miyagi, Aun (Chubby Hubby) Koh, Ms Cheryl Chia, the Keropok Man … have gained sufficient respectability and credibility to be included in the hallowed writers circle.

This is indeed a milestone for the local blogosphere and even the Asian blogosphere, with local and other Asian bloggers being invited to be part of this event.

I do believe that bloggers have much to contribute to the new landscape of literary (or even non-literary) writing.

The official website for the festival states that “central to the SWF is the belief that literary arts is one of Singapore’s major cultural expressions, one that contributes to the collective identity of Singaporeans” and that the festival is to help “promote new and emerging Singapore and Asian writing to a wider public”.

There is no doubt that blogs can contribute to the local and Asian writing scene. Already, many local bloggers have developed a following and it can’t be denied that they form part of the collective consciousness of Singporeans.

It’s also little wonder then, that local bloggers want more say about regulating the blogosphere. Local bloggers have mentioned that they want to be on the discussion panel and not leave it to the elite academics to determine rules and regulations for the blogosphere.

With so much said and done about social networking sites, there’s bound to be uses and abuses of them.

Indeed, the use of social networking in the workplace is regarded as being controversial, with many having their say and questions about it. You can read some of the views at: Kit Kai’s Tech Blog; Web 2.0 and its impact on 21st Century; Scaling the Social Web, and more.

Young people tend to use social networking sites to keep in touch with their friends and enlarge their social circles. Some use it as a way to suss out potential mates, check out the competition, entertain their friends, and themselves, etc.

While there’s nothing wrong with that, what’s making employers and companies fret is that many of the employees are spending too much time working on their Facebook profiles, checking out how many people have invited them to be friends, or throwing sheep at each other!

According to a Straits Times article entitled “We’re (net)working”, $390 million is lost a day due to loss of productivity caused by cyber-loafing. You say network, I say notwork? While employees may be tapping away at their keyboards, they may not be engaging in any productive office work. They say that employees are getting distracted by MSN messages and pop-ups, etc.

This has actually led to some companies banning and blocking the use of such social networking sites.

Not only are companies concerned about the loss of productivity, they are also concerned that certain company trade secrets and practices may be knowingly or unknowingly revealed to outsiders. This is pretty much like the concern with employees blogging about work.

But is this the way to go? Perhaps companies need to know that they are dealing with a new breed of digital natives and going online to blog and network is part and parcel of their lives. And I have a new term for the new generation of digital natives. It’s “Duo Core generation” with duo core brains which seem to allow digital natives to process separate tasks independently.

Perhaps instead of trying to beat them, some companies have tried to join them. One example is IBM.  IBM warms to social networking and has started using IBM’s Lotus Connections which allows the whole company to engage and network. IBM staff write blogs and keep wikis and make use of social networking software to keep in the loop, thus creating a sense of one giant community.

Some other uses for Web 2.0 technologies in the workplace could be corporate wikis where the collective information and intelligence of staff could be stored and referenced, as well as company blogs that could clue newcomers in on company FAQs and the company culture and the like. Project blogs and wikis could be another collaborative space for working on team projects. It depends on the creativity of the company as well. Perhaps staff could suggest more ways that companies could use such Web 2.0 technologies more effectively in the workplace.

If you wish to read up on more ideas and/or contribute your ideas, there’s a useful site that let’s you do just that: http://www.blog4biz.sg/index.htm. Of course, you care also most welcome to comment on Blogscapes!

In my blog post last week, I wrote about the Singaporean blogger who’s in the running for a blog scholarship.

It was a nice surprise that Kevin actually dropped by and added the following comment:

Kevin  |  19, October, 2007 at 4:32 am

Thanks for the support! I didn’t think it’d be that big a deal, but I do feel honored to be listed among the 20 college bloggers.

Thanks for coming by Blogscapes, Kevin! We wish you all the best!

This is yet another example of the power of new media! It’s able to carry what you say across to a real audience.

The blog comes of age!  There’s now a blog scholarship offered by The Daniel Kovach Scholarship Foundation for college students in the US. Talk about giving legitimiacy to the blog, and recognising its power as a powerful medium of communication and influence!

This is the first ever blog scholarship and the winner stands to get a US$5, 000  scholarship annually.  One of the requirements for nominations is that the “blog must contain unique and interesting information about [the blogger] and/or things [the blogger] is passionate about.”

And in the group of 20 selected to be in the running for the scholarship is Singaporean blogger, Mr Kevin Lim, a PhD student taking communications at the State University of New York in Buffalo.

Kevin Lim has been blogging since 2004 and has covered numerous topics in his blog, ranging from “intellectual property rights to social phenomena in cyberspace”.

I managed to find his blog (I say ‘find’ as surprisingly, the newspaper article that featured Kevin didn’t list it!) and you can read more about Kevin and his potentially-award-winning blog at theory. isthereason.

The winner will be chosen by a public balloting system on the college website.  A quick check on the site shows that Kevin is not in the top running currently, but it’s early days yet, with voting closing in the first week of November. Another quick check online shows that some people out there are already actively canvassing support for Kevin!

Here’s wishing Kevin all the very best as one of the contenders for the world’s first ever blog scholarship! In fact, his very nomination has helped to place Singapore on the global blogmap.

A couple of racist blogs have been taken down by the authorities. The two blogs featured racist comments with vulgarities and negative remarks about Muslims in Singapore. They were apparently started by the same person, presumably a male student in Singapore.  One blog was created in August and the other earlier this month.

The two blogs were hosted on Google’s Blogger site, and were taken down for violating the host’s “terms of service”. 

This reminds me of the case of two racist bloggers who were caught about a year or two back. The case kind of became a landmark one as it highlighted one of the abuses of New Media at a time when blogging was starting to catch on in Singapore.  

While it’s true that New Media such as blogs can be abused and used to express negative and divisive sentiments, what struck me about the situation this time is how the blogosphere and cyberspace seems to have developed an in-built self-regulating mechanism. What do I mean by that?

The one who ’blew the whistle’ in this case is trainee teacher Tanveer Khan who came across the blogs on Sept 9. Tanveer knew that what he read was wrong and would have a negative effect on its readers and the race relations in Singapore, and immediately emailed the Media Development Authority (MDA) to inform them of the existence of the blogs.

His actions resulted in the blogs being blocked on Sept 18 and 20. The authorities do not police the blogosphere but do take action when they receive any specific information that needs investigating. In addition, the blog hosts such as Blogger also take action against users and prohibit certain undesirable content from being hosted on its servers. More details on specific content that violates Blogger’s policies can be found at www.blogger.com/content.g.

Anyway, with watchful Web users like Mr Tanveer, coupled with the proposed changes to the Penal Code stating that a person convicted of causing racial and religious disharmony can be jailed up to three years or fined, or both, it looks like bloggers who wish to spout undersirable sentiments should exercise more restraint.