Part of NaBloPoMo 2008

With all these talks about new media I’ve seen the trend of people moving to online means to get their newest news. I can’t deny that it happened to me too. Well sorry, when I’m in front of my computer almost 24 hours a day (minus the time I take to sleep and to go to bathroom and to eat), it kinda doesn’t make sense to go down to nearest convenience store or uncles aunties in front of MRT station to buy the newspaper.

However I still longed to read a newspaper. Seriously, even with 54.0 Mbps internet, clicking a link to go to another story still takes longer than flipping the paper.

And furthermore I longed for news from Indonesia. Singapore news websites are of course overloaded with Singapore news. Kompas.com is one reliable source for me, as it is the website of Kompas, the most popular and generally trustworthy newspaper in Indonesia (Jakarta). However the website is just too cluttered with ads it turned me off. Detik.com is another option but the website is just, to say the least, not very pretty. (websites are in Indonesian)

There are only few good Indonesian blogs I know. And just like that, I was shut out from news of Indonesia.

However things changed when my friend introduced me to the coolest newspaper ever : EPaper Kompas, online!

It looks exactly like the real newspaper..

Screenshot of EPaper Kompas

Well if only I had bigger screen. Big sigh.

Using broadband 54.0 Mbps internet, the pages load smoothly and the flipping doesn’t take very long. I wonder how it works using less superior Internet in Indonesia though. I figure that maybe this ePaper is targeted to Indonesians abroad (like me). Well most Indonesians (at least in Jakarta) are subscribed to Kompas everyday anyway.

Anyway, since this is talking about new media, I guess it’s worthy to mention that Kompas itself has its own blog network called Kompasiana. It is mainly populated by the journalists of Kompas, with “celebrity bloggers” adding spices here and there. Read more about it in Budiputra’s CNet entry. By the way, Budi Putra is known as Indonesia’s first professional blogger (he let go his job as a journalist in a well-known local magazine to be a professional blogger). Aside from Kompasiana, Kompas also has KoKi (Kompas Kita/Komunitas Kita – Our Kompas, Our Community), a portal dedicated to citizen journalism.

Whoever thought that the so-called traditional media is dead, hasn’t found Indonesia’s strong “traditional media in new media”, Kompas. They hit back hard, surely!

Bravo Kompas!

Wonder when Today and The Straits Times will follow.. No, I refuse to acknowledge people bashing Stomp‘s Singapore Seen as citizen journalism portal.

Maybe it was my network. Maybe it’s just wordpress. I dunno. I have a lot of things in mind to write but then having to wait for a looooong while to be logged in (and failed, in the end) really turned me off.

In any case, in one rare opportunity that I successfully logged in, I wish to inform you readers that I’m joining NaBloPoMo. It’s simple. Just post something everyday during the month of November.

This is going to be challenging. Also to mention that my exams and project deadlines are coming up!

It starts 2 days from now (on the 1st of November) and I’m excited even though not necessarily ready or prepared.

Wish me luck!

View my profile on NaBloPoMo

I have been an avid follower of Sugar Networks blogs. Fabsugar and BellaSugar is my daily bread for fashion and beauty, and of course GeekSugar to feed my geekiness.

I got the news in my Google Reader one fine morning and one thing caught me : free access to Getty Images and Fashion Week photos! Oh my! As I have been blogging for quite some time, one of the most tedious things to do is to find images. Not just any image, it must be an image that’s free from copyright restrictions. Getting in a legal mess just because of a picture is the last thing I want to have in my blogging journey.

So since I was already a member in the Sugar Networks, I quickly headed to OnSugar and created my first website. Check out Sweet as Sugar. It’s just a test website though, so not much is there actually.

Anyway that aside, I’m so in love with this blogging platform. It’s like the bastard child of tumblr and wordpress plus so much more features. To see the sneak peeks please read more to continue. It’s gonna be long so I hope you can keep up with it!

Dashboard

The OnSugar Dashboard

The dashboard looks a lot like Tumblr’s Dashboard.

The Tumblr Dashboard

This is because OnSugar offers different type of posts. However as you can see OnSugar has more variety in post types. Let me go through them.

Gallery

Gallery allows you to.. well, make gallery of photos.

You upload photos from your hard disk using a Java applet.

Adding Photos to OnSugar Gallery

Oddly enough they don’t give options to make a gallery of photos from Getty Images or Fashion Week.

Check out a test gallery.

Spread

This is so exciting! You’re given a “canvas” to create a “look”. Basically you can add photos of different products you like! The search is provided through ShopStyle, which then will search numerous online shopping websites. It’s very user friendly. Just click add image, and search.

Search Results for Brown Top on ShopStyle

The search can further refined by brand, price, store, and sale.

Refining ShopStyle Search

After adding the images, you can freely move your images and resize it. You can also add some text.

Make a Spread on OnSugar

You can also add a background to the photos so it looks like a polaroid.

Check out the spread post.

Poll and Quiz

Well these two are pretty explanatory.. To make polls and quizzes, in an easy, automated way.

Making Quiz on OnSugar

Making Polls on OnSugar

No more going to external poll maker such as PollDaddy.

Others (basic stuff)

The other stuff is pretty much the same with Tumblr. Quote, Link, Chat, Video, and Audio. I wonder what’s the limit for video and audio upload though.

Now even though I’ve been comparing it with Tumblr, it has features that Tumblr doesn’t.

Static Pages

Editing Pages on OnSugar

It again has different types of pages that you can add, based on the categories. If you want to add something more generic, such as About Me, you can add “text”.

Widgets

Similar of that of WordPress, you can easily customize your sidebar by adding pre-designed widgets. Including twitter and flickr too!

Editing Widgets on OnSugar

Of course if you want something more generic, there’s always “Text or HTML”.

Subscription

OnSugar offers RSS Feed, and “Follow this site” feature. If someone, a member of TeamSugar, follows your site, he/she will get e-mail alert everytime you post a new post.

Themes

There are pre-made themes but we’re free to customize the themes using the in-built theme editor.

Theme Editor on OnSugar

I think the pre-made themes are pretty enough though

Summary

Verdict : KEWLNESS.

What I like

• Different types of posts that doesn’t require any programming
• Free Getty Images and Fashion Week photos. Plus ShopStyle photos too.
• Clean and fast interface
• No advertisements
• Fully editable theme (CSS) with user-friendly editor

What I don’t really like

• Only TeamSugar registered users can leave comments (a subtle forced sign up)
• Inflexible. Codes are not open source and there are no plugins to be added. But who needs plugins anyway when there are already many features bundled?
• OnSugar.com subdomain. I hope in the future it can support custom domain name though.
• In the Spread post, you can’t rotate or flip things. In short, no further image editing capabilities are available.

More info

So…

After my write-up, what do you think about OnSugar?

Confused?

I’ve been seeing this problem by comments left by my friends. It will have their name (their wordpress.com username), but that name isn’t linked to their blog.

This is a disadvantage, since people who want to visit back will have difficulties to go directly to the webpage (the blog). Most of the time I will need to type username.wordpress.com to visit their blogs. Well I do that, but how many other people/bloggers do that? They’ll most probably just pass it off. No traffic is going to you! Ho noes!

This is because they’re usually already signed in to their wordpress.com account and since they already are, they don’t need to fill in the details such as name, e-mail, and web URL like usual comment form asks for.

So behold! I’m going to teach you how to link your name to your webpage, and watch your traffic increasing (well, hopefully :P).

First step, go to your Dashboard

And then click “Users”

And now, click “Your Profile”

Now scroll down and find the section Contact Info.
Find the textbox named Website

…. and enter your website address there.

And there’s no next step! That’s it! So easy.

Hope it was helpful for you!

Original photo by Vox Efx

Photo by Leo Reynolds

My prof mentioned these 10 tips to make your blogging more effective in the class. I’ll list it down here, plus my own take on the tips.

1. Have something of value to share with other people
I would like to add something on this. Besides value, remember to give in your sincere effort for each post. Copy-pasting a valuable post from other blogs will give value, but not sincere effort. So I think the best thing is to have value AND sincere effort. Having only either one doesn’t work that well.

2. Post by some fairly regular schedule (have a tiny element of predictability) 
I can’t agree more on this. Some people might not use Google Reader or similar RSS reader (and some people who don’t even know what RSS is….) and those people will frequently manually open your blog address. If they don’t see new posts in your blog for too long, they will get bored and in the end will never open your blog again. Of course this also applies to people with RSS readers too. Some people get bombarded by hundreds of new updates everyday (sounds familiar…? :P) and if you don’t update often, you will basically get forgotten

3. Comment on other blogs 3-5 times as much as you post on yours
Online presence is important, and with thousands and thousands of blogs online, you have to make some effort to get remembered. Commenting is one good way. If you regularly comment on a blog, the owner might (or might not… oh well) go back to your blog and gives comment too.
Ok I’ll make it even simple : build a relationship.  Take note! This also means that whenever people comment on your blog, take your time and reply them. Visit their blogs and comment too as a token of appreciation. I guarantee, this will make you liked by many

4. Linklove~
Haha I swear that was what I wrote in my notes. Ok the point is when you are referencing something, refer to that. It’s the web! With HTML you can literally link everything! (See what I mean?)

This brings two advantages. The first one is that you add value for your readers, so that they can read up more if they want to know more. The second one is that if you link to somebody else, who knows he/she returns your favour! In this recent trend of paid links and advertisements, free links are rare.

5. Craft attention-grabbing headlines
This is the same thing that goes for traditional journalism. And the same basic rule applies : Don’t be misleading! People in online world are cruel, really. Accept the truth. So don’t make them feel cheated and not coming back to your blog ever again.

6. Write for easy quick read/skim (keep your paragraphs/sentences short, use active verbs)
This is the top tip like seriously. Through my years of blogging I have found out that making posts scannable is really the trick. Also, adding images. And headings! Ok I won’t elaborate much, let Problogger explain it to you. Seriously, read that up. That’s good stuff. Additionally, also read the guide of how to polish individual blog posts by the same man.

7. Put the most important information first (in the first sentence)
This goes with the tips #5. Basically, make your readers glued to your post. Readers might be a very busy person, no time to really read up all thousands posts posted online. So make sure you grab his/her attention and make his/her attention worthwhile. In case you want some element of surprise, use my own strategy : put a beautiful image on top! Find some in Flickr or Deviantart. Please be wary of their license though, don’t get yourself in a legal mess.

8. Tag Wisely
Actually I’m still guilty on not really utilizing tags so I can’t comment much. The prof said that it might bring you traffic, but maybe that’s more relevant if you’re blogging on a public blogging service (like WordPress.com and Blogspot) where you can browse blog under the same service. If you’re blogging in your own personal domain, though, it might be more useful in terms of organizing and finding your relevant blog posts (and aid the readers to find relevant posts too!).

9. Join Blogging Groups
The prof mentioned ping.sg which I think is a good and prominent community meta blog in Singapore. Bear in mind, though, that even though this type of community site will be a good marketing tool, don’t abuse it too much. As a ping.sg member myself (for quite a long time already), one of the things that irk us (the members) the most are the people that use ping.sg just to advertise. The point of blogging groups is the community it builds, and how we can find new posts (and new friends!) from there.

Do not worry though, we at ping.sg people are friendly people

10. Manage your persona
My prof explained this in one sweet, short, and simple sentence : “Do people want to share a conversation with someone like you?”. As for me, be wary, is all I can say. Not all people is nice in the blogosphere. Daryl Tay, a fellow blogger (who is also a senior of mine in SMU) wrote about this before. And also, remember what I said : Blog what you want, but blog responsibly.

My tip that is not listed here is.. Take your time. Blogging is a habit. A habit takes time to form. All you need is to repeatedly encourage that forming of habit.

Hope this will help you for your blogging! (And help you to remember your stuff in COMM215, for my fellow students. :P)

Do you yourself any other tips to share? Do leave it in the comment!

Dear bloggers, hear what I think..

***

Remember what defines you as a blogger.

If you have a blog and you update it regularly voluntarily (under no pressure of other people or rather money pressure), you’re a blogger.

This is my personal opinion, but after muddling around the blogosphere for years, this is the best term that I think defines a blogger.

And you better believe me rather than those people blogging since 2007 or later.

A blog is your space. Your personal space. Your proof of claim of that tiny space in the cyber world. It is yours. It’s read by everybody, but it’s yours. Your content is yours. Your words are yours.

And whenever you want to update your blog, there are only two rules:

1. Blog what you want.
2. Blog responsibly.

Yes, blog what you want. Blog about how you tried to trim your dog’s nails but it refused so it scratched your arm. Blog about your chance encounter with some hot guy in the fitness center. Blog about your grandma who told you her old stories from the war time. Blog about your hot night out with some friends.

No, blogging about technology stuff and gadgets doesn’t make you instantly cool. Blogging about social media doesn’t get you into the “top bloggers” list instantly. Trying to teach people about how to make money doesn’t make you compelling. Talking about the latest update in politics doesn’t make you smart all of a sudden.

Only blog about stuff because you WANT to. Sure, blog about that new gadget that catches your fancy because it has the cool feature you’ve been longing for. Blog about social media because you’re so excited that it can help your business’ next marketing project. Blog about making money scam you’ve encountered (oh come on, there’s a lot). Blog about politics because you study political science and you think what you studied doesn’t really apply in the real politic world.
(note that the reasons are not exhaustive, in case there are some real ahem… less intelligent people who think so)

Don’t ever feel forced. Don’t fall into peer pressure. You know what happens to the teenagers who took drugs because their friends took it too.

And secondly, blog responsibly. Now that you can blog whatever you want, be responsible. This mainly concerns your readers. Let’s just assume your blog has readers, unless it’s somewhere out there locked by password that only you know (now that, I don’t know if it’s still a blog). As I mentioned before, your blog is yours but your readers are not. And your readers’ perceptions are not yours either. And since the words are yours, they will always be attributed to yours and you can’t deny them.

Sure you had a boring day in office and your boss scolded you for not finishing your work. Well we all have our bad days don’t we? But saying “Working in ABandC Company sucks! Don’t work here” won’t be a responsible thing to say, no? Sure you met an annoying person in the bus this morning. But talking about the race of that person and labelling that race as inferior is not a wise move, right? Sure you had a big fight with your parents today but flaming them behind their back and letting out family secrets are not in any way good, are they?

You might eventually apologize and take down the post but in some readers’ memory (or in Google cache, or in screenshots), it will stay and you’ll still be labelled as irresponsible blogger.

Don’t defend your stand because of “It’s my blog and who the heck cares!”. In whatever you do, not only blogging, think about the impact of your actions. In either online world or offline world you don’t live alone, and stop pretending that you are.

There’s no gauge for good or bad blogger. There are only popular bloggers and they all have many different things that made them popular (sadly, preference to flame people and showcasing unnecessary skin included but no, you don’t have to do that, really)

I’m a blogger. You’re a blogger. Together we make the blogosphere. Not only 1 or 2 or 3 popular bloggers. We’re included too.

We are the blogosphere.

I swear that was the real thing that Hillary said to me.

hillary saying

The plurk is here.

Anyway, If you’re too lazy to open the plurk, I was asking for opinions for a niche I can blog about. I mean, I’ve blogged about many things in my personal blog, mainly because I have too many interests. I initially wanted to talk about web 2.0 and social media, but to be honest I’m quite tired about them and I don’t want to be seen as “following the trend”. Let me talk about it later.

Suggestions came in. Krisandro mentioned accessory making, which I enjoy so much doing, but lately I have too little time to make those trinkets. Malique mentioned about simple and easy recipes, but I don’t really cook and thus I’m not really able to churn original content. Paced mentioned about movie reviews. I like movies and I like reviewing them, but the problem is I don’t watch movies that often anymore. Hillary recommended about fashion. She said I got good imagination with fashion (which is actually unproven). Well, I can write about fashion of course, but no one will really be interested I think, unless overweight girls fashion is on fire.

The reason why I didn’t want to blog about social media was that.. I believe in original content. Sure I can browse through the blogs talking about social media and then write articles similar to them. In fact I can blog about anything if I want to. Information in the Internet is endless and a bit too much. Found this, found that, copy-paste, put image, a blogpost done. But no, that’s not what I want.

So the important question is.. Why did I finally decide to blog about social media/web 2.0?

This is because.. I realize I have unique stories about social media/web 2.0. As I mentioned in the previous post, I’ve been muddling in web 2.0 for quite some time but well.. I’m not really those prominent bloggers who has thousands of followers/subscribers, who always blog regularly (notably with lists) about “Things in Social Media”.

I’m not.

But I’m inside.

Remember this guy?

This is Linguini from the movie Ratatouille. Before he ever became the famous chef (or rather.. “chef”), he was just the cleaner in the kitchen. He’s not cooking for you, no, but he’s inside, he’s part of the kitchen/restaurant.

If this guy blogs..

(this is the head chef, by the way)
What will the blogpost be?

In restaurant business, the important thing is to bring smiles to the customer. So no matter who the customer is, no matter how weird their requests are, they’re still number one. So today I encountered this customer that sent a special request to the kitchen asking for roasted duck, but the duck must be female. You can either 1. freak out or 2. find a way to talk to them. The tactic of this is ……

But when the cleaner boy is blogging, what will it be?

You know what the most important thing in restaurant business is? Somebody who can be told to do anything impossible! Like calling duck meat suppliers and ask for female duck meat. Not just any duck meat, must be a female duck meat. So I went frantic and dealt with them and …..

This blog will contain the stories like these. Ok, not that extreme, but something you might not have heard in the middle of this social media abyss.

So keep coming back for more. For the very first time, I’m going to open up about what I think about social media/web 2.0.

I’ve been muddling around web 2.0 for years now, after started blogging in my MSN space. But that blog had just 2 entries and thus I don’t think I need to link it I then moved to Friendster Blogs and was blogging until about 2006. I then moved to Blogger. At this point of time I was still blogging in my mother tongue (Indonesian). After I moved to Singapore in 2006, a friend encouraged me to move to a self-hosted wordpress site. After messing around with sites, I firmly stay in My Grey World.

And this was the time when I knew about web 2.0. This was the video that made me understand what web 2.0 is.

I wrote about it here in my personal blog.

Anyway, after a while, I found out about ping.sg. It was initially a desperate plea to get traffic, but after that I found out about their shoutbox and through that, I joined their outings after outings and soon after online friends become personal offline friends. Yes apparently it can happen. Give me another post to talk about this later.

And after reading so much rave in ping.sg and other sites, I joined Twitter. And became addicted to it quite instantly. Especially for the fact that I can update it via phone/sms (provided I have enough credit for international sms – yes I still use pre-paid cards). Blogposts in my personal blog decreased – since posting short updates in blog is no longer necessary (which I did often actually). After Twitter, I joined the hype again : Plurk. It’s microblogging with conversation, perfect for me.

I also joined del.icio.us and digg but I don’t really use it that much nowadays. Another web 2.0 “thingy” I like is StumbleUpon. It’s more like a time-waster,

but I have discovered a lot of great sites (and great procrastinator tools) through it. Since I’m a music person, I also joined last.fm, and later a late adopter of imeem. I like to take pictures so I joined Flickr and even became a pro member, but I left it eventually since I realized I don’t really need it that much.

And what’s web 2.0 without Social Networking, yes? I adopted Friendster quite early, and it was the “in” thing when I was in high school. Along the way social networking sites sprouted out and I joined liveconnector, hi5, myspace, and maybe other sites I forgot. (you can see the list here) At SMU Facebook seemed to be the hype so I joined and quite hooked on it since. I make use of a lot of applications and I have about 400 (real) friends there.

So there you go. Web 2.0 and me.

The question is still unanswered though. So am I credible enough to talk about web 2.0?

My personal answer is : perhaps. Web 2.0 (or a bit narrower, social media/new media) consists of a lot of things and while all those things are extremely interesting and useful (in some sense), I don’t use them all.

Ask me something though, and I’ll be glad to share.

This blog is made to jot down my thoughts about Corporate Communication/Social Media. Well yeah of course this blog is made for a course in school, COMM215, that’s Digital Media Across Asia, folks.

Hope the blog will be entertaining and keep you coming back from more.

Well if u want to know my personal blog… You can keep searching on internet. Keep searching, keep searching…