Politics Pt.3

The opposition party seems to be banking a lot on Social Media and at least right now, it seems to have paid off for NSP's female candidate Nicole Seah. Here she wisely acknowledges the power of the medium without forgetting the people on the ground.

15,000 likes. Now she's just got to convert those into votes.

The Future of the Internet is Written in Chinese

Sorry, I meant the future of the world is written in Chinese. China now has more than 440 million internet users, and its penetration rate is still low compared to the West. Already, Chinese is the second most used language on the internet and if The New Web is right, might take over English at the top spot in less than five years.

And you'd think a country without Youtube and Facebook would be at least a step behind the rest of the social media revolution. The world's greatest copying machine will port all the best ideas over in its trademark unapologetic fashion.

No Youtube? Try Youku.

No Facebook? Try KaiXin.

If Google decides to drop, try Baidu.

Better start brushing up on the hanyu pinyin.

Politics Pt.2

Updating on the previous post, I found that the Ng Eng Hen in the video below was so much more charismatic and engaging than the one in the introductory video. His pronounciation is clear, he is energetic, and humorous.

So really, our politicians can be colourful. It is possibly the tight contraints of the party's video template that dulls the colours. Maybe they should start loosening up a little and let a little colour and excitement shine through.

Politics

So the government decides that social media's impact cannot be denied anymore, and this year's candidates are open to campaign on social media. Although I anticipated a flurry of political activity flooding my news feeds, all I got instead was a video template and talking heads.

One would think that after Obama's immensely successful internet campaign, our politicians would realise just how powerful it can be. But recent activity from the politicians hardly inspire us to share their messages through social media, much less get out and vote. Maybe they'd do better to take a leaf out of Obama's playbook.

However, to be fair the campaigns are still young and there is much room for activities in the days to come. Ministers are now on Facebook, they are taking pictures of their walkabouts and posting them on their profiles. Like I mentioned in my social media post however, they're using it in a very straight forward manner and one can't help but beg for a little creativity in the approach.

Let's hope things get more exciting in the days to come.

Kickstart the World

Fancy watching a documentary about the World Yoyo Championships? Or hearing a hiphop emcee rap over Balkan Brass? Or maybe you want to convert your ipod into a watch? On Kickstarter, otherwise obscure projects like these get a chance at life by combining the concepts of retail and donations.

On the website, artists, film makers, product designers, and general creators upload a video explaining their project and how much they need. In return for funds, creators offer something in return. This could be anything from a name in the credits, to a silkscreened poster to the freakin robot itself.

The amazing thing here is Kickstarter offers a way for artists and funders to meet, not in the middle but at both ends. Creators have a relatively easy way to reach an audience out there that might be interested in funding their work. Funders in return, get something in return for their money. If in the end the money raised is not enough to fund the project, all money is returned and no one gets hurt.

While the site is created with the intention of funding art projects, commercial entities have realized it is also a good way to do business. For example more than 6,000 people have funded the making of a Fat Pencil for your iPhone.

The sit also allows creators to gauge interest before investing time into it. So if you have a cool idea and are not sure if it'll fly, make a video, get on there and let's get it Kickstarted.

Book Burning

I'm surprised that in this day and age, kids still carry textbooks to school. Really. At one time, Polytechnics required a bulky laptop for each student. Now, we have far more manageable devices in netbooks and readers like the iPad.

The digital medium allows for so many benefits, it's befuddling why it isn't the norm. Instead of having to know which of the many textbooks they need for the day, students bring one device. Lesser cases of not having the textbook and having to share. Trees don't have to die. Did I mention multimedia capabilities and information updates? Digital files need no paper and ink and will be cheaper. In the long term, considering the hundreds that will be spent on textbooks, one device with cheaper e-books will be more cost effective.

I suspect a large reason kids still have to lug 400 page tomes to school is the education industry having some obligation to keep its allies in the print and book industry alive. Here's a message to those in the dying industry. It's gonna go. You either profit in the new medium, or someone else is going to.

Someone like E. O. Wilson, who is trying to create a biology textbook called Life on Earth. Wired shows us the first chapter.

His organisation plans to sell University level textbooks at 10 percent of the cost of its printed counterparts. The best part? Kindergarten through 12th Grade editions will be free. How's that for cost effectiveness?

Citizen Journalism

Someone asked me recently. With citizen journalism and social media around, will we see the end of journalists? Truth is, the news business has been on the decline. Across the board, newspapers have reported decreasing readership and ad sales for a while now.

The audience have shifted to the internet and newspapers are having a hard time finding a business model there that works. In addition, to this, journalists are dealt another blow. The regular citizen now has the ability to take photos and film breaking footage even before journalists have arrived on location.

I'll say this. Imagine it really happens and newspapers fold and journalists are no more. We get our news everyday from the opinions and perspectives on social media. In this picture, those who verify their data, speak ethically, and write clearly will simply be the new journalists. Because really journalism is a process of writing accurately, briefly, and clearly.

Squished with everyone else, these people might not be known as journalists anymore but the form and art of journalism, will survive. Squished with everyone else, the journalist who writes ethically will only be valued even more, for he, like the newspaper he used to write for, speaks the truth.

Because in a world where everyone has a soapbox to scream from, those who speak the truth will be heard best.

I Like it on Social Media Pt. 2

Using Social Media creatively is not limited to huge entities. A humble dessert shop in Tampines, Penang A1 Chendol puts up "slogans" on their facebook page that get their facebook fans discounts on drinks.

Social media is a new medium. There still are many marketing strategies/tricks out there waiting to be invented. Go get a squeezer for those creative juices.

I Like it on Social Media

With its low cost, low risk and high potential, Social Media has become the new frontier for marketing and promotions, amongst numerous other things. Today anyone trying to launch anything will very early on be considering getting on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc.

But when everyone is on it, it's easy to get lost in the crowd of status updates blatantly promoting a new product/song. Traditional advertisement messages over a new medium. This is the classic mistake of new media usage.

When the TV was invented, they wanted to port radio shows over to the new medium. When the internet was created, they wanted to port television's advertisement model over. This clearly didn't work and it took a while before they figured out how to use the new medium.

On television, they were manipulating visuals. On the internet, webpages. On social media, few realise, we're really not manipulating webpages anymore, we're manipulating people.

When Breast Cancer Month came around on October 2010, women posted on Facebook that they "like it on" the floor, car hood etc. to promote Breast Cancer Awareness. This internet meme spread like wildfire and soon the whole world became a little more interested in Breast Cancer. Not bad for an inside joke.

Producers from hit television series Family Guy set up a twitter account for one of its fictional characters, Peter Griffin. On it, he posts witty one liners and jokes about current affairs that might not have made it into the actual show. This keeps the audience interested in the show far more effectively than routinely telling them "Family Guy airs 7pm on Tuesday"

Efforts like these truly utilise the social media platform and to succeed on the new frontier, we need to be going in this direction.

Cameras Are the New Guns. Don't Leave Home Without One.

Anything you're not happy about? Now with the internet's ability to make anyone look like a douche to 4 billion people, all you need is a compromising photo of your target. Just look at Singapore's own Whine Central, stomp. Intimate youngsters.. angry staff.. kiasu Singaporeans.. the list goes on.

As with regular guns however, it's easy to shoot, but trickier to avoid being shot at. For that I recommend shooting back with your own camera. Someone's got to Watch the Watchmen right?

All the Right Moves: Google

The Japan disaster hit. Whether you like it or not, people will help. It's generosity. It's also building goodwill among the public for better business in the future. On this front, I think Google responded perfectly to the disaster.

It launched its Crisis Response project, which consists of the people finder to help find the missing and a comprehensive Google Map with markings of evacuation zones etc. All this in Google's trademark no frills, easy to understand user interface.

I mean, you're either looking for someone or have information about someone right?

A statistician would say "on our 5 dimensional, 10 point scale, Google increased its 'Caring' score by 1.8 points and its 'Cool' score by 0.7."

My Social Media Post

Twitter doesn't need to know how bad your day was. The people who made it bad, do.

Logging in Securely

I always enjoy reading about hackers and their stories about late night sneaking through the cyber backdoors of some of the world's largest organisations. While it gives me hope that the brilliant mind can still stick it to Big Brother, it also makes me lose faith in well.. cyber security.

Take this excerpt from the book Kingpin by a guy hardly anyone of us would know of. The systematic, large scale stealing of credit card information from restaurant transactions. All he needed was for you to pay with your credit card at a pizza place and he would be able to sell your information to a credit card counterfeiter.

When I bought this T-shirt online with my credit card, I was prepared to have $60 (and the rest of my bank balance) totally disappear. But the cyber gods smiled down, the T-shirt arrived 2 days later, and my bank account was intact.

Even with this vote of confidence, I'm still skeptical of internet security. Unless needed, I will try to keep my private information off the internet completely. But in such an inter-connected world, where signing off at a restaurant could mean signing off your bank balance, really how safe are we?

Yeah right.

Ephemerally Permanent Pt. 2: Forever Mob

On the internet's ability to make everything permanent, the phenomenon of flash mobs it seems, has taken off. On the internet, the flash lasts forever. (+400 points if you spot me!)

Ephemerally Permanent

Technology and the internet can make everything last forever. Artists on the streets have (ab)used this fact to great effect. Pre-internet, generally their work might reach passer bys for a week before being painted over or "buffed" by authorities.

On the internet however, pictures of their work can stay online for as long as they want them to be available to a worldwide audience. And it seems for the authorities in particular, its slightly trickier to paint over something on the internet.

Blogs like Wooster Collective have dedicated themselves to promoting such art, and have gained huge followings from all over the world. On their site, pieces like Joshua Allen Harri's Air Bear (below), a cleverly placed plastic bag that inflates into a bear as air from the subway rushes through it, last forever.

This has totally changed the incentive and nature of street art and graffiti. Artists no longer have to find prominent but dangerous places to paint in order for their work to be seen. All they need now is photographic evidence of their work. I think this has spurred the Street Art movement, and produced some astonishing results.

Banksy (who also did that cheeky take on getting buffed above) has gained worldwide notoriety and his feature film Exit Through the Gift Shop has been nominated for an Oscar.

Get out there. Leave your mark, and the internet let's you live forever.

TED2011 is Now

In addition to the last post, I thought you guys might want to know that TED2011, is now on. Follow one of the world's most amazing conferences on their blog.

To get some idea of what it's like, here's a video wrap up of last year's conference.

From 800 People a Year, to 750,000 People a Day

TED, is a conference people pay $6000 to attend to hear others speak about remarkable ideas. A few years ago, it did what was at that time considered counter-intuitive. It put all its speeches online. Streamed for free at high speeds. This was when you often had to pause a Youtube video to let it load before you got a smooth stream.

It made sense to say why would one buy a $20 music CD when its available for free. But when it's a $6000 conference available for free, I think the question becomes rhetorical.

What happened however, was that the free videos became incredibly popular. So much so that instead of not wanting to come to the conference anymore, more people now knew of it and wanted to go to the conference.

TED, I think proved that giving away content for free is a viable way to go. Since then, musicians have wisened up and most of them now have a huge catalogue available online for free. Record companies, launched VEVO to stream even more free music. Magazines are putting their articles up for free.

Despite this, there are still many content generators still stuck in the traditional form of copyright. While the TED motto is "Ideas worth spreading" I think the internet has proved that Ideas are meant to be spread.

I'll let TED, who invited Youtube's head of user experience to talk about the issue demonstrate how everyone can win by choosing not to sue off each others pants.

Chris Anderson who curates for TED said, "when you give something away sometimes, it's the very smartest thing you can do." He should know. He turned an annual conference for 800 into a global phenomenon.