And so it begins...

Seriously, I love killing demons.

And it looks like there's more to kill now. You guessed it, Diablo III was announced over the weekend after lots and lots of speculation. The website is here, and the nifty cinematic intro and 2 gameplay videos are embedded below.

At first look, I'm excited by the 3D environment (finally), and the fact that the gameplay looks virtually unchanged from Diablo II. Yes, that's right. I actually think Diablo II got the fundamentals of the game right with some very good levelling and skills mechanics so much so we saw pretty much the same thing in World of Warcraft. So yeah, keep that - add new classes, monsters, items, etc. - and give us a whole new game to fight evil in.

The downside is, with no official dates announced, some people are already saying it won't be out for another 3 years. Oh well...

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.
  

I never thought I'd miss Windows this much

There, I said it. I never thought I'd miss Windows this much. The XP variety, that is.

About a month ago, I was really all fired up about Ubuntu - and rightly so. From the horror stories of how complicated Linux is, Ubuntu's real-world experience (and looks) were amazingly great. Of course, then I realised that despite how great the open-source community was, it still had its limits. And the cruncher for me was that the email application, Evolution, didn't quite agree with the wierd resolution on my Eee PC.

So I ventured into loading an old copy of Windows I had lying around onto the Eee. It wasn't as simple a process as I had thought. Simply borrowing Kelvin's USB external CDROM drive wasn't enough as somehow, my Eee PC refused to boot from the CD. Resignedly, I had to search up instructions to install XP via a USB stick. Follow the instructions step by step and you shouldn't get into trouble.

After the install, I realised just how capable a machine the Eee 900 is for Windows XP. Boot up time is a respectable 18 seconds, even if it's not the 13 seconds promised by nLite (I ended up not using nLite). I've done manual cleaning and disabled stuff I don't believe I'll ever use.

I gave it a test run with Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Office 2007 and it works great. Documents open pretty fast (about 2 seconds) and the browser didn't stutter none. It might be because I have 2GB of RAM.

Shifting back from Ubuntu to XP, I realised just how under appreciated Windows is in general. Sure, a lot of times, we think it's the most boring operating system out there - wowed by the Mac OS and fancy Linux builds. But in its own way, XP is elegant and simple too. For one, I found the launch bar at the bottom (a la Mac, which I insisted on having in Ubuntu) was more pretty than useful. The Windows Start Bar method still appeals to me.

Also, maybe I'm just a noob, but I understand how applications ,files and folders work on XP a lot better than I did on Ubuntu. There's a certain logic to how Windows works and, maybe its because we were mostly brought up on Windows but, it DOES make computing simpler.

The one thing I loved best about the whole process? The untouched, unsullied desktop. I'd like to see how long it lasts :)

Finally, Windows XP on my Eee

The fruits of a long, 8-hour install process. More later. Need to work now, lunch break over.