Congrats Mr. & Mrs. Chieng / Good Media Friends

First, I'd like to wish Mr. and Mrs. David Chieng a very, very happy marriage :). Just got back from their sloshing party-cum-wedding dinner and I've got to say, they sure look like they are made for each other *tips my hat in their direction*.

Secondly, I just want to say what a great thing it is to have good (media) friends. Nigel Yap totally acted like my mommy - warning me off driving whilst still a bit sloshed (actually, I wasn't at all, otherwise I wouldn't be typing this) - but I really appreciated it. That's so touching man. (Oh, see, I got back in one piece).

But you know, it made me think, that, on the way home, as PR people its so often easy to just make "friends" without being "friends" (you know what I mean.) Yet, I have in about 4 years on the job made some really good friends whom the word "media" really takes a secondary role. One of them got married tonight. The other made sure I got home safely. Kudos guys, this is what makes our industry tick.

I'll have a pic up once I get round to uploading them to flickr. ;)

I'm a winner!

You know how your mother always tells you you're someone special and that you'll grow up to be a winner? Remember all those colouring contests you entered, when your mom crowed and cooed how beautiful your colouring was, but the judges didn't seem to appreciate it and you never won anything?

Yup, I entered quite a number of colouring contests, and my one win was a miserable skateboard which I never got around using.

Well, yesterday night, I did finally win something I would really appreciate! Props goes to Jeff Carroll, the host of this wonderful show - Podhammer.

As you may know, I'm a bit of a Warhammer junkie (for the uninitiated, it's a game where you have two grown men hunched over a "realistic" looking board and commanding little toy men to go into battle with each other). Podhammer is for fans of this game (particularly Warhammer Fantasy).

So Jeff ran a contest in Episode 4 of Podhammer where he said he'd offer an AUD$ 50 box set for the person with the best story about how he got into Warhammer. I was just listening to Episode 5, and... I won!

I'm so happy! This is the best prize ever - thanks Jeff!
Here's what the prize will look like once I'm done painting them - hopefully. If you like Warhammer Fantasy - or even 40k - I really encourage you to surf right over to www.podhammer.net and take a look.

Men's ego sells tickets

Ernest Wee explains to us why his Macho Macho Man game will attract lots of people in the upcoming PYP Carnival:

Not satisfied with life...

Just got back from our church family camp in Genting Highlands. There's a thought that I brought back with me - am I satisfied with my life?

We spent four days studying the book of Ephesians - taking us all the way from how God chose us to the war we wage in our daily lives. Being a Christian is about having the right perspective and the sort of life to prove it.

We often stumble on the first part of this. Yes, you prayed the sinners prayer. You said you wanted forgiveness for sins. And yet, did your perspective change? Do you still wallow in sin? Do you chase the things in this world that are meaningless - ultimately? Do you harbor in your heart wrong motives and misplaced goals?

Until you realise what a great plan God has laid out for you and that there is eternal life beyond this shell we live in, you can't get it right.

But I'm on the second part. So, if I know that ultimately nothing matters save the work that's eternal, why do I spend more time than I should enjoying myself? Why am I not urgent (or urgent enough) in sharing the gospel?

I've realised I can't be satisfied with this life I'm leading. Not enough. Because if there's one thing the Bible makes clear, it's that time is very, very short. It's time to buckle down and get down to business. Eternal business.

Be very careful, then, how you live -- not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.

Ephesians 5:15-16

Me and my next most famous self

Talk about the biggest coincidence ever!

Today as I was scrolling into through my old posts and wierdly noticed an extra comment on a post I made in August about googling myself on the Internet. Apparently another David Lian did a google of his own name too and found me. :)

Check that post here.

What's with Nurin and Technorati?

Quick posting: what's with Nurin and Technorati? Have a look at the screen capture below and just check out the number of latest search strings that has to do with Nurin and her autopsy.


My wild guesses:

1. Concerned Malaysians are just very interested in knowing the results of Nurin's autopsy.
2. Journalists doing research on the story are interested to know what the blogosphere is thinking.
3. The government is keeping tabs on rumor-mongers in the Malaysian blogosphere, not wanting any misinformation to be spread.
4. Some gatal fella is getting his kicks from a poor, young girl's autopsy report.
   

Your next ad agency - Google?

*Disclosure - I work for Text 100 on the Nokia account. This blog posting is purely my viewpoint, taken from my knowledge of the industry, without any confidential information.*

"There's money to be made in online advertising," - [random internet company exec]

There was an interesting article today in The Business Times (yes, I read NST) about how Google was seeing a real rosy future in mobile phone advertising. (read it here) Well, this isn't exactly new news per se, but I just really liked the article as it presented a real concise picture of the next step in the convergence of mobility, communications, technology, services and content.

You see, the first problem companies really had with the internet was how to monetize it. Why? Because the internet is used mainly by a bunch of freeloaders who expect and want everything to be free. Yet, even if you're generating be best content in the world, the moment you ask people to pay for it online, you can expect your readership, listenership or viewership to drop to about 10% of what you've got. Wonder how many people would watch YouTube if you had to pay US$1.00 per clip? Uh-huh.

So, advertising has been the way forward for making money on the Internet, and this one company, Google, has gotten pretty good at it. Indeed, when the then leader Yahoo! was floundering, along came Google with AdSense and voila! we discovered the first truly workable internet advertising model. Of course, it helped that AdSense was really Web 2.0-savvy (simple bloggers could just add AdSense and make money) and the blogosphere was in the middle of its boom.

So now, as we're moving on to the next great phase of technology - the mobile internet - it suddenly makes sense that Google would want in on bringing advertising to the fourth screen - your mobile phone (or device or multimedia computer). Tom Merritt once said on Buzz Out Loud (though I forget which episode), that "Google's goal is to advertise to you wherever you are with whatever means possible." Fantastic plan, actually.

However, Google's probably not the only one moving in this direction this time. Microsoft, via its Live services hopes to attract a couple of eyeballs and sell some advertising as well. Yahoo! is shaping up its own internet advertising offering. Both have solid partnerships with handset manufacturers and are developing application suites that may (and I am heavily speculating here) include advertising in the future. Nokia (and this I know for a fact) has already acquired mobile advertising firm Enpocket and a bunch of other services companies like Twango, and more recently Navteq - so you can expect some innovative new ideas on advertising soon. Do you think Apple might consider moving into advertising too?

So here's the big picture, you now have several big companies steeped in devices, software, or services, all moving towards one zone of competition - advertising. As the internet becomes a more powerful medium, this little niche in advertising may one day become the mainstream mode of reaching people (if it hasn't already). What, then, do you call companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Nokia? Ad agencies?

50 years of Sputnik!

If I could go back and change my name, I'd name myself... Sputnik! Cool name, yeah? Well, there's actually a story behind the name, and little did anyone guess that a simple metal ball that could beep would hurtle man towards the space age.

Sputnik was the crowning glory of the Soviet Union (the then USSR) and shocked the US into the realisation that perhaps, just perhaps, there was a civilization outside their own that was ahead of them in the technology race. On October 4th 1957.

As the story goes (the one I'm making up right about now), one morning some staff at the United States Space Research Centre woke up early that morning, made his cup of coffee, trained his telescope towards space as he had always done and then... "CRASH!" spilt coffee. "What is that Metal Ball up there?"

Bemused, Sputnik beeped.

*BEEP*

Of course, as history would tell us, this then resulted in a fevered rush for advancement that meant science became the most important subject in class.

But what I'm trying to say is, if not for Russian innovation and Sputnik, we probably wouldn't have a lot of the technology, research and innovation we all have today. Imagine if the internet was invented 30 years later, I'd be 50 before I could get on ICQ. So, those of us young whippersnappers who care nary a thought for dear old Sputnik, remember this: this interesting world of Tech-overdose you live in, of wirelessly transmitted voice and blinking screens in your face, wouldn't have been yours if it wasn't for a simple, nondescript metal ball in space that beeped.

This world would've been your grandchildren's.

Bicycle! Bi Bi Bicycle!

Tomorrow, I get to take my bike out for a spin in FRIM. Her name's Judy.

:)

Talking to God!

Okay, please don't get stumbled by this. It's really just for FUN.

I stumbled upon this link by clicking on someone's MyBlogLog profile who happened to read my blog. And... LOL. This is so funny. Click on the below. Check it out:

http://www.titane.ca/concordia/dfar251/igod/main.html

Oh, by the way, that random person who randomly clicked on my blog, which randomly led me to finding this site was CarolineL

I'm chatting with you on my mobile...

If you own a Nokia Nseries device and you click onto your download folder, you'll see a new folder pop-up saying "Windows Live". Yup, the Windows Live suite announced last month in Europe has now been made available in Asia.






















I've actually been running this little piece of software for days now since downloading it through MOSH but didn't expect it to reach Asia so quickly.

To be honest, the Windows Live Messenger client is utterly fantastic. So good, in fact, that I've gone ahead and replaced Fring with it. After all, I mostly chat on Windows Live Messenger. No screenshots to share yet coz I don't have a screenshot capture ap on my N95, but I'll get that soon.

Top new technology... for something essentially old!

It's been nearly two decades since I grew out of it. But when I encountered today's new-fangled "tanglung" design at our church's Mooncake Festival do on Sunday, "wow!" I felt so amazed at what technology has done to this ancient tradition.


As you can see, the familiar glass-paper tanglungs we used to have are now replaced with slick beachball-type material ones. Instead of expecting kids to burn up about 2 - 3 tanglungs a night thanks to wax candles and highly flamable material, you can rely on the these modern tungsten bulb-lighted tanglungs to be burn-resistant. And, of course, the highly stylised fish and butterfly characters of our well-loved tanglungs are now replaced with branded characters such as.... Winnie the Pooh (which is Lydia's favourite Disney character, by the way)!

Above is Kee Gan, the product of Mr. and Mrs. Low and a fantastic model for showing just how stylish these new tanglungs are. It's like, really evolving tradition with technology. Now... the one thing I don't appreciate is replacing all the great-tasting traditional mooncakes with wacky-flavours like "Mint Chocolate" and "Cheesecake." Makes my stomach queasy.