Apology accepted.

The Malay Mail published an apology for taking without prior information or permission blog posts from ShaolinTiger and myself. I'd like to say here that they did the right thing in apologising and I hope that this little incident in some (small) way contributes to a more professional relationship between blogs and the broader media industry.



For my part, I've no problems with people taking my stuff, quoting me or using content found on my site. I'd just like to be asked first. So there, that's the policy. If you need to take more than three paragraphs from my blog, please ask me. If you want to just quote me here and there, I really don't mind as it's fair use - just credit me properly. After all, we live in the age and culture of sharing don't we?

The post about Barcamp KL 2009

Spent Saturday morning at Barcamp KL 2009 and though I only spent half a day, listening to four sessions, I have to say, it was probably the most fun conference I've attended. Way better than the one I attended last year. Kudos Daniel Tan and Daniel Cerventus!

Quickly, off the top of my head, just the top things I loved about barcamp:
1. Meeting other geeks!
2. The talks - some hilarious, some insightful, some flame-worthy and all a great deal of "time well spent".
3. Breakfast! *note to organising team: The hearty breakfast was absolutely smashing!
4. Debates: Along with meeting people, the inevitable sharing of views and debating was enlightening. Truly, some of Malaysia's best tech minds attend barcamp.
5. The fact that you can be you, and everyone's a peer: I missed the dance lessons, but hey, not all conferences have to be stuffy.

For more BarcampKL 2009 coverage:

Here's an excellent video by TheBackpackr which captures the essence of Barcamp KL 2009:



If you want to catch up on all the tweets that were made at BarcampKL, click thru here.

I also guested @mikefoong's TheITChannel Podcast to share my experience at Barcamp, check that out here.

Bytebot's presentation and associated blog posting on: Behind the scenes: Advertising and PR, Bloggers and Integrity: Making Money, While Being Honest

Random videos of talks and happenings by TheChannelC on Qik.

Reports on Barcamp KL 2009 I've found:
Bernard Leong.
Demonick.
TheBackpackr.

The PM's exclusive content: Marketing the wrong thing?

There was a story that ran in The Star today where our PM encouraged the people to check his blog regularly for 'exclusive content.'

I've got a question. What does our dear PM mean when he say's 'exclusive content'?

Is he talking about some exclusive wallpapers featuring himself? Behind-the-scenes videos? 'The making of' videos? What 'exclusive content'?

He says its exclusive content on coming events. Okay, so it sounds like its actually useful information. That's more troubling.

The issue here is: is it right for the nation's leader to have exclusive content just for the 59% of Malaysians on the internet - and even then, only the few - who may be visiting his website?

Shouldn't he be sending the message out to all Malaysians through as many channels as possible?

No, I don't believe 'exclusive content' is for the PM. I also don't believe a new logo will actually add any 'fresh perspectives' (read here).

Can you contribute others' posts?

Yesterday, the Malay Mail published both ShaolinTiger and my posts about "PR and bloggers" side by side in a contrapuntal article entitled "Battle for the Internet mind". Shaolintiger posted about this on his blog, attracting many replies screaming plagiarism, copyright-infringement or the like.



Technically, it isn't plagiarism, because its attributed to us. It's possibly copyright infringement, because we weren't asked or informed. But here's a slight loophole, that I've had at the back of my mind thinking:

The whole page is framed as a reader-contributed page where the Malay Mail asks readers to send in links to anything interesting they've seen on the Net. So technically, it isn't the Malay Mail that's willfully taking and publishing blogposts, right? Readers contributed them.

I'm not a lawyer, so I'm really asking an open question about the legality of this?

Personally, I wouldn't even have needed to be asked permission (permission is over-rated). But it'd have been nice to just get an email from The Malay Mail telling me:

"Hi David, we loved your post on this and this, so we're going to run it in tomorrow's newspaper. Thought we'd let you know. Oh, and don't worry about running out to get a copy, we'll send you a complimentary copy."

It doesn't hurt to be nice, you know?

On another note, in today's connected society, is the culture of taking and re-purposing something that's become a norm? I can embed any YouTube video I want without asking the person who posted the video in the first place. Can the Malay Mail 'embed' my blog into their newspaper too?

I guess that's another discussion altogether.

New MALAYSIAN tech podcast for my ears...

I've confessed previously what a big fan of podcasting I am. In fact, podcasts have replaced the radio completely for me.

What I've been looking forward to though is for a truly local tech podcast to break through and set the ball rolling in Malaysia. Murmurings at KLTweetup seemed to indicate that more than one large tech personality in Malaysia was looking into it and then on Monday, I discovered TheITChannel.



Hosted by @mikefoong and @andrewkjs (and supposedly, in future episodes @thechannelc) of Twitter fame, the inaugral episode covers Earth Hour, Maxis iPhone launch and DiGi's Broadband launch - all from a really local tech-head viewpoint. It's a great listen and the hosts are suitably Malaysian (not at all pretentious with western accents). I think it'll stay on my podcast list for a while.

Meantime, I'm also looking forward to ByteBot's podcast when that comes around. It's starting to looks like it's going to be the year Malaysian podcasting takes off.