Edison Chen - The bigger picture

The past few weeks, the Internet search of the mere two words Edison Chen have churned up tonnes of news and views. Most of these concerns the actor who is now embroiled in a sex scandal that has rocked the Hong Kong movie scene, triggering police crackdowns and street protests.

If you have not been informed, suffice to say that the hoo-haa was about the Canadian-Hong Kong actor whose sex romps with prominent HK actresses have been exposed in the form of allegeedly stolen pictures which are now circulating fiercely in cyberspace. Apparently, the pictures, said to be video still, were extracted from the actor's laptop when it was brought for repair in a Hong Kong shop. The pictures were released some time in late January, sending shockwaves through the Hong Kong movie industry.

The fallout has taken many of the fans - both Edison Chen's and the girls involved - by surprise and have resulted the calling off of a marriage of one of the actresses by her in-laws as well as the cancellation of contracts of another. You may read more about the stories merely by Googling for the name Edison Chen.

The issue has become so big that it led to a protest march in Hong Kong which claimed that it was not pro-porn but one against internet censureship. Interestingly, a Blogger site has also emerged to trail the latest developments, and which has cleverly placed ads to cream off the rising traffic that to-date averages 250,000 visits daily, a circulation figure that would put even the South China Morning Post on envy.

While street protesters claimed that the march was not pro-porn, it cannot be denied that the pictures were private property and certainly not for public viewing - their existence only came into public knowledge when the computer was taken to a HK repair shop. Does it make it right (morally?) for third parties to circulate the pictures via cyberspace?

One question that begs answering is why Google is allowing this "objectionable content" to continue on its free hosting servers in Blogger, despite having been alerted by its readers.

Do you think Blogger/Google should remove the "objectionable content" or continue to allow it to proliferate since it did not want to be seen as censoring the internet content and allow unconditional free speech?

Take part in the poll at top right. Let's hear from you and discuss this issue.

Internet makes it so easy to cheat

Recently an editor friend confided in me that she received a letter from one of her magazine's readers, a learned person from an institution of higher learning, commenting on the environmental degradation article her magazine run a week earlier.

When she read the 1000-word dissertation, she was highly impressed by the writing and wanted to publish it because of the looming deadline.

However, a sense of familiarity about the writing stopped her. Being Google- and web-savvy, she decided to search for some of the terms used in the paper.

To her surprise, some of the content came lock-stock-and-barrel out of the internet and the academician was merely stringing ideas off the cyberspace and making it almost his own.

Finally, despite the validity of the arguments and ideas presented, my friend realised that it was unethical should she published the writing and decided that the best place for the article was not the spike but the dustbin.

If you are an editor, or a journalist making decisions to run stories you receive, perhaps you might want to Google them. Take keywords or even quoted phrases and hunt them down. You might be surprised with the outcome.

The vast information available on the Internet and the ease with which we use Control-C and Control-V has drawn many into the trap of plagiarism. Many thought they would get away with it and while some did, others also got nabbed, usually with a heavy price.

Your can read famous ones here, here and here. How rife is it, I am not sure but this is an interesting piece you ought to bookmark - nevermind if it was news from 2006.

So, how do you detect and prevent plagiarism? You can't. But perhaps, this site can give you some ideas to deter it.

In journalism, however, I still think Googling for phrases and keywords can help you just as much. What do you think?

Lessons to learn from Sportstoto

Smart marketing knows no bounds and creativity has no limits. Take a look at the offerings from Sportstoto Malaysia, one of the three major legal lottery operators in Malaysia.

This is an ordinary orange that the Chinese distribute to friends and well-wishers during the Lunar New Year celebrations.

A local Sportstoto outlet has come up with this as a Chinese New Year gift - an orange bearing a sticker carrying what looked like a registration number which is actually random picks of it six-digit lottery, 6D.

Punters without doubt punt on the number on the oranges they receive respectively, and in so doing, ramping up the sales of the lottery.

How creative can you get?

Google Image Search - now with Size classification

Imager surfers take note. If you have been using Google's image search, here's the good news. I noticed that they have provided image classifications (see graphic above). Sizes available included small, medium, large and extra large.

When did this feature come about? Saw it two days ago. Drop me a comment if you know when. Thank you.

Dont use graphic to display what you can in HTML!

This is a snapshot of a prominent website, the National Art Gallery's.

Instead of using HTML to list the events to be held this year, a graphic was used to display instead.

However, the webmaster apparently did not foresee that his jpeg did not/could not/would not load properly (see x-ed box at bottom of the capture).

Usually when this happens, users can right-click Show Picture to view the jpeg. Not in this case.

However, a javascript preventing this function, right clicking, has been introduced. He/she probably fears people copying the images within the site (and they still can with screen capture!).

And by introducing this script, the good intention is doing further damage to the site. How much more wrong can you get?

Tip:
1. Don't use graphics to display what you could in HTML
2. Don't disable right-click unless you have a damn good reason to. It's bad PR

Social Bookmarks - How many do you need?

Back in the days of HTML 1.0, website publishers include a Bookmark script. When clicked, it tells the visitor's browser to save the URL into the browser's favourites.

Since then, there have been many versions of such bookmarking facility. When the blog explosion occurred, and with icon creation as easy as eating peanuts, every Tom, Dick and Harry are into bookmarking as a means to both share and keep favourites sites.

How effective they are in converting a casual visitor to a return loyalist is up to your imagination.

I suppose having everything at hand for your readers to click and bookmark can help increase your site's readership but too many can also make your site be a turn-off as it smells of internet marketing sales pitch, not to mention make a clutter out of your site's features just like blinking links do in the days of yore.








How many is sufficient and not too cluttering?

Tip:
Use only the major social bookmarking icons that you know your visitors come from. This information can be obtained by scanning your serverlogs. This way, you will not turn off your reader and you might just encourage them to bookmark and share your site.