Reader's Digest Is Better Off Not Sending Junk Mail

The cover letter. Reads stupid, isn't it?

Every now and then, Reader's Digest, to which I am a long time subscriber, comes up with some bright ideas. Sometimes, not too bright ones.

And when they do, you really wonder if you should just terminate the subscription for making you feel so stupid to have subscribed to a magazine that apparently don't give two hoots about your intelligence and continues to insult it with vehemence with junk mails promising you would be an instant millionaire if you act now on its offer.

This recently happened to me, again and again, with the company promising that my name had been entered for some stupid lottery-like thingy that promised instant riches. Reading between the fine lines, it actually wanted me to purchase some silly reading material and the junk mail set up was so good that had I acted on it, I would have realised that I had been had. Of course, to get to the fine line, I would have to sift through some deliciously crafted literature that was design to floor the greedy in two blows.

It set me thinking, why should such an organisation resort to such junk mail and if they realised that I would gladly terminate my subscription given half the chance of additional irritation, and encourage 20 of my friends to do the same?

It must be a marketing manager's idea, of course. But what the heck? You know how many trees you have to down to make that much of paper to print your junk on? These junk mails are nothing by an attempt to hoodwink the gullible and the greedy.

Wouldn't it be better for public relations and good will to ask, periodically, in a marketing survey, if such junk mail was welcomed? And perhaps, how many of such junk mail had actually resulted in a sale and if the cost was actually worth braving bad publicity for?

And if not, perhaps junk the person or department that came up with the silly idea of flooding one's client's mailbox with unsolicited literature that could one day prompt him/her to actually cancel his/her subscription?


The junk mail. How many trees have been cut to produce these? What about the environment as a result of discarding these garbage?

Top Malaysian hosting service provider stops forwarding emails to Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail, Streamyx, TMnet and others

This writer has just been informed that Exabytes will no longer permit email forwarding to the following free email providers:

Yahoo!
Gmail
Hotmail, and other popular mail servers

as well as local ones such as tm.net.my and streamyx.

According to my informer, this move is due to "free email service provider having applied stricter anti-spam policy in their mail servers."

Meaning, if they detect any of Exabytes customers setting their forward emails to these servers, and the account receives lots of emails, the free servers will consider it an attack on its servers and will stop future forwards, including those from Exabytes itself to the account holders.
And the result, blacklist Exabytes mail servers from sending mail to them, ie causing legitimate email to be blocked.

I wonder why this is happening to Exabytes when other international hosts also face similar problems.

I do know of a Canadian host as well as a San Franciso-based hosting service which are widely used by Malaysians who have email forwarding to the said services and are not experiencing any problems that made them change email hosting policies like what Exabytes just did.

Perhaps someone out there care to explain?

Tips For Politicians Who Blog - Tip 1

Welcome to the world of blogging. If you are a poltician and are thinking about reaching your masses through blogs, you are smarter than your contemporary who is still reluctant to find out what a blogger or Blogger is.Chances are that if you are doing it yourself, you are a whole lot smarter than he/she is but I doubt you would be doing the blogging yourself.

More likely, you would have paid someone to upload your thoughts, ramblings and grievances - especially if you dont have the time and luxury of funding. In fact, those of you who have the funds may even consider someone to ghost-write, especially if your writing skills are not that great and the muse seems elusive most of the time.

Be that as it may, this piece is for the poor politician who cannot afford a secretary to dictate speeches to, who can ill-afford to pay a ghost-writer, and who is brimming with ideas and enthusiastic enough to blog hands on. This one is for you, no charge. (Those who are rich enough are also welcome to ready and copy these ideas, no charge, because I am trying to fulfil my social obligations and accrue good cyber-karma)

Tip Number One: Use your own domain name.
This is personalising your cyberhomestead and ensure that no one else buys it and later on make a mockery out of your name. If they do, then it leaves you with little to do except take legal action - which will then generate more publicity and show how you are paying the price for that ignorance.

Having your own domain name will also prevent cyber-squatters from grabbing your name and selling it back to you at a hefty profit because you were not smart enough to purchase it first when you exposed your name, thoughts, rambling and grievances. And believe you me, when you get to be famous, say like Mike Tyson or Mike Jackson, they will get you if you want your name back on cyberspace. Heck, even if you are not as famous, cybersquatters still know politicians can afford it and come after you.

So, go get your domain name today. Don't blog under whatisname.blogspot.com or whatshername.wordpress.com or any blogging.com for that matter. It should be yourname.com if someone else have not cybersquatted on it.

So who wants to blog now?

Just when you thought blogs were losing their appeal in Malaysia, to be replaced by more interesting and hip social media on the web like Facebook (where you could Poke and Super Poke, or play Scrabulous), politics have given them a new lease of life.

Believed to be largely responsible for the ruling coalition's losing the general elections, blogs have now attracted a large group of politicians who see blogging as a means to interact with the masses - nevermind why it took them so long to realise the interactivity of blogs.

Here are some politician bloggers with their new found toys:

http://drchua9.blogspot.com/
http://www.drkhir.blogspot.com/
http://weechookeong.blogspot.com/
http://mykuli.blogspot.com/
http://www.shahrirsamad.blogspot.com/
http://www.muhammadmuhdtaib.com/
http://azalina.wordpress.com/

There is no need to elaborate who they are - their names are dead giveaways and if you have not figured them out, then you probably not a Malaysian, in which case, this piece will not mean a thing to you.

One thing is certain from this exciting development - that most of those who blogged are either deadly ignorant or just pennywise simply because all of them used free blog services - this writer has nothing against using free blogging services, of course.

Heck, if you are an amateur, then you are excused for using the services of Blogspot, Wordpress or Typepad.

But if you are a politician, surely for branding purposes you would want to have a custom-made blog with your unique domain name on it. You know, like when you have a company, you just don't want to use a hotmail.com or a yahoo.com email address.

Why? Pretty obvious isn't it? You simply don't want to look unprofessional. Or cheapskate hanging on to a free homstead.

Politicians should at least attempt to look professional, even on cyberspace. You cannot give the impression that you cannot even afford a USD20 annual domain fee, let alone a paid hosting service.

So, if you are next to want to blog, and a politician, consider what I have just said here for your public image - register a domain name. Please!

Then get a hosting service.

Personalise your blog so that you don't look low-yah. Or cheap. That way, your writings would carry more weight, and perhaps taken more seriously.

Oh, by the way, a blogger is one who blogs. Not one who uses Blogger in case some of you don't know it yet.

You can also use Wordpress, Typepad, Blogsome and more.

How RTM Can Improve Its Landing Page - And How Others Can Learn From Its Mistakes

This is a review of the Malaysian government owned broadcasting station RTM. The RTM owns two TV stations and several radio channels, everyone broadcasting almost 24 hours a day. These are some areas its website's landing page can be improved upon.

1) Do Not Run Live Video ON Your Landing Page.

It may appear hip and enviously modern, but running videos straightaway on your landing page is never good just yet simply because of loadability - not all browsers are capable of playing it at once. I have seen this at work with disastrous results. One of the most annoying things is to have the browser asking you to download a software plugin so that you could view the movie. No one likes to install anything on their PCs. Asking them to do so is a turn-off, unless of course you have something really, really special for viewers. Use thumbnails instead. If viewers are interested, they can click to view. If not, they go on to something else - and at least they will stay longer on your site and not just click out.
Tip: Go visit YouTube. Learn how they display video.

2) Don't Use Silly Javascripts

Some picture-intensive websites just love to mark their territories and show how smart their webmasters are by embedding annoying little pop-up message boxes that tell you not to download their pictures because they were copyrighted materials. (In the past, they used to do this through watermarks and they still do.) Now, they disable your RIGHT CLICK. Websites are better off without these. If anyone wants to download your picture, there are at least five ways to do this, regardless you like it or not. So, try not to insult the user's intelligence by javascripting your site with the Do-Not-Copy-Anything-From-My-Site-Or-Else. You are broadcasting to the world now, remember that.
Tip: Savvy users use Print Screen to copy pictures from websites whether you like it or not. Aside from that, Mozilla also allows its Firefox to copy images. If you don't believe me, launch Firefox and see for yourself. And of course, you can use other powerful graphic softwares like Photoshop, if you wish.

3) Mind Your Language

If you have a bi-lingual site, make sure you truly assign the designated section to that language. If you are speaking Bahasa Malaysia, then all links and text should point to and be in Bahasa Malaysia. (And if it is the England, then it should be in the Inggeris-lah.) If not, it really doesn't mean much to say this is for Bahasa Malaysia and there is the link for the English Version.
Tip: You are broadcasting to the world. If it is English, then use all in English so that you cannot possibly be misunderstood.

4)Try Not To Use Thumbnails For List Items

Bullet lists such as [ol] and [ul] are the best for listing items for obvious reasons. But no one can stop you from using thumbnails if you wish to beef up your site's graphics content. But wherever possible, try not to repeat any thumbnails that appear too big (above 10px by 10px) otherwise you run the risk of having clutter on your landing page. Missing thumbnails run havoc with little Xs all over your page and this make you look real bad.
Tip: Stick to bullet lists - they are faster to load, less cluttering and can be seen in all browsers. Besides, thumbnails will end up like misplaced Xs if the viewer decides to disable graphics in his browser. Very, very ugly.

5. Best Viewing Practices

If your site is best viewed using a certain browser or if it has been optimised for Firefox or IE, at a certain screen resolution size, then stating it somewhere on your site is good public relations. You give your reader a choice whether to use a better browser or stick to the current one. At least he will be informed and not think that there are some missing parts on your website or that there is something wrong with your site or his computer.
Tip: You can place this best viewing practice at the bottom or top or anywhere else, but to make it less intrusive, the bottom of the page is fine. If it was my site, I would prefer it to be at the most prominent position possible, ie. above the taskbar. Better still, optimise your site for all browsing platforms so that you don't need to put up this message.

Who says the Newspaper is dying?

Could you imagine accessing and reading digital newspapers from kiosks like this using coins or smart cards? They can be set up at transport hubs, waiting lounges, and even newsvendors for the public to browse and read news of the day. Initial investment might be high, but the long-term revenue model certainly can be considered.

THE recent vote sway during the Malaysian Elections that caused the ruling coalition to lose many of its seats in Parliament and State Assemblies have been attributed to new media, specifically online news portals, and non traditional media

Several online news portals have been set up days before the election and have gained some success in attracting web traffic.

With declining street sales of newspapers, and adspend moving online, established publishers are looking towards investing in cyberspace to hedge their core businesses. Many are now zooming in on the internet news content, to discover new business models online as print news industry quietly goes into menopause.

But the truth is, the NEWSPAPER IS NOT dying. Print is, and certainly the next decade, but definitely not the newspaper - at least not those that you and I know - as a news casting tool.

If you have not looked beyond the new media hype, please do. Shut out the noise generated by this preconceived ideas that the only way to survive is on the net.

Spend a moment and think about the newspaper as the dissemination tool. It really doesn't matter if the newspaper is in its physical printed form or digitally accessible alternatives which were born several years ago.

Pay attention to the production process - up to just before printing takes place. Yes, the digital version of a physical newspaper produced by desktop publishing softwares that can come in all shapes, sizes and capabilities. Then think Adobe Acrobat viewing. Indeed the newspaper has evolved, in case you have not noticed.

Printing plants may be dying and their ink well may dry up, and demand for physical newspapers could drop over the next five years or even earlier, but not the demand for digital newspapers viewable through all sorts of devices of tomorrow.

I think this term will continue to live in the new media tools that will emerge, if they have not already. Yes, I am talking about viewing devices which can be as small as a PDA screen or as big as a A2 size touchscreen panels at information kiosks you see at supermarkets. Or even bigger ones. These are where the new newspaper will emerge as a born-again member of the new media.

The viewing technology are already and Adobe has one of the biggest yet - known simply as Adobe Digital Editions.

Not only you can use it to read and manage eBooks and other digital publications, it also works online and offline and supports PDF - and XHTML-based, including Adobe Flash (SWF formats) for multimedia interactivity. Best of all, it is downloadable for free. And guess what, it is only one of the many out there that is being developed at feverish speed.

And you still think the newspaper will die?

Site jumped 2 mil in position! Alexa Glitch?

For the past two weeks, Alexa showed this site to be some 6 millionth position down under.

Surprise, surprise, today it's gone up by 2mil plus to the current traffic rank of: 4.7mil.



What caused the surge? An Alexa glitch or something more interesting that I don't know of?

Scheduled Publishing - Blogger Is Now One Up Against Wordpress

Blogger is experimenting with Blogger-In-Draft - an upgrade that equips the world famous blogging engine with a pre-publish feature that comes standard with Wordpress. On Blogger, this is known as Scheduled Publishing.

Prior to this, no matter what Post Options you pick, ie. the dates to publish, Blogger just goes ahead and publish your post. Even if you date your post two years from now, Blogger publishes it with glee, making you look like a bloody fool if you go ahead with it.

The lack of a pre-publish feature makes it quite a chore if you want a regular publishing of posts, especially if you are running a syndicated blog-column or some people call it blog-lum where daily posts are required. You simply have to log in daily and publish the posts you have saved in draft. Some trouble, isn't it? And if you can't log in, your posts' continuity is dead.

Now, with this scheduled publishing system, Blogger has gone up one notch against Wordpress. It should now be the perfect blogging tool for bloggers, as it even allows much, much more flexibility than Wordpress where 'free hosting' is concerned. You can get a hosted name and point it to Blogger and your blog posts will happily reside in Blogger servers for free. Not with Wordpress, you can't.

Apart from that, Blogger allows you a certain degree of tweaking of the templates under its free hosting. Not Wordpress. You can design all you want but Wordpress doesn't allow you entry into their servers unless your hosting is paid to any of the Wordpress hosts.

Now what I would be interested in is for Blogger to come up with tweakable posts, ie. you can have various posts on any category, designed to be static or dynamic. You know, those elements that you can arrange on a template, anywhere you like. In short, turn Blogger into a content management system that Wordpress has already become. Now, if that happens, it would be awesome!

eBay Malaysia, Would You Please Buck Up?

The more I discover about eBay Malaysia, the more I am wondering who is behind the marketing intelligence team that powers the world's most popular brand name in internet shopping. I don't mean the one on eBay.com but rather the regional version, specifically Malaysia.


I just discover this splendid error which made it look pretty foolish for an international giant who is trying to penetrate a local market but forgot to do its homework.


Look at the picture below.


Where is Federal Territory? Anyone living in Kuala Lumpur knows it is impossible not to know that Federal Territory should be on this drop down list.

It is a drop down window for region of the applicant's origin. Kuala Lumpur has been left our - or specifically, Federal Territory, within which Kuala Lumpur is in. How can this oversight be left standing in the sign-up? Will anyone notice?

Certainly I wouldn't want to turn this blog into an eBay FAQ. Nah, wouldn't want to waste my time spotting errors on their site. Unless I am paid and which I am not.

So, eBay Malaysia or eBay.com.my, please buck up a bit? You have spent so much on your site upgrading recently. Surely you cannot afford to miss these fine details.

Free Offer That Paid Dividends To Alternative News Portal - Malaysiakini

One week before the Malaysian general elections on March 8, online alternative news portal Malaysiakini.com offered free access to its content. Prior to that, it was on subscription basis, RM15 per month. There are also various levels of subscription, including a package deal with Wall Street Journal subscription thrown in as well.

Free reading is limited to a paragraph of breaking stories and some sections such as opinion but not editorial. It is the only subscription model that seemed to have survived the times since its inception on November 20th, 1999.

The decision to offer free reading during the election period seemed to have paid off although the website paid a price for this generosity when its servers crashed from the sheer weight of its users on the night when the election results were out.

Today, having gone back to its original subscription mode, it has not only retained its pole position in cyberspace where online alternative news is concerned, it has also drawn new readership as apparent from the following charts reproduced from Alexa.com.

Current Rank - Jumped Triple

Pageviews - Improved Six Times

Reach - Improved Five Fold

From the above, one can safely conclude that Malaysiakini's free offer was a smart marketing strategy. Although other Malaysian news sites saw improvement in traffic, it is now able to tap into its newly converted subscriber base since it charges subscription and other sites are not.

The question now is:

Will people who wish to read about Malaysian political news on the web want to pay similarly? And will more online news portals sprout to tap the market share of subscribers that Malaysiakini has?

eBay Malaysia Had Better Be Serious About E-Commerce!

Ebay Malaysia had better be serious about ecommerce.

I attended an Ebay Malaysia luncheon recently and was pleasantly acquainted with Dan Neary and gang. I was pretty much impressed by the menu, but I was even more attracted to the preview on eBay that followed.

Although I had an eBay account, I never thought I would want to do any transaction, simply because I didn't really trust it. I joined back then because it appeared then that it might be useful. Somehow, I didn't do any selling or buying simply because there were other alternatives, those that I considered pretty secure.

But that short lunch talk bought me over and I decided to take the plunge several weeks later. Boy, was I in for a rude shock - trying to register was hell since eBay Malaysia kept saying a legitimate credit card was wrong!

To make matters worse, the so-called Live Help was no help at all. Despite stating that it would be available from 8:30 to 4:30 Mon-Fri, no help was forthcoming and I found myself waiting silly for one to come - on a Friday several times between the stipulated times.

As I checked further, I realised that the PayPal registration link returned a 404 .

How can eBay make it so tough just to sign up to trade? I understand not everyone faced this problem; I could just be unlucky.

But isn't there a system audit to ensure all links are working and all services up to notch? How can Live Help be of no help at all and dead links still alive on an ecommerce sign-up page?

Perhaps the public relations department people (or do you call them community relations now?) can do something after reading this.

A persistently failing system is definitely bad public relations and dirties the corporate image. Where ecommerce is concerned, it is really really bad for business!

eBay Malaysia Bans Digitally Delivered Goods

I just received this notification. If you are selling digitally delivered goods on eBay, you might want to reconsider another market place. But read on first:

Digitally Delivered Goods to be banned on eBay.com.my
April 09, 2008 | 09:31AM a MYT

eBay has decided to ban digitally delivered goods listed on eBay.com.my due to the high risk they pose in undermining eBay’s Feedback System.

Digitally delivered goods are often reproduced at little to no cost to the seller. On eBay, this creates the potential for feedback manipulation (both real and perceived). To preserve the integrity of the Feedback System, all goods that can be digitally downloaded or transferred electronically will be banned on eBay.com.sg, effective from April 16th.

However, kindly note also that while the title of the ebay post is directed to eBay.com.my, its content read eBay.com.sg, which is the Singapore eBay. Commonsense tells one that it probably meant for both, so I think the eBay team who posted this is excused.

But back to digitally delivered goods: I take it to mean software, audio visuals, mp3 and the likes which can be transmitted online. This is a good step to prevent fraud from buyers especially. Kudos to eBay but what about legitimate buyers of such goods that can be digitally delivered, and of the sellers, who will now have to incure extra costs to burn them into media such as DVD etc?

Wordpress Gets Even Better - Version 2.5 is out

WP 2.5 with its pleasant looking interface or dashboard as you know it.

Wordpress 2.5 is out and once again, WP proves to be a blogware that has not only become an excellent content management system but also one that old-timers in the same field will have to contend with - namely Joomla and Drupal.

Why?

Well, for one, customisation gets easier. And if you are running a online news site, you might want to reconsider WP with all its bells and whistles. Customisable category modules well placed with the CSS run layout will allow you any kind of imaginable design or theme you can think off. What more, there is an army of WP theme designers out there who are at your service, to suit every pocket and financial means.

WP 2.5 which was released about 12 days ago is now upgradable via Fantastico in the C-Panel package for Linux host users. Just go into C-Panel, Fantastico, and click upgrade and you will be presented with a cleaner interface of 2.5. Brilliantly designed.

The major change I see for 2.5 is the use of PHP version 4.3, or later. This interface is less cluttered with well places tabs for different sections. And oh, I simply love the baby blue colour of the dashboard!

I upgraded mine recently and everything gelled seamlessly. This time I decided to use Fantastico instead of the WP's famous 5-step Upgrade via SFTP. For WP dummies, use Fantastico if yours is Linux hosted. Believe me, there are fewer worries and lesser work!

To download WP 2.5, Click Here

Another brilliant idea from Nuffnang - Click Through Reporting System For Ads

I have been asked by some Malaysian bloggers who signed on with Nuffnang that they do not receive ads weekly but their peers, with similar pagerank and traffic volume, get ads practically every week without fail. Now I know why.

A post received from Nuffnang's Robb Chew (Blogger Liaison Executive) explained it very clearly:

"One of the strong factor that drives advertisers to select blogs to advertise on would be their Click Through Ratio. It literally means the more clicks the ad unit in your blog has generated to the advertiser's site, the higher the value of your CTR. Only genuine clicks from unique IP address each day would contribute towards the value of CTR."

"Before this, Nuffnang users have no idea how are the ads are performing or where their CTR stands, so we have introduced Click-Rating System."

Basically, the system allows advertisers to know how well or how badly a blog has performed in terms of CTR in the previous ad campaigns. The click-rating ranges from 1 to 5 levels from worset to the best.

If you like, it's similar to PageRank for Adsense but better formed since it is ad-click based. But don't get any ideas - Repeated clicks from the same IP address on CPC ads might result in click fraud, and subsequently a ban.

This is brilliant. If I was an advertiser, I would want this kind of reporting tool for my investment or return of investment if you like. And if you are an advertising network, giving this kind of reporting to your advertiser is good service.

Note: You can read more abut this reporting system here

Star Online's Reporting Tool

If you are in the Press, you will definitely know tough it is to spot typos. Day in and day out, you read tonnes of text and go through hundreds and thousands of words, some correct, others suspect. Sooner of later, one or two gets past your watch and you end up in trouble.

I remembered one incident about 15 years ago. A press releases was sent by a hotelier announcing his new entertainment centre, an up-market pub and bistro. The Press Release was written by its Public Relations manager who signed off: "For details about the pub, contact the Pubic Relations Manager".

The electronic copy was input in the system by a typist who was not a journalist and when the story was in the system, sent for sub-editing, no one - from editors to copy sub-editors - failed to spot the mistake until it came out in print. I won't go into the details of the embarrassment the entire production line responsible experienced.

With Online, typos can be even more serious although its reprieve is the ability to correct the mistake almost in real time.

One online newspaper I stumbled upon recently took the trouble to have its reader spot typos. The online paper is the Toronto Star. The online paper introduced a typo reporting tool other online newspapers around the world could and should emulate.

Its inclusion is of course no excuse for textual sloppiness but it still is a good checking tool to allow your readers to spot errors in your editorial content. It is also good public relations to empower your readers to assist improve the content they are part of.

Spanish Media Recognises Blogging, Awards Blogger

This is good news. An independent Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, who chronicled the woes of life in communist-run Cuba, received one of Spain's top journalism awards on Friday, the Ortega and Gasset prize for digital journalism.

While Malaysian bloggers have yet to enjoy this kind of accolade, and hopefully things will soon change, judging from the recent statements made by ministers and ministries.

Could this be the coming to terms between bloggers and trained journalists, and finally the latter accepting the former as an equal of sorts - save for the training and professional qualifications that separate journalists and bloggers?

This is an excerpt of the article:

Cuban blogger win Spanish digital journalism prize
HAVANA (Reuters) - Independent Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, who chronicles the woes of life in communist-run Cuba, was awarded one of Spain's top journalism awards on Friday, the Ortega and Gasset prize for digital journalism.

Spanish newspaper El Pais, which awards the prize annually, said Sanchez won it for her "shrewdness" in overcoming hurdles to freedom of expression in Cuba, her "vivacious" style and her drive to join the "global space of citizen journalism."

You can read more here:

Does Spammy work at Real Rewards and Alliance Bank?

I received this phone spam recently (See Picture Below) from a financial institution whose name is blatantly emblazoned on the SMS. It was to invite me to some deal which I was not interested in.



Within the SMS was the give-away sign - the poorly masked culprit's name of how my phone number got into Alliance Bank's database since I had never banked with that bank nor interested to do so in the future for what they just did.

I am sure you have received some of these nasties some time. Some of you may have been spammed almost daily that you were forced to discontinue your number and seek new one.



This is not the first I received and my mistake was probably I had signed up - many years ago - with a loyalty scheme called Real Rewards. For those who don't know, Real Rewards is among the first loyalty schemes linking various merchants in Malaysia and has today become quite successful (I won't go into the details but click the link to the website if you wish to know more and I am not even charging them for this traffic diversion!).

Somehow, I think the chief executive officer has been poorly advised about unsolicited promotional messages such as what transpired between Alliance Bank and my phone. And I have strong reasons to feel that the top guns at Alliance Bank is similarly illiterate. Perhaps both are not even aware of the nasty lady called Spammy. And I am not even going to go into speculations on how my number ended in the Alliance Bank's database since the evidence clearly pointed to who the actual culprit for my discomfort is.

Any good public relations-aware organisation would have renewed their Opt-Ins annually to keep up with the times and from what I remembered, I had never given any permission for them to release my phone numbers to anyone and I had never ticked on the application form that I wanted to receive any promotional messages from them or their partners.

What I gave was my contact phone number to which they can call me to inform the status of my card or anything that relates to my usage of the card.

Technically, if I was in Australia, and they, too, are Australia based, I could have reported them for spamming, to which its corporate image would have been marred. Perhaps they would even have been slapped with a hefty fine under their Spam Bill 2003.

I am writing here to perhaps give their corporate communications director a hint of what goes on under his/her nose and what he/she could possibly do to enhance his/her employers' corporate image. And these two entities are not alone in Malaysia although I have yet to hear about Spam Act being enforced or any Spammer made an example of.

I have also received unsolocited calls inviting me to some resort marketing 'seminars' that I was not interested in nor cared two hoot about. To the Spam Blind marketing directors and managers in Malaysia, read about anti-spam laws in Australia I have linked to. They may not enforced be in Malaysia as I know it, still, it is bad public relations to be part of the spamming process.

Craiglist Growing By Leaps And Bounds

I once told my peers in the newsroom that the best online advertising model to look at (if anyone in Malaysia is setting up one) is Craigslist.

That was two years ago. Craigslist was virtually unheard of here but when I was introduced to it, I was tremendously impressed by the simplicity of the system which uses nothing fancier than text-links.

The ease-of-use simply appealed to users and why not? Not everyone who wants to read ads want to look at pictures and in cases where quick downloads matters a whole lot, in terms of dollars and cents, it makes sense to have something like this.

And the people at Craigslist seem to know what they are doing judging from what is reported in www.paidcontent.org. which stated:
Craigslist Poised For $81M Revenues In ‘08; Could Top $100M:

According to the report by David Kaplan:

Craigslist stands to bring in $81 million in revenue in 2008, according to a report by researcher Classified Intelligence. If that comes true, it would represent a 47 percent gain over Craigslist’s $55 million revenues for 2007. Despite a growing challenge from eBay-owned community postings site Kijiji.com, which launched in a number of U.S. cities last summer after establishing itself in Canada and Europe, CI believes Craigslist could top $100 million in revenues if it continues to add fees and site enhancements.

More Here

Are online companies in Malaysia similarly poised? Do we have our own product that say reaches the nook and cranny of the nation, from Batu Pahat to Wang Kelian perhaps? How difficult is it to emulate a similar model?

Smart Move by Adsense - Link Ad scroller

Have you seen what I saw?

I found this Google link text ads and stumbled on a scroller on the left bottom of the ad. Instead displaying four link ads, Adsense now allows the ad viewer to scroll through more ads.

Why anyone would want to scroll, I don't know, but I did a scroll out of curiosity. And guess what I found? There were altogether 12 ads displayed according to the content of the story - instead of the usual four (see picture - arrow points to the scroller).

This simple addition was not there last time I viewed such ads. In any case, it allows more advertisers to place an content targetted ad.

On the other end, it also allows more opportunities for the publisher to make money through click throughs.

What an ingenious idea. Now, why did Google take such a long time to figure this out?

Print, Broadcast Dying in China

I read this on Poynter:

Print, Broadcast Losing Ground in China

Monday, March 31, 2008
Posted by Fons Tuinstra 2:58:24 PM

In China, TV has been especially hard hit by the advent of the Internet.
According to China's leading Internet researcher Guo Liang, Chinese traditional media are in big trouble, thanks to the net. Internet users in China once also were loyal consumers of print and broadcast media. Today they still outnumber non-net users in terms of traditional media usage -- but that might change in the next two years...

More here

If this is happening to a fast developing nation as huge as China, and a country that is as traditional as it get when it comes to consumption of news, ie via the basic dissemination conduits such as print and broadcast, think what will be happening to a country which is already quite well established like Malaysia.

Of course, one can still dwell in the comforts of one's cocoon of ignorance, putting down the influence of the internet and online news, saying that the revenue model is still uncertain and the roadmap to profitability is still uncharted. Some traditional media workers in Malaysia still feel that it will be some time before Online news will overtake print. However that "some time" could be tomorrow, or even the next hour. The signs are pointing to it already as in the case of China.

If broadcast had overcome the geographical problems which crippled print news distribution, now internet is making it even easier to reach the people - whether it is a simple land line phone link or satellite uplink through wireless broadband.

But the killers of broadcast and print will be the ease with which internet content (you may call it news production if you wish in this case) can be generated and broadcast far and wide, and fully equipped with the feedback support.

The rich multimedia features, allowing for a meaningful user interaction and personalisation will hammer the final nail in the print and broadcast's coffins.