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Scoble and Twitter in the Borneo Bulletin: the future of news?

Wow - a funny occurence, in light of my growing interest in Twitter of late. I was flipping through the Borneo Bulletin at a cafe in Brunei, and amidst the coverage of the catastrophic earthquake in China, stumbled across coverage of none other than the tech blogosphere’s two darlings: Robert “Andrew” Scoble and Twitter. It looks like a wire excerpt, but still fascinating to see in a tabloid format local Borneo paper…

“Twitters Beat Media in Reporting China Quake (Sanfrancisco, AFP): The world had real-time new about China’s massive earthquake as victim’s dashed out Twitter text messages while it took place, in what was being touted Tuesday as microblogging outshining mainstream news. As the earth shook with tragic consequences, people in parts of China that felt the quake used their mobiles to send terse messages provided by the San Fransisco-based Twitter Inc. News of the deadly catastrophe reached Twitter devotees such as blogger Andrew Scoble in San Francisco even before the massive tremblor, which killed more than 12,000 people in Szechuan province, was reported by news organizations and the earthquake-tracking US Geological Survey. “Several people in China reported to me they felt the quake while it was going on!” Scoble wrote in his popular Scobleizer blog. Twitters are abbreviated text messages that can be instantly posted on online bulletin boards and personal websites and sent to the mobile phones of selected friends.

For me, this post, found in this paper in this place highlights the parallelism rapidly emerging between the blogosphere and mainstream media: for breaking news and on the ground reporting, blogs and micro-blogging services are rapidly becoming the global-standard destination. Connecting web users and mobile users, first world and third, journalism with ad-hoc/off-the-cuff/street-cred reporting, the net is the first place more and more are turning - in the developing world, its setting a precedent that will shape the evolution of nascent news/communications/entertainment industries. The mainstream media is assuming a new shape as well: in depth coverage, background research, and historical context are services that are more easily provided by a news organization…

Anyway, in a nutshell: blogs/microblogging provides instant, unfiltered news; MSM provides a longer term perspective on a given story. Both have a place, neither is mutually exclusive. Its late, I’m tired, I hope this point is coming across - more on this later.

scoble twitter

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Verified by who??! A letter to VISA.

Dear Visa,

Over the last few days I’ve spent many frustrating hours trying to book an AirAsia ticket over an hsdpa connection from a sandy tropical island. Not fun. Once the lethargic AirAsia site actually allowed me to book a ticket, the payment process was interrupted by something called “Verified by Visa” - a mysterious page at “securesite.com” that demanded that I register for the service, re-entering all of my contact info, showing my credit card details, etc. I have a few problems with this:

1. The service died halfway through my “registration” leaving me at a blank screen with nowhere to go. No idea if the transaction went through and whether I had seats booked or not. I ended phoning from the mainland to find out.
2. SecureSite.com?? I don’t know securesite.com from a hole in the ground. From my standpoint, all I’ve done is given yet another third party site all of my credit card details. Oh - I should trust it because there are Visa jpgs all over the place? Perhaps not.
3. I can just imagine the dismal marketing meeting the resulted in the decision to use “securesite.com.”
4. There’s no way to opt out of securesite.com or the Verified by Visa program that I could see.

So, in a nutshell, Visa’s program to make me feel safe (a) killed my transaction, (b) did so in a way that required phone calls to fix, and (c) made me feel less secure by dumping all of my info to yet another site that I don’t trust. Dear Visa: Please shut down the program until its ready for public use.

security visa

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Bored? Text Me in Malaysia!

Hey hey hey - if you have nothing better to do, text me! My number: 017 226 8612

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HSDPA from Malaysia

Good connection speeds on 3G wireless here in Malaysia - posting this from a sandy dinner table at a restaurant on the beach in Pulau Kapas — good times!

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Blog Names - Argh

Dear Everybody - please title your blogs with something useful. Seriously - I’ve been digging through the feed prospects that TechWatching and WheelScore have turned up, and for most of them you can tell absolutely nothing from their titles. For example:

• “Steve-o’s Blog” - about what?
• “Just Another Blog” - I have no reason to follow this whatsoever.
• “0WS3e” - maybe this means something in l33t, but it sure is useless to everyone else.

To those who are guilty of similarly lously blog names, here are some suggested naming conventions:

• Steve-o’s Blog: Family Ramblings
• Just Another Blog about Microsoft Silverlight Development
• OWS3e - HAM Radio in the Internet Age

Yup - that’s it. Just add a three word description to your blog title - please!

If you’re using WordPress, click “Options” in the Admin panel, and under “General Options” weblog title is right there. Anyone that works directly with feeds will thank-you for taking a moment to d o so.

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Sony’s got a lock on the Bangladesh market

Seriously, the squat toilet that I balance over daily is branded “Sony.” And that’s about as minor an example of the weird, wonderful world of Bangladesh that I can think off. Pics follow after the main post, all are from flickr, click to expand…

I’ve been here a mind-blowing two weeks now, and have navigated Dhaka, done an overnight paddlewheel voyage down a river, moved into a bunk bed in volunteer barracks in Rayenda, and have helped build two houses and a school. Bangladesh is such a mish mash that I’m just going to throw stuff out in point form:

1. Dhaka is crazy. Its the capital city of Bangladesh, comprised of around 12 million Bangladeshis. Its polluted like you’ve never seen - day or night, the sky is gray haze, and visibility is limited to a few kilometers (keeping in mind that Bangladesh is laser level flat). The people are perennially friendly, and never does one feel threatened. And there’s grocery stores that sell $1 knock-off DVD’s - perfect for relaxing in the island of calm that is your hotel room.
2. If you ever need to travel within Bangladesh, take the Rocket - that’s the big paddlewheel river steamer network. Its slow (it took us 24 hours), but infinitely more comfortable and relaxing than the 9 hour bus ride would have been. Consider: the roads are horrible and pitted, making bus rides extremely bumpy; the bus seats are built to Bangla-scale - way too small for the average Westerner; and they’re rather harrowing - two friends texted us today to say that their bus hit and killed a boy, and then peeled out of there to avoid the bus driver being mobbed and killed. Then again, the Rocket liners have a habit of sinking.
3. Rural Bangladesh is a wonderful, fascinating place. I’m woken up every morning by a succession of dog packs barking, cats fighting, roosters crowing, and mosques broadcasting calls to prayer. After a day or two, it seems entirely natural.
4. Anyone not Bangla is Elvis. Seriously, when my wife and I go into the bazaar, there’s 50+ people following us around in a big group, shouting stuff about whatever were buying, asking out names, and where were from. As odd as it may sound, this too becomes natural very quickly, and its actually disconcerting to wander around alone.
5. There’s a profound disconnect between state of existence and state of mind here. The most destitute people here live in the “landless zone” - a squatter village for those who don’t own land. There’s no electricity, no running water, no police, no healthcare, no services of any kind. And life consists of backbreaking fishing and manual labor, followed by carving a home out of mud, bits of lumber and tin. And in the middle of all of this, smiling crowds will pile around you, drag your around to their home, their friend’s home, the river bank or wherever, and generally have a great time. Perhaps its easy to maintain a cheerful disposition when you’ve never known anything else.
6. Were in a town of 50,000 people. There is not a single bank. In fact, the closes bank is 3-5 hours away in Khulna. Consider the implications for the economy, the financial services infrastructure and everything else - its wild how cut off from the world we know this place is.
7. I’m writing this post on my laptop, connected to a cellphone, which is connected to the Internet with unlimited bandwith for $15/month. The cell network never goes down, in a town where the electricity outages regularly outlast my laptop battery. This is the essence of leapfrogging, and I wonder what the social implications will be from the penetration of technology into a people who haven’t had any chance to acclimatize to it.
8. Volunteering is a wonderful experience. There’s nothing more satisfying than falling into bed after a day of spinecrushing manual labour under a sweltering bangla sun, helped on by a beaming family.

That’s it for the moment, but thank goodness I’ve finally got this internet connection hooked up - its great to be back online, and profoundly satisfying be so connected from such a remote place.

bangladesh volunteering

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Tin Whiskers and the coming Electro Armageddon

Sounds like a death metal band right? Unfortunately for all of us, its not - instead, its referring to a phenomenon know as “tin whiskers” in which soldered joints in electronics grow minuscule metal stalactites that eventually even short out the device in question, or explode and physically disable it. Tin, if you didn’t know, is the primary material used to solder the wiring joins in your computer, car, iPod, phone, etc. Without lead being mixed in with the tin solder, whiskers abound.

At the core of the issue is the industry-wide switch to lead-free solder, ostensibly for health reasons. Lead, as Robert Cringley explains, is the only way to stop tin whiskers, and do-good “green” legislators have done away with it.

As commenter D. McCorvey points out on Robert’s post…

The only way to prevent tin whiskers reliably is to add lead to solder and use no tin anywhere else in electronic assemblies. Even the ‘lead free’ solders such as tin-silver-copper have been shown to grow whiskers over time.

So, a few months ago, my 2 year old Casio Exilim started falling apart. It lost the ability to read/write SD cards, then the CCD crapped out such that all it could show was a varicolored blur. Is this unwarranted, mysterious failure a result of tin whiskers? I don’t really know, but I question any legislation that guarantees a limited lifetime, followed by interminable landfill decomposition, for electronics. As Cringley’s post title notes, “sometimes going hurts more than it helps.”

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PSP Outnumbers Nintendo DS Twenty to One

Its a funny thing to be disabused so thoroughly of a notion that you’ve got stuck in your head. In North America, Sony’s PSP is certainly playing second fiddle to Nintendo’s DS, but in Singapore at least, the situations are completely reversed. The PSP dominates here. Every train ride I’ve taken has multiple people banging away on their PSP’s - young, old, professional, student, solo, or group - its eclipsed only by the number of people with mobiles.

So far, I’ve seen about 40 PSP’s on the train, and a total of two DS’s. Perhaps the PSP’s layout is friendlier to train riders than juggling a stylus or tapping at the DS’s stacked screens, or perhaps the more expensive PSP is a conspicuous status symbol - who knows. But when I went out for dinner tonite, I noted a bank giving away PSP’s for opening an account - branding it as both desireable and mainstream - a powerful market position.

nintendo, singapore sony

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Jan. 31 Vancouver - will be out for drinks!

If anyone wants to meet in Vancouver, we’ll be out and about the eve of Weds, Jan. 31. We have a flight to Singapore leaving at 2:00AM, so we’ll be somewhere ’till about 11:30PM - I’ll post back the location.

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Branson = Dog

With a little accessorization, hair work, and sunglasses, Richard Branson (see video below, found via Sarah Meyers) could go out for Hallowe’en as a perfect Dog the Bounty Hunter (LGT GIS, dog pic below vid). I mean, its uncanny.

bounty hunter, branson dog

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