Sales, Social and Tech

Forbes India ended its 2010 with accusation of them plagiarising the cover of Pragati India’s cover of October 2010. Nitin Pai, editor of Pragati - The Indian National Interest Review, tweeted , Forbes India Dec 2010 cover http://j.mp/i7dqXs plagiarises from Pragati Oct 2010 cover http://j.mp/e6BL09 . For those fearful of the clicking on j.mp links, take a look at the covers below to see if it was right for Nitin to accuse Forbes India for plagiarism. But seriously, how many ways can we expect Superman to rip off his shirt?

Overhead at the customer is not always right , Me: “Thanks for calling [credit card company], how can I help you today?” Caller: “I bought my crops on Farmville using your card. I forgot to water them and they’ve all died. Am I covered on purchase protection for that?” Me: “Seriously?” Caller: “I thought you’d be like that. Thanks anyway.” *click*

It seems like FaxGate issue between the Malaysia editor and Microsoft Malaysia has been settled. Apparently, Weber Shandwick, the PR agency responsible for sending out the press release still have request from IT journos from Malaysia to send them press release via fax. Unfortunately for Kashminder Singh, group managing editor at One World Solutions which publishes MobileWorld Asia, he was still part of that mailing faxing list and thus got thesame faxed press release three times in a single day. Microsoft Malaysia PR has since asked Weber Shandwick to remove Kashminder from the faxing list. Le Fax est mort. Vive le Fax!

Stop the press! Forget Windows 7 or the Windows Mobile. Forget the Kinect. Forget the advent of micro-blogging sites like Twitter or even Instant Messaging. Microsoft decided the best way to send out its press releases to the IT publications in Malaysia is via, wait for it… the good old fax machine . (I linked a description of what a fax machine is for the younger readers here who have not seen or used one before.) This delivery process irked Kashminder Singh, group managing editor at One World Solutions which publishes MobileWorld Asia. “Can someone explain why a tech savvy company like Microsoft is still using faxes to send press releases??,” asked Kashminder on his Facebook Wall. In reply to comments made by his friends, Kashminder added “I understand but Microsoft (the creators of the word tech, in a way) is communicating with tech publications in this case. When a tech company communicates with a tech company, it shouldn't have to be through fax, right?” A Malaysian ...

iPads, Print-on-Demand Slowly Transform Magazines in 2010 If you haven’t download the TODAY app for iPad, don’t waste precious Gs on it. Flickr Should Have Built Instagram. But They Didn't. Here's Why . Here’s what happen when you drag your feet on innovation. You lose out on the real opportunities. Take The Red Pill: The Rise Of The Hybrid Startup “You see the same attitude in other industries: who in technology wants to work with retail bankers, teachers, doctors, restauranteurs? As a result, hybrid businesses have little or no competition: technology companies want nothing to do with the real world, and real-world companies struggle to develop competitive technology.”

Database “shut down” permanent? The Bangkok Post is rumoured to be printing the first and last edition of their popular IT supplement, Database, of 2011 on 5 January. An anonymous source at The Bangkok Post highlighted that the lack of advertisement revenue for the IT supplement was the main reason for the Impending permanent shut down. The Bangkok Post is also said to have pulled the plug on their Motoring supplement. Long time contributor, Grahame Rogers, will be starting his own AMITIAE (Apple, Mac, IT, iOS, Asia and Everywhere else) blog at amitiae.com which will go “live” on New Year’s Day.

Beware of what you buy in China. The big difference is the iPed runs on Android.

Since working with Aneace Haddad at Taggo, I have inculcated the three questions which Aneace has kept asking himself as an entrepreneur. Yes, we do throw ideas back and forth, but when the idea is on paper, we ask ourselves “So What, Who Cares and Why Me?" to the ideas. The next step is to ask if the feature or idea will be seen as a painkiller, vitamin or cocaine. No, we are not selling drugs, but rather a description to how the idea will be seen by potential client. Thus, a little exercise I did by putting the Google Chrome OS in the limelight and to see if the new OS will pass the test. So What? The Google Chrome OS came about in the era when the netbook was hot. The netbook started from the ideas of the One Laptop Per Child and Asus decided to make a low end commercially available version with a Linux OS. As we know the Linux OS wasn’t that well received so Asus moved to Windows XP Home. Windows Vista would have made netbooks a slow moving brick. So netbooks jumped ...

2011 is the lunar year of the rabbit. I find it interesting that somehow my predictions for social media in 2011 have same similar characteristic of the furry animal. 1. Strong focus on location marketing Like a rabbit jumping from one farm to another searching for the best carrots, location marketing will become one of the most important feature for social media in 2011. Location marketing encompasses location based marketing. Location based marketing looked to bring online customers to the stores. That’s just the first part of it. The next goal of location marketing is to encourage/recommend friends within their social network to go to the same venue too. Such recommendations will come in short comments, the number of likes and star rating. The signs are there. Google with their hotpot experiment, Foursquare with their latest photo and comments feature. When Facebook launch Places in Asia, it would be surprising there will be encouragement to provide reviews to venues....

Print publications cannot avoid the lure of creating Facebook Pages. Her World Singapore has 5000+ fans, HWM Philippines has 18,000 fans, but the ultimate question for these publications how can you make money from Facebook Pages. Enter Taggo . SauceINK , an online print publication, has teamed up with Taggo to allow their fans to check in at theblogshop @ 35 Haji Lane in Singapore to enjoy fan benefits. Unlike other Taggo clients, SauceINK do not have a retail venue. Their advertisers, however, do have. When a fan checks-in at the theblogshop upon purchase, the fan’s wall will show a status update which promotes both the publication and the advertiser. At the end of the campaign, SauceINK can report to their advertisers to inform them how many of their fans visited their outlets with the possible value of purchase made. This extends SauceINK use of their Facebook Page, from just a communication tool to update fans on the latest in the magazine to a very simple CRM so...

You have 1,000 to 10,000 fans on your Facebook Page. You look to provide fans with promotions and benefits at your physical outlet. But how do you know if a customer is a fan of your Facebook Page? Marriage Central recently opened its second resource point at Woodlands Regional Library. With 3,000+ fans on its Facebook Page, http://www.facebook.com/marriagecentral , they wanted to reward fans who visited the resource point. The capability now to let their Facebook Fans to check in the resource point in person has allowed for some creative play on the title.   ( Picture: Landing Page which non-fans see when they visit Marriage Central Facebook Page at http:///www.facebook.com/marriagecentral ) Check in on love at Marriage Central @ Woodlands and see how you lucky you can be.

To blog or not to blog? That was the question a remisier posed to me after a short presentation I made on the "so what, who cares and why me?" of blogging. So what if this remisier blogged? By asking this question, it helps to set the reasons for blogging. The remisier highlighted his reason to blog was to position himself and his firm to be one of the few remisier who shares the morning analysis of the stock market. Who cares help to set the audience whom the remisier would like to target. This resulted in a very insightful discussion. The remisier shared that his high net worth clients would choose SMS as preferred choice of communication. This group of clients tend to be more senior in age. Even those who carry a Blackberry would rather check their email on the PC. So his high net worth audience wouldn't be his blog audience. So is it worth his time to blog? It turns out that the remisier would like to use social medium to target the Internet savvy generation, ...

Tough if you are a Chinese Malaysian as film maker Namewee finds out.

Bakerzin has listened to fans of the Facebook Page and have extended the duration of the expired vouchers. Fans who have signed up for the vouchers would have received an email highlighting the extension. This has lead to positive responses from fans on their Facebook Page. Kudos to the Bakerzin social media team.