Sales, Social and Tech

I had the dengue virus last week and I didn't know it was dengue until the rashes appeared. Adding to the complexity, I didn't even know where I was bitten as I was the only one in the family affected by this virus (Touch wood). This comes in the news today that dengue infections has a hit a five-year high . It all started with a paralysing fever two Sundays ago. I thought I was done with a very bad flu virus given that I was caught in the rain the night before. Paralysing because I didn't want to do anything but to lie down and sleep. But sleeping was rather difficult too as I had chills and for some part of the nights, shivering under the blankets. It didn't help that the weather was chilly and had rained continuously for the past few days. The fever disappeared by Tuesday morning but my body was aching. The aches were acute pains that, though painkillers did the job, I felt extremely lethargic. Even my thought process was much slower than usual. The whole w...

Bloggers using blogspot today found their blogs deleted and one of the affected is one of Singapore most popular blogger, Xiaxue. Wrote Xiaxue on her Facebook page , My blog is currently down as Blogger seemed to have deleted it this afternoon at around 230pm. They didn't give me any reason but from the forums it seems that some other bloggers have experienced the same issue...  The response from Blogger to my forum query is that my blog was mistakenly classified to be a spam blog. So the blog is under review now and should be restored once the mistake has been cleared up. I believe it could be a technical glitch. 

Communications and Information Minister Yaacob Ibrahim contributed the hacks to the "lapse of maintenance". A blog used the PA sites hacks as a case study and highlighted that they were using very old versions of popular content management software of Joomla 1.5 and Wordpress 3.1.3. Wrote  Knowledge Republic , "Before i begin, pardon my lousy English, i am not here to teach you English. This page is not to teach you how do you hack other website, but to feed curiosity of those who wonder why or how did those Brazil HackTeam manage to hack Singapore Statutory Body site, when the impression that Singapore give was so high tech Country, the security should be pretty high due to the amount of years that IDA spend on cultivating Security Talent by subsidizing Course fee. These Are the Sites that are being Hacked by HighTech Brazil HackTeam www.pa.gov.sg southwestcdc.org.sg yep.nyc.sg servicelearning.nyc.sg water-venture.org.sg cdc.org.sg app.yep.nyc.sg ycm.nyc....

This morning I saw a post on Facebook of a Singapore citizen emailing the Attorney General to investigate The Straits Times on contravening Parliamentary Elections Act (Chapter 218) with an article headlined "ST Poll: More rooting for PAP". I thought I post about it later in the evening, only to have heard that the police are currently looking into the complaint. A concerned citizen by the name of Brendan Chong emailed the Attorney General Chambers about his concern over the article. Brendan compared the incident with that when the Act was enforced on Joseph Ong Chor Teck for conducting a general election exit poll on the TRE website. Source: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4317387301523&set=a.1099500416362.2017043.1492224593&type=1&theater It was soon announced in the evening that the police are looking into the matter. Wrote Yahoo News , "The Elections Department (ELD) has confirmed police are probing an election poll result published b...

In an earlier post, I shared that there was a rumour spreading on the blogosphere that Cecilla Sue, the IT Sales Manager, involved in the Ng Boon Gay corruption case, has send out letter of demand to bloggers. Wanbao has outed the blogger to be Alvin Lim of Alvinology.com . Here's a screenshot from Omy.sg. Ironically, Alvin is also the online marketing manager at Omy.sg. Omy.sg is part of Singapore Press Holdings. Screenshot from  http://singaporenewsalternative.blogspot.sg/ Alvin has since deleted the offending post but has not posted an apology in his blog as of this posting.  It seems Cecilla Sue took offence to the parody images by 9GAGSG but reposted on Alvin's blog.  If reposting images is considered defamation, it would be interesting to see if Cecilla Sue will also send letter of defamation to the forums like Hardwarezone.com which also saw its members reposting 9GAGSG images like this .

Singtel chose to piss off the wrong public relations executive and it resulted in IT journalists and public relations community rallying behind her against Singtel. Bridget Kow, Account Executive at The Hoffman Agency, wrote on Singtel Facebook Wall about being wrongly charged on mobile data downloaded when she was overseas. Bridget thought that her loyalty to Singtel would mean something and Singtel would consider defraying this cost. However, her loyalty meant nothing to the telco. Wrote Bridget . "My bill for this month was SGD$340 dollars from the usual SGD$65 I regularly pay. After over ten years of loyalty, regular bill payments and good service, I was stunned to discover today that your organisation had taken the liberty of charging me an additional SGD$200 for 10MB of data while I was out of country. How is it considered “goodwill” when I still have to pay 1 day Dataroam package at $15/day instead of $200 dollars for 10 mb.... ..Instead of punishing a loyal custo...

Rumours are spreading around the blog-o-sphere that Cecilia Sue, the IT Sales Manager, involved in the Ng Boon Gay corruption case , is sending out letter of demands to bloggers who have re-posted spoof images of her with regards to the mentioned case. It seems that Cecilia has taken offence to the images created by 9Gag Singapore  during the period of the corruption case and have send letters of demand for these images to be taken down. The owners of 9Gag Singapore Facebook Page is still unknown and their website 9Gagsg.com has hidden the administrators' details. Sources highlighted that the spoof images are still hosted at Hardwarezone.com forums and if Hardwarezone will also be requested to remove them is still unknown. One blogger has already removed the offending post so as to not escalate the situation any further. Though we are in the early days of 2013, this would make it the second case where letter of demands were served to bloggers to remove their post. ...

Online users thought it was a steal for Microsoft Store Singapore to offer its soon-to-launch Office 2013 for only SGD5. From Hardwarezone Forum , "More SGD$5 deals here: [REMOVED] ___________________________________________________ UPDATE: Product have been taken down. Those who received their product keys, now we wait. Those who are waiting for their product keys, hope you get yours soon. " The Microsoft Store Singapore has since taken down the "$5 offer" and has offered a refund. Wrote Microsoft Singapore Facebook Page , "We recently learned that some Microsoft online store customers were able to purchase certain Office 2013 products from the Microsoft online store Singapore that were not generally advertised or priced for sale, and are still pending general release. To remedy the issue, we are issuing a full refund of these purchases of the Office 2013 products. To make up for any inconvenience, we have offered these customers a single use coup...

In my earlier post , I wrote that Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's letter of demand to Alex Au over his post on the AIMS issue help lift the profile of the Yawning Bread blog.  The Senang Diri blog also highlighted similar points. Wrote Senang Diri ,  "Firstly, Yawning Bread has been elevated to the status of thought-leader since it was the blog that broke news of the relationship between information technology company, Action Information Management (AIM) and the ruling People's Action Party (PAP)... ... Secondly, by declining to comment on the number of companies the PAP owns, the system surrendered the initiative in info management regarding this episode. This loss of initiative means the system is reacting to public opinion, rather than leading it.... ...Thirdly, legal action is high-handed but admittedly necessary where reputations have been besmirched. However, unleashing the silks comes with a price: It gives rise to concerns among Singaporeans that perh...

On the rare occasion I read the newspaper, I spotted what seems to be the journo's favourite pose. The male journos seem to prefer the chin resting on fist pose as seen in the photo below. Showing the fist is an attempt to show brawl and authority, short of showing the middle finger to the readers. The head needs to rest on the fist because it is heavy with thoughts of the next 1000 words.

Singapore Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, via his lawyers, has send a letter of demand to Alex Au, the blogger at Yawning Bread blog to take down his three posts on the AIMS issue. Wrote Today , "The letter, from Drew and Napier Senior Council Davinder Singh, said the blog post contained "very serious suggestions of criminal breach of trust" and, by the references to the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau and the Attorney-General's Chambers, "of corruption". The post also drew defamatory comments from readers, some directed against Mr Lee, said the letter of demand, which listed 21 comments. The comments when read with the original post and/or by themselves, are understood to mean that Mr Lee "is guilty of corruption in relation to the AIM Transaction and will abuse his powers to cover up the matter or prevent any investigation into his corruption", said the letter. "These are false and baseless allegations"." If the ...

Snapseed, the iPad app of the 2011, is now on Android Play. Plus it is free. It is available here . Wrote PC World , Though it doesn't have quite the stunning interface of Apple's iPhoto for iOS and some of the mind-blowing content-aware tricks of Adobe Photoshop Touch, Snapseed remains one of the most powerful image editors available for tablets. Best of all? It's now free.

As I was reading the The AIMS-Town Council issues via the blogs, it hit upon me that the way we search and consumed our news has totally change. Thanks to both technology and non-technological reasons. Dr Teo Ho Pin released his 26 paragraph rebuttal as a press release and Facebook Post Before Facebook, before Internet, one had to wait for the print media to report on releases. Radio and TV had the upper hand as they could release it earlier on air. But now, the release is made via a Facebook Post  where everyone can like, share and comment. In doing any of this three, the news would be easily spread from friend to friend. Back then, without the Internet, the only way to share the news was to pass the newspaper to a friend. There would be coffee shop talk but comments usually disperse at the speed of sound. Newspaper report, bloggers analyse  This is where the local newspaper struggle. I believe there are some journalists who would like to go deeper into the story ...

QR codes have been appearing islandwide in 2012 and it will continue to appear 2013. Our Fan Club posters also incorporate QR codes and this has taught me a few things about QR codes. QR Codes are personal We have seen QR codes on big window posters, big posters hanging out the walls, etc. However, what I found is that consumers will scan QR codes when it is more personal.  Consumers find it quite weird to be pointing their mobile phone in public places as they are concerned it would invite stares.  On the contrary, when you have a smaller poster at tables top, they are more than willing to scan as it is done in their own personal space. Looking at the phone while sitting down seems acceptable to the consumers. Putting links or description next to the QR Codes increase scan rates When consumers see a standalone QR code, they tend to be suspicious where the QR codes leads to upon scanning. Some digital marketers will respond to say that these ...