Skye Tan writes two slick articles in Singapore’s Electric New Paper. “Xiaxue Killer” profiles Sandra Ng, who runs the fun blog Sandralicious. Tan writes,
In person, her charm is girl-next-door but as evident from some photographs, the babe with a Shanghainese mother and a Singaporean father has no difficulties turning on a more vixen charm.
Sandra is part of the just-leaving-home generation I’m seeing creep up between the teens and the 30-something A-listers:
Her guardian, an aunt, is aware of her blog and is cool with it, she said, something she considered “very fortunate”. “I have friends whose parents check their blogs regularly.” Ms Ng’s not sure what her parents, who are divorced, would think.
Tan’s second piece, “Blogheads or What?” reveals that Singapore’s A-list is dominated by personal blogs:
A cursory browse of some of the more popular local blog sites seem to reveal them as vain, navel-gazing and, well, rather self-absorbed. Not exactly similar to the blog power we have seen in the US… There are exceptions, sure. But they are rare, and not getting much attention. Instead, the ones which make the most impact and score the most number of hits appear to be those that yak on and on about well, me, my body, my thoughts and my dog.
And the style will catch on as non-US blogs proliferate:
Livejournal.com, a US-based website which hosts blogs, ranks Singapore among the top 10 countries with the largest number of registered blogs. Our little red dot has 22,000 registered accounts. The blogging phenomenon is truly international. Time Magazine estimated in their 9 May issue this year that even in conservative Iran, there are 100,000 bloggers.
Hungry for stories? Why not try some Singapore blogs?
Tags: Singapore, blogs, SandraNg
What is “sucking up to the A-list“? What game does Lisa Stone of the BlogHer conference think bloggers have to play? Why do people bitch and moan about lists of popular bloggers, then grumble “but you have to do what they say”?
What’s to suck up? Technorati’s top blog, Boing Boing, permanently links to one blog: Fark, hidden in a text link below a stack of ads. You can only earn temporary links from BB, by sending them something cool. Just find something they might like, and fill in “Your Website” on the suggestion form. Sometimes they’ll come around and find you; most likely if you’re also a coolhunter or techie or both. And if you’re not, why do you want Boing Boing readers anyway?
Technorati slot two, Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit, either neglects credits or gets everything first-hand. If you want a link from him, you’ll have to actually write something. Again, something he’s interested in. That basically covers politics and world news. Or e-mail him some great posts from your own political blog, and he might put you on his right-column link list. Can’t be too hard to get there; there are over 200 links already.
Daily Kos, number three, stands out for its heavy threaded commenting. This is easy. Write something intelligent, link your name to your blog. Done. No one has to approve you. No one has to see you. But the blogroll is short, and Kos admits it - he feels a long list wouldn’t serve his readers. But again, you’re fine; just comment.
Gizmodo, fourth place, has only the occasional credit and no blogroll. It’s really about the products, so there’s no focus on networking your blog — nothing to suck up to.
Fark rounds out the top five. It’s a forum-blog like Slashdot, Metafilter, and Digg, and my advice applies to all four: Get an account, add to the conversation, don’t naysay people without wit and insight, and post a few of your own links. Follow the forum rules, and do more than whore your blog.
Building a reputation in blogdom isn’t about sucking up to an A-list. It’s about sharing tidbits with other bloggers, blog readers, forum members, and chatters who might enjoy them.
A good investor builds his wealth through diverse investments, some in blue chips and some in speculation. He doesn’t play the lotto, and he doesn’t spend his life savings on one Internet startup. You won’t build long-lasting fame and influence with a few blogroll links and a lucky meme find. You’ll build it with interesting, relevant discussion. And, as always, by writing something worth reading.
Am I connecting with anyone here? Do you want more?
IceRocket tweaked some settings. The front page now defaults to blog searches. Glad they’ve recognized and adapted to their niche. TechCrunch profiles the site:
Basically, IceRocket is awesome. One area where they really shine is in search results. A result includes tons of useful links. In addition to a link to the source, there are also links to tags for the result, the blog itself, tools to refine the search to include or exclude that blog, number of links to the blog (for relevance and ego), and they even link to the RSS feed for the blog. All search results pages have RSS feeds.
WorldChanging, a progressive futurist content-blog, interviews Cory Doctorow about the rising importance of fair international intellectual property law:
So, imagine being a development-oriented broadcaster with a low-power FM transmitter in, say, rural Costa Rica (where I used to live), servicing Nicaraguan refugees by taking information that you receive from distant stations with your big antenna — public health information, distance learning, government announcements — and splicing it together with locally-relevant public affairs programming and retransmit it, that becomes unlawful under the Broadcast Treaty.
AS: Even if all the pieces of that content were originally Creative Commons, or open source, or free use, or public domain, or whatever.
CD: Yep. If they were factual, if they were government transmissions, whatever. Things that aren’t subject to copyright.
Doctorow, of course, works for the copyfight org Electronic Frontier Foundation. He runs one to five copyfight entries in Boing Boing daily. His fiction, also, is infused with ideas about info freedom. The Globe and Mail runs a review of Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, his new present-day-Toronto novel:
At first, the main character, Alan, seems normal enough. He’s a middle-aged guy who’s just moved to the Kensington Market area. His neighbour, Mimi, appears fairly normal, too, except that she grows enormous, leathery wings unless her vicious boyfriend periodically saws them off. Doctorow presents these details straight-faced, amid the everyday scenery of Kensington and Toronto.
Then, as Alan spearheads a scheme to blanket Toronto in a free wireless network, Doctorow launches into flashbacks to Alan’s mysterious childhood. Alan is a monster. He grew up in a cave. And as an adult, he has the sense that his past is haunting his present.
Cory Doctorow, the transhumanist Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Tags: CoryDoctorow, bookreview, interview
If you believe the LAT, Mark Lisanti sweats and quivers at his computer, tapping F5 every two minutes and counting the pennies dropped from on high by Ebenezer Denton.
“It’s almost exactly like crack addiction,” says the affable 31-year-old from his command station, a Sony computer in his home office — a modest Los Feliz apartment. He doesn’t have air conditioning or any pictures on the wall of his office save for a black-and-white publicity still of Ralph Macchio in the forgotten 1980s flick “Crossroads.”
Also, the worst analogy ever:
He says that if an item lies in his inbox, or his consciousness, for more than six hours, then it’s usually too old to get on the blog. “Who’s going to want to hear about six hours ago?” he posits, much like in another era when Hamlet asked “to be or not to be?”
The Times later compares him to Virgil before heading off on a “people are more celeb-obsessed these days” tangent. Then it’s back to Lisanti with a few lines like “contributors get paid a set fee of $2,500″ ($2,500 per what, LAT?), before a final wrangle over Lisanti’s existential angst.
Tags: Defamer, LATimes, MarkLisanti
Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette is one of four finalists for Reliable Source, the gossip column left empty since May. Says the Washingtonian:
Ana Marie Cox has become the capital’s “it” gossip-blogger thanks to many articles about Wonkette, especially one in the New York Times Magazine. She shows up often on TV talk shows and DC’s social scene and then unclothes the high and mighty. Her prose is occasionally laced with language that would not pass the Post’s “family newspaper” standards. The question most asked by the Post’s scribbling hordes: Can she report?
She told the Washingtonian, “Commenting on this would be a good way to prove I wasn’t interested in the job.” She can’t be too worried about alienating the Post. Reliable Source will appear on page three of the Post’s Style section; Cox mocked the Style section’s lead story today: “The heat has everyone at the Post a little woozy. How else to explain yesterday’s lead Style section essay? Yes, an essay about shade.” As always, no love lost between Cox and past Style writers.
Tags: Wonkette, WashingtonPost, bitethehandthatfeedsyou
This is a Statik Selektah World Premier.
“Everybody get low.
Dedicated to the F*ck Nas Coalition.
Ni**as don’t want beef.
They vegetarian.”
That track up there is the hottest ish there is right now on the net.
your welcome.
Tonight I have a theme. There is a method to my madness. But I dont know what it is yet. From the Gaurdians Special Report Yugoslovia, via: Washington Monthly, via: Different Kitchen comes this piece of domestic bliss.
The wife of Europe’s most wanted man, the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, yesterday for the first time called on him to surrender to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
The following is good news for everybody, because I heard one day computers are going to take over the world, and than they’ll prolly vote for a robot for president. That would suck.
After possibly the most extensive testing ever on a voting system, California has rejected Diebold’s flagship electronic voting machine because of printer jams and screen freezes, sending local elections officials scrambling for other means of voting. “There was a failure rate of about 10 percent, and that’s not good enough for the voters of California and not good enough for me,” Secretary of State Bruce McPherson said.
via: Crooks and Liars cause y’know, politicians are like crooks, and liars. Get it?
agitprop invites it readers to help the bush administration rename the war on terror.
and me makes three who thinks Pataki has a zero chance of becoming President in ‘08.
americablogs new shirts are in. niiicceee!
Sploid is reporting on the news that the Police in the UK allegedly may have executed the Brazilian in the subway. via:
Hmm…Has anybody checked this out yet? A new TV network started by Al Gore. via: Mediaocrity.
This blog over at Different Kitchen does a great job of cherry picking the news, reporting that the “I.R.A. Renounces Violence in Potentially Profound Shift”
Guantanamo Tactics Revealed. Caffeine Low writes about the inhumane tactics used at Guantanamo. Well I can totally understand why. I mean, what kind of secrets would you tell if some girl as pretty as Pfc. Lynndie England was trottin’ around in her underwear, with a whip in her hands, and lust in her eyes?
Goodnight. I’m gonna go check that alledged Lindsay Lohan sex tape.
Singularist
Do you love Gothamist and its sister sites, but wish they didn’t use the editorial “we” all the time? Well kiddo, you’re in luck! From Eric Richardson and Gothamist LLC’s Creative Commons Noncommercial/derivitive works license comes Singularist, the site finally that puts the “I” in the “ist” sites. Literally. It goes thru and turns all the we and we’re into I and I’m. And Gothamist can’t mind too much….it still serves up all their pretty ads along with the 1st-personed text.
What’s next? A de-Xeni’d BoingBoing? Oh yeah….somebody already did that.
[via Blogging.la]
What do we have to do to get an autographed, poster-sized version of this Foxy Jess action shot from Wednesday’s Gawker v. Onion version of Battle of the Network Stars?
Tags: gawker, onion, geeksplayingsoftball
OhGizmo editor DP is blogging it up at Gizmodo. His guest-editing stint results in all the catchy, less-techy gadgets you’ve seen there lately: bicycle spinners, flower urinals, the beer belly life jacket, Mr. P, the Bios Urn, the War of the Worlds lemon juicer, and the lo-res chair.
Tags: Gizmodo, OhGizmo
Blogging Baby’s post on a baby sale sprouted a drawn-out comment fight, leading to an apology including Kim’s personal story about keeping her baby when she was 16. That wasn’t enough — some readers claimed they’d boycott the advertisers (which I’m fairly sure is illegal when organized) — so Kim read more comments and published a list of what she’s learned. Good on you, Kim, for being firm but understanding, for being open to ideas and stories, and for handling a tricky situation with aplomb. And good on you, Jason, for supporting her. Maybe you have a utopia after all.
Thanks to Brandon Rogers (damn it, he played softball too!) for the tip.
I watched all the old Apple Switch ads today. I’m in love with Ellen Feiss, and I want an iBook. [Disclosure: I am single and stuck with a Compaq.] Time for recaps!
Cory and the Boingers protect your right to photograph but also toy wit’ de breakin’ of de law.
Whoa, Mark Frauenfelder, careful with the old media references. You admit you read a whole magazine?
Jeff Jarvis to Bob Cauthorn: Who are you, Cauthorn, to say who can and who cannot blog?
You are trying to import the worst traits of old, big media — exclusion, snobbishness, the closed club — to citizens’ media. And it is most unbecoming, especially since you served in both worlds, since you yourself are a mainstream media guy who is now, uh, bloging (can you smell the irony, Bob?). You make fun of “a very senior, 50-something editor at a well-known American newspaper” but, you know, Bob, you’re looking a little long in the tooth yourself, fella.
Calling him old? Yes, Jarvis, keep digging your grave (divot by divot).
It’s easy to get distracted when you have an IRC channel named after you.
Gawker finally surmises that a media personality might be straight.
Gawker also finds Nonist’s blog Depression pamphlet. It’s actually, um, spot on and smart:
Stop reading all those tips from other sites on how to ‘have a great blog.’ You are doing this for fun! Not to join some cult of backwater celebrity…right? RIGHT? Oh screw it, do what you like. Suck cock for higher Google rank, just stop whining.
Thank God they gave me an out.
Dave Winer wants work. Seriously, Yahoo. Seriously. I hope IceRocket hires him. Do it, Cuban! He is the man! He is working the stripey! He takes shit from no one! He terrorizes! He quotes posts regardless of negation in the comment thread!
Jossip: Morgan Stanley shuts off Times Square stock ticker. Tomorrow: Jeff Jarvis crows over the corpse of Mainstream Investing, foresees day when money is all funneled through network cords. Discreetly accepts a slice of that money for more TV appearances.
Technorati releases Technorati Mobile. Cause blogs are the only sites that fit on those $%@@# Nokia screens.
Lifehacker claims a man can quit AOL in 10 minutes. We have conquered all barriers to human happiness! Let the age of peace begin!
I maintain that as much as I think about lots of women naked together, they think about it too. Granted, Heather Armstrong is a skewed sample.
Arianna Huffington’s evil Judy Miller theory gets considered on CJR Daily, then goes to Romenesko. I hear Hannity quoted it this afternoon. Huffington, you’d better be right, or newsbloggers will never hear the end of it.
Yahoo gives Firefox users a big smooch on the lips, meanwhile slapping the face of Google, whose Firefox toolbar took months, forcing FF users to cobble together an unofficial bar. The in-bar RSS adder is a boon for blog readers.
What the hell is Kottke on?
Today’s beauty: Flickr baby. Today’s ugly is pulled from yesterday’s Flicker: Worst Face Eva. And a million Radar covers are ugly too.
And for all we missed, there’s the Bloggers Blog.
Jason Calacanis says his bloggers are in Utopia:
Our bloggers work for a couple of hours a day and magically a check arrives every month (100+ checks last month). Every couple of months the check gets a little bigger and the blogger’s love and knowledge of their topic grows deeper. The blogging becomes easier and more rewarding the more bloggers blog. The community gets more involved and their jobs get even easier and more rewarding. We give them raises when they don’t expect it. We send them to trade shows they always wanted to attend, but never had a chance too. We have a total blast when we go to these trade shows—it’s a party!
And there are puppies and candy and Santa! And you were there, and you were there, and you! Oh Jason! There’s no place to work from like home!
Damn it, Jason, you’re making me drool. I have to admit, this blogging life is sounding pretty fun.
Days after the WSJ whips the High Times, Gawker Media and the Onion make the sorriest tie in softball history. (Apparently this is a sort of tradition among media companies in NY; I must have missed the memo.) Anyway, click it to see the sexiest Bad News Bears ever. I’m told they had to shoo the photographer off the field.
Tags: softball, Gawker, Onion
Jason Calacanis has posted his public schedule up to November 11, including a PR panel, a keynote speech at the Podcast and Portable Media Expo, and Burning Man.
Tags: JasonCalacanis, publicschedule
