Archive for the 'Technology' Category

This is a cross-post from my social media blog ZenGuide

I was recently profiled in the journal of the International Association of Business Communicators, Communication World, about how I have evolved from a novelist into a blogger - dowload “A Novel Approach” pdf article here . It started me thinking about how my love affair with blogging started and how, at the start of my venture into the online world, I had no idea that it would lead me to develop a valuable expertise that would become the foundation for my social media consultancy here at ZenGuide.

After publishing two novels, I stopped and started a number of third novels only to stumble into the doldrums after the first few chapters. I found that I did not have the inclination any more to sit quietly by myself and my imaginary characters, engaging in an imaginary landscape. The real world and all its real activities and people seemed much more interesting. I was also finding myself intrigued by developments in technology and in particular web-based technologies.

For those who have read my two legal thrillers, they will know that technology and gadgets play a critical role in the stories. In my first novel, The Flame Tree, the hero Luke does something clever with his mobile phone so he can secretly record a dangerous meeting with the bad guy and the heroine Jasmine dials in to listen to the message from her office phone - only to find that it cuts off just at the point that gunshots ring out. In Mindgame, Sam encrypts secret files into the code of digital photographs before destroying the original CDs and computer hard drive and the whole plot revolves around mind control using drugs and computer-generated imagery (CGI) in real time. So it was only a small step for me to move from being an author to a geek, checking out all the clever Web 2.0 gadgetry that is changing the way that we all communicate and relate to each other.

I started blogging to try and kickstart my enthusiasm for writing. I started out at www.yangmayooi.blogspot.com with Yang-May Ooi’s LitBlog, playing around with the HTML code to semi-personalise the standard template. I wrote a few posts and had a go and connecting with other bloggers and networks. The blog was picked up fairly quickly by Global Voices Online, the site that watches and comments on bridge blogs ie blogs that bridge cultures.

After a month or so, I realised that there was huge potential to use blogging as a marketing tool for my books and to share my experience as a published novelist in an increasingly competitive publishing market. My home-made site looked a bit tacky and lame in my eyes so I commissioned web designers to re-design the site - it was not cheap but, looking back, it was the best investment I have made in my life. The new site Fusion View has a confident, professional feel to it and many people have commented to me how much they like the look of it. For my books website, the designers retained the same design but tweaked it in different colours, thereby giving me two sites that sat well together within a branded identity. I was also then able to have the same designers create the look for ZenGuide many months later, within the same branded identity.

And as I blogged and explored the online world, concepts like “new media” and “social media” began to emerge. It seemed I was one of the new communicators. When I started blogging in April 2006, I had 200 unique visitors a month. Last month (May 2007), Fusion View clocked just over 8,000 unique visitors. People were starting to ask me for advice about how to use blogging in a business context. As I approach social media from the point of view of a communicator and writer rather than as a programmer or web developer, I can help my clients focus on developing quality content. Clients have also appreciated my experience in the legal and business worlds so that we can discuss in-depth how social media fits in with their marketing and business strategies. So, it made sense to start up a new blog and website for this specialist consultancy service so that all the technology- and social media- related information could sit in a distinct place from the cross-cultural arts and writing posts that make up Fusion View.

I’m having a fun time with this social media consultancy. It combines online activities like blogging with offline activities like meeting with clients, giving seminars and networking - which for me feels much more rounded than sitting alone in a fantasy world of fiction. I’ve learnt a great deal about social networks and online communications tools and I’m learning more every day in this ever-moving sector. I’ve also met some interesting and dynamic people on this journey so far and I’m looking forward to meeting many more - online and offline.

Photo: thanks to tandtinc.om

Headline, part of the same group as my publisher Hodder & Stoughton, is publishing a crime thriller Contract by Simon Spurrier online for free in six weekly installments, according to booktrade.info, the online book trade website.

Interestingly, Simon contacted me via the Ning.com social network site for crime writers Crimespace a few weeks before this announcement and we are now “friends” on that network. On Simon Spurrier’s Crimespace page, he describes himself as “Sarcastic. Odd. Paranoid obsession with aggressive Yaks. Hoping to get rich - in the spiritual karmic sense. Or at least break even.”

You can read the online version of the novel from tomorrow 24 May at http://www.itsallaboutthemoney.co.uk/. Or you can wait till 4 June to buy it in hardback at £19.99.

I’ve added a new gadget so you can download Fusion View posts as audio files onto your iPod or MP3 and listen to them wherever you are.

So no more being glued to the computer screen - you can enjoy my posts and guestblogger posts on the move.

All you have to do is drag and drop the Talkr badge below into your podcast tuner.

The easiest way is to minimise this screen in front of your iTunes (or other podcast catcher/ tuner screen) and drap and drop the badge into iTunes (or other podcast tuner).

The posts are read by a clever automated text reader that sounds like an American woman. It’s actually pretty realistic and natural sounding, considering she’s a bunch of bytes and digital data. Try it out and let me know what you think.

You can try it out by listening to my post on the non-stinky durian. (3 mins 02 secs)

(For Film Mondays or photographs, you’ll still have to come back to the screen to watch the movie and/ or see the photos, I’m afraid. The gadget doesn’t offer a facility where they narrate or describe the video or photo for you….)

Photo: thanks to dtechnews.com

Asia’s love affair with technology and the web is taking its toll. According to Reuters, students in India are spending so much time surfing the internet and blogging that they are becoming isolated, depressive and even suicidal. There’s been a decline in real life social activities and sports on campus with students preferring the solitude of being with their laptops and computer in the virtual company of a billion bytes of humanity.

Read the full article here.

Photo: thanks to thetrial on flickr.com

This Twitter thing is exploding. I turn away from the computer for a second and someone’s invented this living, moving map that shows you where in the world someone is twittering from:

Go to: http://twittermap.com/twittervision

You’ll be hypnotised - and also probably get a bit queasy as the map zooms around the world showing you thought balloons whenever anyone texts a thought, a gripe, a moment from their lives up onto to Twitter. It gives “stream of consciousness” writing a whole new meaning.

What’s the point of it all? I think people are still trying to figure it out. Key blogging commentators like Robert Scoble (Microsoft) and Steve Rubel (Edelmans) are on Twitter engaging in a conversation with other key figures plus anyone who wants to add their tuppence worth - about twittering, blogging and the impact of all this on global ideas. Other people are just texting what they’ve been doing, sharing their lives with friends and hundreds and thousands of strangers around the world - and I guess that’s part of the aura of it: that as a visitor, you can glimpse into the lives of so many strangers and as a participant you can share what you’re thinking or doing at any given moment. It’s an act of defiance - or desperation? - against existential angst and the aloneness of the human condition.

PS. Thanks to Andrew Eglinton for telling me about the link.

Pic: thanks to academic.evergreen.edu

I’ve just discovered a new blogging / messaging tool - Twitter, which allows me to post snippets of text via the web, a desktop application or my mobile phone. I have added a Live Updates! board in the middle sidebar to experiment with this tool. The idea is that I can mini-blog from wherever I am so long as I have a PC connection or my mobile phone.

You can see my twitterings page at http://twitter.com/fusionview and subscribe to the feed using a feed aggregator and you can also sign up from there to receive my twitterings on your mobile phone. And if lots of your friends and mine sign up, we can all receive updates of what each of us are doing anytime, anywhere. (Fortunately, you can set it so it doesn’t SMS you in the middle of the night or adjust it so you receive only some - or none - of your friends’ texts as you choose.)

Apparently, Twitter is so popular that the overload of people signing on caused a momentary glitch on their website. You can follow public texts from anyone and everyone on their homepage. News providers like the BBC update regularly with snippets of news. Senator John Edwards who is on a presidential campaign in the US uses it to update his potential voters on where he is and what he’s doing. For ordinary folk, it’s a chance to share our lives online every moment of the day and night that we have the strength and inclination to text.

“I text therefore I am”?

What I would really love to see are Twitterers who can write something interesting or thought-provoking in 140 characters so that I can have something worthwhile to read on my mobile phone - when I’m on the bus or hanging around waiting in between real-life events. So here’s a challenge to all you flash fiction writers and haiku poets, can you Twitter interestingly, uniquely, fascinatingly, challengingly to entertain, bewitch, bedazzle and enthrall the masses on their phones? Let me know if you have such a Twitter account and I’ll feature you on Fusion View!

PS. You can see my first attempt at mini flash fiction at http://twitter.com/fusionview/statuses/7739671

Photo: thanks to cs.sfu.ca

There’ve been some terrific comments over the last few weeks. I don’t have space to highlight all of them but here are some that you might enjoy.

The podcast interview with James Wood drew a number of comments from poets and poetry fans, O’Shea Jackson, Rob and Calvin Broadus. James’s remark about Scottish poets lacking ambition prompted a quick retort from Rob. Calvin gently mocked James’s way of adding multi-textual references in his manner of speech but also cheered James on, saying that everyone MUST read James’s poems.

My post on the joys of malt loaf awhile back drew a recipe request from Kim Lewis. Yeeton has kindly responded and posted up a recipe for malt loaf in his comment – I hope Kim will come back and let us know how she gets on if she uses that recipe. Pedro defends the loaf as being healthy – especially if you are a runner or cyclist. I definitely agree that it’s great for an energy boost when you’re outdoors doing vigorous exercise.

Jennifer comments that she always checks out guys whom she sees knitting and she is clearly familiar with the film about guys knitting that I posted up. The pics of knitted cupcakes brought comments from émigré and Annegret, who marvelled at the skills of the creators. I laughed out loud at Wei’s response to the cupcakes: “like men… cute, but pointless.”

Rj gave me a link to a Singaporean online radion station in response to my post on listening to the wireless. Thanks for that!

Ted Mahsun, whom I mentioned in my post on where to submit your manuscript, has complemented that post with some advice on how to submit short stories to US magazines on his blog. Thanks for adding to the community of knowledge, Ted.

Vandana is a Daphne du Maurier fan and will be visiting the du Maurier festival in Cornwall this year. She asked me to recommend a place to stay and I emailed her to say that I Googled for a self-catering cottage and suggested she could Google for a B&B. I’ve asked her to write up a short report of her tour of the festival if she does go and to submit it to Fusion View – I hope she will as it would be great to have an “our reporter from Cornwall” piece on all things du Maurier on this site.

You may remember Nicky Harman, the translator whose first-person piece I featured awhile back. She was looking for an agent for her translations of a Chinese novel into English. Her article about the translation process posted on Fusion View was spotted by a publisher in China who contacted me, wanting to get in touch with Nicky. Nicky emailed me a few weeks ago to say that that publisher has now invited her to discuss a possible translation project and she is also in discussions with a literary agent in the UK who checked her out on Fusion View. Rock on, Nicky!

The discussion about how the Japanese occupation on Malaya is written continues with a comment from jack who tells how his Japanese friend in college did not know about the past of his own country.

Rosaline Ting adds a comment to tell Fusion View readers about her play Journeys at the Wimbledon Theatre in London. Let me know if you go to see it and would like to contribute a review to Fusion View.

Kenny Mah, a Malaysian writer, has created a cool banner for the sidebar of his blog displaying details of the LitBlogger event that I will be taking part in on Saturday 24 February in Kuala Lumpur - he shares the link to it in his comment that he posted here. Thanks, Kenny!

Tunku Halim makes a good point that people who use obscenities too much in their daily speech just makes them boring rather than shocking. He also queried where he can buy my books - Tunku, you can get them from www.amazon.co.uk, or click on the links in the sidebar of this blog. Or you can order them at a good bookshop in your area.

Peter added a thought-provoking comment on a previous comments roundup, highlighting the differences between different Chinese communities in the UK. His picture of the diversity within the Chinese overseas groups makes me think laughingly of the recent case when a Scottish judge let off a Chinese person from a driving offence because we all look alike and it couldn’t be ascertained without a doubt that the accused was the person driving the car in the traffic camera photo. We don’t look alike, really we don’t, your honour.

Finally, my post on maintaining an authentic image prompted some musings from yeeton on blogs and blogging and also some advice from Sandy Dumont encouraging me to try some light lipstick instead of throwing out make-up altogether!

Photo of cattle round up thanks to boss lady ranch.com

My name is Yang-May and I’m a netaholic. We lost our broadband connection last week and I found myself having a panic attack. I couldn’t breathe, my gut churned, I felt anxious and stressed. And as with all junkies, Angie was my partner in crime, too and she paced the house, fretting about where we were going to get our fix.

We called our PC repairman like junkies calling their supplier. When Roger arrived, Angie hovered tensely by as he tested the router, checked the wired connections and spoke at length with the broadband help desk. I called in regularly from my office for a moment to moment update. Would we get our supply by the end of the day?

No, Roger said, there was nothing more he could do – the problem was at the supplier end and it would take them a couple of days to give us a call back to let us know when we would be re-connected. A couple of days! Aaaaargh!

Our emails! My blog! YouTube! Shopping on Amazon! My supply of podcasts from iTunes! Angie and I have been in a state of shock since last week. The call from the supplier never came and I have chased in a state of desperation but we are still off-line. Our universe feels like it has come to an end.

But we are going to be strong. I hold in my mind Frank Sinatra in “The Man with the Golden Arm” going cold turkey for days in a locked room and Ewan McGregor in “Trainspotting” being swallowed by his bed as he de-toxed. If they can do it, we can do it.

So I took the opportunity of time offline to express my existential netaholic crisis in art. This post is illustrated with the result of my expressionistic efforts last week of My Hell Without Broadband.

I wouldn’t say we are exactly “clean” as yet. We are hanging on by a thread while we wait for re-connection. And if we have to wait too long, we shall have to change suppliers, whatever the cost…

~~~

PS. To keep Fusion View going, I am writing this on a Word document, taking it in to work on my flash memory stick and uploading it to the blog in my lunch hour.

I’m a gadget freak and I just love any new technology that’s clever and innovative - and useful. Dulwich Picture Gallery have a great new initiative, using PDAs (handheld digital devices) to enable visitors to interact with the beautiful Baroque art in its collections.

The PDA connects via wi-fi in the Gallery to a selection of art “trails ” that will take you to different paintings. There are questions and fun tidbits of information to discuss and debate with your friends, making the whole experience of visiting this art gallery interactive and very 21st century. That great innovator Leonarda da Vinci himself would have approved!

Here is a video of Ingrid Beazley*, E-Learning Programme Developer, talking to me about the DiGit Art Trails at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. I met Ingrid giving a demo of the PDAs at the Gallery this morning and asked her spontaneously to tell me about them, capturing it on my mobile phone and uploading it onto Fusion View within an hour of getting home - I just love the wonders of modern technology!

You can hire a PDA at the PDA desk when you go to the Dulwich Picture Gallery at weekends. It costs £3 on top of your entry ticket, which is pretty good value. To find out how to get there, click here. To find out more about the Gallery, go to http://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/.

*Ingrid is also Chair of the Friends of the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Disclosure: I am involved with the Friends of the Dulwich Picture Gallery as member of their film club team, GalleryFilm, and I am also helping them with their social media strategy. The Friends support the work of the Gallery by their annual subscriptions which in return give Friends discounts on Gallery events. The Friends also raise funds for the Gallery through active volunteer activities - for example, all profits from the film club go to the Gallery. To find out more about the Friends, click here

Here’s your chance to own a piece of genius. The Tate has set up an appeal to stop a major Turner painting from going to an overseas buyer who has paid £5.8million to buy the painting. However, there is a temporary export ban until 20 March 2007. The Tate are trying to raise enough funds to keep the painting, The Blue Rigi, in the UK with an innovative new media campaign, offering the likes of you and me the chance to “buy a brushstroke”.

You can “Buy a Brushstroke” by clicking on a small square on the painting - or as many squares as you like and it will calculate the amount of your purchase for every click you make. Or if you prefer not to give in to your consumeristic, acquisitive urge, you can make a regular donation online as well! Find out more at The Art Fund.

As a global, fusion sort of person, I am ambivalent about the nationalistic tone of such campaigns to save great art “for Britain”. On the other hand, as someone who enjoys and appreciates art, I can understand why anyone, any group, any country and any nation might not want art that was made in their country by one of their own to go outside the “tribe”. Who does art belong to? Should it belong to anyone?

I’ve been reading “The Gift” by Lewis Hyde about the commoditisation of art and its impact on creativity, culture and society. A very simplistic summary goes something like this: Creativity is a gift. Creativity makes art. Art is a gift. Once you capitalise a gift (as in “being a capitalist”) by buying and selling it, what happens to the creativity? Does it become the servant of capitalism? Can you be still truly creative? (I haven’t got to the end yet but what I want to know is: if you don’t engage with capitalism as an artist, how are you going to pay the bills?)

Let me know what you think.