Tabik Malaysia!

Tahun Baru Hijrah paling bermakna buat Malaysia, emas, emas, 40+ semuanya... Many did their best at 25th SEA Games at Vientienne, Laos - swimming, diving, wushu, football... R.E.S.P.E.K.!



Quoting "King Raja" (Dato'-in-waiting Rajagopal):

“We started the competition by recording the biggest win of the football competition (since 1959) – thrashing Timor Leste 11-0. Then, we packed off defending champions Thailand (out of the semi-finals for the first time in 36 years).

“Today, we have won the gold medal away from home for the first time after 30 years (1979) and ... crowned champions after 20 years.

Kepada semua peminat bola Malaysia "KEMBALILAH KE PANGKAL JALAN!" ;)

Have a great Awal Muharram everyone and may your year(s) ahead be blessed by God Almighty...

Wassalammualaikum w.w.

H.e.L.P. !! I'm being auctioned....

Most feastful weekend, like, ever!

Today, hundreds of millions of people around the world especially in the United States celebrate Thanksgiving Day with feasts of turkeys and gatherings of family members. How I miss those gatherings with friends during college years in the States.... ;)

By the same evening, about 1.5 billion Muslims will celebrate a three-day Eid-ul Adha starting from the 10th day of Dhu al-Hijjah - the 12th or final lunar month of Islamic Heejrah Calendar marking a three nights and three days of feasts, mainly from the halaal sacrifices of livestock animals, eg. goat, sheep, cow or camel, aka, 'qurban' - "The meat from the qurbani is to be equally distributed among the poor, relatives and ones self." (Wikipedia, 2009)

Hence, four days of celebrations for many, for the entire weekend from Thursday until Sunday!


The Hajj or annual pillgrimage to Mecca are also being performed by millions at this time of the year, from Nov 25th until 29th, 2009.

Happy Thanksgiving & Eid Mubarak!

In Malaysia, we say: Selamat Hari Raya Haji & Korban al-Adha... Maaf Zahir & Batin... (forgiveness seeked)

Jangan lupa pi Masjid esok pagi untuk solat Raya!!

Join me at USM Penang for Global Entrepreneurship Week 2009!

It's time to rock Penang, and Northern Corridor, coz we're also in! We'll be buzzing Malaysia and the world with one of the largest gatherings of entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurial aspirants in Penang this Thursday, 19 NOV 2009.

Be there, meet me and friends from all over including the good people from Kuala Lumpur Dash, CEO of Warisan Global, Azim Pawanchik, Chief Consultant of Alpha Catalyst and Michael Teoh, Founder of Youth Entrepreneurs Malaysia.

The evening ceremony & dinner will be officiated by Dato' Mukhriz Tun Mahathir, Deputy Minister of International Trade & Industry Malaysia (MITI).

Everyone's welcome! RESERVE YOUR SEAT TODAY (limited ones available)!!

Together, we'll create world's largest movement on entrepreneurship, ever!

Eid Mubarak 1430H!

It's been a week since the 1st day of Eid ("Hari Raya" in Malaysia), but the raya mood is still here. (Malaysians tend to celebrate Eid for the entire month of Syawal, perhaps to make up to the the full month of fasting during Ramadhan)

I even attended another Raya open house hosted by a local State Legistive Hall Member (ADUN) earlier yesterday, and more open houses are on the way - Tuesday at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) Pulau Pinang, and all the way to 10th of October, hosted by TechBiz Penang (which I'm also a committee member of) at Pen Mutiara Restaurant, Batu Maung.

So, here again (as wished elsewhere - @twitter, @facebook, via SMSes, in person etc.):

Selamat Hari Raya Aidil Fitri
Maaf Zahir & Batin!

* Photo taken from the lounge of newly opened Hard Rock Hotel, Batu Feringghi, Pulau Pinang.

#1 in Malaysia

OK, thought I'd made only a single post today on the 1st of September, but, glancing the top of the page reminded me to check Twitter Grader again - a full one hundred mark, really? - after many days of low frequency tweets this week, losing updates count by nearly 15,000 (short mishap by @twitter ~13 AUG 2009), and dropped so many ranks down below just a week ago.


(Besides, my top-20 Malaysia rank (in terms of followers just a few months ago), has long gone following my neglect and focus on this one account - I do have another acct with more followers tho ;))

Feeling like a kid again... The @WoNoJo really at #1, huh?



My tweet buddies, @PeterPek and @xmellyssax - you'll have your time on the #1 spot soon... don't worry.

The rest, @nurul54, @syafiza, @ruhanirabin, @gloson, @askaaronlee and @emailcopywriter have enjoyed the top-most spot before, and will definitely go up there again, I believe. All the best to newcomer @lean6s, rising up fast there!

Wait, I didn't know @ruhanirabin made that many tweets in such a short time -aktifnya hang!

Cepat-cepat, ikut saya... (follow me, and I'll follow you.... teringat iklan makhluk kuning Digi)

Satu Malaysia

Four months without updates, and finally had the urge to update, and thought this video from Astro radio folks deserves the spot - it's watched barely 3,000 times though since published on YouTube 3 days ago by DemonDJ - not your typical "All Stars", except maybe Aznil kot:



Selamat Merdeka Malaysia!


p/s: haven't been watching youtube much all the months, but think I've watched at least 4-hour straight of video feeds last night, mostly catching up on X Factor Season 6 ones :)

Web 3.0 at Work - "Human does it better" for Focussed News

The news broke out about three hours ago during mid morning (around 10:30 am) at the American Civic Association immigration center in Binghamton, New York:

Thirteen people were confirmed dead (including perpetrator), twenty-six wounded, and forty-one were taken hostage by an Asian gunman: 42-year-old Johnson City resident, Jiverly Voong, who later shot himself. Five people, aged from twenty to mid-fifties, were treated for gunshot wounds at Wilson Medical Center in Johnson City. (Wikipedia, Apr 3, 2009 - US)

A search on Google News revealed that among the first reports came from Elmira Star-Gazette with the headline "Shooting at American Civic Association":

Police are responding to reports of a shooting at 131 Front St. this morning, the site of the American Civic Association. They began staging at Oak and Main ...

Immediately, the news was covered by a scores of other news media companies including News 10 Now, The Associated Press and USA Today being among the earliest. Within two hours, over a thousand news sources have covered it, and the count is at over 1,500 as of 3am Malaysia Time (MYT) or 3pm in New York, USA (EST).

However, although the news naturally made it the top-most position in Google News (US Edition), overall news focus was varied to several other topics including "madoff", "obama", "jobs" etc. as the media companies think that people are more concerned about the troubling economy and financial woes with Obama being in Europe (France specifically during G20 stop in London) meeting world's leaders to cook up economy-fixing plans:

But for the millions of Internet users on Twitter, the most revolutionary social media platform to-date (touted the "web 3.0 that people have been waiting for", which is reportedly being actively pursued by media giant Google for final acquisition), the focus topic was unanimous:

It's the mass-shooting and hosting crisis in Binghamton, clearly ahead of all others, similar to previous reportings of the Mumbai raid, several occassional earthquakes and tsunami warnings, possible Google acquisition of Twitter etc.


One of the first tweets on the Binghamton news probably came from BNOnews, a new media service (with over 114,000 followers as of 4th of April 2009) specifically focussed on using Twitter to disseminate breaking news headlines:

BULLETIN -- AT LEAST FOUR PEOPLE SHOT, MORE THAN 40 HOSTAGES INSIDE BINGHAMTON, NEW YORK BUILDING.

Immediately, the original tweet was retweeted by dozens other Twitter users creating ala-MLM chain effect for the news distribution, reaching thousands in the matter of minutes, and could end up to reach a million or so readers in the matter of hours, as observed from the dozens of tweets that continue to be posted every minute to a tune of thousands per hour, or tens of thousands per day!

That's Web 3.0 at work... as they say (ripped off DMOZ Open Directory's campaign), "Human does it (the news) better!"

BTW, our heart and prayers go to family and friends of the victims of the Binghamton shooting...

Read more about the Binghamton shootings at world's biggest and most up-to-date encyclopedia, the Wikipedia.

Theater time, once in a blue moon...

Not to be missed... I feel the need, the need for speed!

How to Trend Twitter - the @ideaShare Way!

1. Get some 70 people or so into one room,
   
   
2. Hook 'em up with the Internet,
   
   
3. Ask each to log in to Twitter.com
   (after creating a new account for the first time, if new user), and
   
   
4. Start tweeting with #ideashare tag!

After some shameless act of self-promotion for twitter names owned/co-owned by facilitators i.e. @cerventus,@myentrepreneurs, @worldisastage, @pieartboy, @michaelteoh, @elevyn_official etc., the not-so-newbies and newbies altogether sent well over 200 tweets with #ideashare tag over the course of over two hours, by which "ideashare" was already trending clearly on Twitter.com and on tag cloud at sites like Twitscoop etc, as observed by below graph, sparking curiosity among twitizens:


There were negative side effects though: The room was so packed with people, that those in the room were suffering internet surfing slowness frustration syndrome (as 20-30 ppl cramping wirelessly the small pipe of 1.5Mbps temporary/dedicated DSL installation at any one time), and to make things worse, the aircond couldn't stand the heat emitted by after-lunch human crowd and broke down, sending the room into the state of microwave and fried most of these brainiacs turning them into crappy tweeters, irritating everyone else in the twitterverse including @kamal, @lukejsmith and @bytebot, among others!

Guess, most of the people in the room hasn't heard about @kevinrose's latest gift to the web 2.0 crowd: @wefollow, ie. http://wefollow.com/tag/ideashare - you don't need to blatantly self-promote your twitter name. Instead, just tag, and you're it!

Need more tag ideas? Try "penang" (or the state you're from, which you can change at a later time) and "malaysia" (we're all Malaysians right? and there's no rooms in twitterspace!)

I'm also surprise why the facilitators were showcasing twitterfall and twitpic websites, when tweetdeck clearly has all of those small gimmicks with growing features like group, search and twitpic. (note: twitpic.com was down at the time of demo!)

The first of the two-day event in conjunction with the MSC Innotech 2009 Interstate - Northern Region event was organized by Kuala Lumpur-based Ureka Labs, and financed by the Cyberjaya-based Technopreneur Development Division of Multimedia Development Corporation (MDEC), custodian for the MSC Malaysia government initiative.

More information is available at the event-centric/local networking site developed by folks at Eureka Labs, http://ideashare.my

Surprisingly(?), not many people, despite having a horde of 60+ participants at the venue yesterday, are following @netbash or @ideashare (ownership questionable), with just thirteen and four followers respectively as of 7 am on the next day.

And folks @ MDEC neither owns @mdec nor @tedd twitter names, which are both registered by others as early as nearly a year ago (30mar08 for "mdec") -- Should I reveal more brandjackable twitter names??


About Twitscoop:

Twitter was built to help thousands of people answer a very simple question: "What are you doing ?"

Twitscoop was built to help you stay on top of twitter's hot topics or discussions.

Through an automated algorithm, twitscoop crawls hundreds of tweets every minute and extracts the words which are mentionned more often than usual. The result is displayed in a Tag Cloud, using the following rule: the hotter, the bigger (no joke here).

Thanks to twitscoop and the continuously growing twitter user base, you will soon realise that "What are you doing ?" can have very different answers, from "I'm standing in a queue of 500 to buy Gta4", to "Was that just an Earthquake ?", through to "Hey, Microsoft just acquired Yahoo" (no this didn't actually happen yet).

As a result, twitscoop enables you to stay on top of things in a matter of seconds, often way before the news actually hits the mainstream information channels !

Twitter & Me! @PenangCity (Sun, 22 MAR 2009)

I'll be talking about Twitter, among others, at the Blog Bash 2009 @ Balik Pulau this coming Sunday, 22 MARCH 2009.

If you've never heard of Twitter, watch the following short presentation... "in plain English":



Learn why Twitter is the best thing on the Internet since Email, or the best for mobile phone, since SMS (text messaging).

Learn why Facebook couldn't even acquire Twitter for nearly RM2-BILLION!

Do you know that Malaysia's Deputy Prime Minister, YAB Dato' Seri Mohd Najib bin Tun Razak @NajibRazak is also using Twitter, although, not exactly how Twitter can be maximized its benefits! And so does YB Dato' Seri Anwar bin Ibrahim @AnwarIbrahim, the popular opposition leader.

On the other hand, President of the United States, Barack Obama use Twitter to first announce his choice for US presidential election running mate just months ago. Today @BarackObama is the most popular person on Twitter, and Facebook too!

Learn how businesses are using Twitter to generate millions of RM in sales.

Join us in Penang!

To attend, RSVP at the official website of Social Entrepreneurs Club of Balik Pulau.

BTW, if you've never heard of the multiple award-winning Rural Internet Centre of Balik Pulau, watch the following video:



See ya in Balik Pulau!

Jalur Sempit IPTA Malaysia

More than three years ago in 2005, I raised my concern to the then Malaysian Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Dato' Seri Dr. Jamaludin Jarjis during the Global Technopreneurship Forum event in Penang on how intolerable the state of Internet connection in Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) Status higher learning institutions including Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM). Consider that when universities in the United States were enjoying 10-MBps or better connection to dorm (hostel) rooms as early as ten years earlier, Malaysian universities in 2005 were having 100Kbps or slower connection to hi-tech labs. In fact, my 50Kbps mobile GPRS connection was at times better than connection to these RM-million equipped computer labs. At the same time, home users were able to subscribe to 1-Mbps (best effort) from providers like TM Net Sdn Bhd.

I was responding on how he should not focus too much of his effort on (less practical) WiMaX roll-out to jungles and villages and might get distracted off the more urgent task (RESPONSIBILITY) at hand, i.e. empower some 600,000 higher learning students with what they critically need, usable BROADBAND! Yang Berhormat's immediate reaction (and very bold if I may add) was that I should not question the rights of Malaysian natives (Orang Asli etc.), but instead should tolerate the fact that those university students (me included, since I was completing my postgraduate program at a local university) can at least have some taste of Internet no matter how horrible it was.

Fast forward 3+ years later, Malaysian broadband scenes still look hopeless, and WiMaX is practically nowhere to be found the country, except only recently starting from mostly Klang Valley (as usual, where many providers don't go further away, like Jaring's Broadband, TIME's Webbit etc.). Instead, people have come to realize that it's WiFi that most people need, including through recent better-late-than-never initiative (political campaign?) by the Penang State Government (although the actual implementation is still very much questionable - where is it??). Considering that Maxis & Celcom are among world's most ridiculous broadband providers offering hi-speed download of total data at just 3GB and 5GB per month respectively (enough for just ONE full day of active use, or just SEVEN days of 8-hour/day web surfing), compared to upcoming DiGi's & P1's at 50GB and more, most people would still have to rely to WiFis at Mamak outlets (private or government-supported via KTAK) at the cost of RM1/hour (electricity at most outlets) or less (just 'teh tarik' etc, and get their stomach bloated with sweetened milk and sugar causing 'kencing manis'). For some who don't mind 'behaving' while surfing, they can make use of hi-speed wifi at most KTAK myBroadband-powered libraries.

At the age of Web 3.0 (starting March 2009), when millions in developed countries of US, UK, Japan, Korea, Singapore etc. are enjoying up to 60MBps average broadband, millions of Malaysians especially those 100,000s of university students in campuses around the country are still crawling at speed well of under 1Mbps and frequent disconnections...

If you don't believe me, see the following rant (do disregard association with a Hitler portrayal - just for laughs!), creative production by a Malaysian Multimedia University (MMU) student - if MMU that's located at the epicenter of MSC, Cyberjaya is in trouble, don't dream elsewhere!:




ENGLISH TRANSLATION/SUBTITLES:

Military official (looking distressed): This week, electricity supply has been interrupted twice (especially) at nights. Today, water supply is also experiencing interruption. The number of students who aren't taking morning showers are increasing.

Hitler: That's OK (looking unimpressed). What's important... has the internet problem been resolved?

Military official : Regarding that... (looking fearful). Internet...
Military official 2: Internet connectivity still experiencing troubles, and the speed... worse than usual.

Hitler (angered and disappointed, putting down his eyeglasses): Those who are staying... outside the hostels (off campus), please... leave the room now.... (MOST LEFT THE ROOM EXCEPT THREE SENIOR MILITARY OFFICIALS and two scared bodyguards)

What's all these!! Can't internet issue be resolved already? We've suffering for so long, and with the Internet speed continue to worsen and worsen! I totally did not expect this! (woman sobbing outside the room, being consoled by another woman). Why is Internet problem not resolved to date? (SHOUTING) Today, I was forced to use the Internet service that's obviously slower than my neighbor's turtle!

Military official (at fast pace): Sir, this internet (slowness) issue has been reported to CITS.

Hitler: I've send that (same) report way earlier! In fact, I've sent thousands of emails!!

MO: But (Sir), at least Internet can still be used for surfing.

Hitler: What surfing, if the Internet waves look slower like there's no wind! (THROWN PENCIL TO THE MAP ON DESK). It's disguisting, you know! All these while, I was able to enjoy playing online games, joining outside servers, mass-massacring people in Counter Strike! Look what happens now, ping results are extremely high! Even worse, when I was enjoying my Internet game, it keeps disconnecting! All my dream to become number one was gone... just like that! If I can do anything my heart desire, I'd strangle my roomate, and murder him! All the while, I was so proudful with Internet in MMU (Malaysian Multimedia University, a MSC-status institution/campus), which was different from home Internet... Now, it's like a long sweet dream, crashed! Disguisting! Not just that, I could die trying to download movies via torrent from outside! They keep blocking that download, and it's insanely slow! And don't get me started with Rapidshare... It takes over a dozen days just to download a single part! How can I be patient with such a a thing?

Woman Outside (CONSOLING ANOTHER WOMAN): It's ok. C'mon... we both stay off campus (outside the hostels), right?

Hitler: This is a very critical problem! Looks like I won't be able to play that Team Fortress 2 game that I've just purchased... It's been very unfortunate! Internet... slowness... If this continues, maybe it's time for me to leave the hostel, and reside in Cyberia (a nearby off-campus condominium). It's been an unfortunate day... (LOOKING DOWN)

I wonder what the KTAK ministers and staff are doing nowadays? Why are they not as vocal as former KTAK minister Tun Dr. Lim Kheng Yaik, against these incompetent national telcos?

Well, sometimes, when facing adversities and hardships, people can indeed be creative! Take the Oscar-awarded Slumdog Millionaire film for instance. Plus, I can absolutely, personally attest to this statement!

WoNoJo is in the elite 90+ percentile group!

Not bad... That's over 100 mark, not so far from the top-50s with 200+ points, according to TwitterRank!! Believe in WoNoJo today... :)

$100 for a surge of twitter followers?

It's so easy to get people to virally spread words about you - just promise them free t-shirts, free followers (@garymccaffree) and free $100 (a considerably low marketing investment!):

Just an hour ago (around 1am MYT or noon USA EST, Michael Gray (@graywolf) posted a simple message on Twitter:

"I will give out $100 via paypal to ONE person who is following me as of 12:00 midnight east coast time - please RT"

That simple message on a 12-hour contest (from noon to midnight) offering $100 via paypal was enough to generate over 150 retweets per hour (about 2.5 messages per minute), sending a spike on twitscoop, highlighting "paypal" on twitcloud:


To enhance the tweeted message, Michael also immediately highlighted the simple contest on his Twitter Bio.

It helps however that Michael already has nearly 5,000 followers on his @graywolf twitter account.



Expect that he'll add a few thousands more very soon...

The reawakening of WoNoJo

A 10-day research project on 3rd generation of social media (web 3.0), while talking craps and taken two days of vacation (outstation)... but in the same time, doubling followers in 18 days - Amazing isn't it? (not phenomenal, but good enough). And I haven't even started any viral/MLM experiments yet...

Imagine if I had started optimizing these social media tools for many years now (I first blogged nearly 10 years ago, and started to specifically use twitter over 18 months ago)

Stay tuned for my book soon... (while I push out at least TEN parallel new media brands in just two weeks)

BTW, I wonder if there's a tracker/grapher for facebook social circle growth too...

...is being being stalked by 390 people and robots!

I'm being stalked by 390 followers! Be in my cult @WoNoJo now!!

CheDet Lompat Lagi

The URL domain for Che Det's blog that is...

chedet.com

The first blog post by Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad, the former longest-serving Prime Minister of Malaysia who's warmly known by the locals of his birthplace as Che Det, was recorded on 1st of May 2008 (Labour Day holiday in Malaysia) when the nation was still in shock over the power of blogs (new media) that gave the ruling Barisan National (National Coalition) party its biggest lost in decades -- In fact, if Malaysians had embraced the new media significantly much earlier, perhaps, Dr M himself would have to cut short his prime ministership tenure that ended on his postponed resignation back in 2003.

The motivation for blogging for Tun M, judging from his earliest posts back in May 2008 was to counter mounting criticism against him, both from his older critics, and also the new critics from the ruling BN government, of which many of whom pointing the blame to his still powerful influence upon Malaysians to not giving BN a two-third control of the parliament during the March 8th election. Less than three weeks later, on Wesak holiday (19 May 2008) Mahathir resigned from UMNO, the backbone of the BN and a party he's been attached to for over 30 years. Since then, the blog has served as a free outlet for him, to defend himself verbally, as well as continue offering unbiased opinions on everything Malaysia and the world, and once shot to a popularity rank of top under 10,000 in the world, and top-100 in Malaysia, closing in the web traffic ranks of mainstream news media like the Star, Malaysia Kini, Utusan Malaysia & Kosmo and several of Media Prima's publications.

In fact, Mahathir today is probably the most popular former head of state in the world, who blogs regularly.The hard-to-catch personality who still travels around the world frequently, becomes easy to follow this time - practically everyday, his writings are reviewed and reposted by both the new and old media - blogs and daily newspapers.

Just check out Mahathir's most recent quotes on daily basis as tracked by Google News aggregation service:-

"What is most comical is hearing Anwar's comments regarding Nasarudin who joined Parti Keadilan Rakyat and left PKR. Jumping in (the trap) is allowed but jumping out is illegal," Dr Mahathir said.

10 hours ago Malaysia Today (2 occurrences)

"However, he can't put it off for a long because the assembly will need to convene to table the budget and such," said Dr Mahathir.

14 hours ago Malaysia Star (2 occurrences)

"But if the menteri besar did not want to convene a state assembly, then how can we force him to call for one? The law states that a vote of no-confidence should have been passed before there is a change in the government. Even if they continue to...

Feb 6, 2009 Bernama (2 occurrences)

"What can be done to a minority government if it remains and continues to harm the state? This situation is still vague as to my knowledge, there are no legal provisions for such situations," Dr Mahathir said, adding state officials might not...

Feb 5, 2009 The Malaysian Insider (2 occurrences)

"The Israelis have learnt a lot from the Nazis. They are using Nazi methods against the Palestinians. I thought they would sympathise with other people, having been oppressed and tortured by the Nazis...... but no, now they want to do the same...

Feb 5, 2009 New Straits Times (1 occurrence)

The former prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir bin Mohammed, has said that "the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."

14 hours ago Today's Zaman (18 occurrences)

When asked if the Malays would be upset with the legal suit, Dr Mahathir said as a Malay himself, he disagreed but, "there are many Malays now who are supporting Karpal".

14 hours ago Malaysia Star (2 occurrences)

"He is the one that really wanted the biggest party hopping on Sept 16. Oh! Mistake, Sept 24. Oh! A mistake again," Dr Mahathir wrote with glee about his protege-turned-nemesis whom he sacked in 1998.

Feb 5, 2009 The Malaysian Insider (2 occurrences)

Dr Mahathir said United States President Barack Obama was "quite free to do a lot of things but with regard to Israel, he is paralysed. His hands are tied".

Feb 5, 2009 New Straits Times (1 occurrence)

"Kedah's situation is very different from Perak," Datuk Mukhriz Mahathir, the MP for Jerlun, told The Edge Financial Daily. "Kedah is a PAS-led government."

Feb 4, 2009 The Edge Daily (1 occurrence)

His blogging domain name chedet.com was so popular, that others have also registered .net, .org and .info counterparts of the name "chedet" immediately after the first blog post of Mahathir made the big buzz around cyberspace and mainstream media. The domain even made it to four wikipedia pages including a Japanese version for Dr Mahathir's biodata. These however are understandable.

chedet.cc?

But closing in 2008, many were puzzled when a migration to chedet.cc was announced. The new domain that was registered on Christmas Day, was officially launched on New Year's Day following the last past on chedet.com on 31st of December. Speculations arose that move was to not support US-dominated .com domain (overseen by US-based Verisign, Inc as licensed registry company). But both chedet.com and chedet.cc rely on Verisign as their registry, being .cc overseen by eNic, also Verisign company (since 2001) despite chedet.com being registered through eNom (second largest domain registrar as of 2008, with strong cooperation with Verisign through eNom's owner, Demand Media), and chedet.cc being registered through GoDaddy (largest domain registrar as of 2008, also a US-based company) - although I myself immediately speculated back then that the use of .cc TLD was to promote Malaysian-based Qinetics Solutions (a unit of MOL/Vincent Tan's Berjaya, through web.cc and webnic.cc sites, acquired from WeBCC), among the first proponents for .cc domain.

For most petty domain owners however, the switch from the much cheaper .com to a .cc seem pointless - why pay more? (why waste money) -- Oh well, the site with a popularity such as chedet.com can definitely afford it, with the cash it can naturally pulls! Read on...

With the new domain comes the new management (and ownership!) for the domain: Mutual Digital Sdn Bhd, chaired by Datuk Wan Lokman Bin Dato' Paduka Wan Ibrahim and headed executively by Tuan Haji Ismail Bin Daud. From the company's website, Mutual Digital boasts an impresive list of partners for its Mobile ASP business - practically every major name in the local telco and entertainment production industry. Its flagship service, the musiclobby.net, however seems to be put on hold for now. So the company's service to the public consumers for now has got be delivering content from chedet's both via web and perhaps mobile too. And to finance it, and perhaps make a hefty profit too, by sponsorship opportunities on the website. Great, but the small fish would have to wait, because the cheapest ad placement starts of RM2,100 for an "inside page" banner space at RM300 per day (7-day minimum) and the premium space on top of the page costs a whopping RM1K/day, making it one of the most expensive online ad space for a Malaysia-based publication -- if completely booked, this one site can easily pull about RM1-million in ad revenue per year!

chedet.co.cc ??

By mid January 2009, the site started giving a headscratch again - a soft switch to chedet.co.cc - a subdomain of a popular free DNS service by Korea-based co.cc (an independent company, not a domain sTLD like com.my etc.)? Could it be that this is to hide the site's popularity that are naturally metered by traffic ranking service Alexa? After all, based on a six-month monitoring, chedet.com has suffered dwindling popularity from a top-10K in October down to a rank of top-40K by December before missing from the top-100K radar after the domain switch? Supposedly, lack of controversies and increase in new media competition may have caused this, except of course, by early February 2009, when millions flock again to chedet.com to find out what Tun has to say with regards to the Perak political crisis.

The little traffic graph spike recorded by Alexa during the first week of Feb '09 shows how people still remember .com the most, being it is the most popular top-level domain with about two-third market share.

URL Jump

The concern here is CONTROL. A domain ownership is like a land title. Being approved as a domain registrant means that you're holding the exclusive right (no freeholds as of yet) to its use, and you are required to pay the relevant authorities a minimal annual fee. And in most cases, unlike popular physical land leaseholds for up to 99 years, domains can generally be held for a maximum of ten years. This provides the owner the most control - unless if you've falsify ownership or commit other activities not permitted by the registry or registrar, you can safely do what you want with the domain.

Tun Mahathir unfortunately does not owns the domain chedet.cc, which has been personally registered by one CEO of Mutual Digital for exclusive use by the said individual (not company), and ultimately owned by assigned registry (eNic), and above it, the governing entity for Cocos Islands (presently under Australian control). Though, should any control dispute arise, Tun can legally contest for the right for the domain via Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UNDP) set by ICANN, or any other legal agreements made between Tun and Hj Ismail/Mutual Digital -- However, consider that the less-monitored smaller entity eNic can easily dictate chedet.cc versus chedet.com (which on the other hand, registered through the rather influential Godaddy, and closely-watched Verisign).

The use of chedet.co.cc on the other hand might be a setback: suddenly, chedet's site is under the full mercy and possible monitoring of a single company co.cc -- it's hard to decide on infrastructure reliability, security, features etc.

For certain however, the possible move to avoid close monitory by Alexa and the likes (Compete.com etc.) is temporary, as once co.cc becomes very popular which it already is, Alexa will switch to monitor subdomains similar to what it does with blogspot.com, geocities.com and the likes.

And it puzzles me greatly on how a less than 1-year old domain bears a 199 changes on its whois record! BTW, Mutual Digital ironically does not even fully control its own mutualdigital.com and musiclobby.net...

Whatever it is, it's not Belilah Barangan Buatan Malaysia (Buy Malaysian) for Che Det for now, as chedet.my and chedet.com.my are registered for Kuching-based Jacob Liew (CDC) and KL-based C Wong (Alpha Global) respectively...


(in reference to Che Det's Lompat Lagi, Feb 6, 2009... This lompat-lompat reminds me of Battlestar Galatica's Jump, jump parodies)

Paris Hilton just started saying "That's wonojo."

It's hot in here... according to Twitemperature.