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"It's sort of like open-source journalism,'' says Jason Calacanis, the AOL executive and Weblogs Inc. founder who is spearheading the new effort.

The move's intriguing. Calacanis wants to move the social news meme out into the mainstream Internet, beyond the techie Slashdot/Digg crowd. And in a way, he's already there. Netscape relaunches tonight as a profitable site with 10 million unique visitors a month. A success by many measures. On the other hand, the venerable Netscape name is so tied to another era in many minds, and so indentified with browsers that most are not using anymore, can this new site do anything to lift the brand's profile?

From SiliconBeat.

With AOL jumping onto the bandwagon, social news is set to take off. While AOL used to be just another internet company, it has matured from the upstart of the bubble days to a titan in today's GYM-dominated world, as witnessed during the power struggle between Google and Microsoft last year. All it takes now is for Rupert Murdoch to issue another missive t his NewsCorp hordes to embrace social news on the web and push another nail in the coffin for conventional "editor-censored" journalism.

Will social news take off? Will the world move from a syndicated news industry to a perfectly competitive model where one-man purveyors of the truth or so-called citizen journalism dominate? I think not, citizen journalism will not be a dominant trend for it merely highlights the deficiency of modern journalistic practices that do not meet the information needs of a disenfranchised readership. And I am not just talking about the voyeuristic needs of the desire for more sensationalized news.

To me, news reporting s not just about the facts, its also about the opinions. There's only so many ways you can spin the facts. But there's 1001 ways to spin one single fact when u frame it as an opinion. And thats why blogs and news aggregators like Digg exist - to explore and find that alternative viewpoint you thought no one else had.

And opinion is not just an one-way process but a multi-directional exchange. Which is why newspapers today are trailing in circulation, especially in the States, to online news sites like Google News. Readers do not just want to read, they finish an article and they want to share and interact with the infornmation they have just received and processed according to their unique beliefs and opinions. Thats why editorials and commentaries are popular in newspapers or magazines like Economist. We, the readers want to interact. And that ability to interact is available on the web via comments, forum discussions. More on the multi-directional exchange. Put yourself in the shoes of a journalist, you want gratification and recognition of your efforts, the satisfaction that you get when someone responds negatively or positiively to your article. That satisfaction may be a sliver of what you get if you say, win the Pulitzer Prize, but its still a recognition of your achievements in life. And thats why some journalists turn to blogging now, or to podcasting, for one aim of seeking new channels to reach out to their Holy Grail of audience participation. To join in that conversation of social communing. To be able to trade perspectives and learn more in-depth from readers who may know more or have different belief systems. So that same journalist can progress in his career development, writ better articles that are more balanced and thoughtful. The same goes for passive readers. TO be able to read or hear what others have to say about a single issue is meaningful and adds value to his/ her learning about that topic. Thats why Digg is so successful and warrant copying. Because they do not just generate links from their communities for reading, but also interacting and bringing the underlying conversation among the readers to the forefront.

That, to me, is news — the process of informing from all possible angles of society through a (digital) conversation.

Screenshot for interesting comparison. The first pic is the new Netscape portal as of today. And the second pic is how Netscape looked like in 1998. Click on the pics to go to the sites.

Here's the 1998 site.

Related articles from Jeff Jarvis's BuzzMachine. Very forward thinking approach by Guardian of shifting their readership online. ST will probably do this after the whole world's done it and its no longer new.

In other news…

On STOMP — Latest Straits Times Offering

Check out their latest lame attempt at capturing online traffic after they bungled their ST Online subscription and pissed off the online community. STOMP is a dilemma-in-the-making as ST deliberates between whether it is a blog or magazine or portal. Take the first page and it wun look out of place as the front page of a magazine. Think, ST, think. The Web is not offline media. And such blatant advertising on frontpage of offline Straits Times too. Apparently, they just confirmed what they report everyday is trivial news as it appears today's headline is the launch of STOMP.

Giving away cars to boost traffic. haha.. sure, lets see how many cars they need to give away before their traffic becomes sustainable. I would love to see their alexa rankings in a few months time and them to make me eat my words. Justin has a great post here on bashing them. I refuse to give STOMP the visibility they want on the web by dedicating one entire post to them. Lets make them read my piece on new-age journalism.

Related articles from SGEntrepreneurs and Legal Janitor. 

Youth. Internet. Entrepreneur. Passion.

At the newest, snazziest city campus Singapore has to offer.

Experience what we mean by an "unconference".

• No stuffy seminars or talks by boring speakers.
• YOU decide the topic, if you want to.
• Or, find interesting people, e.g. students, techies, entrepreneurs, PhDs, MBAs and chat about your interests in becoming your own boss or whats cool in tech/ internet.

Where:

Singapore Management University

School of Information Systems Level 2, Network Seminar Room 2.4

When:

6.30pm - 10pm

Fee: Zero. Yes. Zero.

Come meet the new generation of entrepreneurs and view 3 demos by:

RSVP required. We are capping attendance at 50 for now. Click here and press the "Edit" button to add your name. Hurry, spaces running out fast.

Take a good look at this pic, we think polar bears are so cute and cuddly we use them in ads, but think again because polar bears might march off into history to become fiction and fantasy after the end of this century. New generations will come to think of polar bears in the same context as dinosaurs.

Thats right. And global warming is to blame. Global warming, as we all learnt in our youths, melts the polar ice caps, natural habitats of these polar bears. (not artifical refrigerated zoos) While I am concerned about the continual and relentless destruction of the polar ice caps, that alone did not make me blog this article.

End of this century might be 94 years away, but its a very short time compared to how short a time humans have since embarked on Industrialization. If we talk about sustainability, our human lifestyle on Earth is highly unsustainable if we keep hearing about fellow animal and plant species getting endangered or dying off all the time. Soon, it might be us.

Here's a pic below of polar bears in happier days in the past. Not anymore.

One word: CANNIBALISM

CNN reports that the latest threat to polar bears might just be themselves. Global warming's greatest impact is not limited to just the physical landscape but also the ecological food chain. With the decimation of the preys of polar bears and the increasing difficulty of access to their food sources, polar bears' new source of food can only be themselves.

"Researchers discovered the first kill in January 2004. A male bear had pounced on a den, killed a female and dragged it 245 feet (75 meters) away, where it ate part of the carcass. Females are about half the size of males."In the face of the den's outer wall were deep impressions of where the predatory bear had pounded its forepaws to collapse the den roof, just as polar bears collapse the snow over ringed seal lairs," the paper said.

"From the tracks, it appeared that the predatory bear broke through the roof of the den, held the female in place while inflicting multiple bites to the head and neck. When the den collapsed, two cubs were buried, and suffocated, in the snow rubble."

Not so cute anymore, eh? Polar bears have become killers and they do not stop at killing females.

In April 2004, while following bear footprints on sea ice near Herschel Island, Yukon Territory, scientists discovered the partially eaten carcass of an adult female. Footprints indicated it had been with a cub. The male did not follow the cub, indicating it had killed for food instead of breeding.

A few days later, Canadian researchers found the remains of a yearling that had been stalked and killed by a predatory bear, the scientists said.

Yes, some friends of mine might not know me as an environmentalist, but I am. Because I believe that our damage to our environment is a direct impact of mankind's irresponsible actions. And such irresponsibility will bite us back eventually and threaten our existence on Earth.

My Message: Humanitarianism

The disruption of mankind on the natural order of our world is a dangerous omen. Cannibalism is as unnatural as it gets. Do your part to lessen global warming. And as we march off college campuses to become captains of industry, academia or society, let us cultivate a sense of environmentalism, or more fundamentally, a sense of humanitarianism.

Because the environment sustains us humans.

The Social Web is beginning to take shape and may look promising. I have always believed in the wisdom that web surfing is a social activity and as web-surfing becomes as ubiquitous in everyday life as showering or brushing your teeth (well, at least for me), whether it be for work, leisure and education, we are going to see convergenece of activities around offline social groups just the same way pple socialize offline by engaging in sports or going to the movies or just chilling at the beach. Replace sports with online MMORPGs/ games and watching movies with "youtubing" and gossiping with perhaps checking out each other's social network profile.

From Mediapost's "Social networks poised to shape Net's Future",

" Growth opportunities within the market will be for niche communities targeted at middle-age or young Web surfers, Rashtchy said. For example, a host of family social-networking sites have cropped up already. Rashtchy suggested that Yahoo and other portals may have to team with MySpace and others to attempt to direct their mounting influence among Web surfers.One overarching issue, Rashtchy said, is that online advertising dollars continue to lag behind Internet usage in the United States. Roughly 172 million Americans visit the Web in a month, according to ComScore, but online ad sales, expected at $16 billion in 2006, are still a small fraction of the hundreds of billions of ad dollars spent annually. In the next 10 years, this gap will close, but the spending will likely never be equivalent, Rashtchy said.

For that reason, content and communities are corners for investment and growth, Raschtchy said. The advertising gap will not likely be closed by blogs or social networks, however, researchers said. That's because blogs may contain unsavory material that marketers often don't want their products to be associated with, they said.

Mobile devices are another growth opportunity, Rashtchy said, and video will be a particular complement."

People - I want the entrepeneur to be someone I'd enjoy working with, intelligent, honest and hardworking.

Products - the product (or service) should have a large market.

Plans - The entrepreneur should have the ability to make and execute plans

Profits - this should all lead to obscene profits.

Passion - the entrepreneur must exhibit real passion for the idea, since he or shee will be giving up some of their personal life to make it happen, and needs to believe strongly in what they're doing.

Persistence - the ability to stay with it through all the many setbacks that happen during the long time it may take from idea to profitable execution.

From Howard Morgan's post, a VC from First Round Capital. The first 4Ps were in concurrence with John Doerr's opinions. Howard came up with the rest later on.
So where do i see myself on this 6P metric? I shall not reveal the actual score but lets just say I will stick to bootstrapping for now. =)

Continue reading: The Dark Side of Entrepreneurs 

From Macworld UK,

• Apple's iPods are made by mainly female workers who earn as little as £27 per month
• In one of the factories, i.e. Foxconn's Longhua plant,  200,000 workers, a population bigger than Newcastle, is hired to make iPod. 
• The same workers (above) live in dormitories that house 100 people, and…
• visitors from the outside world are not permitted.
• Workers toil for 15-hours a day
• Another factory in Suzhou, Shanghai, makes iPod shuffles. The workers are housed outside the plant, and earn £54 per month - but they must pay for their accommodation and food, "which takes up half their salaries", the report observes.

While researching online for my upcoming thesis, I chanced upon several innovative campaigns by Carat Fusion for their clients Motorola and Adidas Soccer.

MySpace Profile as Landing Page

Carat Fusion is the first agency I know that is actively exploring new marketing propositions on MySpace. For Adidias, they created a MySpace profile complete with:

• photos of their sponsored players (with Adidas-sponsored player profiles of Beckham, ZIdane, Kaka too),
• videos of their recent ads, including that ad with young Jose Mourinho,
• competitions,
• blogs and most importantly..
• thousands and thousands of MySpace fans — their target market.

These fans are responisble for adding content and relevancy to their page, creatign comments, forum discussions, controversial arguments .. all leading to hours and hours of sustained engagement with soccer fans and hopefully favourable impressions of the Adidas brand.

Player Profiles

I like the secondary MySpace profile Adidas also created to promote the brand through their sponsored players that ensures geographical targetting of their markets. Not only did they include the most popular ones like Beckham and Zidane but they also have players from different regions: US players such as Eddie Pope, Claudio Reyna; Nakamura for the Japanese and other Asians, Riquelme and Kaka for the South American, Jaime Lozano for the Mexicans. They left out the Australians and Africans though.

And the blogs…

Justin mentioned about World Cup blogs and mentioned Yahoo as one of them, well Adidas surely links to much more… here's a selection for you to lap it all up and reinforce your relationship with Adidas..
Brad Guzan
Allen Hopkins
Lang Whitaker

Even New York Times, IHT and FIFA are bloggers…

New York Times, that venerable paper of United States, is in too on the long-overdue mission of enlightening Americans to the wonders and marvels of THe Beautiful Game. They now have a World Cup section under their Sports vertical and also a blog too, in partnership with another venerable paper International Herald Tribune, to capture all that web traffic and online surfing of their offline readers.

Not to mention FIFA, the world authority on all things soccer with their blog for almost every country here…

Are you reading this, Straits Times? Time to wake up from your self-induced offline coma and jazz up ST Online.

Related Articles: World Cup: Advertising & Influence

Unless you are an American, you know why the hell soccer is in the DNA of many male soccer fans.

I am sitting here in my room typing away, with barely 6 hours away from the kickoff of the first game of Germany vs Costa Rica and I swear I can almost hear the gears of the non-US global economy slowing down. Beer companies, clinics, pubs, TV makers, energy drink makers, coffee cafes, soccer jersey sellers can all expect to make big bucks for the next month. =) Yes, if you listen hard enough, maybe u can hear them rubbing their hands with glee…. ok, enough of my own glee and cheesiness..

Google + Nike wants you to read ads

Google and Nike already planned to cash in long ago. Couple of months ago, they co-launched Joga.com, a social network for soccer aficionados. Videos, interviews, group discussions by rabid fans are expected on this new network as Google and Nike hope to cash in by plastering relevant ads every time a rabid fan logs into this network during their conscious intervals between matches. Google is also actively trying to gather more soccer fans to get their exclusive Google account through their sign up page. A good way to upsell and promote the rest of their Google services such as Gmail which only has 5% of global email market share?

VW + Beckham wants to sells you cars 

Volkswagen is also using the World Cup brand + David Beckham's appeal to publicise their Touran model and also the David Beckham academy. A mini-site has been created where you can play games and choose between the role of either a striker, goalkeeper.

Youtube doesn't know what to sell you… yet 

Lets not forget Youtube.com . After the World Cup, perhaps we will see them raise another multi-million dollar round. But whether they will earn money out of this is another matter i shall not discuss here. Heard about their new channel feature recently where you can subscribe to certain channels which groups videos of the same genre? I will sign up for the world cup channel once its available! =)

McDonald's wants to sell you fattening fast food 

And here's another rumor i have yet to verify. I hear certain Mcdonalds's outlets will be broadcasting the live feeds of the games. Now, thats another smart move to cash in if its true. It doesn't seem to end, does it?

Justin sent me this NTU & Singapore Survival Guide, written by a German exchange student, which was rather funny if you can read the encyclopedia-esque rambling.

I am just highlighting this:

Lifestyle

All you can do in Singapore is work, sleep, and eat - the eating part is national hobby. People rarely go partying, they rather enjoy good talk, meals, movies, pubs. They are more introverted than europeans and thus dislike the concept of an open party where nobody knows the other. It is generally difficult to get closer to a singaporean; aside from the girls n guys from my block, I found few open minds. People from the surrounding countries are often more open minded. You will probably end up sticking together with other exchangers as they are open by nature. My advice: Try to meet as many local people as possible, some might become good friends.In public, people view the human mass more as a natural flow then as persons, leading to strange effects. It happens frequently that people cross your feet in impossible patterns, something that would be considered very rude in euro countries. If they notice, they will almost always apologize at length. Try to not get angry (boy, sometimes thats hard). Pushing and rushing is common at MRTs (trams), rarely at buses as they have waiting lines. In general people are very polite. Violent behaviour is practically unheard of; I think the peaceful atmosphere is the major plus of Singapore.

The mindset of the people is very capitalistic and commercialized. The economic success is paid with a very competitive system where people must work extremely hard to just achieve medium success; everything major (housing, cars) is very expensive and the lack of social security produces constant angst of failure. As a consequence, few artists, philosophers or people with similar mindset can be found. Even the highly educated people (master degrees and the like) have a surprising lack of creativity (so I heard). Singaporean science is more about getting things to work than inventing stuff. The famous Mr. Kiasu (from a comic book series) is a good parody of singaporean traits.

Not Steve Jobs which we all know but the other Apple Computers Founder — Steve Wozniak, affectionately known as Woz.

Here's excerpts from his upcoming book, "iWoz" due for release in November 2006:

1. Woz is now, and always has been, an Apple employee.
2. In the sixth grade Woz scammed gubernatorial candidate Richard Nixon with a certificate from the school’s ham radio club. The certificate was made with crayons just before the ceremony, and Woz was the only “member” of the club.
3. The Apple IPO made the most millionaires in one single day in history up to that point in time.
4. Woz and Jobs worked as Alice in Wonderland characters at shopping mall in San Jose.
5. Woz didn’t return to the University of Colorado after his first year because he ran up too much computer timesharing costs.
6. Woz tried to call the Pope by impersonating Dr. Henry Kissinger. He almost got through except that the Vatican called the real Dr. Kissinger to verify the call.
7. Woz and Jobs got robbed of a blue box at gunpoint in Sunnyvale.
8. The statement that convinced Woz to leave HP to start Apple (uttered by Allen Baum) was, “You can be an engineer and become a manager and get rich, or you can be an engineer and stay an engineer and get rich.”
9. Woz lost approximately $12 million in each of the two US Festivals that he put on.
10. Woz taught computer technology to elementary school students for ten years.

Thanks to Guy Kawasaki's great post here.
As I read Guy's blog, several things jumped out at me reading it as a Singaporean citizen. We all know the following statements to hold a lot of truth.

In the context of why Silicon Valley succeeded and why others couldn't,

Absence of multi-national companies—especially the finance industry. If your companies have to compete with conglomerates or banks like Goldman, Sachs throwing money at people, it’s going to be hard to get anyone for a startup. Pity the startups in New York, London, and Singapore. Come to think of it, how many tech success stories have come from these cities? There is intense competition for employees in Silicon Valley too, but we’re using the same currency: the upside of equity, not high starting salaries…

Yeap, very true. We have a lot of pple applying to banks because in Singapore, that appears to be the MO to a prosperous life. I have blogged about this before in my earlier article, its sad that many fresh graduates, especially those in the technical disciplines strived the hardest for a career in finance and banking. We have no innovation in the high tech sector when our best and brightest engineering minds opt for banks over engineering companies. Where A*Star pumps millions into training dozens of PhDs in overseas colleges, we forgot the thousands in NUS and NTU and the polys every who see engineering as a dead-end education in Singapore and cast eyes of envy towards the business schools. We should be pumping millions instead into changing the mindsets of local engineers, especially engineering undergraduates to not just be involved in procedural, process-oriented, maintenance-related engineering tasks and be engineering drones but product innovators, creative, disruptive engineering breakthrough work. I am not an engineer, but I have observed enough enginners in Silicon Valley and Singaproe and it doesn't take an engineer mind or a genius to observe and hypothesize why Singaporean engineers lack the passion and drive in their engineering education.

The answer does not lie in the next papragraph, but it gives us a direction towards which many NOC returnees like myself should aspire for after our stints in the entrepreneurial hubs of SV and Route 128.

The goal is to infect them with the disease called entrepreneurship and show them that there can be more to life than “a job;” that two guys/gals in a garage can change the world; and that a lot of money = millions of dollars. Sure, some people will never return—like me. But those who do return come back with a much broader perspective on what life and a career can be. Maybe they will build another Silicon Valley because they’ve seen it done before. Here’s a dirty little secret: Silicon Valley is more a state of mind than a physical location, and you can’t alter a state of mind by staying at home.