With people now permanently connected with one another via such social networking sites, word of mouth marketing has never been more important and effective. One person’s endorsement of a product or brand on Facebook will immediately let his dozens and dozens of friends know about an awesome new product. A single celebrity with hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter could instantly make or break a product with his or her opinions on it. Thus, it’s no wonder that companies are increasingly engaging in social media monitoring, where they try to keep up with the buzz around their product. However, with billions of Facebook and Twitter posts to sift through, it can be quite a daunting task to find out what people are saying about your product.

Thus, services have popped up that assist companies and individuals in keeping track of what people are saying about their brand on social media sites. Sites such as sproutsocial do the dirty work of sifting through social networking sites and breaking it down into numbers and graphs, allowing users to instantly notice any trends at a glance. While many of such services can be a hit-or-miss, this sproutsocial review certainly has pretty good things to say about that particular service.

Social networking certainly is one of the many ways that technology is forcing companies to change the way they do business. It’ll be interesting to see how else companies will make use of this large network of people to market their products.

It’s kind of insane to think that there are people out there who can earn loads of money simply by being smart about what they invest their money in. Of course, there’s a ton of risk involved. The moment you make a bad decision, a ton of money is suddenly gone. It’s no wonder there are tons and tons of books and articles out there dedicated to teaching people how to invest appropriately to ensure they don’t end up losing all their money. For example Timothy Sykes news is one such individual who turned about $12,000 into $2 million over a decade. He’s continuing to earn money now by opening “classes” to teach people how to invest like he did.

Maybe I’ll dabble in stuff like that one day. For now, I need to find work.

There’ve always been “music discovery services” floating around the Internet for years now. In all honesty, I haven’t found a single one of them that can accurately provide me with songs that I enjoy. Most of them usually ask you to name one or a couple of songs that you already like, then they’ll suggest other “similar” songs. From there, you have to manually tell the service whether you like or hate each and every song they throw at you to give them a better idea of what kinds of music to filter and present to you. What a hassle to begin with.

But it doesn’t work like that

The problem with this approach is that they’re taking a very scientific approach to music discovery. Oh, you like an R&B song? Well let’s play more R&B for you. The problem is that music doesn’t work like that. Just because you liked a particular R&B song doesn’t mean you’ll like all other R&B songs. You might have liked that first song because you liked the unique beat it had, or the unique vocals of that particular song. The fact that it was an R&B song was just a coincidence. But these “music discovery services” don’t know that. To the algorithm, both songs are tagged as R&B, so you should like both songs, right?

Of course, I’m over simplifying here. I’m sure there are many other algorithms that go into determining whether a particular song would be to your liking. But the fact remains that discovering music isn’t a scientific endeavour, but rather an intuitive one. That’s what’s so brilliant about Apple’s Genius feature. It relies on the intuition of other humans to decide what songs to suggest to you.

A little history…

For those who don’t know, Genius is a feature Apple introduced into iTunes all the way back in 2008. It’s s system that suggests songs to you based on what you already have in your library. Plenty of people saw this and immediately dismissed Genius as another way for Apple to sell you more songs from their iTunes Store. However, it goes way further than that. Genius also allows you to create playlists from your library based of off any one particular song. The genius (pun intended) of this feature and the factor that sets it apart from most other music discovery services is that instead of basing the suggestions off of the song’s descriptors, it bases it off of who else listens to that song as well, and what other songs they have in their library that you have as well. Once they find these common denominators, it’ll put it together into a playlist. The basic idea is:

Oh, both you and these 100 other users here listen to this particular song. And you have these 24 other songs that can also be found in the library of these 100 other users. I’ll put them all together into a 25 song playlist for you!

Of course once again I’m over simplifying and there are other algorithms at play here (e.g. For starters the 24 other songs they put in will most likely be the 24 most common songs among these 100 users, and they probably won’t suggest Heavy Metal songs when you chose a Pop song), but that’s the gist of how Genius works, and more importantly why it works so much better than other music discovery services.

“It just works!”

Genius is one of those Apple products that follows their mantra of “it just works”. Whenever I generate a Genius playlist, the other songs included in the playlist are oftentimes from vastly different artists, and even slightly different genres. However, for some strange reason, when I’m in the mood for that particular song I chose to build my playlist around, I will also be in the mood to listen to the other 24 songs that Genius chose for me. It works so well for me that I’ve more or less abandoned manually creating playlists because I completely rely on Genius to put playlists together for me.

Y U NO USE THIS FEATURE

And yet, despite being such a useful (and free) feature that’s included with iTunes, a surprising number of people actually don’t even know about it or use it at all. To be honest Apple didn’t even really advertise Genius much. They seemed to have made an even greater effort when it came to Ping, their attempt at a social network based around music. That turned out to be a huge flop, and rightfully so. Apple didn’t seem to realise that the last thing people wanted was another social network profile to maintain. Not to mention it hardly did anything out of the ordinary to justify their users spending time on it.

In comparison, Genius is a feature that actually works and is actually useful. Unfortunately the only problem is that few people outside of those who know the ins and outs of iTunes+iPod actually know of it at all. A problem that really needs to be rectified.

Mobile 17 is one such site that assists users in creating their own custom ringtone. One simply has to upload a music file (in any of the common formats), and then use the website’s ringtone maker to set the time within the song that you want your ringtone to start from, and the desired ringtone will be created. Obviously, the most common use of this would be to cut out the chorus of famous pop songs, such as creating a Moves Like Jagger ringtone.

I’ll probably look into creating a ringtone for my phone sooner or later. I’ve always wanted to, but such tools weren’t really available a few years ago. With such tools to help facilitate the creation of ringtones, there’s little reason for me not to get my own one soon.

Resolutions I had for 2011

1. Write more… – Ok I kind of did this?
2. … no seriously write a TON more. – Definitely didn’t do this
3. Exercise more – nor this
4. Sleep earlier everyday – nope not this either
5. Find some way to earn money now that ReviewColumn is down for good. – definitely not this
6. Read more – First item on this list that I can kind of give a definite “yes”.
7. Keep up with current affairs – Yes, thanks to Flipboard
8. Find some use for this site – nope, still searching here
9. Come up with an idea for a new site (it’ll be big if I can actually accomplish this one) – why did I even think of this last year?
10. And finally, because she’ll kill me if I don’t put this on here, be even nicer to Charlotte. – definitely did this.

So obviously, not very good there… And I guess I should create a new list for this year huh. I’d better do more of these this year seeing as how I have about half a year before university starts.

Resolutions for 2012

1. Read more
2. Play the piano more
3. Write more
4. Get off the computer more (my poor eyes)
5. Excercise. Excercise. Excercise.
6. Get a job before uni starts
7. Do some coding for fun
8. Complete NaNoWriMo for the first time ever
9. And finally, because she’ll kill me if I don’t put this on here, be even nicer to Charlotte.

Kind of similar to last year’s one I guess. Though I’m definitely trying to squeeze in more stuff since I have way more time this year, now that my NS is finally over.

Speaking of NS, I think its end deserves a pargraph to itself. 2 years is a really long time. Seriously. Thankfully I worked in an office environment, so I definitely learned a lot that’s actually going to be useful in the future. Not every NS guy can say that. Working has also made me dread what’s to come after uni life is over and I actually have to find a job. Odds are I’m probably going to get landed with an office job that I don’t enjoy, which is going to be an absolute nightmare. The thing about office jobs is that they gradually suck your life away without you even knowing, and by the end when you actually start to notice how much of your life has been sucked away, it’s an absolutely horrible feeling.

Which one is tougher, studying or working? Provided you know your shit at work, I’d say studying takes just about two to three times as much effort and hard work as compared to working. Which one is more rewarding? Studying. Ten times over. So no matter how hard university life is going to be, I’m not going to complain, because at least I’m actually enriching my life instead of letting it slowly drain away.

Also, I’m not going to stress myself out over work and results. Because there are way, way more important things in life. For example, “having fun” is a highly underrated factor when considering priorities in life.

Yes I know, as a recent The Online Citizen article pointed out, there have been a ton of train stoppages within the last 2 years, but all of them have been relatively minor break downs compared to this incident. No mechanical system is perfect and in my opinion such minor stoppages are acceptable.

But there’s absolutely no doubt that the break downs over the past week or so have been pretty damn bad. Stoppages lasting almost the entire day, trains getting stuck in the middle of a tunnel with passengers on board, etc. Even I was affected. However, just to put it into perspective, I’ve been taking the MRT religiously for the past 7 years or so, almost every single weekday, and of course pretty frequently on weekends as well. This is the first time in all my life that I’ve actually been affected by a train breakdown.

Yet, suddenly the entire Singapore has been engulfed in a burning desire to see SMRT burn at the stake. This (brilliantly titled might I add) TOC article has been making the rounds on Facebook with many applauding it’s superb writing and its persuasive and well explained arguments. No, it’s not that great an article. It does have a couple good points, no doubt. For example the notion that SMRT should release its maintenance records (w.r.t industry standards) to prove to commuters that they do spend sufficient funding on ensuring the safety of commuters. Also, it raises a good question of whether or not fare increases are linked to Quality of Services standards, as they rightfully should be.

But the remaining demands made in the article are downright preposterous. It calls for the resignation of SMRT’s CEO, as are many other Singaporeans. Because “somebody” has to take responsibility for these failures, why not it be the person holding the highest level of management! It doesn’t matter that this is a mechanical fault that’s so close to the ground and so many layers below her that she has absolutely no control over it! Get rid of her! Who cares that she’s been running the whole system just fine for years and years and years! WE JUST WANT TO SEE HEADS ROLL BECAUSE IT MAKES US FEEL BETTER!

(Though over here I must admit I’m perplexed as to why a Malaysian is running the biggest public transport company in Singapore)

Then the article goes on to ask SMRT to provide free rides for everyone “affected” by their disruptions for a month. Seriously now, are we at the wet market bargaining or something? Or at an IT show asking for free gifts? But never mind that. Who do we count as “affected”? People who got stuck in trains for an hour? Maybe. But technically I was affected as well! I wanted to go out but couldn’t take the train, along with hundreds of thousands of other Singaporeans. So we should all get free rides for a month? Really? Come on… That’s just looking at a situation which you realise you stand to benefit from and squeezing it as hard as possible to get as much out of it for yourself as you can.

That’s just selfish.

The lucky bird who's not getting charged

The general Singaporean attitude towards this whole fiasco is honestly quite disgusting. Tay Ping Hui even tweeted out that SMRT should provide a “FREE TRAVEL DAY” for EVERYONE IN SINGAPORE! Is he mad? Then when everyone takes the trains on that day they’ll complain that “they’re too crowded” because obviously EVERYONE will take trains. Even those that didn’t really need to go out will just go take the trains for the sake of taking them because “free mah, why not? Free leh!” Someone actually pointed this problem out to Mr Tay on twitter. His response? “Then it is up to SMRT to have more trains in higher frequency.”

WTF he think trains appear by magic ah? Oh then if the trains get overworked and break down again then scold SMRT again loh…

This is the first large scale breakdown in our train system in more than its 20 years in existence. That’s pretty damn good. And all the trains did was break down. Did they collide or something? Nope. Did they derail? Nope. Did they explode? Nope. Did anyone get injured? Nope. They just broke down. When buses break down (a relatively frequent occurrence) do we blame SBS? No, we accept that buses break down. But for some reason when gigantic trains that go at many times the speed carrying many more times the number of commuters break down it comes as a huge shock to us. People treat it as a fault with the people instead of a fault with the machines. It’s just that the people behind the scenes have been running these machines so optimally that you think it’s the machines doing the good work and the people screwing them up, when in fact it’s always been the other way around.

If anyone at SMRT should be fired, it’s their PR department. For example they released a statement that commuters shouldn’t break windows because a backup ventilation system will come online. This despite the fact that it was explicitly clear that no such system came online in that particular scenario, yet they went ahead and released such a prepared statement. To make matters worse, they had the guts to assure people that they wouldn’t be charging the man who broke the window for ventilation. This statement shouldn’t even have been put out and goes to show what a horrible PR department SMRT has that doesn’t know how to properly address complaints.

In terms of responding to such emergencies however, SMRT have done a fairly good job. Communication about the status of trains was very efficient and clear, especially through their twitter account. Shuttle buses were deployed (albeit queues were ridiculously long but they only have that much capacity). Of course, these are systemic responses that were obviously well drawn out contingency plans. Any on-the-ground and on-the-fly decision making is still very lacking, as seen from drivers being told to not open the doors at any cost even though there was no ventilation.

Such an attitude of over-reliance on systems and contingency plans, and more importantly the absolute refusal to deviate from them under any circumstances has to change. But to be honest many big co-operations are guilty of such problems as well. Still, we will be able to tell from the next crisis whether SMRT learns anything based on the way they interact with the public. For now, I just wish that Singaporeans were more rational and be more interested in seeing the problem fixed rather than pointing fingers and trying to decide who should be blamed for the problem.

Thus, I’m kind of back to searching for a theme for my blog again. I keep coming across themes with these great slideshows at the top and wish I could use them. Alas, they don’t quite fit the needs of a personal blog. There is even a jquery slideshow plugin for self-hosted WordPress blogs that looks awesome. While slidedeck has a pro version that costs at least $99, they offer a free, lite version as well that’s a simple WordPress plugin. It’s pretty damn cool, not only does your mouse’s scroll wheel interact with the slideshow (which is a great improvement over having to click the left or right side to change panes), but it even allows for vertical sections within each pane. Awesome.

If I were operating a magazine-style blog, I’d get this in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, I like my personal blog to be as minimalistic as possible…

So I’m gonna try and create my own theme from scratch.

I dabbled in HTML and Javascript literally almost 10 years ago and have never done web development in my life. But seeing as how I have quite a lot of time during this period of my life, I might as well give it a go. I’m not an artistic or creative person, neither do I have good design sense. I’m not even completely sure what kind of theme I have in mind.

Guess I’ll just start and see where it goes from there!

My first real “magic” experience with Apple products was with the introduction of the iPod Touch. Back in 2007 when the first iPhone was announced, I didn’t really feel a strong compulsion to get it considering how young I was and how undeveloped 3G technology was in Singapore at that time. However, when the iPod Touch was announced, I knew I had to have one. Being a tech geek, the idea of a handheld device that was nothing but a touch screen was like a dream come true.

I got my first ever first-gen iPod touch at the end of 2007. Because the store I went to was out of stock for the 8GB version, I got the 16GB version, at $700. Yeah, 700 bucks for an iPod Touch, that’s almost the price of an iPad 2 today. Crazy huh? But till today I think that that $700 was exceedingly well spent, for the joy of having an iPod touch at a time when no one else had one was simply too gratifying. I had that iPod for years, but unfortunately lost in in 2010. Careless me…

Since then, I replaced my iPod Touch with a new one, and am now typing this blog post on an iPad 2. (By the way the keyboard works a lot better than I expected it to). As much as it sounds like rhetoric, these iOS devices really do feel magical to me. It’s crazy that 4 years on, I have yet to see another device that has a touchscreen that works or feels better than the iOS devices. And I think it’s all thanks to Steve Jobs that the devices we have feel the way they do.

Even detractors owe Steve a big one. Without the Macintosh all the way back in 1984, you might not have Windows. If not for the iPhone, you probably wouldn’t have Android. Without the iPad, you probably wouldn’t have your Blackberry Playbook. Without the Macs, probably not a single windows PC would be remotely aesthetically pleasing. Steve Jobs’ understanding of how the common man thinks, feels, and wants has helped him develop all the magical products we have today.

These products have brought me a great deal of joy and excitement. Oftentimes when I’m using my iPod Touch (and now my iPad), I will occasionally stop and think, “Wait a minute, I’m using a touchscreen device. That does basically everything. That feels great and isn’t clunky. Wow, just wow…” When I was a much younger kid, I never really did think that touchscreen devices would become so readily available to me. They were always these cool devices you saw in sci-fi films that you’d never have. But thanks to Mr. Jobs ushering in the “post-PC” era, I now have one with me everywhere I go.

He truly is the inventor of the 21st century. It’s a pity we will never know what else he had in that creative brain of his. Regardless, thank you Mr. Jobs, for everything, you will be missed.

Was just watching the latest episode of Diggnation, and the first story they were talking about was the unveiling of Oink, the brand new app from Kevin Rose’s (the founder of Digg) new start-up, Milk. The idea behind this new mobile app is that let’s say you visit a restaurant, and you really like the Fish and Chips there. You’ll then log on to Oink and sort of “vote” or “thumbs up” it (ala Digging). From then on, other friends (it’s integrated with Twitter/Facebook so I’m guessing Oink’s “friends” will just be your followers/FB friends) who log on to Oink will see that you’ve given the Fish and Chips a thumbs up, so if the dish gets voted for by plenty of their friends, they’ll know it’s a great dish.

So instead of simply “checking in” to an area like you’d do with Foursquare or Facebook’s Places, you’re voting for the items that are specific to that area.

And this isn’t limited to food I’d guess. For example what rides are worth queuing for at a theme park? Or maybe what attractions are worth checking out if you’re on holiday or something? Obviously this mobile app is a really great, easy and simple way to quickly figure out what’s worth your time whenever you visit a new place. Instead of having to hunt down reviews beforehand, you’ll be able to tell what’s great at a glance.

Yet, the whole time Kevin was explaining the idea on the show, I had this nagging feeling at the back of my head of: why is this concept so damn familiar? Is it already out there?

Then I realised that I had had this exact idea for a mobile app just last week. One of those ideas I tend to park at the back of my head as potentially profitable ideas. And now this idea’s just completely worthless.

I was quite annoyed by this news, because this means I can’t build this by myself in the future. This had happened to me before last year or so, when I was actually conceptualising how Jarvis (you know, that digital butler that Iron Man has in his house that responds to his every command) could actually be built in the real world. Then I find out some guy was already doing that. His version is in its early stages and he built it for personal use, but he got a $100,000 grant to build it into a full product. But like a year later and still absolutely no news.

But this whole voting-for-cool-stuff-in-an-area was actually a much more feasible idea, something that could be built right now. But once again I’ve been thwarted.

After some consideration however, I don’t know if I should be flattered. I mean little ol’ me thought of an idea that Kevin Rose himself came up with and felt was worthy enough to build into a full product. I mean this is the guy who co-founded and built Digg from the ground up. That site now has 8.5 million unique visits every month from the USA alone and at one point was worth US$200 million.

The greatest ideas are usually those that seem to be the most obvious, which was exactly what Digg was when it first started up in 2004. I always felt that I’d never come up with something as creative as the likes of Kevin Rose can come up with.

I might have just been proven wrong