Tag: blog2u

Martini Innercity Festival 08

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dk of Blog2U invited some of us to The Martini Innercity Festival 08 at Clarke Quay on Thursday evening. I guess had FoxTwo been a Blog2U member, he would probably also be invited but 2 drinks wouldn’t be enough to satisfy him.

At the event, DK introduced to us Elaina – whom I believe to be one of the organisers – and if I heard her correctly and got the context right, she mentioned the concept of various cocktails out of Martini is about going social.

When some of us spoke about our impression that Martini is a lady’s drink, Elaina quickly put an end to the misconception by pointing out that Martini is actually more of a man’s drink. She point out that Martini first gained a lot of attention because of James Bond, and therefore there should not be the idea of it being a lady’s drink. I thought she might just be passing on an urban myth but when I am sober enough to check on Wikipedia later, I discovered that she may indeed be right. On hindsight, while it may be just trivial, I was quite impressed that she actually did research on the matter and spoke about it with much confidence.

These are the people dk invited to the event: alice cheong, coolinsights, endoh, jean, nicole, and plaktoz. Most of them, other than endoh, jean and nicole, I have met for the first time. My only regrets is yet again I didn’t chat very much with much of the faces new to me, like coolinsights (Walter), jean, plaktoz (Tianhong) and alice. The photo on the left shows nicole, plaktoz (whom you can see for yourself the effect of the Martini), jean and alice.

They are good company – since we generally concentrated on the event, sampling the drinks offered instead of camwhoring. All of us took the drinks we fancied, for e.g. Teh Halia, Japan!, Mintini, Scary Harry etc, and at times we let one another have have a sip of our drink when we felt they are quite good but none beat the Scary Harry which ran out by the time some of them who still have free drinks left on their access passes tried to get one for themselves.

On the right, you see a photo of dk’s hand holding a Scary Harry – truly the drink of the night. While I am sorry I can’t really remember who the sponsors are and which joints are present there, I know for sure one of the counters serving their own blend of Martini Cocktails is manned by Geek Terminal. I believe Harry’s is also there as well though I am not quite sure.

Anyway Singapore is truly small because I also run into some of my friends from Biz-Era at the event though they are not there for drinking. They were simply there to standby to ensure the IT part of the event works. After all they need some way to keep track of the drinks being given out and make sure no one gets more than their assigned number of drinks, and Biz-Era wrote the software to interface with the database for the event. If I am not wrong, I believe this software also keeps track of the people who will sign up for the $99 offer for 20 Martinis at the event.

After the event, dk, endoh and I went over to Brewerks and got ourselves one more jug of Golden Ale just to meet our alcohol quota for the night. Nicole was also with us to chat and we continue to chat a bit more before alice, jean and plaktoz came over to say good night one more time one their way home.

All in all, it’s a fun event. No pressure and all fun, and I certainly wish the organisers success for this festival which will end on 14 Aug itself. For more details you can visit their site here.

Blog Advertising… yet again…

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Every now and then we will hear something about our ‘local’ Blog Advertising companies – e.g. Advertlets and Nuffnang. Most of the time it’s just complaints (if not the whines) of bloggers.

In rare cases, you hear something different. Even Blog2u was not spared of this curse, though in their case the matter quickly blew over with both sides – company and ex-staff – agreeing to remove their respective blog entries. (I will not go into details about this matter.)

Yet again, blog entries about nuffnang hits the Top 10 of ping.sg recently. This time written by bloggers who finally having enough of their service and deserting them. Starting with Limetouch, the body count soon increase to include: Kriscell, Wishbone and Sicarii. (If you aren’t mentioned here then it’s most likely your blog has been given the [-] on ping.sg, a list that is ever growing… daily.)

In Limetouch’s case, he also published his post on Innit, nuffnang’s very own propaganda machine People’s Daily blog aggregator which resulted in his ban in a matter of hours – an efficiency rarely seen in nuffnang (depending on who you asked). Of course, the reason for these bloggers finally ‘abandoning’ nuffnang, is yet again: the lack of ads, the never-ending controversy surrounding the transparency on how the ads are given out and also how bloggers are ‘tiered’ and paid. (And frankly speaking, I personally felt it wouldn’t matter very much to nuffnang unless there is a massive desertion of bloggers from using nuffnang to monetize their blogs, or when higher ups of big brands which use their service sit up and do something about it.)

Of course, where there are detractors, there will also be supporters. Blogger ylva wrote that she will not leave nuffnang regardless and stated that her reason she will stay with them for the ‘priceless’ activities nuffnang have organised and the ‘friends’ she can meet as a result of such activities.

But I wondered if ylva had thought about this: If bloggers continue to leave nuffnang in droves, then her chances of her making new friends are going to diminish as time goes by. Unless she’s content with meeting the same people over and over again, these ‘priceless’ activities she touted appears to me to be slowly depreciating in value.

Still, it was quite amusing for me to know that some actually found a special use nuffnang other than as an attempt to monetize one’s blog. It is now some kind of friend-finder or social networking facility like Asia Friendfinder. Perhaps nuffnang should consider adding a new facility along the lines of myspace, facebook or even friendster, so nuffnangers can now poke, slap or perhaps even scratch the back of one another.

Indeed, it appears to me that some bloggers are also unconsciously using ping.sg in that capacity and more than just a blog aggregator and a means to publicize their blogs as well. I personally have made and gained a few friends… and make a few enemies.

Meantime, I am glad I have outgrown the usual urge to respond to the ‘creative’ cut and paste of those who never grows up and fart through their blogs as easily as they do with their mouths. They are aptly be described by this new term: 兰州人 (Lanzhou Ren). An interesting term which I believe I will soon use often on die Mutter-Ficken Schweinhunde, hopefully without any offense to the real natives of Lanzhou.