Newszapped, a new way to post your video

Last Friday, on a cold morning, I went to another event where another new media which is tapping the power of social media is launched. The company in question, called Newszapped seems to offer the new media for a particular subscriber of a telecommunication company, Maxis. What it is offering is simple, you can take a video up to 8 minutes, log in to their site, post your video and share it to all the known social media such as Twitter, Facebook and even your email list. But, they do charge you a fee for doing it.

As I was a participant of another such event 4 days before that, called under Project 500, which got quite a lot of brickbats from Malaysia online community, I commended this company how it approached the introduction of their product.

David Yong from Newszapped

They chose to call all their partners and explained the functionality of their offering. A Maxis representative (I forgot the stand-in who was covering for Kugan that day. I think his name was Dinesh) was there to tell us about what is the future for Maxis customer. What peaked the interest of most of the bloggers there was when he starts to tell us about Finder301, an exclusive Maxis customer directory, which are a compilation of places in towns. And they have a lot of food bloggers who are doing reviews for them. If you are one, why not submit your review. I think for submitting your review (either food places or places of interest), you don't need to be a Maxis subscriber. Here is the link for Finder301.

The rep from Nokia telling us about how much their user uses what

(and just a small percentage use their mobile phone to call other people)

There was also a representative from Nokia, one Henry Wong, who showed us a few of things that Nokia has up its sleeves. The integration that Nokia has with all the social media and web is quite amazing. Wait for it when it comes out.

The rep from Maxis

Newszapped itself was represented by David Yong who told us the excitement about Newszapped. He used the March 08 as the starting point for them to develop the website. A place where you can put up your political rally or those things where you may want to share with other web users.If you do a lot of Vlog, why not try them at Newszapped.

Some of the bloggers who came that day

(Suresh, Bboyrice, JonYKT, me, CurryEgg, Bryan)

There was supposed to be a representative from Nuffnang to tell us where Nuffnang fits in the picture but a mishap delayed him and when a representative do appear, the talk was already over. I think most of the blogger that day were there for him.

The idea of using a website to post some video especially from whatever mobile apparatus you have on yourself, which they are banking on will be a mobile phone with a Maxis line is still too far fetched for me. They are banking on the technology where by pointing your video recorder or your phone to a particular place, it can tell you some information on the place. It is too futuristic for me now. As for me, as of now, I will still stick to my Blackberry and occasionally my digital camera to take some pictures and write the story later.

Bremont : From pilots to watchmakers

It may not described this company in full, but this is what the brothers who currently own the Britain wristwatch company told us during the launch of their new collection in Royale Chulan Hotel. You may say that I am going to harp again about another posh event that I went to but this one has an interesting business story.

The family who owns the company has the surname English. Quite a name, huh? The brothers even made jokes about their name being unacceptable in certain countries. Nick and Giles were both in Malaysia and mingled with us on that day.

If you go to their website, Bremont.com, you will see there are a lot of planes in the pictures. It seemed that they have a lot of history with planes. They were pilots and their father actually died while piloting a plane. One of the brother was in it (which I'm not sure which one) and the one who was holding the microphone then joked that the one in the plane that day is not quite right today. That is the life changing event that changed the course of their company. I wonder what event in my life would make me do such a thing. Do you know what is yours?

Joke aside, they changed the direction of the company and they became watchmakers. They don't really have a long history of watchmaking but they do put them under a stringent test. They strapped it on a pilot and eject the guy from a plane. The watch is supposed to withstand that force.

The video that they showed that night had John Boorman who rode with Ewan McGregor around the world on a motorbike (quite a biography there which my wife and I love). That is another life changing event which changed how Ewan and John decided to take a lifelong passion into a journey. They did another journey across Africa after, which book I still have to read.

And get this. One of their watch is not for sale for whatever price. You will be offered the watch if you earned it. And leave it to my business partner who went to one of the brother and asked him that night, with a glint in her eye "What should I do to get one of those limited edition watch?". He simply answered "Wear a jumpsuit and do what that pilot in the video did. Being ejected from a cockpit of a jetfighter plane!".

I think I can do that too....

The watch in a display case

The watches on the models that night

Project 500_Part 2

Continued from previous post...

As someone who has never been asked to test anything at all (except for my wife's cooking, which is delicious, honey!), I was excited when I was told that Project 500 was a new software which integrates all the social media that you can think, and then some. It is just a beta version of a web based software. We were to test it, give a feedback through surveys (there are two of them) and we can suggest other things which we think can improve Project 500. As Project 500 is the project name, we were even ask to suggest a name for the new software.

Before we go further, let me be frank. There is a reason I was never asked to test any software or even a hardware. My experience in testing some new gadget was when I was quite close to the editor of this one pull-out section of a local newspaper which is about cars. We travelled twice to the north of Malaysia in brand new cars and on one of the occasion, I even got a speeding ticket (he paid for it). The speeding ticket was due to my idea of testing a vehicle is where you need to see how fast can it go. I mean, the speedometer goes up to 300 km/h for a reason right? So, that was my whole history of 'testing' something. And as I said, my wife's cooking (which did I mention is very, very good, right?)

Oh, and my experience of testing the new portable broadband product which was called a Wiggy of all thing. And which is now embroiled in the controversy due to its advertisement using the word "Potong!" or "Cut!" which is a play on that word to suggest you don't need a wire to get good speed on your internet. That test has at least gained me a netbook for quite a good price....

So, what is my understanding of Project 500 from the briefing and the few days I have tried it?

The best way to explain what is the Project 500 is to look at this image :

It shows you an image of one interface to get you connected to all your social media site (the host that day, Hannah Tan, used the acronym SMS or Social Media Siet, which confused me a bit as I have been using SMS as acronym for Short Messaging System for handphone)

The interface for Project 500 is this web based look :

It is supposed to be a beta version, which some of the techies who came that day explained to me as very near release date but can still be tweaked.

What I remembered most about the system, although they say can be accessed with mobile phone, especially when they used this image :

was that, when I tried to access the site using my Blackberry Storm,

IT CRASHED MY BLACKBERRY!!!!

My Blackberry Storm never had any problem before since the first they I took it into my possession. So, the next day, I had to spent nearly 3 hours getting my Blackberry restored. And thanks to my constant back-ups, I managed to return it to its former self.

Still, it was a hassle. And the initial feedback I am reading in twitters and other review like the one done by Niki Cheong, which you can read in his post : Initial thoughts on Project 500, which is a better review than this, are not flattering. Some are even angry as they think they are used as guinea pig. Read the comment section too. There are a lot of other bloggers and testers and invited-testers-but-turned-off-by-the-questionnaires who gave their opinions on it. During the event itself, there were only 170+ of the 500 who came as it was a long weekend and most people were out of town.

As for me, I don't mind that as they did give us a free movie screening (where my opinion on the movie is another matter altogether) and some vouchers. And I got to spend some time with some friends. So, as my friends always point out, I am easy to please.

If you want to join in or get to know what is Project 500, you can join in but you will not be asked to participate in the survey (which is good? bad?). Here is their address :

PROJECT 500

Project 500_Part 1

Got a mystery invitation last week to attend the launch of something called Project 500. I told someone I met there, it was like that television series of 4400 where the number connotes the people who were abducted by alien one time or another then suddenly came back all at once. So, maybe we are going to be experimented upon.

It was not far off than the truth...

The registration

Four days before that there were a gathering of bloggers to watch the movie Ninja Assassin courtesy of Nuffnang and those who got invited like Nigel of Rant of Orang Terbang fame,  Chris of Perpetual Tockism and me were talking about it. Those who didn't get an invite were asking around and wondering what it was all about. As were we. The email only states the place, the time, and there will be a free movie screening of New Moon. Those who couldn't attend the screening was even given a choice of to just attend something they labelled as 'The Briefing'.

Then, 18 hours before the event, we got another email stating that we can bring another person who would want to come to watch the movie and to join the Project 500 itself. Within that 18 hours, those of us who were in touch with our Twitter-self, we sent out nearly every hour invitations for anyone to come with us to at least watch a free movie. As it was a long weekend. No such luck. Everyone was out of town or in the middle of coming back to town. There was no one to give them too...

Look at the leftover New Moon tickets up for grabs....

That is bboyrice making a scarf out of the tickets...

I did suggest some of the single guys or gals, go and give out the tickets to those who were going to watch a movie that day. No one did and the tickets were wasted just like that. There were those who were there on their own initiative when they heard the news through Twitter but from what I heard, there were only 170+ people who were the original Project 500 invitees.

To be continued...

I’m a Sherlock Holmes in the Making

I am so a fan of Sherlock Holmes that when I was in my primary school, I went to the public library in Seremban to read the book which show how Arthur Conan Doyle published it  more than a hundred years ago. In the newspaper. As it can't be signed out, I have to make it a point to stop at the library nearly every day.

And now Nuffnang is giving 60 bloggers and their partner to watch Sherlock Holmes earlier than anyone. I am not going to miss this chance. So, they asked us to look for clues. I found mine in KYSpeaks.com :

Hope it shows them how Sherlock Holmes I can be...