Who “Manages” the Internet by Michael Nelson. (via Internet Policy)

A friend once told me “A guru is one who advocates common sense…except he makes sense of it before it is common.”. It is easy to look back on hindsight and make remarks how obvious things are but foresights are often not so easy. For instance, no one doubts that Internet is here to stay but just barely 4 years ago, some people still thinks that the Internet is just passing fad.

And cutting-edge technologists normally plays the role of advocating emerging technologies. That role is a difficult one especially new technologies often do not have sustainable evidences. But a even more difficult role for technologist. is when he advocates that an established technology is going to die.

Case in point: Over the last few months, I have been saying to several people (in louder and louder voice) that I believe Email, as we know it, is going to die¹. The reaction I got was the expected disbelief and horror! It is an understandable reaction since Email is the most important part of their life. I have the same feeling about Email too…about 10 years ago. Today, I see emergence of other communication tools, like IM and RSS and they are especially popular among teenagers.

Just as teenagers from the early 90s entering the workforce bringing with them the Email culture, teenagers of the late 90s is about to enter the workforce bringing with them the IM culture.

Unfortunately, such demography changes arguements often do not work with die-hard conversative. And at this point, I would borrow a phrase from Doc Searls: “When is the last time you use the fax machine?”

¹ Of course, I wasn’t the first one to say that Email is dying.

A nice article was published on Public Sector Technology & Management, (a site that discuss IT usage in Asia governments) on Singapore e-government. (via InternetPolicy)

Amidst the flags and fly pasts, and other very visible signs of four decades of Singaporean nation building, a profound civic achievement deserves the attention of anyone interested in Asian IT-enabled governance. Put simply, Singapore has succeeded in leveraging the web to create one of Asia’s most engaged citizenries.

What the article did not say is that much of the credit goes to IDA, the agency in Singapore responsible for most of the government IT infrastructure services and implementing e-government services among other things. (Yes, we don’t just put stickers on your handphones). For example, many countries are still talking about how good would it be to have IT integration between different ministries and agencies and to perhaps provide a single login to all government services like tax filing etc, in Singapore style, we already done it (see Singpass).

This is one of the many reasons I am proud to be working in IDA.

Wandered into Gematriculator today, a service that uses the infallible methods of Gematria to determine how good or evil a web site or a text passage is by looking at text starting with vowels and the divisiblity with 7 (a God number).

I am rated 77% good and 23% evil *grin*

The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen.

Actually, not a new book but I digged out from my closet and re-read it last week for some internal presentations. Highly recommended for someone who is interested in technology trends.

Incidently, in the course of doing research for my presentation, I also come across this article The Myth of Disruptive Technology by John Dvorak (via Orkut’s Disruptive Technologies Community).
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Sunday Times have an interview with the famous (notorious?) Singapore blogger xiaxue. Yes, I don’t just read technology related blogs like Joi Ito, John Patrick or Dan Gillmor. I also read foul-mouthed 20 year old girl who constantly bitch about her life.

Speaking of my blogrolls, another worthy of mention is Mr Brown (blogger turn journalist) who started blogging in 1997, before the word “blogging” is invented. His work of fame is the Singapore National Education, a series of political satire “documenting the dysfunctional side of Singapore life”.
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lol. (via seattlepi.com)

Matthew Fordahl of the Associated Press reviews the service pack in this story: “With the latest update to Microsoft Corp.’s Windows XP operating system, personal computers will soon join parents, bosses, teachers and spouses as a source of nagging in your life. But as mom always said, it’s for your own good.”

ps: Don’t understand? Install SP2 for yourself :-)

In August Wired edition:

Wired: First, carrier fought number portability. Now you won’t unlock out phones. Why shouldn’t I be able to take my handset from Cingular to another carrier?

Ryan (Cingular VP): It’s about user experience. If you had a T-obile phone and switched to Cingular, you could run into problems getting mobile browsing and picture messaging working. Cingular’s customer care may not be in a position to know exactly how a T-Mobile phone is configured, and vice versa.

I nearly chocked on “it’s about user experience”, thinking maybe it is a joke. But sadly, it isn’t.. Sadder still they still think their customers are silly people who couldn’t configure their mobile phone.

Well, here’s a clue for you, Mr Jim Ryan. Look at your mobile subscribers numbers and check out the percentage of below 20s. And then go back home and asked who can programme the VCR. You may not know how but I am willing to bet your children can.

Sorry, please call a customer tie-in tactic as a customer tie-in tactic and stop hidding behind this vile “it’s about user experience” excuse.

You know you are a geek when your wife bought an Wireless PS2 controller for your thirtieth birthday. But toys are just toys..stuff you buy for the thrill of owning a cool gadget, play for a while and then move on to the next. But hey, with a cool controller like this, maybe I can make some time to play my PS2 again. :-)

I attended the BoF on URI. The discussion on lower barrier on IANA registration on URI scheme sound scary to me, esp the protocol identifiers are been exposed to end-users. And if it expose to end-users, you never know what creative things they will do with it. Yet on the other hand, I agree with Ted we need to lower the bar so we dont end up with undocumented but widely used schema like itms:// or conflicting mms:// usage.

I took an earlier flight to LA today and plan to stay overnight in LA to take a flight back to Singapore tomorrow. I been to LA a couple of times and never could say I actually visit LA since all I see are airport terminals and hotels. So I decided to join a short tour, having dinner at Universal Studio and visiting places like Hollywood Bl. Now, I can proudly claim I did “seen”¹ LA :-)

Hey, guess what? I just realize I just turn 30 years old 10mins ago! I officially join the 30 something club from now on. Damn, I feel I am getting old…

¹ or as much as one could see in 2 hours which isn’t much :P Someday I got to come back here and do a proper tour.