mrbrown and me was discussing what we can do with twitter last week. We thought it would be cool to have a shoutbox on seewhatshow linked to twitter so anyone can instantly feedback how good or bad the show they are watching via their mobile phone.

I went to do some research and find a pretty nice AJAX shoutbox for WordPress. I was also pretty excited to learn Twitter is expanding their API but was very disappointed it is not available yet. Stuck, I am not one to give up so easily, I spend the whole today doing a hack.

The hack is actually quite obvious: Since Twitter send all private message to you via SMS or IM, the solution is to link your twitter to an Jabber account (e.g. GoogleTalk) and then write a Jabber client that will monitor the private message and process it.

Add yourself to http://twitter.com/sws then send a private message (“d sws your message”) and see it appears on the shoutbox. You can also do a semi-private message in the format of “@sws your message”.

(The problem is we need to add you to SWS’s friend before you can send private message. I suppose we an do another hack but how I wish there is an auto-add function in Twitter…)

Steve Poland talks about doing weather info service “d weather 14202”. I think there are many other interesting stuff you can do with this hack, more interesting then a shoutbox or weather service.

So I decided to release the source code to the blackbox. Go do some interesting stuff with it :-)

Update: doh, less than 24hour of doing this, twitter released a new set of APIs. It is probably more efficient to do this via the new API :P

After working for almost 2 years on IP Telephony Framework for Singapore, and another year waiting for companies to put the new 3 series numbers into operation (you can imaging how tough to get interconnection done :-), I finally got my own 3 series VoIP phone number :-)

+65-31050266 is the working VoIP number that will call my PC or my handphone. I had AT&T Callvantage a few years ago so I have a US VoIP number for a while. But this is the my first +65 Singapore VoIP number :-) While its not exactly what I dream of (“I hope to see shops in Sim Lim selling voice service packed in a box too!”), I am still very excited over it.

Thanks to the folks at Pfingo which is currently under closed beta. Anyway, I just got it up and running so I cant say much about it yet beyond it is some sort of integrated VoIP, IM and Email PC&Phone service.

More about it after I got sometime to play with it.

Update: It is SIP :-)

Hosted by Dr. Lee Boon Yang, the appreciation lunch today marks the conclusion of the National Internet Advisory Committee and Community Advisory Committee under MDA. For my (little) contribution, I got a nice stationary for Chinese Calligraphy that my wife probably will put into good use.

Today also marks the beginning of two new committees: AIMS, Advisory Committee on Impact of New Media on Society (Ya, I dont know either…) and IMAC, Internet and Media Advisory Committee (Ya, its corny).

AIMS is the higher level committee that will look at New Media on all aspect on society. Their recommendations to MDA/MICA would have significant impact on New Media, including but not limited to the Singapore bloggers.

The Singapore blogosphere is surprisingly quiet about it. I was kind of expecting some knee-jerking reaction on how Singapore government is trying to control the New Media.

Anyway, let me repeat what I said during the Nexus 2007 panel over the weekend: “Singapore has a two-tier media regulation, one set of rules for the Traditional Media and a light-touch approach towards the New Media”.

The two-tier media regulation is worthy of mention because while the traditional media is subjected to a rigid licensing regulation, Internet content is a simple class license (See Internet Code of Practice) instead. Not many people knows that if you put up any content online, you are automatically licensed by MDA under this class license.

While one may argued that it is fundamentally wrong to even regulate media, it is a matter of opinions, varies from people to people and from times to times. But more importantly, a moot point because this is the reality in Singapore.

It is the light-touch towards Internet content that allows us to setup our own blogs, share our photos, make our own funny podcast and upload homemake video to Youtube. These are what most take for granted forgetting that we probably cant do any of these, not without prior permission from the Minister (yes, no kidding).

This is why I also said during Nexus panel : “The government understand the New Media more than the general public gives them credit for”.

Speaking to some of the members of AIMS during lunch, I get the idea that no one knows how it will developed. It is a huge effort with multiple moving pieces (changing technology, changing behavior and thus changing impacts) and even more possible actions, reactions as well as unintended consequences. Maybe the two-tier media policy will go. Maybe the various Media Acts will be changed/updated. Maybe the whole framework will be replace. No one knows.

But I do have confidence in the capability of the people involved in this, that they will strike a fine-balance in our ever changing Media landscape. As liberal and as light-touch as the general public can accept, no more no less.

And yes, the community comments will be very important. So start talking and even better, send emails and letters to them.

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with MDA/MICA so everything I wrote here is my own personal views.

Google RSS Reader has being release for a while. I remember playing with it last year but it was slow and the UI, for lack of a better work, sucks.

Over the weekend, I decided to give it a try again. I was surprised to see a new face lift and a new UI among other new features they are adding to it. So I decided to give it another shot and imported my OPML into it.

And I love it! :-)

They got it this time definitely. I think it is time I chunk my offline RSS readers now.

Incidentally, Google Reader also comes with this feature to tag blog entries to be shared. Check out my shared list. (Yes, they need a shorter permalink :)

When I was playing with Ruby on Rail, I thought this was really cool. An AJAX ruby interpreter running off the browser.

Then I saw this and I was blow off. DOS Emulator on Java. Anyway, if you miss those games from the 80s, go try it out :-)

Nexus 2007 definitely exceed all our expectations. The folks at The Digital Movement certainly done a great job. Well done!

The session with the IT veterans/big shots was a great session by itself but really out of place with the rest of the sessions. The culture gap is very obvious.

And oh, Cory (of Secondlife) was definitely the star of the show. Everyone loves the talk he gives.

MCMC (Malaysia) announced the winners of 2.3Ghz spectrum beauty contest:

Malaysia’s telecoms regulator has named four newcomers as winners of Wimax wireless high speed internet licences.

The winning bidders were Bizsurf Sdn Bhd, MIB Comm Sdn Bhd, Redtone-CNX Broadband Sdn Bhd and Asiaspace Dotcom Sdn Bhd.

I was involved in some way so I will not comment beyond giving my congratulations to the winners. :-)

Went to visit MyIX today with Bill Woodcock. MyIX is the Malaysia Neutral Internet Exchange that was recently setup. Thanks for having us :-)

I have a lot of concerns over the setup but since I already relay my comments to friends involved in the project, I will not repeat them here. Regardless, MyIX is definitely a positive move to the right direction. In fact, Malaysia have done better than Singapore in this aspect.

* See my old article on Internet Peering in Singapore. Although written nearly 3 years ago, nothing much has changed. (And yes, I am aware of SOX).

I didnt stay for the whole APRICOT 2007 this time as I am needed back in Singapore. On the other hand, the most useful meetings I get out of APRICOT are the side meetings that is usually held just before APRICOT 2007.

Anyway, here are some notes from APRICOT 2007.

1. I was surprised to hear that Area Sensor Network was a very hot topic in APAN. Maybe I need to pay a little attention.

2. ASN are running out (just like IPv4 address). RIRs already trying to get people to migrate from the 16 bits to the 32 bits ASN. Luckily, the transition is going to be as complex as IPv4 to IPv6.

3. For some unknown reasons, a lot of developing country are falling over themselves to host Internet Governance Forum.

4. Oh yea, Marc Blanchet, my co-chair of the IDN Working Group at IETF started his blog. :-)

I have my own thoughts on these issues but perhaps another day.

This petition by Skype is one of the most significant milestone for the VoIP, or mobile application, industry. It will decide if the wall-garden cellular network will stay or go.

Skype yesterday petitioned the FCC to lay the smack down on wireless
phone carriers who “limit subscribers’ right to run software communications applications of their choosing” (read: Skype software). Skype wants the agency to more stringently apply the famous 1968 Carterfone decision that allowed consumers to hook any device up to the phone network, so long as it did not harm the network. In Skype’s eyes, that means allowing any software or applications to run on any devices that access the network.

It stands on good ground based on the precedence of Caterfone in 1968 but law aside, politics is will likely to be involve. Afterall, you can expect cellular operators to fight it to the end.