So update your feed reader, bookmark, or web browser to point to this new url www.jiboneus.com.

Thanks,..
J Shamsul

Our local blogosphere (blog community) has been getting all of attention lately, with the lawsuit taking place, a couple of negative remarks by politicians alike. There is also an alliance of bloggers formed, all up in arms adding fuel to the fire.

Over on the more international blogosphere, it is not much different either. A series of targeted violent and disturbing anonymous death threat comments against a blogger Kathy Sierra had raise a firestorm throughout the blogging community.

Tim O’reilly on the O’reilly Radar, yes the Tim O’Reilly, the guy who did coin the term ‘Web2.0‘ has posted a call for a Blogger’s Code of Conduct. There couldn’t be a more perfect time for this. Here is the early initial draft: -

We celebrate the blogosphere because it embraces frank and open conversation. But frankness does not have to mean lack of civility. We present this Blogger Code of Conduct in hopes that it helps create a culture that encourages both personal expression and constructive conversation.

1. We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog.

We are committed to the “Civility Enforced” standard: we will not post unacceptable content, and we’ll delete comments that contain it.
We define unacceptable content as anything included or linked to that:

• - is being used to abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others
• - is libelous, knowingly false, ad-hominem, or misrepresents another person,
• - infringes upon a copyright or trademark
• - violates an obligation of confidentiality
• - violates the privacy of others

We define and determine what is “unacceptable content” on a case-by-case basis, and our definitions are not limited to this list. If we delete a comment or link, we will say so and explain why. [We reserve the right to change these standards at any time with no notice.]

I’m glad that I am not the only one who thinks that bloggers are also responsible for the comments made by their readers on their blogs. They themselves must be their own censorship board to enforce civility on their commenting system.

2. We won’t say anything online that we wouldn’t say in person.

This is a difficult one as I’ve meet several bloggers with totally different personality online and offline.

The purpose of this particular code of conduct is to practice the same restrain online just as what you do offline. If there is something you wanted to write on your blog regarding a certain, person, party or organization, make sure it is something that you are willing say in person if you were to be in the same room.

3. We connect privately before we respond publicly.

When we encounter conflicts and misrepresentation in the blogosphere, we make every effort to talk privately and directly to the person(s) involved–or find an intermediary who can do so–before we publish any posts or comments about the issue.

It is always good to settle conflicts privately first before you go gung-ho, all out in fighting it publicly.

4. When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.

When someone who is publishing comments or blog postings those are offensive, we’ll tell them so (privately, if possible–see above) and ask them to publicly make amends.
If those published comments could be construed as a threat, and the perpetrator doesn’t withdraw them and apologize, we will cooperate with law enforcement to protect the target of the threat.

It is always the case that a blogger will delete comments that are use to abuse, harass, or threaten themselves but not comments of that nature that are targeted to others.

5. We do not allow anonymous comments.

We require commenters to supply a valid email address before they can post, though we allow commenters to identify themselves with an alias, rather than their real name.

While I understand that to moderate comments on your blog might be difficult if you run a very popular blog, so making it a requirement for commenter to register before commenting might be an option to look into.

I have always had allow anonymous comments and will always allow anonymous comments for a long time on this blog. Anonymity isn’t an issue for me. However I do actively delete comments that are not (related) or what I think is not appropriate.

6. We ignore the trolls.

We prefer not to respond to nasty comments about us or our blog, as long as they don’t veer into abuse or libel. We believe that feeding the trolls only encourages them–”Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it.” Ignoring public attacks is often the best way to contain them.

This is a universal rule that everybody who had been actively participating on the Internet for a long time would know.

However there are great blogs that I love to read that could not even last a 0.01 second under such code of conduct. To this, Tim O’Reilly proposed an “anything goes” badge. Yes, what he did was actually creating badges.

These rules or Code of Conduct is by no means to be or will be enforce in anytime soon or ever. Just take this as self-regulations imposed to oneself in writing a blog.

No blogger has to go by these rules but, as much as I love the anarchy world known as the Internet, it is good if you do have some code of conduct when online.

As for myself, the code of conduct that I go by as a blogger is simple, don’t write crap, and don’t link to crap.

We all have known or heard by now of the Great Firewall of China. The Chinese Government is known for actively censoring contents coming into the country through the ‘tubes’.

So are your websites blocked by China? This little website claims to be able to test the connection to your site from China.

Test your website and see if people from the Republic of China could access it.

No one belongs here more then you is a website made for a book by the same name written by Miranda July. Check out the site.

It is no secret that whenever you buy something in bulk you get a discount in price. Savvy shoppers who want to take advantage of this will find other savvy shoppers who are looking for the same thing to band together and purchase the item in bulk price.

The recently launched Tumpang.com tries to take the concept online. Tumpang.com is Malaysia’s first online bulk discount store, creating a community where buyers band together to get an item in a discounted bulk pricing.

The metaphor used in Tumpang is a little bit different, which makes it more interesting. The word ‘tumpang’ is actually a Malay word for ‘pooling’ as in ‘car-pooling’. The website helps its users to pool their resources to qualify for a bulk discount.

Initially, there will be one ‘driver’ to post an item up and set the discounted price with the number of item needed in order to get the bulk price. Other interested users could then ‘ride’ on this bulk buy. Once there is enough number of buyers for that item the deal is made. Buyers are called ‘passengers’.

This type of web based online services has been done before during the early dot com bubble, not locally but I’ve read several website offering such services at time when ‘e-commerce’ was all the hype. They try to get revenue from sells and transactions made through the website.

Tumpang.com on the other hand is making their revenue from retailer or a distributor (or just an interested buyer looking for others to share the bulk buy). As a seller to post an item you will need ‘Toints’, which are points in Tumpang land. Toints will act as a virtual currency for transactions conducted on Tumpang.

There are two ways to get Toints. You could buy them with actual money, credit card online payment or you could accumulate Toints for free as a buyer. Whenever you make a purchase at Tumpang, the savings you receive will be converted to Toints. So if you are an active ‘passanger’ you could accumulate enough ‘Toints’ to post an item every now and then.

For a retailer or a distributor who will be using the site to sell their items in bulk as often, will then need to buy ‘Toints’ from Tumpang.

Upon signing up and filling my personal details I already have 10,000 Toints. You could start posting item right away.

Apart from just selling and buying things in bulk, Tumpang.com could also be a tool to organize group outing. If you wanted to organize a futsal game and are looking for extra players, you could post it on Tumpang and split the cost up between you and other interested users who want to join the game.

Overall it is an interesting concept and I hope it will get popular. It needs to get popular. The site design looks very friendly and fun, unlike some e-commerce sites out there. It also looks like it has some good tools in place for organizing bulk buys, not just another glorified webshop.

It is good to see some interesting web projects taking of here in Malaysian. If you do know of a web project, or are developing one drop me a line, I would like to write about it.

The report goes:

AT THE DEWAN RAKYAT

BLOGGERS using locally hosted websites may be asked to register with the authorities, Deputy Energy, Water and Communications Minister Datuk Shaziman Abu Mansor said.

He said registration was one of the measures the Government was considering to prevent the spread of negative or malicious content on the Internet.

Had the Government ever considered educating blog readers instead to what is consider negative or malicious in the first place?

If there is an official site, a website that is frequently updated and chronologically ordered, which points out such negative and malicious content on the blogosphere then blog readers will know which content to be taken seriously and which content to avoid.

Shaziman said this while winding up the debate on the motion of thanks on the Royal Address for his ministry.

He added that the ministry did not have any problem with bloggers who identified themselves, and he welcomed blogging activities.

However, he said there were about 50,000 websites registered under the .my suffix and there were a lot of avenues for anyone to host websites with malicious content which could harm the country’s security.

Currently those who wish to register a .com.my suffix are already required to provide Trade License or some certificates. Currently there are already mechanisms in place, which required those who wish to register a domain name to provide some form of identification.

Requiring them (the bloggers) to register makes it redundant.

Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang, who interjected when Shaziman was speaking, said the negative comments of several ministers about bloggers reflected their lack of understanding about information flow in cyberspace.

“They should be educated on the vast benefits of blogging, which will help them to interact more with the people. Many politicians overseas already have their own blogs,� he added.

Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang who is somewhat a blogger himself, does understands the vast benefits of blogging. He has been using the medium to spread his words for quite some time.

Asked to comment on the matter, Johor Baru MP Datuk Shahrir Abdul Samad said bloggers were very aware of their own ethics and responsibility for content on their sites.

While agreeing that there were bloggers who had inflammatory content, he said unidentified bloggers could still be traced through their website addresses.

He added that the problem was also about inflammatory comments by unidentified visitors to the blogs.

If that is the real issue here then the title should be ‘blog readers should register to comments on blogs’. Some blogs already require you to register as a user in order to post a comment.

So are you responsible for comments made on your blog? I already address this question before. Yes you are responsible for comments made on your blog by your readers. If there are inflammatory comments made by unidentified visitors to your blog, and you as the blog owner, having the access to edit and remove such comments, then as a responsible blogger that is what you should do. Read my previous for more.

Ahirudin Attan of Rocky’s Bru said the move to compel local bloggers to register was effectively the Government trying to control what Malaysians were writing online.

“This violates the Government’s no-censorship policy with regards to the Internet,â€? he said.

Clearly Ahirudin Attan of Rocky’s Bru does not understand the Government’s no-censorship policy. True that the Malaysian Government does not censored the Internet now and it will not in the future. You are free to post anything you want, the Government wont stop you at that, but however if what you are posting is inflammatory, slanderous, illegal or are violation copyright laws or any laws, then you are taken into action.

You are free to write anything online but at the same time you are responsible for whatever you writes online.

He added that the move would just create fear among the bloggers and would encourage them to host their blogs overseas.

Most bloggers already have their blogs hosted somewhere else, Blogger.com or Wordpress.com doesn’t have their servers over here right?

Marina Mahathir, a blogger and activist, said the Government really should “get real.�

She said the move “is just going to make Malaysia look ridiculous in the eyes of the world.�

Actually the Malaysian Government is already looking pretty ridiculous thanks to irresponsible bloggers.

Blogger Jeff Ooi wondered why the Government was pursuing this course of action.

He said the Government had already set up the Content Forum to deliberate on complaints by any party.

The Government should set up a blog instead.

This move by the Government to require bloggers to register, if were to be implemented, will be a huge waste of resource. There is no easy way to govern the blogosphere.

There is no way to make a blogger who decide to set up a blogspot blog on Blogger.com to register with the Government. Unlike registering cell phone prepaid, there is no way for the Government to restrict the access to Blogger.com.

If such a move were to be implemented I wonder how would website that offers blogging service will operate? Will websites like LifeLogger need to register all it’s Malaysian users?

Technically it would be difficult to implement. It is one thing to suggest such an ideal but it is totally different when it comes to implementing or even enforcing it. There are other ways the Government could venture into in trying to keep its citizens save from negative or malicious content on the Internet.

BegForPost is a new service to ‘compete’ against PayPerPost advertising network, which is favored by pro-bloggers everywhere. PayPerPost connects advertisers, bloggers and publishers. In short, advertisers use this service to find bloggers to blog about them and their products. They then pay the bloggers for their post.

To some, the service is ethically questionable, to others it is not much different then how an artist is being used to endorse certain products. In this case, the bloggers are the artists of some sort. What do you think?

BegForPost on the other hand takes a different approach. Instead of paying bloggers for mentioning their website or products, you beg for it. This service however promises none of the ethical hassles of PayPerPost. There is no payment, just begging for some coverage, which is common in the blogosphere.

BegForPost is better because: -

• Completely free
• No chicken hats
• No conflicts of interest
• No annoying reality show
• No direct deployments to production
• No premature acquisition announcements

This is just a parody playing on PayPerPost, at least I think it is. Check them out and start begging for posts now as I don’t think they will be around much longer when the cease & desist letter comes from PayPerPost.

This is a great time for music and digital media. Earlier this year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs writes an open letter to the industry regarding selling music with out DRM (Digital Rights Management). Record labels like DRM because users can’t easily copy songs. The consumers, those who actually are paying for the music, hate it because they are locked in to one device or one service.

EMI announced recently in London together with Apple that EMI’s entire music and video catalog will be available in May on iTunes DRM free. They are also at a higher quality and price (256kbps AAC at $1.29).

Although iTunes is still not (and wont be anytime soon) able to sync contents with other portable music player on the market, but with DRM free media from iTunes, in theory one could export music purchased form the iTunes Store to other software players that sync with other portable devices. It is not ideal but it is something.

This makes EMI as the first of the four major record labels to make the move in distributing DRM free digital media. It is a bold pro-consumer move by EMI. However Engadget did manage to point out some dubious facts regarding this whole announcement.

One of them is the fact that DRM free music are 30% higher in price then the other DRM version. Apple is selling both the 128-bit AAC with DRM on the normal 99 cent price tag and the bumped up version 256kbps AAC at a higher price $1.29. In other words Apple is still selling crippled EMI music on its iTunes Store.

The fact is that only techie and geeks really know what the whole DRM issue is, non-techie and non-geeks would have cared less about it. Apple’s iTunes Store on the other hand is so successful in getting the non-tech-centric consumer on board. Looking at the price tag I’m pretty sure most of them would choose the cheaper version even if it is crippled with DRM.

This move might just be a test bed for EMI and other music label to see if a DRM free digital content does really make a different. Do people willing to pay a little extra for non-DRM content? This is also how Apple does things, in handling transitions. They didn’t release all the Intel Macs at once.

This is purely a speculation. Another reason for the bumped up version of DRM free music on iTunes is because it is easier to track them on P2P networks. These ‘larger’ files will stand out like a sore thumb in P2P networks. In theory, it is much easier to pirate these files since you do not have to strip the DRM of.

If this is true and it turns out that more music is being pirated then ever with this move, it might just end all argument regarding DRM. The DRM-free community will be at a lost and music industry will then impose stronger control on their digital music. Sony rootkit anyone? Lets hope that it will not come to that.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs called EMI’s move “the next step forward in the digital music revolution, the movement to completely interoperable DRM free music�. While it might just be baby steps, it is still a huge step.

Now my hope is that this move will carry on to other types of digital media, videos especially. Could we one day be able to buy a DVD, rip it via iTunes and sync it on our iPods? With out any shady third party software in between.

Will this whole region thing on DVD just go away, so I could buy a DVD anywhere in the world without worrying if it will play on my DVD player or not?

Could we one day could buy a movie and download it online via bittorent (if during that time our broadband bandwidth is not sufficient enough)? Imagine a setup box that you plug to your TV set and downloads digital movies over night for you. The content is DRM free which means that you could then transfer or sync the video content to other video devices, iPod, PSP and what not.

I like to think we are getting there with media center devices from Apple TV and the next Gen gaming console like the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii but are still a long way to go.

The future of digital content distribution will much brighter if major players would start to let go some of its restrictive control on their digital media contents.

If you are not sure what DRM free music means to you, then head over to myMacBUZZ, there is a nice write-up of what this means for you.

You might have stumble onto some popular video that is not longer on YouTube because it was remove do to some copyright violation or was just asked to take by some spoiled super model.

If you find yourself looking for missing clips, staring at YouTube message: “this video has been removed due to terms of use violation� then you might want to check out Delutube. Just try entering the YouTube video ID to see if the video is there.

Apparently YouTube display that message for some time before the actual .flv file is deleted. Delutube will play the video from YouTube’s folder. If whenever YouTube do remove the video, then it also will disappear from Delutube.

You have to find other ways to save the file personally although you should know that the clip is almost entirely a copyright violation.

First of is Google Paper, which is part of a new feature in Gmail. It is a service that will print out all your emails on a paper, and they will ship it out to you. You can archive them, in say, your filing cabinets maybe?

You Click. We Stack. You Get. Yes it is that easy and it is also free. According to Google the cost of postage is offset with the help of relevant, targeted, unobtrusive advertisements that will appear on your Gmail printed papers. Adsense for papers.

And here is what Google has to say about the environmental impact with all the printed Gmail papers produced by Google;

Gmail Paper is made out of 96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum, and thus, actually helps the environment. For every Gmail Paper we produce, the environment gets incrementally healthier.

The service however is not able to print out other attachment such as MP3 and WAV files. They could burn it on a CD or something.

The second product is a free high-speed broadband connection that comes through your toilet. The name Google TiSP stands for “Toilet Internet Service Provider�

Check out how do you install this service at your home.

Popuri is yet another website offering to check the stats of your website. Type in your website URL address or any site’s address to check out some stats on them. Popuri is a nice tool to check at-aglance the popularity of the site ranking on different search engines (Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Yahoo!, MSN Live, Technorati), social bookmarks (del.icio.us) and subscribers (via Bloglines).

Unlike other similar web tool like DnScoop, mentioned before, Popuri doesn’t acumulate all the ranking and gives us the overall ranking of the website. DnScoop on the other hand sort of calculate an estimated value for you site.

Popuri just got popular, it has been dugg on Digg and mentioned on Techcrunch, therefore it is a little bit slow.

Whats a Web2.0 website without the cool stripe effects. Now with Stripe Generator 2.0 (was there ever a 1.0?) you don’t need to playing around photoshop with pixel-by-pixel painting to create seamless stripes textures.

However, the fact that you need to click on the image to update/refresh the image and they didn’t name it ‘Stripr‘ is so web 1.0.

Please note: this is for fun, nothing too serious.

As the service approaches its 10 year anniversary, Yahoo! is announcing that they will be offering free unlimited storage starting in May 2007. The current storage limit is 1GB.

This puts Yahoo! back in the email race as it leapfrogs Google’s Gmail with 2.8 GB (it keeps growing thought) email storage.

Does this means you will never again need to delete emails? or more room for spam in your inbox?

Anyway the new beta version of Yahoo! Mail still does not work with Safari, but the new storage limit, lack of limit, will be applied to all Yahoo! Mail uses.

We are living in exponential times. The presentation makes me feel small.

Talkr is a service that I’ve signed up a long time ago. It turns your blog posts into a podcast. You might not have notice this, but for quite some time now on the sidebar of my blog post there is this little section call ‘Audio This’, click the ‘Listen to this article’ link and listen to the audio version of my blog post.

Not only just that, you get a RSS feed of the audio making it a podcast that you could subscribe too. I have it on but rarely use it.

Recently Talkr run by Chris Brooks alone was acquired by LiveOnTheNet. It seems that anybody with a great idea can have some success in being bought over by some company. LiveOnTheNet has been in the business of delivering audio and video content over the Internet. They make a great partnership.

It is good to know that Talkr is here to stay and will continue to make it easy for people to listen to blogs. They are promising some new feature, looking forward for that. One new feature they had role out is a new instant voice conference widget.

Bloggers can post these voice widgets on their blogs and create free live chats on topics of interest to their audience. A single conference call’s widget can also be placed on many different blogs, so groups of bloggers can collaborate on chats on broad subjects.

You can check out the new talker at new.talkr.com.

The web will be taking over your desktop soon. Adobe recently announces their Apollo runtime platform that lets developers run their web application offline. Appllo lets you develop a desktop application by using HTML, JavaScript and Flash. The runtime also will make it easy for accessing local stored files.

Firefox 3 also is said to have some offline support that allows sites to work by accessing local datastores.

New player in this game is Slingshot, a product by Joyent. Slingshot allows developers to build or port Rails applications to the desktop. Rails web application could run offline with simple and transparent data synchronization.

Currently the downside or what lacks in a web based application is that you are tie in to your browser and there are little accessibility to data store locally.

Slingshot aims to enables Ruby on Rails web application to break free of the browser. It allows Rails developers to easily create a hybrid web/desktop application. Users could expect the same experience from a normal desktop application. You could drag in and out locally stored files to the application and t should syncs to the web counterpart.

There is a little screencast (video link) shows a demo of a calendar application, how it syncs up you the web version and how you are able to drag out and drag in vCards, iCal enents and other files.

This type of runtime projects creates a lot of potential for web based Office 2.0 products out there. Soon the lines between the web and the desktop will cease to exist.

Yet another local, Malaysian based Digg clone hit the net, digg.com.my. Personally I don’t mind another user-generated, user-voting site, but this is just ridiculous. The whole site basically is riding on Digg’s trademarks logo, layout, button the whole pack.

While Digg might not be the one who invented the concept of voting, but all the logo and even the name Digg, (with double ‘g’s) are registered trademarks of Digg Inc.

Other so called Malaysian based Digg clone, like SpyMy only took the concept but not the design or even use the name Digg for their own.

Surely Kevin Rose’s lawyers will be coming with cease and decease letter not to stop the website but to stop using the Digg name and it’s other trademarks design and logo. Digg in the past has taken action against a couple of websites that uses the ‘Digg’ name.

For a corporation to be taken seriously they have to fight to protect their trademarks.

Then again this clone might be too little and insignificant enough for Digg to take any action. However there is still the horde of Digg users to face. Malaysian Digg clone got dugg.

There is a different between ‘being inspired by’ and a total rip off.

This might just be a gimmick to direct attention to the developer, Arsyan Ismail. He is also the one who create kawanster, which is a friendster clone. The word ‘Kawan’ is Malay for ‘friend’. If it is then I would say that it works at least it got my attention.

Apollo is a runtime. What the heck does this Apollo do? It allows the creation of desktop applications using current web technology such as HTML, JavaScript/AJAX and Flash. What this means is that web developers now could take their web application to the desktop level.

Apollo takes HTML, Javascript and Flash outside of the browser and it could interact with file system on the machine. This also means that you could take your web application offline. Imagine a web based word processor like Google Docs or Zoho Writer creating a Apollo version of the word processor. You then could work on your documents offline, and when you get online it just sync up with the web version for collaboration with others.

Apollo looks interesting something I would love to mess around if I have the time.

Here is an interesting blog post by Alan Williamson regarding Google their early days that you might have not heard of.

First of the prime reason for the Google home page is so bare is not as a testament to simplicity but due to the fact that during that time Google founders doesn’t know HTML. They just wanted a quick user interface. They got lucky?

On the early stages they did user testing on their homepage. Users would just sit there staring at the screen without any interaction. When ask ‘what’s up?’ They replied “We are waiting for the rest of it”. Google fix this by putting a copyright message at the bottom.

Even the name ‘Google’ was a mistake, a typo. The founders were actually aiming for ‘Googol’ which is a word representing a number with 100 zeros, just like a ‘million’ is a word representing a number followed by six zeros and a ‘billion’ is a number that followed with 9 zeros. May be ‘a googol’ is how much the Google founders planing to make with the company and it seems that they are going on the right direction.

Read on the blog entry for more interesting facts about Google on a lecture given by Marissa Mayer, product manager for Google.

Brought to you by Kineda, the one who did the A-List Blogebrity test. I’m a C-List blogger if you are wondering. Damn. Are you an A-List Blogger?

Anyway, same concept different play. Blog fight put two blog to face of against each other to see who is the more famous/popular in the celebrity kind of. Use it to compare your blog to others or just pit together two of your favorite blogs.

There are also some result of pre-made fight between famous blog.

ProBlogger.com vs ShoeMoney.com (fight result shows ProBlogger wins)

Techcrunch vs GigaOm (fight result shows Techcrinch wins)

LifeHacker vs 43Folders (fight result shows LifeHacker wins)

View more fights or create your own at Kineda. Not sure about the accuracy of the result but it is still a fun popularity contest game you can play along.