Protecting nature's beauty

10 Sep 2007, ST

By Liana Tang

GETTING wet and dirty, sometimes knee-deep in mud, may not sound like a great day out for most. But for undergraduate Loh Kok Sheng, it is just what he needs to unwind - conducting a guided walk on Sentosa's shore.

The third-year life sciences student at the National University of Singapore also regularly explores the muddy crevices of shores like Changi beach and Chek Jawa, sometimes in pre-dawn darkness, to photograph the wildlife he encounters. He then shares his photographs and experiences through his blog: http://wondercreation/blogspot.com.

The 23-year-old discovered this newfound passion on a visit to Sentosa last year. 'When I was first introduced to the Sentosa shoreline, I was amazed at how marine life was thriving on a tourist island.'

He cites colourful creatures such as giant anemones and stealthy crabs among many intriguing finds.

A project he is currently working on is charting the recovery of wildlife on Chek Jawa following damage to the marine environment caused by heavy rainfall earlier this year.

Mr Loh reports his findings on a blog: http://cjproject.blogspot.com where he notes that despite having to adhere to unearthly timings and strict schedules 'chasing' the low tides to survey the wildlife, his friends who volunteer to help in his field surveys thoroughly enjoy themselves, discovering something new each time.

Why his many blogs? He simply hopes to raise awareness among youth about Singapore's natural heritage.

He is among an increasing number of young people and groups who conduct workshops and guided walks in various nature spots in Singapore.

Mr Ron Yeo, 32, founded one such group. Suitably named Naked Hermit Crabs (NHC), the group's 30 volunteers provide guided shore walks for the public, doling out historical tidbits and facts while pointing out ecological highlights.

Of the 20 youth volunteers in NHC, Mr Yeo believes that engaging young people in such volunteer roles is key to the future of conservation.

'It is refreshing to work with young people as they always bring in new ideas that help improve the way we conduct our walks and other conservation efforts,' he said.

In agreement is Mr N. Sivasothi, an instructor at the Department of Biological Sciences at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He believes that the efforts of such individuals and groups, along with education in schools, provides comprehensive opportunities for creating awareness among youth about environment and conservation.

'Young people who are inspired by the volunteers they meet tend to take up committed leadership roles in the conservation community,' said the former research officer at the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research.

'This is one way that we maintain a dynamic, motivated community that works towards making positive impacts on conservation in Singapore.'

The writer, 23, graduated with honours in biology from NUS

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Play your part!

HERE are some useful resources close to home:

Keep up-to-date with news about nature spots at www.wildsingapore.com

Seek out information on Singapore's natural history at Habitatnews
http://habitatnews.nus.edu.sg

Find out how you can help the Blue Water Volunteers at http://bluewatervolunteers.org

Volunteer to be a part of shaping Singapore's garden city by visiting www.nparks.gov.sg/involve.asp

Find out more about visits and workshops on Semakau Landfill with the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research at http://rmbr.nus.edu.sg

Clearing away the cobwebs

6 Sep 2007, ST

Andrew Keen's The Cult Of The Amateur is a refreshingly brusque critique of how culture is being cannibalised in the brave new Internet world

By Ong Sor Fern, culturevulture

I HAVE never, nor will I ever, read blogs.

Yes, I am an information snob. I prefer my writing to come in published formats: newspapers, magazines and books. As someone who grew up on a hearty diet of old media, I trust these established systems of delivering information simply because there is quality control.

When I read a newspaper, I can be assured that the journalist is subject to a code of ethics, his work has been audited by editors and his sources verified. Ditto a magazine and a book.

Blogs, however, are a Wild West frontier, a welter of undifferentiated information that blends fact with opinion with merry disregard for consequences.

No doubt there are intelligent bloggers out there. But trying to find them is akin to looking for a single brainy needle in an exceedingly large and, mostly dumb, haystack.

I am no Luddite. But I do regard the current enthusiasm for Web 2.0, the so-called second generation of Web-based communities, with a jaundiced eye.

This is partly because I have seen the Web mushroom from its early days, when there was a much better signal to noise ratio, to its current state of mostly deafening white noise.

And it is also partly because as someone in the media business, I have been taught to assess information with an eagle eye, so I value the quality, not just the quantity, of information.

So it was with relish that I devoured Andrew Keen's book The Cult Of The Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture And Assaulting Our Economy.

The book is a much-needed wake-up call for all those who think that Web 2.0, where Google, YouTube and Facebook are worth billions of dollars even though they produce no content, promises a new utopia.

Keen, an Englishman based in the United States, is a self-declared apostate. He was a technopreneur during Silicon Valley's first Internet boom. So his perspective is not that of some lofty old media Cassandra perched on the outside, but a clear-eyed insider who has thought long and hard about the industry.

The book is not perfect by any means. Some parts are a bit repetitive and his tone occasionally totters dangerously close to hysteria, especially when he rails on about morality and the Web.

He is also focused solely on the US, so his book does not deal with the impact of the Web on other countries around the globe.

But the most intriguing central tenet of his argument is that Web 2.0 is killing culture creation through its celebration of the 'noble amateur'.

The idea that anyone can be a writer/artist/critic is a seductive one, as Keen concedes. But the grim reality, he points out, is closer to 19th-century evolutionary biologist T.H. Huxley's infinite monkey theorem.

The theory states that if you provide an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters, one will eventually produce a masterpiece to rival William Shakespeare.

The problem is, of course, trying to find that one talented monkey amidst the cacophony.

While Web 2.0 businesses are busy building more typewriters for more monkeys, it is also tearing down the infrastructure that used to support the William Shakespeares.

The idea of intellectual property, which Keen points out has sustained culture creation in Western civilisation for 200 years by paying people for their creative output, has been pulverised in the new information age.

Students plagiarise chunks of writing for their essays. People steal music and movies online. So-called citizen journalists do armchair reporting by cobbling together tidbits from legitimate websites.

Such disregard for intellectual property has already resulted in the collapse of the American music industry and a drastic nose-dive in circulation for American newspapers, whose readership are deserting old sources of information for the illusory 'variety' offered free online.

While Keen lambasts new media for indiscriminate destruction of old media structures, his book, in focusing so tightly on the negative aspects of new media, also seems in danger of committing the same sin of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

But it is rescued by a last chapter, in which he lists the Web ventures which manage to find an economically sustainable middle road between the technological promise of the new Web and old-fashioned products.

Of course, my love of old media could be seen as springing from vested interest. After all, I work in the print media, about as old school as you can get.

But I am not simply a producer of content. I am also a consumer of content. As such, I also have a vested interest in finding trustworthy sources of content, produced with integrity and accountability, because such content contributes to the cultural discourse of society.

I think the world will be a very much poorer place if newspapers, magazines and books were to be replaced by Web 2.0's drastically shorter and much more populist forms of writing.

Old media has to find ways of adapting to the new platform before the new media completely cannibalises the old to the detriment of everyone in the culture industry. That much everybody agrees on.

But I think that just as old media businesses need to adapt, consumers of culture need to draw a line in the sand. They have to commit to paying for legitimate content, because if there is anything Web 2.0 has proven, it is that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

In that, the brave new world of Web 2.0 looks pretty much like the old world. The new divide, it seems, will be between those who can afford to pay for the correct sort of information, and those who cannot.

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# Andrew Keen's The Cult Of The Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture And Assaulting Our Economy (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 228 pages, $29.40 w/o GST) is available at Kinokuniya Book Stores.

Online fake Steve Jobs found

07 Aug 2007, ST

Mystery blogger who parodied Apple's CEO on the Net is a technology writer at Forbes.

SAN FRANCISCO - For the last 14 months, high-tech insiders have been eating up the work of an anonymous blogger who assumed the persona of Steven P. Jobs, Apple's CEO.

The mysterious writer has used his blog, the Secret Diary Of Steve Jobs, to lampoon the CEO and his reputation as a difficult and egotistical leader, as well as skewer other high-tech companies, tech journalists, venture capitalists, open-source software fanatics and Silicon Valley's overall aura of excess.

The acerbic postings of Fake Steve, as he is known, have attracted a plugged-in readership - both the real Jobs and Bill Gates have acknowledged reading the blog ( fakesteve.blogspot.com ).

At the same time, Fake Steve has evaded the best efforts of Silicon Valley's gossips to discover his real identity.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes magazine who lives near Boston, has been quietly enjoying the attention.

'I'm stunned that it's taken this long,' said Lyons, 46, when a reporter interrupted his vacation in Maine on Sunday to ask him about Fake Steve. 'I have not been that good at keeping it a secret. I've been sort of waiting for this call for months.'


'Fake Steve' Daniel Lyons (above) responding to a reporter asking him about his blog

Lyons writes and edits technology articles for Forbes and is the author of two works of fiction, including a 1998 novel, Dog Days.

In October, Da Capo Press will publish his satirical novel written in the voice of the Fake Steve character, Options: The Secret Life Of Steve Jobs, A Parody.

Unlike the off-the-cuff ramblings on his blog, Options is a well-plotted satire that imagines Apple's CEO grappling with his real-life stock option backdating troubles and getting help, and bad advice, from friends like Larry Ellison, Bono and Al Gore.

Blogger unmasked

THE book, in part, led to Lyons' unmasking.

Last year, his agent showed the manuscript to several book publishers and told them the anonymous author was a published novelist and writer for a major business magazine.

The New York Times found Lyons by looking for writers who fit those two criteria, and then by comparing the writing of Fake Steve to a blog Lyons writes in his own name, called Floating Point (floatingpoint.wordpress.com).

Lyons said he invented the Fake Steve character last year when a group of CEOs- turned-bloggers drew some media attention. He noticed that they rarely spoke candidly. 'I thought, wouldn't it be funny if a CEO kept a blog that really told you what he thought? That was the gist of it.'

He said he recalled trying out the voices of several CEOs before settling on the colourful Apple co-founder. He twice tried to relinquish the blog, but started again after being deluged by fans e-mailing to ask why Fake Steve had disappeared.

Though many speculators have guessed Fake Steve was an Apple insider, Lyons said he has never interviewed Jobs or written a story about the company. 'I have zero sources inside Apple,' he said. 'I had to go out and get books and biographies to learn about a lot of the back story.'

He said writing as Fake Steve became addictive. He developed a unique lexicon and catalogue of insults for the character. Bill Gates is Beastmaster, and Eric E. Schmidt, Google's CEO, is Squirrel Boy.

When a reader asked Fake Steve about Apple's succession plan, he replied: 'My plan at this time is to live forever and to remain in charge here, though perhaps with fewer restrictions on my power. The truth is, I am not human - I am a man-god, son of Zeus, born to mortal woman but fathered by the ruler of the gods, lord of thunder.'

Lyons receives around 50 e-mail messages a day through the blog, many with ideas for posts, and says the site had 700,000 visitors last month.

Recently someone claiming to be Jobs' daughter, Lisa, wrote to tell him: 'You don't sound at all like my father, but your blog is hilarious.'

The guessing game around his identity saw speculation centering on a variety of plugged-in journalists, former Apple employees and even Jobs himself.

Over the last year, Forbes publisher Richard Karlgaard even got into the act, speculating about Fake Steve's identity on Forbes.com. At one point he wrote: 'The guessing game has begun. Who is writing it? Send me your guesses. I'll gladly buy the most expensive iPod for the first to identify Fake Steve Jobs.'

Lyons said he felt bad and later revealed himself to his bosses and colleagues. Since yesterday, Secret Diary has been published on Forbes.com.

The Fake Steve saga calls to mind the guessing game behind Primary Colors, the political roman a clef written in 1992 by Joe Klein, then a Newsweek writer.

Newsweek, however, fired Klein when he allowed other writers at the magazine to speculate on the book's author without tipping them off.

Lyons used the Fake Steve persona to further some of his own interests and positions. For example, articles in other business publications and their journalists were a frequent target of criticism from Fake Steve, while Forbes got off comparatively easy.

Asked whether he was worried that he would be called to account for some of Fake Steve's stinging, personal posts, Lyons chuckled and said: 'Yes.'

As for Jobs himself - the real one - he did not seem interested when told about Daniel Lyons. He said in a phone interview that he had no interest in reading Lyons' novel.

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'I have not been that good at keeping it a secret. I've been sort of waiting for this call for months'
'Fake Steve' Daniel Lyons responding to a reporter asking him about his blog

'The truth is, I am not human - I am a man-god, son of Zeus, born to mortal woman but fathered by the ruler of the gods, lord of thunder'
Daniel Lyons, impersonating Apple's chief executive Steve Jobs on his blog, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs.

Whole world is watching but who cares?

05 Aug 2007, ST

By Joe Queenan

IN THE audaciously predictable style for which he is famous, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently rhapsodised about the many ways in which 'transparency' is making our 'global discussion...so much richer'.

The theory was that the 24/7 surveillance wrought by camera phones, blogs, YouTube, Facebook and MySpace has turned all of us into public figures.

Because everything we say or do is now apt to turn up on the Internet - potentially with humiliating results - we must live our lives more judiciously, cognisant that in the new 'transparent' age, there is nowhere to hide.

Not long ago, such a society would have been deemed an Orwellian nightmare, a living hell where the brain police spied on everyone.

But somehow, Friedman has gotten it into his head that although surveillance is a bad idea when the government does it, it is just peachy keen when done by amateurs.

Friedman's argument that 'the whole world is watching' - thereby compelling mankind to be on its best behaviour - ignores reality.

The Taleban is simply not concerned that some blogger hammering away at his laptop doesn't approve of its activities.

Hamas is not worried about having its latest depredations captured on mobile phone camera.

Friedman suggests that the 'digital footprint' young people leave on MySpace and Facebook means - and he doesn't seem to think this is necessarily bad - that it will be extremely difficult for them to recover from the mistakes of their youth.

Deceitful resumes, compromising photos, ill-advised confessions of sexual predilections could all come back to haunt them.

But this assumes that some future version of society actually will hold people accountable for their bozo-like past behaviour.

Get real. When the 35-year-old twit who once posted a video of himself mooning Dick Cheney applies for a job with the International Monetary Fund, the 36-year-old interviewing him for the position will be the guy who once blogged about imprisoning George Bush on the planet Alderaan and getting the Death Star to destroy the State Department.

That's not a digital footprint. It's a digital handshake.

The one seemingly valid point that Friedman makes is that transparency will force corporations to be on their best behaviour.

But even this is a flawed assumption. Camera phones and YouTube videos are useful when depicting pollution or botched surgical procedures.

But transparency doesn't work well in the bond market or the private equity field because finance is an abstraction and mobile phone cameras cannot capture the invisible. You cannot post a picture of a hyped stock. You cannot post a video of a rigged initial public offering.

You cannot depict felonious stock market activity on MySpace unless some white-collar crook agrees to be videotaped.

If 'the new transparency' actually could deter obnoxious or criminal behaviour, it might be worth getting the whole world watching.

Muggers, drug dealers, car thieves, axe murderers, hedge fund managers and Antonin Scalia are not afraid of the blogosphere. Especially Scalia.

The weapons of transparency might be good at embarrassing people, but this approach works only with people who worry about being embarrassed.

The Mafia doesn't.

Osama bin Laden doesn't.

The guy who's going to key your car tonight just because you stole his parking space doesn't.

And the woman who conceivably might confront you with your quasi-pornographic, falsehood-swollen online profile 10 years from now isn't going to because she's the gal who once posted a video of herself puking her guts all over her wedding cake.

In a society in which people have decided to immortalise their stupidity, being an idiot isn't going to hurt anyone's career.

The new 'transparency' is just like the old television: The whole world might be watching, but nobody seems to be paying much attention.

Los Angeles Times

Queenan writes frequently for Barron's, the New York Times Book Review and the Guardian.

Off with the mask - come out and blog

03 Aug 2007, ST

By Aaron Low

WHENEVER I read the latest buzz on online forums, I never fail to be amused and annoyed at the same time.

Amused, because some forum participants have a sharp and wicked sense of humour that cuts right to the nub of an issue.

Annoyed, because to unearth such gems, I often have to sift through hundreds of junk posts that say nothing of substance.

Worse still, I am astounded because these junk posts are sometimes so malicious that you wonder whether they were written with an agenda to maim.

Going by what South Korea has experienced, words can indeed hurt more than sticks and stones.

Earlier this year, two South Korean celebrities committed suicide after being the target of 'cyber-bullying' or online harassment.

To deal with this ugly phenomenon, the South Korean government passed a law requiring people to state their real name and social security number when they post on major Internet portals and websites.

The law, which came into force in June, requires these sites to log the information and produce it for the courts if there is a lawsuit against these forum posters.

Advocates of free speech decried such a move, saying the new law is an over-reaction and one that curbs individual liberty.

Indeed, there is much value in anonymity, especially when it comes to being able to speak out without fear.

Whistle-blowing, for one, relies on anonymity.

Nobody would be whistle-blowing if he had to submit his identity card number every time he exposes wrongdoings by his boss or others.

A case for anonymity can also be made in oppressive societies, where it is one of the few tools which enable individuals to criticise the establishment.

Some also argue that what is important is the message, not the messenger.

On the other hand, as shown by the South Korean example, anonymity brings out the worst in people.

Being faceless emboldens them to do things they would not otherwise do because they are not accountable for their actions.

Most of the rubbish posted on popular online forums here are usually written by anonymous participants hiding behind a pseudonym.

They regularly mock and satirise public figures with colourful language, sometimes alleging that politicians here practise cronyism and engage in corruption.

There are hardly any dissenting voices in these forums when such attacks get going, because they get drowned out and attacked as well.

Would the solution be to adopt South Korea's example to weed out such influences?

This would not only be extremely difficult to enforce, but also be counter-productive.

For one thing, many sites and forums are based overseas in the United States or Australia. As such, a law, even if passed, would be difficult to enforce.

Secondly, it is precisely because these voices are anonymous that they do not lend credibility to themselves. They hide behind masks so they are not accountable for their views.

But because such voices do not stand by what they post, and claims are sometimes short of ridiculous, my view is that most people will take such comments lightly.

Third, there is already a section of the online community moving away from anonymity and revealing themselves.

The blogging community here has many people who run blogs with their names proudly displayed.

And why not?

Some of these blogs are intelligent, insightful and well-researched.

If they have put thought into their writings, and have facts to back their arguments, they should be prepared to stand by what they say and identify themselves.

One example is the Yawning Bread's Alex Au. He openly champions gay rights and is unafraid of voicing opinions that are critical of the state and its agencies - and yes, he is still blogging.

More bloggers have recently followed his example and put their real names and biodata on their blogsites.

Blogs like the Singapore Angle and theonlinecitizen have short write-ups about each of their contributors.

This shows a certain growing maturity in the blogosphere, as bloggers become more confident of themselves and the medium.

My hope is this will mark the start of a trend that eventually leads to a broader unveiling of those who engage in the online community.

An open debate, face to face, can only add to the weight of the exchange and the credibility of those involved. As has been increasingly shown by others, there is no need to hide behind anonymity to mask who you are.

Buck$ for Blog$

22 Jul 2007, ST

Thanks to Singapore firm Nuffnang, bloggers can turn their popularity into ad dollars

By Jamie Ee Wen Wei

BLOGS were once the domain of daily musings, inconsequential chatter and random rantings.

But now, a local company wants to change that by bringing in advertising money for local bloggers.

Founded by Singaporean Cheo Ming Shen and his Malaysian counterpart, Timothy Tiah, Nuffnang provides an online platform to match bloggers with advertisers.

All bloggers need to do is to join its blog advertising community and fill up an online form, which provides details of their blogs and readerships that are used to match them with advertisers.

Launched in Malaysia in February, the blog advertising community - the first of its kind in Asia - was an instant hit, attracting 300 bloggers in just three days.

'We were only expecting 300 blogs in three months,' said Mr Cheo, 24, a graduate of the London School of Economics.

Two months later, the company started its Singapore community, and 1,800 bloggers have already joined.

Despite competition from similar online ad services such as Google AdSense, local bloggers are attracted to Nuffnang because it focuses on promoting local products and businesses, which means bloggers have a greater chance of clinching ads on their web space.

'There is no point showing somebody in Singapore an ad from the US, right? So if you sign up with Google Adsense, the ads appearing will be public service announcements, which pay zero dollars,' said local blogger Cowboy Caleb, who earned $200 in two weeks from Nike Singapore ads on his blog.

Depending on the number of unique visitors to their blogs, bloggers can earn from $2 to as much as $2,000 a week for ads placed on their blogs.

Big-time bloggers such as Wendy Cheng, also known as Xiaxue, can easily earn about $1,000 a week, said Mr Cheo.

But personal blogs with a smaller readership are benefiting from this service too.

Final-year psychology student Estee Teo, who keeps a personal blog that has up to 150 hits a day, said she earned about $7 a week from ads for Hitchoo.com, a dating website. The money, though meagre, stokes the ego.

'It feels good that someone actually wants to put their ad on my blog,' said Ms Teo.

For advertisers, the playing field seems huge.

A study by media agency Universal McCann said that Singapore's community of bloggers and blog-readers has increased dramatically in the last six months. About 75 per cent of Singapore's netizens - about 2.5 million people - have read at least one blog in the past six months. By March, 36 per cent of them had blogs of their own.

So far, at least five companies, including Nike Singapore and Hitchoo.com, have run ads on blogs under Nuffnang.

But local advertisers remain conservative. According to a report by Nielsen Media Research, Singapore's online advertising expenditure accounted for only 2 per cent of the market's total advertising spending in March this year. The total advertising expenditure was almost $2 billion last year.

Still, Mr Cheo is confident that blog advertising will pick up among advertisers.

'They have waited a long time for this, and they are very happy to explore this new medium,' he said.

And there is always the dream of becoming the next big thing on the Internet.

'Who doesn't want to be the next Google?' Mr Cheo said.

Chinese actress is world's most widely read blogger

19 Jul 2007, ST Life

BEIJING - Chinese actress-director Xu Jinglei became the world's most widely read blogger this month when her blog logged 100 million page views within 600 days, the Beijing News said on Thursday.

And Xu, who has a reputation for a high intellect and integrity, has done it without writing about sex or kiss-and-tell stuff - but focusing on her work and day-to-day life.

The 100 millionth hit was on July 12, said website Sina, which provides blog services to many Chinese entertainers, including Xu.

She started hers in October 2005 and published a book of her blogged articles in March last year.

Xu, 33, has invited 20 fans, selected from online submissions, to a party to celebrate her success.

A star of movies like Confession Of Pain, she won Best Director for Letter From An Unknown Woman at the 2004 San Sebastian International Film Festival in Spain.

An analyst with Sina said Xu's website has had two million more hits since the July 12 breakthrough.

Writer Han Han, ranked second by Sina, will soon exceed the 100-million mark too.

Reuters

Found in cyberspace: a resume you never knew you had

29 June 2007, ST

By Lynn Lee

WHEN his application to be a relief teacher was rejected recently by the Education Ministry, poet and playwright Alfian Sa'at turned to his blog to question the decision.

He posted his e-mail correspondence with a ministry spokesman, without naming him. He had asked the MOE to explain its decision, and it had replied but provided little clarity on the actual reasons.

The local Internet community went into overdrive speculating on the reasons Mr Alfian, who had been given 'provisional approval' by the ministry, had his application turned down eventually.

But no one seemed struck by what seemed to be a pertinent question in the episode: Should correspondence between an employer and employee, whether potential, current or former, be made public and subject to such debate?

Or is this the latest trend in Internet usage, where cyberspace has become a platform for the employee-employer relationship to play out?

But perhaps the question hardly mattered to netizens because nothing has become too personal to put online for the more than one billion users of the Internet.

There is a deluge of options on getting personal, in spaces such as social networking sites and blogs, where users list personal details and reveal their innermost thoughts.

Little is taboo. Relationship highs and lows, likes and dislikes, and work and the place where it happens all get airtime, and eyeballs.

According to online intelligence service Hitwise.com, 6.5 per cent of all Internet visits made by 25 million users in February were to the top 20 social networking sites. These include MySpace and Facebook.

Add to that the more than 70 million blogs out there, with 1.4 million entries updated daily.

There are a few positive instances of how the Net has been a benevolent broker in the employee-employer relationship.

Take the experience of American blogger and Web designer Adam Darowski, (http://www.darowski.com/tracesofinspiration/) who wrote about the trend of blogs becoming 'the new resume' in March.

'Blogging is the perfect way for a candidate to give an employer a more detailed sales pitch - to show he can 'talk the talk' (as opposed to just fill a resume with buzzwords),' he said.

It held true for him. Two months later in May, he wrote that his blog had scored him a new job. He posted a quote from his new boss, which spoke of how his blog posts had allowed the company to get a great first impression of him, which helped him stand out from other candidates.

Mr Darowski's posts, his boss added, revealed that he was self-motivated and could think beyond immediate problems, among other qualities.

In Singapore, well- read blogs have brought in advertising dollars for their owners. These include food blog Chubby Hubby (www.chubbyhubby.net) and the personal site of local blogger Wendy Cheng (www.xiaxue.blogspot.com).

But recent examples show a flipside to having an online persona.

CNN.com reported recently on how a photo in a 27-year-old American woman's MySpace account led to her university barring her from getting a degree in education, which she needed to become a full-fledged teacher.

The photo, captioned 'Drunken Pirate', showed her in a pirate's hat and drinking out of a plastic cup. It 'promoted underage drinking', said the university, which awarded her an English degree instead.

She is now suing the university.

Last June, The New York Times carried a piece on how more tech-savvy companies and bosses are using search engines like Google and Yahoo to conduct background checks on job applicants.

In one case, a consulting company boss went online to suss out an applicant from a top college.

At Facebook, the candidate described his interests as: smoking marijuana, shooting people and obsessive sex.

He did not nail the internship.

American university career counsellors are catching on to this phenomenon, and urging students to ensure that their online identities, set up in the spirit of fun, do not come back to haunt them.

Human resource consultants here say online checks on applicants have yet to gain popularity.

At most, companies send resumes to 'resume sleuths', who hit the paper trail to look up a candidate's job, education and credit history.

But it will be a matter of time before employers here too also turn to online profiling to check out current or potential employees.

A quick scan of the profiles and blogs of Singapore netizens shows employers will indeed find out a lot about them.

For instance, there are those who have no qualms dishing the dirt on their colleagues, albeit without names, while blurbing their company's website in the sidebar.

Others complain about their jobs and lives in their online profiles, with bad spelling and grammar to boot. Not stating where they work does little to help them stay anonymous.

Perhaps employers who do check up personal online profiles will view them with a pinch of salt. After all, some of what is said on personal profiles could be posturing; similarly, sensational comments on blogs could just be there to gain hits.

In the case of Mr Alfian's blog, future employers could possibly see his post as evidence that he has little respect for employer-employee confidentiality.

Or not. They might well appreciate his cogent, well-crafted request to MOE to justify its actions and welcome his persistence in seeking answers.

But whichever way you slice it, the onus still lies with netizens to protect their real-world reputations by asking themselves these questions: What do I want my online presence to say about me? Does my virtual identity portray me accurately?

This would be a good start to ensuring that the Net does not end up hosting a resume you never knew you had.

XX small neh neh

XX posted on her blog that some comments refer to her small neh neh.

I had a good laugh over it. But that's gross and a bit sick! What does neh neh have to do with a blogger?

Does a pair of neh neh blog? What's next? Comments on her fanny? People can be so bitchy!

I would be utterly horrified if someone left comments on my blog about my neh neh.

My neh neh is my neh neh. It is nobody's business or neh neh but mine. Lucky I am not famous enough for some one to talk about my neh neh.

Just in case, anyone is wondering.....neh neh is breasts. And Fanny is backside.