Indonesian in CNet Asia's Regional Dispatches

Highlighted by Jeff Ooi's Screenshots CNET Asia is enlisting bloggers from around the region to blog on technology and review cool gadjets in what they call Regional Dispatches.

Their man in Indonesia is Vishnu Mahmud a trained hotel manager who now holds a day job as a PR consultant writing under the name of Toekang IT. We wish him luck.

Are PR people taking over the blogosphere?

Jeremy Wagstaff has raised an inportant issue in his Loose Wire Blog on worldwide PR firm Edelman's deal with Technorati. Essentially the deal is to offer localized versions of Technorati's offering in German, Korean, Italian, French and Chinese.

This deal allows Edelman to get into the analytics of tracking conversations in the blogosphere, but being a typical journalist Jeremy worries whether this means that PR people have taken over the conversation.

It is an understandable suspicion but one founded more on the misperception that PR people are into spin, that they are still stuck in the mode of command-and-control one-to-many communications and that they haven't realised that they are there to present only a good image of companies, no warts and all.

Just like there are bad journalists, there are bad PR practitioners who do all those awful stuff. They give PR a bad name. To be fair there are lots of awful PR practitioners around, just like the tons of mediocre and horrible journalists.

But where the best PR practitioners are concerned, it has always been and will always be about getting our clients to communicate with credibility — with or without the blogosphere. read more

SBY's cutting edge website

Global Voices Online has reported that President SBY has a new innovative website, complete with RSS and Podcast feeds feeds as well.

It even has an English section and a section devoted to the First lady. Apparently it costs about Rp42 million a month to operate, a pittance really if it pays dividends. A quick search on Technorati shows that its been kept relatively updated: 19 oposts in the last 16 days.

What next for this technology-adopting president? SBY Blog next?

Tempo enters blogosphere

This just in from Blogger Indonesia's A. Fatih Syuhud


Nothing can make me happier than to see a mainstream Indonesia media like Tempo now is taking initiative to introduce blog and blogging into the 'conventional' audience or in other words it acknowledges the growing influence and popularity of blogging so much so that it can no longer ignore it as a temporary trend.

The news came yesterday night when blog-indonesia.com founder told me that Tempo Media will make a new feature in its online edition entitled Blog Pekan Ini (Blogger of the Week). Once I have time to browse I did find what he said. In its introduction, the Tempo online editor says
TEMPO Interaktif, Jakarta: Mulai pekan ini, Tempo Interaktif menampilkan rubrik baru Blog Pekan Ini. Kriteria pemilihannya adalah adalah Blog -- berbahasa Indonesia, Inggris ataupuan daerah ... (From this week, Tempo Interaktif will show a new feature i.e. Blogger of the Week. All Indonesia blogs written in English, Bahasa Indonesia or local dialect will serve the criteria to be reviewed)

It's still unclear to me whether the reviewed blog will show up in its print edition as well.

I am so happy upon Tempo initiative at least for two reasons:
First, it means the mainstream media have seen blogs not only as a kid playing ground or an IT-geek-testing field. They starts if not already see Indonesia blog and its content as part of people voices that need to be paid attention for. Because people voices have --one way or another-- people power, whatever this term means.

Second, it will spread the blogging culture into speedier pace. When it happens, when all people who can access the internet are interested to blog, something big will happen: the turn-around of a culture. From tradition of talking into the culture of writing. When you desperately want to blog or write something, you cannot avoid another: reading. No one can make a decent writing without reading anything. So, if that happens, let's call it a 'green revolution.'

From the above two points, I need to congratulate the editorial board of Tempo Media for taking the first initiative. And from the same token, we, Indonesian bloggers, are waiting for other mainstream media like Kompas, Gatra, Republika, Media Indonesia, etc to play a more active role towards implementing the "green revolution." :)

Lastly, I think Budi Putra must've played a significant role on this. If that's right, thanks so much from me and from other Blogger Indonesia who agree with my point of view.