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Ada satu lagi outlet yang bisa dimanfaatkan untuk memperkenalkan dan mempromosikan blog kita: Google Blogs Alert. Info Google Blogs Alert yang disajikan berdasarkan key-word ini disiarkan Google kepada pelanggan Google News Alert. Pada awalnya Google hanya menyajikan News Alert, tapi sekarang sudah ditambah dengan Blogs Alert.

Blog saya, The Asia Tech (http://theasiatech.com), paling sering di-broadcast oleh Google untuk Blogs Alert dengan key-word “Asia”.

Bagaimana caranya? Tidak perlu mendaftar atau menyetur URL blog: teruslah ngeblog — syukur-syukur bisa spesifik, dan berbahasa Inggris juga kayaknya — dan bersiaplah menunggu blog kita menjadi salah satu sumber layanan “breaking news” blog ala Google ini. Lumayan kan ikut dipromosiin Google?

Microsoft’s planned investments in Asia will boost the effectiveness of the company’s enterprise sales team in Asia.

Microsoft Corp. will step up its investments in Asia over the next two years as part of a bid to strengthen its relationship with partners and corporate customers in the area of mission-critical technologies.”Over the next two years, we’re going to invest about US$14 million in resources and facilities,” said Chris Sharp, Microsoft’s Asia-Pacific general manager of server and tools products, during a phone interview.

As part of these investments, Microsoft will assign 100 technical specialists to work with customers and ISVs (independent software vendors) on mission-critical software products, including Windows 2003 Server and SQL Server 2005. The company also plans to open two technology incubation centers in Seoul and Bangalore, India. Link.

Asia is the next big market in telecommunications industry.

Research In Motion Ltd. expects sales in Asia to double in 12 months and hopes to win approval early next year to launch its flagship BlackBerry device in China, its co-chief executive said Thursday.

Co-Chief Executive Jim Balsillie told Reuters the firm hoped to get approval from Chinese regulators by the first quarter of 2007 to begin shipping its devices, which helped popularise wireless e-mailing, to the mainland market through partner China Mobile Ltd. — the world’s largest cellular operator.

“Currently we have 30 carrier partners we’ve launched in 17 countries. We’d like to add another 15 to 20 carriers in the next year,” Balsillie said in an interview on the sidelines of the ITU World 2006 forum in Hong Kong. Link

Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM.O: Quote, Profile , Research) shares jumped more than 4 percent on Tuesday after China said it may grant a license for a next-generation cellphone network that would boost royalties to the wireless technology and chip supplier.

Qualcomm shares rose $1.61, or 4.3 percent, to $38.99 in early afternoon trade on Nasdaq.

Ed Snyder, an analyst at Charter Equity Research, said news that China may soon roll out its first third-generation telecoms network — which allows faster Internet speeds and streaming video — helped push up Qualcomm shares.

He said that the company would benefit both from royalty payments for its so-called CDMA technology the network would be based on as well as from sales of chips used in handsets. (Source: Reuters)

A survey of 25,000 MSN portal visitors across seven Asian markets - Hong Kong, India, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand - found that almost half of those online in Asia have a blog, and 40 percent of these bloggers are blogging for more than three hours a week.

According to the report, the region’s bloggers are primarily driven by the need to express themselves and share their lives with family and friends.

• Nearly half of those online in Asia have a blog
• 74% find blogs by friends and family to be most interesting
• Young people and women dominate (except India where it is overwhelmingly a male domain and Korea where blogging is a part of everyday life for all)
• 50% believe blog content to be as trustworthy as traditional media
• 41% spend more than three hours a week blogging
• More than 40% have less than 10 visitors per week

Link

Personalisation and interactivity will be the key drivers of mobile TV according to a new report commissioned by Nokia and conducted by Dr Shani Orgad from the London School of Economics. The report, titled ‘This Box Was Made For Walking’, examines the future impact of mobile TV on the broadcasting and advertising industries.

The report predicts that the introduction and adoption of mobile TV will ultimately give way to a more personal and private TV experience than that of traditional broadcast TV, with big implications for users, content providers and advertisers. Users will be able to receive content anytime, anywhere, choose what is most relevant to them, and even create and upload their own television content, while content providers and advertisers will be able to tailor their offerings more specifically to the user.

“For mobile TV to become more than just television on the move, it will have to build on existing channels, programmes, and ways of watching television and using the Internet.” said Dr Shani Orgad. “Mobile TV will become a multimedia experience with an emphasis on personalisation, interactivity and user-generated content.”

“We are currently entering a new era in television, that of personal TV and video consumption,” said Harri Männistö, Director, Multimedia, Nokia. “This LSE report highlights the opportunities for both broadcasters and advertisers in this new mobile television era.”

According to the report, the current trend of user generated content, as seen by the phenomenal growth of YouTube, will be a key feature of mobile TV. As consumers increasingly use their mobile devices to create video content, new broadcast platforms will emerge to distribute this content to other mobile users. The United States television channel, Current TV, is a good indicator of the future with 30% of its programming consisting of user-generated content.

The future of music industry will rely on mobile phone and 3G technology will be a great enabler for it.

The mobile phone is set to become the retail channel of the future for music fans according to a report published by 3.

The report investigates how young people are using new technology to revolutionise the way they access and listen to music and reveals some startling results for the music industry:

• Music purchased on mobile is the fastest growing music format - up 100% on 2005
• Mobile could overtake computer based music purchases within 5 years
• Six out of ten under 24 year olds have purchased music via a mobile
• Downtime’ is becoming the newcommerce space for music retailing
• Two thirds say they buy on public transport, and half say they’re interested in buying new tracks on the way home from a club
• Paying for music via mobile bill preferred to cash or credit cards by 50% of under 21s
• CD will die out within five years say 60% of under 24s
• Downloading has environmental benefits according to 85% under 24s.

Music sales on mobile are booming, up 100% on 2005. 3 is the UK’s biggest mobile music retailer with 75% of the market, its 3.75 million UK customers now buy over one million audio tracks and music videos per month, with audio sales accounting for one in ten of all chart singles bought in the UK. In fact if mobile sales continue to grow at the same pace they could rival - and potentially overtake - computer based downloads in just five years.

Mobile has also driven the resurgence of the music video - 3 customers have watched over 20 million music videos since 3 launched the service in 2004 - prompting calls for sales to be chart eligible (at present, download sales of audio tracks, but not videos, are counted towards the charts).

Link

While businesses aren’t expected to hurry to upgrade to Windows Vista now, a report by Forrester Research Inc. suggests consumers won’t stampede to purchase the new operating system either.

Customer households will adopt Vista much in the same way that they adopted Windows XP, said Forrester analyst Ted Schadler. That’s contrary to projections Microsoft has made that Vista will be adopted two times faster than any other Windows client operating system.

“Call us cautious, but we believe that most consumers will trod the path they’ve been on for years: They buy computers when the old ones break, when the prices come down far enough or when a lifestyle event triggers the purchase,” he wrote in the report. “And that means the best predictor of Windows Vista adoption is Windows XP.”

Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie affirmed that the company’s new Vista operating system is on target to ship to businesses by the end of November and to consumers by the end of January.

Speaking at the Web 2.0 conference here, Ozzie said a major goal with Vista is to create a secure computing environment for people using the Internet and installing software and online content on their machines.

Source: Computer World, Market Watch

Shares of Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Dell Inc. (DELL.O: Quote, Profile, Research), the world’s biggest personal computer makers, rose on Thursday on confidence over increased technology spending after Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) posted better-than-expected results.

Shares of Hewlett-Packard, the largest PC maker, were up 81 cents, or 2.1 percent, at $39.69 in trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Dell, the No. 2 PC maker, were up 88 cents or 3.6 percent to $25.06 on Nasdaq.Shares of Cisco, the world’s largest maker of computer networking equipment, jumped as much as 9.3 percent on Nasdaq and led gains in technology stocks. Cisco was the second-best performer on a Merrill Lynch index of technology stocks and Dell was the fifth-best.

Also contributing to Dell’s and HP’s gains were weaker-than-expected earnings of Lenovo Group Ltd. (0992.HK: Quote, Profile, Research), the world’s No. 3 PC maker.Lenovo blamed pricing competition from rivals seeking market-share gains in its home market of China, where it is the largest personal computer maker. It also faces tough competition from Dell and HP in the United States and Europe, where Lenovo is trying to gain market share.

Link

News Corp. and Japan’s Softbank Corp. announced plans recently to bring MySpace, the popular Internet social networking site, to Asia.

The 50-50 joint venture MySpace KK will be run mostly separately from News Corp., the site’s New York-based parent company, the two companies said.

Each company will invest 590 million yen ($5.09 million) in the new company, which adds to MySpace’s international operations in Britain, Germany, France, Australia and Ireland.

The new venture comes amid rapid growth in Japan’s social networking sites, which are thought to have more than 10 million users, according to the Nihon Keizai newspaper.

Link