How to you save the world and get free stuff at the same time?  Well now you can do just that. 

Since past giveaways on this site have been going pretty well, I’ve initiated a new project for Friedbeef’s Tech, and it’s called the 33 trees project.  The mechanics are simple:

1. Sponsor plants 33 trees via Mokugift in exchange for the rights to give something away on this site
2. Readers get free stuff

Objective

Our aim is to plant 1,000 trees by the end of the year – and we need you to help us! 

Reader’s benefit and how you can help

Your benefit as a reader:

• You get to help plant trees.  These giveaways work mainly because sponsors see the demand and exposure it brings them.  The more you participate, the more you support this tree planting project.  Who knows?  Maybe next year this project may just be called the 100 Trees Giveaway Project.
• You get free commercial quality stuff which otherwise would have cost a fair bit of money

How you can help:

Just participate for free :) 

Here are our first two sponsor giveaways: Totaling USD$524 amount in value

They have planted 33 trees each *applause*.  Feel free to participate in either one or both of these giveaways!

• Blinksale – An amazingly simple and elegant online invoicing service
• iTypetoGo – A handy iPhone app which allows you to type while you walk

Would you like to sponsor the planting of 33 trees?  Check out out our project guidelines.

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  33 Trees Giveaway Project

  Giveaway: iType2Go: Text on Your iPhone While Walking

  Giveaway: Blinksale: The Easiest Way to Send Invoices Online

What is it?

Blinksale is an incredibly simple and elegant way of sending invoices online.  It’s fully featured, allows easy formatting of invoices, tracking, and has an open API and integrates with other cool tools like Paypal, Basecamp, and Tempo. 

What I really love about it is not so much the features, but it’s minimalist simplicity in getting things done.  The layout is intuitive, and you can automate everything from billing, reminders, thank you notes, tax calculations and more so you never have to worry about them again.  The learning curve for this product is literally zero. 

Even if you only send out a few invoices every month, it just makes life a whole lot easier.

The giveaway

• 1 Gold account for 1 year worth USD288
• 1 Silver account for 1 year worth USD144
• 1 Bronze account for 1 year worth USD72

…and we’re giving it away for free to 3 lucky Friedbeef.com readers thanks to the kind folks at Blinksale.

How to Get It: 

3 readers will be selected randomly to receive this giveaway.  To be eligible:

Just leave a comment on this post letting us know you want it

OR

tweet this post and tag #friedbeefgifts

Well actually you can do both to increase your chances :) We’ll do the prize drawing a week from now.

This post is part of our 33 trees giveaway project – where sponsors plant 33 trees in exchange for the right to giveaway products.  Your participation saves the world (and gets you free stuff)

Update: Giveaway closed: Congrats to the winners

1. Gold account: m.s.
2. Silver account: David
3. Bronze account: Rahul

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  Giveaway: iType2Go: Text on Your iPhone While Walking

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This handy little app was nominated by David Pogue in the NYTimes, as one of 2009’s best tech ideas.  It superimposes what you’re typing over a live camera view, so you can see where you’re going even while you’re focused on the screen.  You can use it to text while walking, enjoying the scenery, or when you’re trying to keep a face to face conversation with your girlfriend…  Oh wait, that last bit won’t work very well  (Follow this set of guidelines, on ‘When Is It Inappropriate to Use Your iPhone’ and you can’t go wrong). 

Anyhow, once you type your message, you can opt to send it to twitter/facebook/SMS or email just with one single click.  So easy!

The giveaway

10 free copies of iType2Go Pro thanks to the kind folks at XcoolApps

How to Get It:  :

Just leave a comment on this post letting us know you want it.  The FIRST 10 people who do so will win a free copy of iType2Go Pro! Updated: Giveaway Complete
Winners:

Berg
Jim Fry
Luis
ha14
Alvin Bruce
Ryan
CS420
Granny
paulcrousel
john

Thanks everyone for participating – do continue to leave comments in support, and do check out the product.

This post is part of our 33 trees giveaway project – where sponsors plant 33 trees in exchange for the right to giveaway products.  Your participation saves the world (and gets you free stuff)

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  GIVEAWAY: TUN3R iPhone App: Discover Music Based on Your Tastes

Hello everyone, Merry Christmas & Happy New Year! 

As we close out the year and celebrate this blog’s 4th anniversary in the next few days, we want to say THANK YOU to all readers for visiting this blog.

To mark the occasion, we have arranged a big product giveaway worth more than USD1,200 exclusive to Friedbeef.com readers!

For more details, do check out the relevant giveaway blog posts below.  Feel free to enter as many of the giveaways as you like :) We’ll do the prize drawing on New Year’s day.

• GIVEAWAY: Audials One: Rip Audio Streams into MP3 Files
• GIVEAWAY: Smart PDF Converter Pro: Convert PDF into DOC files
• GIVEAWAY: TUN3R iPhone App: Discover Music Based on Your Tastes
• GIVEAWAY: Windows 7 Classic Start Menu: Classic Startmenu UI for Win7

Update: Contests closed

Thanks everyone for participating. We had a good response of more than 170 entries for this round, so we’ll see what we can do to get more freebies in for you guys so we can do more giveaways in the coming months :)

If you’re looking for contest winners, please check the individual posts for more details.

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  GIVEAWAY: TUN3R iPhone App: Discover Music Based on Your Tastes

What is it?

AudialsOne is a commercial music suite which has one killer feature.  It can record everything you hear on any website or streaming application and automatically saves the file as a new MP3 on your computer.  You can also do this in batch style where you can also just search by genre, artist or song title and AudialsOne will scour the internet for streams which are playing relevant material and record them to your PC as well.

AudialsOne takes care of DRM copy protection and file format problems with music  and audio book files via its PerfectAudio quality guarantee

The giveaway

Worth USD59.90 each, but we’re giving it away to 10 lucky Friedbeef.com readers thanks to our sponsors :)

How to Get It: 

10 readers will be selected randomly to receive this giveaway.  To be eligible:

Just leave a comment on this post

OR

tweet this post and tag #friedbeefgifts

You can do both to increase your chances :) We’ll do the prize drawing on New Year’s day.

This post is part of our Christmas giveaway bonanza to say THANK YOU for reading this blog – Do check out our OTHER seasonal giveaways and feel free to enter as many of them as you like.

Update: CONTEST CLOSED

Here are the lucky 10 winners as selected by Random.Org:

1. alex
2. Ryan Schwartz
3. mlweg3
4. enusri
5. Rafael Capucci
6. vhick
7. Hady
8. jelson
9. Keshav
10. David

I’ll be in contact with you shortly to distribute your prizes. Thank you everyone for entering the giveaway :)

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What is it?

Converting any document to PDF is fairly straightforward.  Going the other way around however, is much tougher especially when trying to reproduce the original layout of the PDF in a Microsoft Word file.  Smart PDF Converter is a commercial grade software which does just that.  Aside from Doc and MS-Word files, it also supports PDF conversion to other file formats like HTML, TXT, XLS, JPEG.

The giveaway

Worth USD69.90 each, but we’re giving it away to 7 lucky Friedbeef.com readers thanks to our sponsors :)

How to Get It: 

7 readers will be selected randomly to receive this giveaway.  To be eligible:

Just leave a comment on this post

OR

tweet this post and tag #friedbeefgifts

You can do both to increase your chances :) We’ll do the prize drawing on New Year’s day.

This post is part of our Christmas giveaway bonanza to say THANK YOU for reading this blog – Do check out our OTHER seasonal giveaways and feel free to enter as many of them as you like.

Updated: CONTEST CLOSED

Here are the lucky 7 winners as selected by Random.Org:

1. my_immortalize
2. phobos
3. vhick
4. syafiq
5. hunter
6. Spinzer
7. Taiwan Student

I’ll be in contact with you shortly to distribute your prizes. Thank you everyone for entering the giveaway :)

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What is it?

With last.fm and Pandora shutting its doors to many international users, TUN3R is an alternative  iPhone internet radio app for the TUN3R web service which picks and streams radio stations based on your music tastes.  Certainly a great way to discover new music. 

The giveaway

Worth USD2.99 each, but we’re giving it away to 5 lucky Friedbeef.com readers thanks to our sponsors :)

How to Get It:

5 readers will be selected randomly to receive this giveaway.  To be eligible:

Just leave a comment on this post

OR

tweet this post and tag #friedbeefgifts

You can do both to increase your chances :) We’ll do the prize drawing on New Year’s day.

This post is part of our Christmas giveaway bonanza to say THANK YOU for reading this blog – Do check out our OTHER seasonal giveaways and feel free to enter as many of them as you like.

Updated: CONTEST CLOSED

Here are the lucky 5 winners as selected by Random.Org:

1. John
2. yumpstyler
3. byflipper
4. pg
5. Joe

I’ll be in contact with you shortly to distribute your prizes :)

---
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What is it?

Classic Start Menu is an alternative to the Windows 7 Start Menu. It emulates the old classic start menu which we’re all familiar with.  Useful if you don’t like the Windows7 Start Menu and long for the ‘good old days’.

The giveaway

Worth USD19.99 each, but we’re giving it away to 5 lucky Friedbeef.com readers thanks to our sponsors :)

How to Get It: 

5 readers will be selected randomly to receive this giveaway.  To be eligible:

Just leave a comment on this post

OR

tweet this post and tag #friedbeefgifts

You can do both to increase your chances :) We’ll do the prize drawing on New Year’s day.

This post is part of our Christmas giveaway bonanza to say THANK YOU for reading this blog – Do check out our OTHER seasonal giveaways and feel free to enter as many of them as you like.

UPDATED: Contest Closed

: Here are the lucky 5 winners as picked by Random.org:

1. Leland
2. Dee
3. Evan Hahn
4. Ronald G. Freeman
5. Senthil Kumar

Congratulations guys, and I’ll get in touch with you shortly.

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Everyone knows how to tell how much battery power their iPhone has.  Just look at the battery meter – and read :)

What most people don’t know however is what that number actually means when it comes to usage.  Let’s say you have 40% battery power remaining. 

• Do you know how many songs you can listen to?
• or how much you can surf the web?
• or how many videos you can watch?

The awesome app

BattPowr is an iPhone app which tells you exactly that. 

Here are some key features:

• calculates the remaining time for different usages, including: audio playback, video playback, web browsing on Wi-Fi, EDGE and 3G, as well as talk time on both 2G and 3G networks
• accurate information on remaining battery time
• checks device type before estimating remaining time
• beautifully designed interface, multiple skins & large visual indicators
• battery image animates while device is charging
• always on mode when charging, see your device charge itself
• support for ALL iPhone & iPod touch models

The giveaway

This app goes for USD$1.99 but the kind folks at xcoolapps, have kindly given me 20 FREE copies to distribute to readers of this blog :)

How to win it? – All you have to do is drop a comment below indicating that you want this app and I’ll send you the redemption code.

The first 20 people get this app for FREE!  Hurry and drop your comment now!

ps. If you like the app, please make sure you give it a good review on iTunes!

ps. This offer is only valid for a US iTunes account.  If you don’t live in the US, you can still set up a US iTunes account in 2 minutes for free by following this tutorial.

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I got this in my Google Wave mailbox today:

“Invite others to Google Wave

Google Wave is more fun when you have others to wave with, so please nominate people you would like to add. Keep in mind that this is a preview so it could be a bit rocky at times.  Invitations will not be sent immediately. We have a lot of stamps to lick.

Happy waving!”

So what is Google Wave?

Currently an exclusive invite-only service, Google wave is a whole new way of communicating online!

“Google Wave is an online communication and collaboration tool that makes real-time interactions more seamless — in one place, you can communicate and collaborate using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is a conversation with multiple participants — participants are people added to a wave to discuss and collaborate on its content. Participants can reply any time and anywhere within a wave, and they can edit content and add more participants as a wave develops. It’s also possible to rewind waves with the playback functionality, to see what happened, and when.”

via Google Wave Support

Here’s a video do you get a better idea of this cool service:

Anyhow, Google Wave is currently under development, and they’ve released a limited number of private invites to their fully usable preview edition.

Want a free super exclusive private invite to Google Wave?  (CLOSED)

Just drop a comment on what your favorite Google Wave feature is, and how you would use it, and I’ll pick 10 lucky winners by the end of this week!

Update: here are our 10 lucky winners, and why they want to use Google Wave!:

1. Rebecca

I am a math coach at an elementary school, and I am really intrigued by the real-time communication tool, especially with the translator robot. I spend a lot of time discussing solution strategies with my students. Instead of watching me solve a problem, they collaborate with each other about how to solve problems. This practice helps them build real-life problem solving skills. There is a lot of talk in education today (especially in math) about comparisons between US students and students from other countries. I would love to be able to bring my students into this conversation by allowing them to share their solution strategies with students from other countries! I think this would be a powerful use of the technology, and one that would really drive home an important social concept to my math students.

2. byflipper

Due to multinational projects I am leading, i often need to communicate with people speaking other languages than my own. So, that instantly translating service of Wave amazed me with one word! I’d be pleased to be invited and be a part of this revolution!

3. cho

i really love the fact that it will enable better communication within members of group projects. I have been apart of multiple group assignments where there was a mess of the emails passed back and forth whilst certain members missed out on important information altogether. That’s why I’m really excited about Google wave since it changes the way we collectively communicate and recieve information ( and real-time adds a factor of cool) and that was my mini essay…

4. Jessie

I’m a student journalist, and my college newspaper is working on developing its online presence. As a leader within the newspaper, I would like to be able to collaborate with other students at my paper, along with other journalists, to discuss the future of journalism and how the web plays into it. However, none of the people using Wave at my newspaper received any invitations, so I can’t join their conversation. :( It would be beneficial to me and our newspaper if I could join in the discussion!

5. Ron

As a pastor, I’m always sending emails, documents and spreadsheets to others for worship planning. With input from several staff people, our Admin. Assistant cobbles together the Sunday worship bulletin. I think Wave will make our lives easier and our communication better.

6. Claes

I want to get a head start on using Wave to help edit stories. I would post a document and have all the people who need to comment it or edit it to do it without having to send different versions back and forth in an average of 10 emails for one story! It is very frustrating and confusing and wastes lots of time.

7. Daniel Coopsammy

I would like a chance to start using Google wave because i have a lot of team project for college that require team members to share information, a lot of the times requiring us to edit the same document multiply times. Google wave seems like a perfect fit in terms of giving us the ability to share information real time and without the need of sending 30 different emails for the same project.

8. Mrs Banka

As a math teacher, I think Google Wave could revolutionize group projects by lowering the classroom walls so that students can converse with students all over the world. The real-time display of typing will only be pertinent for those students in relatively close time zones, but think about a group of students set up to solve a common, real-life problem. I’d also like to see how the Wave would boost the digital PLN. I just graduated in May with my B.S. in Math Ed and am currently in graduate school for Curriculum and Instruction… but I can already tell, I want to be a change agent in the schools. And what better way than to already be armed with the technology experience to incorporate in my classroom. I want to make math real, meaningful and understandable and I think group projects with students outside of the classroom would be phenomenal!

9. John Lombaerde

I think that education and training is one of the greatest applications for Google Wave. I deal with complex technology subjects on a regular basis, and I always try to use layman’s terms in my explanation, but sometimes the written or spoken word is just not enough. The Multimedia drag and drop capabilities of Google Wave seem to have great potential, as well as the playback feature. These would both be very valuable in a technology training session. The asset Google Wave could bring to online education is very significant, and one for which I would have an immediate use

10. Patrick

I’m currently getting my masters in multimedia and am looking at using Google Wave heavily within my graduate project. I plan on incorporating it into an online educational model aimed towards kids with learning disabilities. It is such a cool and useful tool.

For all those who didn’t win, thanks for participating – and if I do get another bunch of invites, I’ll post them up online again!

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"An unconference is a facilitated, participant-driven conference centered around a theme or purpose. The term "unconference" has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees and sponsored presentations" – Wikipedia

I’ve attended two unconference style events this year (Startupcamp/Barcamp)- and I’ve become a true believer of this format.   Since I’ve seen a lot of what goes on behind the scenes – here are some tips to follow if you want to run a similar show in your location.

1. Get a team of kindred spirits together

This is possibly the most important aspect.  The purpose of these unconferences would be to bring together people of the same feather, and to begin – you will need a core of like-minded and driven people.  The volunteers who help run this show don’t usually look for recognition nor remuneration. 

Everything is fueled by passion.

2. Get sponsors – nice ones

Get people who really want to help, rather than take over your event.  BarCamp Kuala Lumpur had one rule about sponsors and it was that their donation limit would be capped.  This was to prevent any organizer from driving the agenda of the event.  To me, this is an excellent path for any unconference to take.   

3. Set up the venue right

In a nutshell, besides the basics like ease of access, amenities, etc.  You need to get a venue with 3 or more large rooms (for the sessions), and perhaps just as important – a large area to mingle.  For me, a lot of the value I gain from these events would be the relationships built, and the interesting mix of characters and conversations you will get into informally between sessions.  

Make sure all the rooms have an easy to use speaker system.  Some speakers will have video to show on their laptop, which fails badly if they have to play audio through the laptop sound system.

4. Set the ground rules

Due to its informal setting, there are very few rules for an unconference.  Common ground rules include staying on time, and being considerate as to not over-run into another session.

5. Trust

Don’t bother vetting speaker material and judge quality.  Unconference attendees vote with their feet – ie. They can move on to another room based on their own agenda.  (Speakers – don’t take this personally – people will walk in and out of of your talk – many attendees bounce around during sessions).   Trust the speakers will do their best to contribute to the event, and trust the crowd.

6. Spread the word

Unconferences typically run on a shoestring budget, but what it lacks in the wallet section, it makes up for in ability to generate goodwill.  Tap into your social networks (online and in real life), the bloggers, and local interest groups.  Local interest groups bring along their own set of people passionate about a particular topic, eg. photography, or Linux – this broadens your the breadth of your audience and their backgrounds.

7. Enjoy

Whatever happens, happens.  Don’t take things so seriously.  What you’ll find is that when things go wrong, there will be more people who will step up and help you fix the problem than people who sit back and complain.  At the end of the day, everyone who attends is there to share, participate, discuss, and learn. 

8.  Attend before you attempt

If you’re going to run an event, visit one first!   For those people living in Malaysia or Singapore – come to BarcampJB happening 6th and 7th December at MSC Cyberport JB  I’ll be speaking on "How to change the world with $25 – an introduction to Kiva" on the 6th at 3pm.  We have some pretty interesting sessions – full schedule here.

Check out the barcamp Malaysia blog for more details.  For those who live outside South East Asia, check out barcamp.org for a list of events happening near your area!

Do you have other unconference tips to share?  Let us know in the comments!

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It had to happen.  Friedbeef.com buys a cow :)

Last week I promised to give out up to USD50  based on a number of comments received for that post to celebrate Blog Action Day’s fight against poverty theme and we received 89 comments in total for that one post!  More than just the number of comments, the objective was to get people talking about charity and to share simple ways to make a difference.

The original plan was to donate 50USD to help give an in-school breakfast to 10 hungry children for nine months and help the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) fight hunger in the most impoverished regions of Mauritania, but unfortunately ChangingThePresent.Org was having issues with their billing system and could not process my order. 

Nevertheless, I’ve channeled all the funds into Heifer.org to buy 10% of a cow for the poor.

A good dairy cow can produce four gallons of milk a day – enough for a family to drink and share with neighbors. Milk protein transforms sick, malnourished children into healthy boys and girls. The sale of surplus milk earns money for school fees, medicine, clothing and home improvements. 

Also, because a healthy cow can produce a calf every year, what happens is that the animal’s first offspring is passed on to another family.  Every gift will be passed on and eventually help an entire community move from poverty to self reliance.

So thank you readers, for supporting this blog by dropping by, and a special thanks to those who dropped participated in Blog Action Day here!

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Today is Blog Action Day.  More than 8,000 blogs around the world have banded together to talk about one cause:

Poverty.

Consider this.

• One third of deaths – some 18 million people a year or 50,000 per day – are due to poverty-related causes
• Every year nearly 11 million children living in poverty die before their fifth birthday
• 800 million people go to bed hungry every night
• There are over 100 million street children worldwide

- Source: Wikipedia

Today, you can make a difference on this blog.

All you have to do is leave a comment telling us about any charity you like which helps the poor.  Not only will this help expose other readers to new avenues of tackling poverty, but I will make a donation based on the number of comments on this post.

• 0-10 comments : Friedbeef’s Tech will donate USD 10 
• USD 10 gift will feed one person in need for a month. For the hungry, every day is about finding enough food to simply survive. This prevents these individuals from pursuing any other opportunities for self-sufficiency.
• 11-20 comments :Friedbeef’s Tech will donate USD 20
• USD 20 will provide 10 families with enough seeds to begin household farming activities throughout the world. This ensures that families have food security during the off-season by allowing them to grow fruits and vegetables that they can both consume and sell for additional income
• >21 comments : Friedbeef’s Tech will donate 50 USD
• 50 USD will provide an in-school breakfast to 10 hungry children for nine months and help the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) fight hunger in the most impoverished regions of Mauritania.

I will close this donation drive on 22nd Oct 2008, but don’t let that stop you from commenting even after it closes.

ps. If you’re interested, check out our charity page to see our other efforts.

So tell us about a charity you like!

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Welcome to BarCampMalaysia coverage day 2.  Noticeably fewer people today, but because the sessions were slightly smaller, I found that it really made for more personable, more interactive and less hectic talks.  I also learnt my lesson about picking sessions in barcamp yesterday, as I found out the hard way that technical sessions in barcamp are VERY technical.  So here’s something to remember all you future Barcamp and unconference attendees…

Before you attend a session, ask (preferably the speaker) if it’s going to be a technical one.  Because if you are not a code monkey, and you attend the wrong session, you’ll get lost – easily. 

So without further ado, here are some quick takeouts of the sessions attended for day 2:

11am: Journey of a Startup (Silicon Valley Style)

Meet Vyasa.  In 2000 he founded Sires Labs in an effort to become Malaysia’s first Microchip company.  By 2003, he was flying high with a bright future.  In 2007, his business went under.  In BarCampMalaysia, he shares some excellent experiences about his start, his ups and his downs and how we can avoid making the same mistakes. 

Quick takeouts: 

If you’re pitching to investors:

1. Keep things simple.  You’ve got to have an elevator pitch because by and large, investors won’t understand the technical elements of your proposition.  They’re mainly interested in the money.
2. Persevere.  Vyasa took 2 years to get proper funding for his idea and was chasing every trade event and networking session in town to pitch to investors (during which he got a lot of feedback from investors how to improve his proposition)
3. You’ve got to have a minimum target return to investment of at least 5x – 10x over a 3-5 year period.  Ideally, your plan should target a 10x – 20x return.  This is because most startups will fail, and investors need to have confidence that it would be a worthy investment.
4. Ideas are brilliant, but experience is essential.  If you don’t have the experience, make sure you rope in someone who does.  A strong team is one of the key things investors look for.
5. Your startup team will run on passion, and very little money.  Your vision of what the company will be and exciting your team to reach that goal is completely essential during the initial lean times of a startup.
6. Image is half the battle.  Look sharp when meeting investors.  Yes you are a web 2.0 programmer who hates ties.  No, your investor is NOT a web 2.0 programmer who hates ties.  Just because you dress up, doesn’t mean you’re compromising yourself.  It just means you’re respecting the other party.

12pm: Social Media Optimization (SMO) for online publishers

This is Anthony.  He’s a Social Media Analyst based in Malaysia who gave us a talk on Social Media, and how people have used it to optimize their web presence. 

Quick takeouts: 

1. Ping.FM (still in private beta) visit Anthony’s site and drop him a line if you want an invite.  This is a web 2.0 mass notifier.  Hook your social networks up to it (eg. Facebook, Gtalk, Twitter etc.) and when you update Ping.FM, it will update all your networks at once, thus building activity and in turn – community presence – without extra effort. 
2. All-in-one-SEO.  A free Wordpress plugin package which just eases up the typical SEO process.
3. Friendfeedspy & popURLs are 2 great sources to get updated on the latest interesting news – fast.

2pm: Leverage Facebook Now!

Tzu Chjeh Wu presented a session on Facebook marketing, and app development.  A good mix of both tech and non-tech aspects of the subject matter.   He’s also talking from experience as he’s a Facebook app developer as well.

Quick takeouts:

1. It is possible to obtain a full set of user information via a Facebook API
2. Malaysians sell contact details and demographics wantonly in the open (!!!!)  
3. Facebook ads are not effective in terms of contextual relevance to the user
4. Groups and Product pages are simple was of getting the word out on your product
5. The investment is so low, you really have nothing to lose by investing a bit of effort in Facebook
6. If you want to develop a Facebook app – FBML is the easiest language to do it in, but the least efficient in terms of load
7. Make sure your developed Facebook app adds value

…and that’s a wrap of the final day of this excellent unconference.  Do check out Cheryl Goh’s website as well as barcamp.my for all the coverage as well as materials presented during barcamp.  Don’t fret if you missed out – due to this event’s unqualified success (packed rooms with all the pre-walk in tickets snapped up in 4 days), you will expect to see future barcamps in Malaysia. 

If you are from another country, check out the official barcamp.org website for details of a barcamp happening in your area.  If there are no barcamps happening where you live – do what these guys did…Just start one!

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BarcampMalaysia certainly lived up to its promise of being an unconference to remember!   Great people, open sharing, and a good amount of ideas bouncing around the room – and every auditorium for every session – packed to the brim.  To give you a lowdown of the events, I won’t give you a full blow by blow of the events, but instead, I’ll try to sum it up something useful for you to take away from all the sessions I attended:

10am: Life of a GSoC Student

Presented by Raj, this presentation was about the Google Summer of Code and his work on the BLOB Streaming for PHPMyAdmin

If you’re wondering what a BLOB is – here’s Wikipedia’s definition: A binary large object, also known as a blob, is a collection of binary data stored as a single entity in a database management system. Blobs are typically images, audio or other multimedia objects, though sometimes binary executable code is stored as a blob. Database support for blobs is not universal.

Quick takeout: BLOBs really benefit from streaming especially when dealing with large media files, and Raj showed us how its done with his demo.

11am: OpenMalaysia Blog Story

Presented by YoonKit, this presentation was about the struggle of Malaysia’s Open Source community in pitting the Open Document Format, which is free and open against Microsoft’s OOXML document format to be adopted as a national file standard.

It was a good job of stepping through the efforts taken, and obstacles faced to help the Malaysian government adopt a free and open format.  I think it certainly raised a lot of awareness in terms of bureaucracy within the Malaysian technology ministries and agencies,  and their unwillingness to go against Microsoft’s lawyers who were sent to defend OOXML. 

Quick takeout:  A government using free and open document formats is a government which is not beholden to any company ie. Microsoft, and its product cycles, and its prices, and its hardware/software requirements.  Open source ensures that the government is not held hostage, and tax dollars are well spent.  A big salute goes out to these guys.

12pm: Monetizing Youtube?

Presented by Roni of Eurekalabs, this presentation showcased Roni’s idea of ad placement within videos. 

For example, someone in a movie is holding generic can.  Then depending on the demographic of the user, advertisers can overlay a brand onto the can.  The image would vary from user to user based on user demographic.   There was also an interesting demo involving pattern recognition where the computer could- in real time recognize certain patterns and overlay images. 

I do no justice with these words as the demo was pretty interesting (yes – I should have taken a video of the demo).

Tech takeout: Technology is still at a very early stage where the overlays look nothing close to a real item good enough to put into a real video.  While the technology was fun to see, my main issue with this was that there was no distribution model.  That perhaps would be the most crucial aspect in terms of the success of this product.  This means that they would have to either depend on an entity like YouTube(Google) acquiring them, or starting their own network for videos.  Furthermore, because of the technology involved, this is not a cheap venture to do well in.  Nevertheless, this looks like one of the more interesting technologies showcased at BarCamp, so it would be good to see how this develops further. 

2pm: Monkeying Around With Yahoo! Search

Presented by Yahoo!’s regional director of engineering Sau Sheong, it showcased ‘rich-search results’ by mashing up Linked-in with Yahoo! results in Search Monkey. 

Tech takeout: While the results looked really good, the implementation seemed extremely technical to me, especially when I compared it to the Microsoft demo of Popfly I had a chance to see earlier in the year which was a simple as pie when it came to building mash ups. 

3pm: How to become 25% More Productive – Essential Free Tools for the Modern Office

This was my presentation where I shared 3 useful tips with the crowd:

Talking about:

1. Dealing with heavy loads of email without going nuts
2. 2nd chance outlook rule
3. FileHamster Portable

Check out the slides by clicking through below, but bear in mind these slides were meant to be presented in person, not read online so the latter parts may be confusing, so check out the posts I highlighted above, because my presentation was crafted from entries from this blog:

4pm: Putting the BAR into BARcamp

Hongkiat, K-Director, LiewCF, KP and I headed down to get a quick drink, and talk blogging.  No this wasn’t a session.  Not an official one anyway :)

Tech takeout: If you do text link ads, Google can get real tough and ban you… these guys are the cream of the crop of Malaysian blogging, and they’ve been burned before so they’re speaking from experience.  Time to reconsider my stance on paid posts, even if they’re disclosed and honest.

5pm: Blogging in Malaysia – Round Table Discussion

This was a round-table session, a free for all so to speak to bring up an issue, ANY blogging issue and talk about it.  Issues ranged from privacy, to money, to passion, to paid posts, and we covered a wide spectrum of topics. 

Tech takeout: On Advertisers: Advertisers do not have issues being on political blogs.   On Privacy: Anything you publish online, is archived forever and will not be private any longer.  On Passion: It’s the feedback which keeps us going. On paid posts: It’s good quick money for the short run, but it may hurt you in Google.

6pm: Pole Dancing for Health

This was an adhoc presentation on the benefits of pole dancing for health.  Of course, there was no pole in the lecture hall, but Carmen (Thanks Daniel for the correction of her name) from Viva Vertical walked us through the benefits of pole dancing (core strength), how everything works in pole dancing, and walked us through numerous health tips.  Here’s a quick video of her pulling off some tough side planks:

Tech takeout: Tech CEOs will do planks in public.

So that’s a quick wrap of the days events on my side.  Everybody coming together in the spirit of sharing.  That’s what BarCamp Malaysia’s all about. 

Do drop in tomorrow for more interesting sessions throughout the morning!

ps. All pix taken with my n82

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