M20

COMMENT

SATURDAY METRO, SATURDAY 1 NOVEMBER 2008

THE

BANGSAR
BOY

Embracing technology

By NIKI CHEONG
niki@thestar.com.my

Blogging now helps make the world a much smaller place

FEW weeks ago, I received an email from

an old friend whom Ive not met in several years. Courtney and I were the best
of friends back in 2001 when we were both
studying at the Curtin University of Technology
in Western Australia.
I didnt realise Nicsters rants were still
going. I can remember in Uni when you started
your blog and I thought, Who would want to
read about someone elses life! What a fool I
am! she said in her email, well, actually it was
a Facebook message.
Nicsters rant was the name of my blog that
began in 2001. Recently, I have just been using
my own name instead. And, of course, Courtney

called herself a fool in relation to the blogging

phenomenon that has hit the world over the
last five years.
Truth be told, even I couldnt have imagined
back then what an impact the blogosphere
could have made. Then, as an Honours degree
student majoring in Internet Studies (and previously a Media and Information graduate), I
was more than willing to embrace new ways of
disseminating information even if I was the
source of the information.
The blogging phenomenon has enveloped
the world and bloggers themselves have
become personalities in their own right.

The most successful (in

popular culture, that is!)
could be Hollywood gossip
blogger Perez Hilton (www.
perezhilton.com),
whose
online antics have earned him
celebrity status hes been
featured on radio and television.
Closer to home, we have, of
course, blogger-turned-parliamentarian Jelutong MP Jeff
Ooi (www.jeffooi.com) as well
as the very funny Kenny Sia
(www.kennysia.com),
my
friend from when we were
studying at Curtin, and fashionista-cum-socialite Joyce
Wong, the KinkyBlueFairy (www.kinkybluefairy.net).
Blogging for me, however, is partly a hobby
and partly a record of my thoughts and opinions of a particular time in my life. But I dont
really think about it very much in that sense, it
was just a natural progression for me.
I have written in the past how I got to
embrace technology so fast and easily. Never
mind that I come from a generation of global
citizens who were lucky to grow up with these
technologies. I had the added privilege of having access to computers from a young age,
thanks to dads work.
So, I have learnt to negotiate the ins and outs
of computer technology since I was in kindergarten and, while I am by no means an expert,
I would consider myself an extremely comfortable user.
When Tai Che, my oldest sister, started
working for the distributors of Netscape and
started bringing a laptop home, it was my first
encounter with the Internet from home and I
took full advantage of it.
I started creating personal websites for
myself and got involved in web communities
like Geocities and Tripod (popular free web
page providers back then).
When Diana, Princess of Wales died, and a
couple of years later when John F Kennedy Jr
went missing, I created tribute pages, one of
which was even picked up by the BBC Online in

Britain.
It was no surprise to people who knew me
well that when blogging came about, I had to
dive headlong into it.
It was only when I received Courtneys email
that I realised how long it had been since I
started blogging.
Along the way, I did take some time off
partially from boredom and partly from writing-fatigue but I would always come back
some months later in a different form, or at a
different URL.
These days, I am happily blogging from my
own domain and have taken to, among other
things, Twittering. Twittering is an extension
of the blogging phenomenon where you are
able to post, for free, your thoughts in less than
140 words per Tweet.
The trend is highly popular in the United
States but many Malaysians have come to join
the fun. It differs from blogging in the sense
that people are not able to leave you comments, but instead can respond to you via a
Tweet in return.
Needless to say, I am hooked. And while I
continue my blogs and my Tweet, I really cant
wait to see what else the Internet has to offer
because now you know that Ill jump onto it
before you can say Internet.
iN > kih
C eongblogsta
blog and Twitters at
nikicheong/.

www.nikicheong.com/
www.twitter.com/