Bersih 2.0 is a movement for the people, by the people to fight for reform of the Malaysian electoral process. It is independent of political parties and it strives for fairness.

On the media front, it was amazing to see hundreds of thousands, if not millions of tweets, Facebook posts and forum engagements generated around the event to rally for a cause – a cause that transcends race, religion and status in life. It just goes to prove that a notable cause will rally together people, and they will use whatever medium necessary to support it.

Though I was not able to be at the protest in person, I was able to follow along via my mobile phone and notebook. It was true to life and I loved every moment, being able to be in the centre of action, though I unfortunately wasn’t. It was much better than the World Cup, Olympics or Royal Wedding. Combined.

It’s amazing to see the power of social media added to the on-ground activities and how it was able to mobilize the thousands of people. The mobile Internet has empowered the masses. It’s proof how much we need our mobile telcos. We could see reports live, or slightly delayed, appearing on the Internet in the form of text updates, photos, videos and even streaming! Totally amazing.

As a tribute to the Bersih 2.0 efforts, here are some photos collected over the course of the day. None are mine, and I’ve tried to give credit as best as I can, but I may have missed a few credit. I offer my apologies in advance. Fact is, the photos were flying everywhere, embedded on various sites.

PHOTOS BY

ahmadhusni, Bandar Kuala Lumpur, BBC, beritaharian, cyberred, danielkong, dansemacabre
evilickle, fahmi_fadzil, freemalaysiatoday, j_rubis, jasurin, johnhansoei, KeadilanDaily
kenhong, khalids, kyspeaks, limbenji, bilviva, curicuriwangmsia, pratamad, kkling, liingpeh
ngkaychin, ryudiculous, plgan, premesh, RAKYAT MARHAEN, randyhew, theonlinecitizen
zhenyanglee, skidolma, ygren, terence7, wordsmanifest, alfredhean, behlihyi

MUSIC

The Weather Is Changing by Fred Winterbottom

As technology becomes more readily available and the population of Internet users increases, the user group gets more diversified. Different users use the Internet for different reasons, and they have varying browsing requirements. The Maxis communications team performed extensive research and found that Malaysian Internet users generally fall into one of seven categories which they name: Blogger, Traveller, Smart Shopper, Explorer, Online Buddies, Gamer and Entertainment Enthusiast.

Each of these user groups has different characteristics and more often that not, the Internet population will fall within one of these types. Based on these characteristics, Maxis launched  a wide variety of plans to suit these needs (tailored, cost-efficient-only pay for what you need).

As an extension to their campaign, fun interviews were conducted with online personalities which represent the seven key Malaysian Internet users. Being heavily involved in social media and running a digital agency, I was featured in one of their interviews, representing The Explorer.

The talented and beautiful Fiona Oon interviewed me and we had a great time in front of camera. Sure we had several takes, but it worked well.

Here’s a behind the scenes shot of the both of us at the Integricity HQ bar area.

Aside from the videos, Maxis, Integricity and Mindshare collaborated on developing an interactive social game built for Facebook, called Maxis Mission: Possible. Mindshare is the agency overseeing the strategy for Maxis, while Integricity provided the expertise to strategize and develop the Facebook application.

Once again, the seven characters come into play. You pick one, and explore maps for hidden items. It’s an interesting concept as you encounter enemies and bonus items that can give you a speed boost.

Prizes are pretty cool (unfortunately, I’m not allowed to win them since I’m supposedly a friendly party) as you can win a holiday for 2 to the Gold Coast AND RM5,000, an iPhone, Blackberry and more cash prizes. If you do win anything, you HAVE to share the goodies with me, seeing as I pointed you in their direction, huh? Just kidding…

When asked about why Facebook was chosen as a platform for this campaign, Matthew Willsher, CMO of Maxis, said, “The extension to Facebook is a natural move as there are now more than 5.2 million Malaysians on it. We are continuously exploring other engagement opportunities on social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter.” [quote from: marketing-interactive.com]

My take on this campaign is that Maxis is really going all out to secure ground using social media and I am very excited to see the wide adoption of Facebook in their campaigns. This will hopefully serve as a stepping stone for the entire industry to show them how powerful it is to invest and harness sites that are already a phenomenal success.

On January 16th 2010, the Malaysian Information Communication and Culture minister, Dr Rais Yatim stated the following, which was deemed as rather preposterous. This had the whole Internet up in arms against him, especially on the Twittersphere. Here’s an excerpt on what he said taken from The Star Online:

SEREMBAN: Malaysians, especially Muslims, must avoid being totally immersed in the internet culture, especially Facebook and Twitter, said Information Communication and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim.

He added that facilities like internet could not be accepted wholly because it was a form of business introduced by the West and “Malaysians were just users.”

“We are not saying that they cannot use Facebook or Twitter but when using such facilities they must upkeep the values taught by Islam, Buddhism or Christianity to maintain our culture,” he told reporters after opening a Seminar on the 1Malaysia concept here on Saturday.

He added that Malaysians who used internet services on social networking sites should be careful with what they see and hear.

“We must be strong in our believes and culture because the identity and image of our country depends on us.

“They are just selling Facebook, Twitter, L-Band and various other services, even through space, as a product but we do not do such business. We accept all this in a state of cultural shock,” he said.

3 days after Malaysians started ranting to one another in every form, they took it onto Twitter in a big way, with the first playful tweets by @bongkerz and a hashtag he coined: #yorais. This kicked of a flurry of tweets that resulted in #yorais becoming a trending topic on Twitter (this is rather significant, as it shows that it’s one of the MOST talked about topics on the whole of Twitter, and that’s quite a big achievement, really!).

With some leftover time on my hands, I decided to choose some of these tweets I particularly liked and highlight them in this video below.

This video was crafted with the aid of “a lot of Keynote”, some Final Cut Pro, Adobe Photoshop, Quicktime Pro, Macbook Pro, mp3 music and time. Surprise, surprise, you can use Keynote to do a LOT of text animation and movement in a fairly short time frame. It’s built for creating slides easily and moving text, and the best part is, you can export it into .mov format which is perfect for Final Cut Pro to pick up and build on.

Do let me know if you enjoyed it.

As such, I decided to try and help expose the group to the current trends and what tools can be used for God’s glory.

Free eBook: Facebook for Pastors by Chris Forbes
Great book / DVD on presentation methodology: Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds

Images and videos for free, or at a low cost for church presentations / illustrations
Please bear in mind, I support respecting the copyright of the image owners and NEVER use something if the image owner does not approve.

sxc.hu (free images)
everystockphoto.com (free images)
istockphoto.com (microstock images at a low cost)
images.google.com (free images)

bluefishtv.com (videos from USD$1.99)
ignitermedia.com (videos)
36parables.com (videos)
openresources.org (free videos)
youtube.com (free videos)

Tools and toys that I shared about were:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Streaming video: live and pre-recorded
• Online payment gateways
• Blogging
• Email newsletters
• Online forms to email
• Slideology resources

Tips for pastors starting out on Facebook

• Culture shock, do not judge!
  - You may encounter information about certain members that you never knew before. Be calm, and reserve passing judgment on them. The main purpose of connecting on Facebook is to achieve true friendship.
• Treat each friend as a real person
  - Though it may seem like a virtual relationship, each person behind every account is a real-life being who needs as much prayer as a person who walks into your church. Pray for them as you would every member in your congregation.
• Don’t get sidetracked
  - Facebook can be pretty addictive, really! Be careful not to spend copious amounts of time looking through photos and watching videos, if you should be focused on other tasks. Facebook can be a great communications tool, and it can also be a HUGE distraction.
• Ask for help
  - If you get lost, don’t hesitate to ask your children or fellow congregation members for assistance. Nothing works best than human guidance.

Videos I used during my presentation

Statistics on the Internet (as at 2008)

What Twitter is all about

Random photos from my session with the pastors

Here are some of the pastors from FGA, KL, SIB KEC, Miri and beyond.

The slightly more tech savvy pastors. Grinning at the camera is Pastor Thomas from Penang.

Thanks for these two photos, @sivinkit.

Here’s a sample of bad, BAD slideology. They’re slides I designed back in the year 2000 when presenting ideas to prospects. Urgh… proof that you CAN learn design! (or marry someone who is better than yourself for a quick shortcut like I did!)

Before I share some of my slides, here are the resources I mentioned during my talk that are relevant for you.

I was honored to be given the opportunity to record her live, and she even addressed me as “the camera-man“. This clip has not been edited to incorporate footage from another camera we had, due to time constraint. We felt it was timely to upload it as soon as possible for the viewing of all Malaysians.

Do share your thoughts on Yasmin Ahmad and how she has impacted you in some way or another, via the comments section.

In this short 15 minute talk, Yasmin humorously speaks of herself as a film dabbler and how she chooses actors and actresses, and turns nobodies into somebodies. I personally found it hilarious how Yasmin subtly pokes fun at the “Malay papers”, “idiot minister” and even her husband who is an “Apek from Teluk Intan” – so, so funny.

You will be missed by many, Yasmin. I too want to be a film dabbler like you.

I was interested to see what he would have to say and how live the interview would be. I was deeply unimpressed as there was really no form of active interaction between the audience and him. For all we know, he could have been asleep at home, while all this was going on.

There was more life in the Twittersphere and there were active conversations going on. Here is a transcript of the live interview, for those who might have missed it. And at the end, are some responses from the Twittersphere.

3:36 The Star Online:

Good afternoon and thank you for joining The Star Online today for our exclusive live blogchat with Datuk Dr Maximus Ongkili, Science, Technology and Innovation Minister. Dr Max has kindly taken time out of his busy schedule today to respond to some queries that you folks out there might have.

3:37 The Star Online:  We are getting Dr Max ready to reply to questions, so we’ll be ready to begin in a few minutes.

3:40 The Star Online:  The theme for today’s chat with Dr Max is “The Internet: Is speed all that matters.

3:40 The Star Online:  We would like to invite all of you tuning in here to leave your comments and questions for Dr Max, and we will try to fit in as many as possible over the next hour. We will also be posting several questions from readers of The Star Online who responded for our call for advance questions for Dr Max.

3:43 The Star Online:  Along the way, we will be uploading segments from the earlier video interview we conducted with Dr Max at Studio V at 1-Utama Shopping Centre in Petaling Jaya earlier.

3:47 The Star Online: It appears that Dr Max is ready to join us. Welcome Datuk.

3:47 Dr Max: Hello everyone, thank you for having me here today.

3:47 The Star Online:  Datuk, we have questions coming in live, and some advance questions as well. The first one comes from Shermaine.

3:47 The Star Online:

Hi Dr Maximus,

The Internet is the basis of much technological development. It’s not surprising that while Malaysia has a wealth of IT talents, and has been actively investing in technology and education, Internet usage still falls behind. Two factors plays a vital role, cost of internet and speed, this is largely due to lack of competition. The last time I was home, about a year ago, Internet service start from RM67 per month (not including phone line rental), mobile broadband costs a whopping RM 130 a month (apologies if these numbers are not exactly accurate). I am currently based in London, my Internet costs £15 a month, which after coversion to RM still works out about the same if not cheaper. This means Malaysians are paying London rate!
What are plans in the pipeline to at least make Internet connection more affordable and reachable for Malaysians?

Regards,
Shermaine

3:49 Dr Max:  Thanks Shermaine for your valuable input and questions

3:49 Dr Max:  Actually it is a chicken and egg situation.

3:51 Dr Max:

As I said earlier, the infrastructure for broadband is only starting to roll out. Hence, it has been costly for the existing infrastructure. We need major roll out of the broadband plan in order to reduce costs. PIKOM has proposed that the cost should be no more than RM30 per month to makebroadband accessible to all and increase Internet access.

3:51 Dr Max:  Once the broadband roll out is completed, the costs will average out and achieve the PIKOM proposal.

3:52 [Comment From Gabriel] what is the fucntion of MDeC within MOSTI and how does it differ from MSC Malaysia?

3:53 Dr Max:  MSC Malaysia is the flagship for the development of Multimedia Super Corridor and MDeC is the agency that spearheads the MSC development.

3:53 [Comment From Bob Chua] Good Afternoon Datuk – Glad to see you in Cyberspace. As a fellow Sabahan, do you see Sabah playing a role or having the opportunity to position itself as an ICT hub, perhaps via SDC (Sabah Development Corridor) or MSC Sabah?

3:56 Dr Max:

Thank you Bob. When there is a development, there is always an opportunity for the use of ICT to drive modernisation. I have already asked the Sabah state government to submit   a proposal for an MSC centre as a start before we talk about MSC Sabah. I understand that the proposal is being prepared and MOSTI will do its best to take the necessary action.

3:56 The Star Online:

This is another advance question, Datuk, from Fikri Salleh from the University of Melbourne.

Dear Dr. Ongkili,
I am an Electrical Engineering undergraduate from the University of Melbourne, currently majoring in telecommunications. In Australia they charge you for download quotas, where the more you download, the more you will have to pay, say 100 GB @ $100 versus 20 GB @ $20, after which the speed is throttled down (slowed). By charging more for more quota, this can improve overall connection quality. The heavy downloaders can still download, but now they have to pay more. Thus we normal users do not have to put up with the network being bogged due to these heavy downloaders, because there will be fewer of them.

Regards,
Fikri Saleh

3:58 Dr Max:  Hello Fikri, thanks for your comment. I totally agree with you. I will convey the concern and proposal to my colleague Information, Communications and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Utama Dr Rais Yatim.

3:58 The Star Online:  Datuk, this is a follow up question to your response earlier on the broadband rollout.

3:58 [Comment From Jerome] Hi Dr, when will be the projected completion time for the roll out? Surely we have an expected time line, don’t we?

3:59 The Star Online:  While we wait for Dr Max to respond, if you would like to listen to the earlier exclusive interview with him, please refresh your page and click on the audio links available.

4:02 Dr Max:  Thank you for your question. The whole broadband initiative will take 10 years to complete. But the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC)  has organised the period into two-year plans. Priority will be given to Zone 1 i.e. the business, commercial and residential sectors. Of course, we are asking that the rural sector i.e. Zone 3 should be given attention at the same time. I will not agree that we have to wait 10 years to enjoy the Internet spoeds enjoyed by developed countries.

4:02 [Comment From CHEWLP] How can the ministry play a role to make sure consumer get what they pay for ?

4:06 Dr Max:  As I said, MOSTI deals with technology and content of the ICT and Internet services. We will voice out to the Cabinet and the relevant ministries our concerns regarding making Internet access as affordable as possible. In   fact, we have already done that.

4:06 [Comment From Firedauz]

Good evening, Dr Max. How do you see the future of Internet service in Malaysia? Will one day we will be able to grace the ultra-fast, fiber-optic Internet speed of Japan, which only cost around RM50 per month for the consumers? I have been based in Tokyo for several years now, enjoying the luxury of the quality services and speed of Sofbank and Yahoo! BB, which is why I hope that one day for the average citizens of Malaysia, I see them enjoying the same benefit as I do. Thank you — Firedauz.

4:09 Dr Max:  Thank Firedauz. My desire is to ensure all Malaysians could enjoy the same Internet speed as what developed countries like Japan enjoy. It is possible with the political will of the Government and the cooperation of all key industry players including state governments. As I said, we should not wait 10 years to enjoy that level of Internet speed in developed countries. My own expectation is that there will be a major achievement within the next three years.

4:09 The Star Online:  This question from Azlan, Datuk, is a follow up question on the broadband rollout replied earlier.

4:09 [Comment From azlan] What speed do we get in 10 years? and will the price be reasonable?

4:12 Dr Max:

Thanks Azlan. I think that the target speed of 20Mbps for the high speed broadband for the commercial sector and not less than 2Mbps for the general population especially for Sabah and Sarawak can be achieved within the next three years. Price is difficult to determine but the proposal of PIKOM i.e. RM30 per month is a reasonable target to achieve.

4:12 The Star Online:

Here is another advance question we received.

Datuk, can you elaborate a little bit on the MyIdeas portal?

Thank you, – JR

4:18 Dr Max:  Hello JR. About MyIdeas portal, it is to be launched by the Prime Minister in the next two weeks. It is a portal aimed at inviting the public to submit ideas to MOSTI regarding 2010 Year of Creativity and Innovation. The public can submit ANY ideas  regarding how we should solve the economic, social and technological problems that Malaysia is facing. Excellent ideas will be developed further by scientists and the final idea patented or ‘copyrighted’  to the original proposer. Such ideas or innovations will then be showcased during next year’s Year of Creativity and Innovation. So watch out for the portal launching on July 8th and please participate and submit your great ideas.

4:18 The Star Online:

I  would suggest some community/rural area projects to be implemented at a lower cost such as the design and development of a broadband/satellite services for a wireless connection at a lower cost for rural areas. This will benefit many like teachers, students, and people who are unable to travel or get connected. This will also indirectly motivate and make full use of ICT applications.

We also need to have applications for video conferencing, distance learning, VoIP, internet education and community service besides e-Government applications.

Thanks and best regards,
Dinesh Wasoo

4:20 Dr Max:  Good afternoon Dinesh. I share your concern and proposal. That’s why for broadband for the general population (BBGP), we are proposing that we should opt for WiWi technology i.e. combination of Wimax and Wifi through the use of satellite infrastructure rather than laying out fibre-optic lines.

4:20 [Comment From Xtina] Hello Datuk, you proposed a National Innovation Foundation when you first became the MOSTI Minister. What has become of that plan?

4:24 Dr Max:  Hello Xtina. The National Innovation Foundation (NIF) has started to roll out its activities. The MyIdeas portal will be managed by NIF. It will also spearhead the organising of the 2010 Year of Creativity and Innovation. As part of the preparation, there will be creativity competitions at district and state levels. It will also embark on innovation awareness programmes for students, youths and woman groups  commencing in August 2009. NIF website will be up and running by August 1st and the public will be able to visit it and participate in the various programmes planned.

4:24 [Comment From Chee Yan Kuan] National Innovation Policy is good.How do you monitor the progress of the National Innovation Policy?

4:28 Dr Max:  Hello Chee. A national implementation committee chaired by the Chief Secretary to the Government has already met three times in the last one year to spearhead implementation of innovation policies and programmes. Various briefings at sectoral and state levels have been undertaken. Exhibitions and competitions on innovation are held twice yearly.

4:28 [Comment From John] Hi Datuk, I always heard about CyberSecurity Malaysia in the radio station. what is the function of CyberSecurity within MOSTI

4:33 Dr Max:  Hello John, thanks for the question. If you’re in the Peninsula I   invite you to visit CyberSecurity Malaysia and have a first hand feel of the latest technologies used to keep cyberspace in Malaysia safe. CyberSecurity Malaysia is the national specialist centre delivering and ensuring cyber security. It deals with education and awareness programmes, training, digital forensics, certification, international networking and collaboration and policy research, and acts as a help centre including Cyber999. I will be launching Cyber999 on July 7th. So hope you could make it there, John.

4:33 The Star Online: One last question, Datuk.

4:33 [Comment From MD] Datuk, will foreign player be allowed to roll out broadband services here?

4:36 Dr Max: Thanks MD. Malaysian infrastructure industry has always been open to national and international players. You can see that from the number of service providers in the country that are foreign-based. As usual, priority will be given to national ICT companies that have international networking and partnerships.

4:36 The Star Online:  Sorry folks, but that’s all the   time we have with Dr Max today. We have received many questions and comments from you. Those that we have not managed to pose to the Minister today will be forwarded to MOSTI.

4:36 The Star Online:  Just a reminder, the video on the exclusive interview will be uploaded shortly. In the mean time, the audio version is already available. For those of you who are not able to see the link, please refresh your page.

4:36 The Star Online:  Thank you for your time, Dr Max.

4:37 Dr Max: Thank you for giving me the time to answer your questions. If you still have further questions, please send me an email listed on MOSTI’s website at www.mosti.gov.my or directly to me at ongkili@mosti.gov.my. Take care and have a good evening everyone.

4:38 The Star Online: Thank you all for joining us today and for sending in your questions. Please make use of the two email addresses provided by Dr Max to send in your queries and comments. Have a good evening ahead of you.

Polls held during the live interview…

Random tweets…

Post interview tweets…

It goes to prove that geeks are cool (most of us anyway…) and we have varied interests. There were sessions on how to Salsa, Espresso appreciation, sharing of holiday experiences, Kufi art and also a little about coding standards. Overall it’s just a gathering to network and meet others. A few interesting observations:

1. Everyone is on Twitter – am I correct? (Seems that way, ‘coz people were Tweeting from each session) – Follow me?
2. Many techies use Apple Macs – it’s rare to see so many Macs in one location!
3. Typical staple geek food is pizza – well, it ended that way yesterday…
4. Live streaming seems to be the in thing now

I found it interesting to “guess” and try to associate Twitter usernames to faces – very often, the little avatars don’t do a good job at all. Anyhow, the funniest incident was sending @thechannelc a Tweet saying, I’m behind you, the guy with the camcorder, to which she turned around several seconds later and shook my hand. Indeed, we’re all a connected bunch.

We also had live updates on the #barcampkl hashtag going on here. Great use of technology there.

I had a video camcorder with me, and recorded bits and pieces from the day, and put them together here. Enjoy! Are you in the video? If you are, add an annotation on YouTube with your Twitter / Facebook username by clicking here.

Music credit: Steve ALLEN (Robert Pieculewicz)

Our enterprising detectives at my office – Integricity, set off immediately to google the handles, and found the friendster profile for manadocoding. The Alexa traffic rank for their website at present is 575,545 which is a lot better than TheBackpackr (sigh… maybe I should go hack some websites… *grin*)

Upon googling Malingsia, it pulls out quite a lot of definitions, with one from the urban dictionary stating:

Malingsia (Noun) is a sarcastic slang for Malaysians. originally combined from 2 words “Maling” (Javanese, meaning “thief”) and “Malaysia. Malaysia keeps claiming Indonesia’s national cultures as malaysia’s belonging, that’s the etymology of the word Malingsia.

Uh oh, looks like some Malaysians have gotten on the bad side of Indonesians. Sorry!

There’s even a website malingsia.com (which was down, at press time – I always wanted to say that! hahah) which I retrieved from Google’s cache that shows a blog of sorts against Malaysians.

Once again, on behalf of the rude and obnoxious Malaysians, I would like to apologise.

And to our city hall aka Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur, please get someone to fix your website NOW! It’s embarassing!

To capture and archive the state of affairs for you, here is what the site says… My favorite sections have been italicized.

1. What is NRD’s website?

NRD website is abbreviation to official web National Registration Department. NRD website make major world to information and national registration department service through Internet.

2. Why this website been created?

Latterly, information and service majority National Registration Department has been prepared by online and NRD website been created to provide convenience to the public find information and service that are provided.

3. Whom were allowed surf and use this website ?

Generally, this website could be achieved by all society. However, there were some information and service that need registration.

4. What is privacy policy for this website? Am I been recorded or not?

All access and your use up on this website shall not be recorded. To further information, please visit to ‘Privacy Policy And Safety Policy’ in bottom of each page.

I am still reeling in shock from it. It’s a given that most Malaysians weren’t brought up speaking English at home, but how can a NATIONAL GOVERNMENTAL WEBSITE have such atrocious copy?! You’d think they could hire someone to proof-read it first. But honestly, this typifies the average Malaysian government website – if only they’d hire Integricity! Here’s the website for an entity parked under the National Bank of Malaysia – AKPK that Integricity worked on. A world of difference, eh?

And I haven’t even begun to critique the usability of the website yet! The design leaves MUCH to be desired. It has spinning bullets on the left! No kidding! I can rate it akin to my first website that I launched in 1995! And I most definitely should not mention the flashing text, or the visitor counter, or the pixellated map that was scanned from a brochure of Putrajaya.

Sigh… no further comments your honor.

Oh, if you do want to view it first-hand, go ahead… it’s here.

The problem – the government now selectively limits what site we are allowed to access and directs the Internet service providers (ISPs) to abide accordingly. As of the 27th of August 2008, access to a prominent and controversial blogger’s website – Raja Petra’s Malaysia-Today.net was blocked.

An initial investigation showed that the DNS servers for our national ISP ceased to point to the right location, which was puzzling as it has never happened before.

Soon after, MalaysiaKini reported the following snippet.

What does the MCMC really stand for anyway? I decided to take a peek at their manifesto, which is extracted from their website.

So… which part of “promoting access to communications and multimedia services” do I enjoy? Perhaps I should reword it to “promoting access to SELECTED communications and multimedia services”. And also, “Ensuring consumers enjoy THE GOVERNMENT’S choice and a satisfactory level of services”.

Or even better, read the MSC Malaysia Bill of Guarantees (which my company Integricity has obtained) which the government is promoting. Point number SEVEN specifically says, “Ensure no Internet censorship”. What then does this mean for us? We can endorse one thing and yet do another? Malaysia tentu boleh (Malaysia surely can).

What will be next? Blocking of freedom to Michael Backman’s website because he condemned Malaysia in his article “While Malaysia fiddles, its opportunities are running dry“? Are we afraid that Malaysians will wake up and realise, “crikey, this country is horrible!”? Too late – those who do, already DO!

Rather, should we not focus our time and energy on improving the nation, rather than wasting precious time and energy on fictitious story-telling in the press, as we have witnessed lately (which are a lot better than some fairy tales I heard as a kid)?

“Selamat pagi, Malaysia” and “sila bangun dari lena” (good morning, and please awaken) – let’s realise that blocking Internet access is not going to work.

After all, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to circumvent this amateur block by using the following methods as listed on Integricity’s blog.