Malaysia and Usability
What do they have in common? *pauses* Come to think of it, we don’t really have much of it. We’ve got the standard press button to cross the road, the standard Touch-n-Go tell amount you have left in your card and some other stuff. The places that you’d find investment in usability are those buildings of big corporations or named companies. Example; when going up in the lift of the KL Tower, it tells you how high you’re going and if I remember correctly, a voice would tell you the level you stopped.
In Melbourne, the city has implemented a new cool toy for tram patrons. It’s a device that tells you the next tram arrival and destined route later. Here’s a snapshot of it:
The system hasn’t been fully implemented and is still in testing phase. But this is still quite cool. Now, they’ve went the extra mile with the toy. Below the pole, there’s actually a button you can press that speaks the details out. Convenient and usability. 
So, why is usability rare in Malaysia?
Continue reading Malaysia and Usability
WebSighting #2
Needed an emergency tinkle so I stopped at the CSSBeauty branch around the vicinity of the United Kingdom (UK) to borrow the loo. Found an intereseting website and it astonished me that you can write your money now. It doesn’t matter if you’re a copywriter, editor or hold a post something alike that. As long you’ve got a team or group of friends who have very good command in English, you could start a company and be off gaining big bucks.
The Storytellers (UK) are an interesting company that establish themselves as a team of professionals who provide solutions for your presentation content. They sort and make it a far better experience than a boring one through storytelling. In their words, here’s an excerpt of what they do:
Imagine your people engaged in an ongoing dialogue with their leaders. Building and owning their part in the vision. Constantly sharing success stories and best practice with colleagues, and seeing how their own stories shape the business or brand vision of the future - a ‘Living Story’. All with pride, great attitude, and total commitment.
Stop imagining. This can be yours. And the key to it is Storytelling.
When I visited the website and read what they do, first thing that crossed my mind are a group of writers you hire to substantiate your commercial blog. I might be wrong as they could be a company who builds brands or others too.
Well, you tell me.
VISA and a Malaysia Blogger
I just got this after visiting Mack’s blog, Brand New Malaysian. It seems that a local blogger is in a legal dispute with Visa International Service Association over a domain name. This really came as a shocker to me because I thought cases like this only could be found in the US.
Anyway, the blogger who currently owns the domain at www.visa.com.my has posted this up seeking for suggestions by his many readers. Some think that he should fight for his rights online where some have the opposite mind. I voted to be on the opposition weighting the value of legal costs and not to mention of legislations that might be found against the blogger in the MYNIC terms and conditions.
Unless anyone wants to read through the documents or understand the inside out of the MYNIC, I don’t think any local lawyer would help defend this fellow blogger. If you’ve got a method for him to fight and win this, you could post your comment HERE.
WebSighting #1
Within the realms of Internet I scour or have servants scour them for me. They who serve me or I, who seek information from them have been for noble causes. The information we’ve agreed to deliver to my readers are but of purely design or contain great potential. webSightings are the notes or seekings from the big WWW of great websites from my journey or agents around. 
Today from the logs of agent DesignersDepot (DD), it reports several Flash websites that worth visiting. All are just superb in design and definetely worth a glance. First from the list is Sonja Mueller who resides in Berlin. She’s a photographer and has a really good portfolio. Her website with a theme of nature is just tranquil. The transition on the trees is cool and made me at peace.
Next, we sail course to the location of Avid Boats. It’s a home to boats though it doesn’t really state it anywhere clearly. The images used are crystal clear with a chilly sea and sky video in there. It’s theme already you can guess is about boats and I find the loading meter pretty cute. Oh yeah, I think the outer frame is suppose to resemble a window.
As we read on the logs, DD has reported sightings of a groovy phenomenon. It’s located somewhere in the regions of Spain. A place known as “Bars-alone-Ah”. Last I heard some great teams play soccer there. *shrug* Anyway, Rhonda Records is where you’d want to drop by to boogey down and relax abit. Its soft funky colors and giant buttons make it a fun place.
Last place visited noted by DD was a website runned by Converse. As we know, they’ve been one of the leading sneaker brands. Well, I’ve got a pair of Airwalk I keep in handy when facing 0-Bandwidth to keep me high over the Internet. Anyway, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I visited the website. It was simply awesome. Graphics aren’t as exciting as the earlier spots mentioned, but the moment I was in Converse One, it got me playing with the SHOE CUSTOMIZATION I was too busy to click anywhere else.
Niche Market
When a niche isn’t a niche anymore than what do you do? When you thought what was a niche market, catches up with you and make you obsolete, what do you do? Do you start a new niche? Or continue to work on your niche but offer something more than the competition?
I’m not sure if everyone knows or does this, but before you start a blog, one of the steps in the plan is finding a niche market. A subject that’s rather rare but has a very high keyword value I’d say. I’ve noticed new blogs being pinged to PPS like never before and I’ve also noticed a certain market that’s being populated ever more. Have you ever noticed that there are more new technology genre type blogs being started by a Malaysian?
As far as I know, LiewCF.com was one of the first to start a Malaysian technology blog and then there was KahSoon then SapiensBryan and now ever more, I’ve seen others like IdealGadget, Geek In Me, AllGadget..etc.
If you ask me, technology blogs are getting pretty stale and these bloggers are challenging each other head on. Not to mention I’ve not even compared these blogs to the few thousand other tech blogs outside of Malaysia. Most of these blogs offer pretty much the same but some still remain a visitor’s favorite for certain reasons.
When selecting a niche, it really depends how you manage to narrow down the subject for your blog. Take tech blogs as an example, technology has a mass the size of a whale when you want to talk about new gadgets. There’s the computer, the mobile phone, the cars, the artificial intelligence..and more. Now, if every blogger were to blog about the general subject of technology, you’ll end up with a scenario I’m discussing now.
How do you curb this or try to be better than the rest? You could either start slowly introducing your blog as a technology blog with more focus on a certain subject, or offer something that these blogs don’t have; a function, a tool or even a contest. It’s a really huge challenge if you try to overpower ones blog.
Therefore my friends, before you start blogging seriously, have ascertain something that would make your visitors coming back for more. Blogs that are of personal rants, ramblings, debates, views wouldn’t have to worry much of a niche market because everyone’s life is unique in their own manner.
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About This Blog
Hello and welcome to Websites Made Simple. I'm Danny Foo and this is my Malaysia web design blog. I manage and co-founded a small Malaysia web design and development team; Simpleet Solutions. -
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