OK, I admit. To be able to introduce myself as a Consultant gave me quite a thrill, and a social media consultant was a recognistion many people coveted. But as of last Thursday, 21 August 2007, I exchanged my Consultant at Hill & Knowlton status for an unpaid entrepreneurship with our new startup, JamiQ (say Jamie-Que). I can't tell you too much about JamiQ now except that we're focused on social media intelligence by combining a whole lot of amazing technology with social media expertise. But we'll be sure to roll out a public beta within the year so watch for that. It's really interesting to have only worked five years of my life, three as a technology journalist, and two as a social media and PR consultant. Somehow, that combination has given me enough insights and passion to take the leap into startup land building and running something I believe will change the way we work with the social media. I just want to take this post to thank Hill & Knowlton for a great opportunity to introduce the social media to the company and clients, and also for teaching me heaps about doing business, managing clients, and understanding the power of influence through strategic communication. So, here I go head first into the ocean of opportunity. Wish me luck! Aside: If anyone is interested in a technology / social media PR consultant position at Hill & Knowlton Singapore, there's kind of a void that needs to be filled. Let me know your interest and I can recommend you to the team.

Think there's a lot of new technology going into cars? Well, you're spot on! So much technology in fact that in about 2 years, we Singapore drivers will more likely be driving data packets on an Ethernet cable with packet shapers and QoS to make us more efficient. Now doesn't that remind you of Tron? When the Singapore government announced plans to upgrade the ERP in-car units with GPS-enabled ones earlier this year, most Singaporeans looked at it as a system to toll a driver from anywhere and the end of speeding. While the fast-lane will now just be max-speed lane, it gives rise to the possibility of something quite revolutionary. According to Tom Vanderblit, author of Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), drivers today make user-optimal and not system-optimal decisions. He explains in the August issue of Wired that if we think of cars on the roads as data packets on a network, we get a chance at packet (traffic) shaping to improve our drive. The article ends by mentioning the possibility of giving drivers real-time traffic data and offering dynamic traffic routing, but only if every car (in any given congestion) had technology such as Dash Navigation's GPS-based social networking system. It amazes me that what seems a dream to a futurist author could become a reality in my home country in about 2 years. The pieces just seem to fit: Congestions + GPS +  ubiquitous wireless network (3G). And even better, Singaporeans won't (can't) complain about the death of road freedom!

Today I was inspired by the use of Twitter by news agencies such as CNN, BBC, and even our local ChannelNews Asia and wanted to take this innovative usage to the next level by adding multiple sources of Singapore news in a single Twitter stream. Since there wasn't a consolidated Twitter stream of Singapore news, I decided to create http://twitter.com/sgnews with the help of TwitterFeed, Yahoo Pipes, and a collection of the best RSS-able Singapore news. How it works:

1. I collected a bunch of RSS feeds from ChannelNews Asia, The Business Times, TODAY, Yahoo News Singapore, Tomorrow.sg, and Topix Singapore News.
2. To clean up duplicates (because sometimes Yahoo syndicates from CNA), I filter them through Yahoo Pipes to get rid of the repeats and form a single consolidated RSS feed.
3. I put this Piped feed into TwitterFeed which automatically and periodically updates http://twitter.com/sgnews with a nice clean stream of the most current news.
4. Users can Follow http://twitter.com/sgnews and get the most up-to-date news on Singapore from multiple sources.

I created this as a personal tool to get the news I wanted, but if you like it and find it helpful too, feel free to Follow SGnews on your Twitter account. Also, if you believe there are other good feeds to add, do let me know in the comments below. Have fun and tell your friends! Update: I've re-jigged the system a little feeding all RSS feeds directly to TwitterFeed and parsing only the Yahoo and ChannelNews Asia ones with Yahoo Pipes because only those two have duplicate entries. This increases and flexibility and reliability of the syndication. Update 2: I've chosen to output only the headlines because in a 140 word Tweet, the body is so badly turncated to make space for the link it's actually more disruptive than helpful. The new is tidy and clear now.