Tomorrow - Bulletin of Singapore Bloggers - News from Editors

Update on "Grand Seasons International"

jseng — 2007-06-05T23:03:17+08:00

We have engaged Dr Toh See Kiat of Goodwins Law Corporation to defend us against the allegations of Grand Seasons International Pte Ltd.

As many would know, Dr Toh is an IT lawyer and the ex-President of CASE who lobbied for the Consumer Protection (Fair Trading) Act and amendments to the Pyramid Selling Act among many other achievements he has.

Dr Toh has responded to the legal letter from Grand Seasons International Pte Ltd on our behalf, denying the allegations. On his advice, our response is not reproduced here.

Furthermore, the title of this link has been taken down because of the lawyer's letter alleging it to be defamatory - until the courts decide on whether or not there are legal merits to the allegation.

Legal Letter from Grand Seasons International

jseng — 2007-05-30T09:17:17+08:00

Lawyers representing Grand Seasons International have sent us a letter (referring to this entry?).

We are seeking legal advice, and are sympathetic with parties who feel they may have been aggrieved by contributors to Tomorrow.sg. We are also mindful that threats of legal action should never be used to quash legitimate and valid criticism on the internet.

If you know anyone who has had dealings with Grand Seasons International, and who can assist us in this case, we would appreciate it if you could ask them to email us at admin@tomorrow.sg to establish the merits of this particular case.

Our Ref: JSG/1311/07
Date: 23 May 2007

Editor
Tomorrow.sg
Registrar: Vooju Pte Ltd
Registrant: James Seng
[Address]

Dear Sir

GRAND SEASONS INTERNATIONAL - TIMESHARE SCAM COMPANY

We act for M/s Grand Seasons International Pte Ltd.

Our clients instruct that a blog has been published in your Bulletin of Singapore Bloggers at the following url address: http://tomorrow.sg/archives/2006/10/23/grand_seasons_international_ti.html with the heading in bold "Grand Season International-TimeShare Scam Company".

We are instructed that the above words are defamatory of our clients and our client's reputation and goodwill has been disparaged and seriously damage. It is common knowledge that the Internet has millions of users who have free and open access to the words complained of.

In the premises our clients instruct that unless the above offending words are removed from the above url address and from the bulletin board within the next 5 days from the date hereof our clients shall have no alternative but to proceed as they deem fit in the matter.

Our clients also seek your co-operation to disclose the name and address of "GECKO" who has posted comment on 23/10/06 regarding our clients in the captioned matter as our clients intend to pursue their legal rights against the writer.

Yours faithfully,

Jagjit Singh Gill

cc clients

How to make recommendations to Tomorrow.SG

jseng — 2007-03-30T17:01:28+08:00

Extract from Recommendation to Tomorrow

Bloggers can also add a quick link so your readers can make quick recommendations of your post to Tomorrow. Blogspot users can add the following Javascript to your Template. (put it just below <div class='post-footer'>.

Link

Thinking about Bloggers.SG 2007

jseng — 2007-02-20T13:07:28+08:00

Last year, we were thinking of organizing Bloggers.SG. As you all know, it was a great success... as far as "thinking" goes (although not so much the "doing" part).

For Bloggers.SG 2007, likely to be held in the latter part of the year, we decided we could do away with both the "thinking" and the "doing" together. (Thinking is hard okay!)

We decided to form the "Web 3.0 Entrepreneurial Creative Innovation Social Network Hub Steering Committee"* or W3ECISNHSC in short. The mission statement for W3ECISNHSC is "to innovate by leveraging the entrepreneurial spirits of Singaporeans to organize a creative social event for Singaporean bloggers and to be the Blogging Hub for the region.". Here is the W3ECISNHSC Masterplan.

1) Agenda

The "Open Mike" session went very well in 2005 despite it taking a while for people to understand the meaning of "Open Mike". Although we would like to run the Open Mike session for a whole day, we also have other exciting topics planned, for example "lEaRn tO bLoG iN aLt cApS" and "|3@|2|\| +0 |}3 |_||+|2@-1337". We were also "strongly encouraged" to include a 8-hour session on "How to be a responsible blogger and praise the government".

Please give us your ideas on what else you want to be included on the agenda.

2) Event Organization

Being the lazy slobs we are, we have adopted the government best practice process known as "Bestsourcing". Yep, we've decided to "bestsource" the event organization to a professional event company.

So if you are from an event company and interested to run Bloggers.SG, do contact us at admin@tomorrow.sg (esp. if you are willing to do it for free!).

3) Sponsors

We were very lucky to have sponsors like MSN and SHINE to support our ~~topless party~~ blogging convention in 2005. Without our dear sponsors, there wouldn't have been a blogging convention. This year, we hope we will be able to get more sponsors. Specifically, we are looking for in-kind sponsors like venue, t-shirts, food, drinks and money... especially $$$ since we probably have to pay the event company to run it.

So if you have stashes of cash lying around and dunno what to do, call us at 1-800-TOMORROW now and we will throw in a free T-Shirt ~~(leftover stock from 2005)~~! Call now: our lines are open and our friendly operators are standing by.

In Memory of Sondra, La Idler

tinkertailor — 2006-12-01T22:04:08+08:00

It's been a year,
and we miss you lots.

La idler passes away (Tomorrow.sg)
Idle Days (Sondra's blog)

Tomorrow.sg: Editor Moderation or Digg Voting Style?

cowboycaleb — 2006-08-09T16:17:04+08:00

Cowboy Caleb said

Once upon a time, there were suggestions that Tomorrow.sg adopt the digg model - moving from an editor moderated model to the Digg.com model where the readers vote to decide what gets published on the main page.

It was not so long ago that Tomorrow.sg was dismissed as being a dinosaur for not allowing everybody to have a say in what gets published.

It's time to take a step back and review how other blog/link aggregators who decided to drop the editor moderation mode and implement the digg voting mechanism have fared.

Link

Server Migration

jseng — 2006-08-03T11:40:02+08:00

The server hosting Tomorrow.sg will be migrated to a new data center next Friday 11th August. With the migration, the server IP address will also be changed.

This is what we expected on 11th August
0900 : DNS for Tomorrow.sg will be updated to reflect new IP address
1100 : Tomorrow.sg maybe inaccessible due to the change in DNS
1400 : Server for Tomorrow.sg will be shutdown for migration
1700 : Server for Tomorrow.sg will be turn on at new data center

Tomorrow.sg should be back in service by 11th August 5pm if everything goes as planned. Due to DNS caching, some users may have problem accessing Tomorrow.sg. If so, try again in a few hours or contact your ISPs to ask them to clear their DNS cache.

New Tomorrow.sg editors

Agagooga — 2006-05-03T18:44:41+08:00

The planets have shifted into alignment, we have slaughtered the sheep and consulted their entrails and the gateway to the Astral Plane has opened. Yes, the time has come to expand our ranks and welcome new Tomorrow.sg editors.

Please welcome Angelique and joy to the Tomorrow.sg family. After a 90 day trial period we will decide whether to elevate them to the pantheon permanently or throw them to the lions.

After all, we do want to ensure we have candidates with integrity and honesty, and who are not prone to wayanging their way into our ranks. We aim to be a First World volunteer metablog.

And no, we are not taking any applications for the post of editor at present, even if you do fill in all your forms and affidavits properly. We thank you for your interest.

[tinkertailor: no animals (including sheep) were harmed during the selection process.]

Tomorrow.sg To Be Subscription-Based From Mid-April

cowboycaleb — 2006-04-01T13:16:53+08:00

In view of the current financial situation and Tomorrow.sg's unexpected growth in both audience and traffic, our server hosting bills have skyrocketed as a result.

The only solution in sight is to begin charging readers a subscription fee of SGD5.55/month, via paypal or reload cards sold at various 7-11 outlets around the island.

While we understand that this is news is very sudden and unexpected, we hope you understand and look forward to your support in the future!

A more formalized annoucement with detailed pricing plans (regular and premium packages are being planned) will also include advertising plans and how Tomorrow.sg's direction will change with the maturing of the local blogosphere.

Problem accessing Tomorrow.sg

jseng — 2006-02-23T01:33:43+08:00

We received many emails from regular readers that they have problem accessing Tomorrow.sg the last few days. This is what happened:

1. On the morning of 22nd Feb (~10am), Tomorrow.sg is under a spam/denial of service attack by someone on Starhub cable. As I was in a hurry, I blacklisted one of the proxy of Starhub which is responsible for the attack in order to bring back Tomorrow.sg.

2. The denial of service attack stopped later but the moment I removed Starhub proxy from the blacklist, the server goes down again. Thus, I decided to put the blacklist on for another 24 hours while trying to figure out whats going on.

3. Today, I checked the log of Tomorrow.sg - we have a surge of traffic yesterday. Surge is expected but this time, we got ~250k hit yesterday. Then add the DoS, the machine hardly able to cope with it.

Anyway, with the DoS attack and the surge of traffic, the machine is heavily loaded. I did some optimization in the codes but it will take a while for things to get back to normal.

Sorry for the lack of access from Starhub for the last 48 hours.

Tomorrow.sg's Year of the Dog Celebrations

ssf — 2006-01-23T03:00:48+08:00

Reminder: No entries without dog or orange will be approved while this notice is here.

In honour of the upcoming Year of the Dog, and as one of the rare dog-owning editors of Tomorrow, I am pleased to make the following announcement:

And the winner is... Bukit Brokeback.

Oops, wrong envelope. Ah, yes:

From Saturday 28 Jan (Chinese New Year Eve) to Tuesday 31 Jan (third day of Chinese New Year), Tomorrow.sg will only publish posts that contain the word "dog" and/or "oranges", or actual pictures of dogs and/or oranges. The posts can still be about anything Singapore-related, as always - they just have to include the theme words. So get your blogging pencils ready.

Submissions about dogs dyed orange will be referred to the SPCA.

You can still submit other posts, of course - we'll just publish them after the break. And finally, feel free to shamelessly trackback pictures of your dog - or your pet oranges - to this post.

And to all our readers - have a great holiday!

C'mon Let's All Bash Tomorrow.sg

jseng — 2005-12-07T18:32:25+08:00

We stated before, the editors are planning to continue to maintain her blog and also print out her blog as a book for her family. Some of you agreed and some of you disagreed with what we do. Differences in opinions are expected in any large community. Nevertheless, we have spoken to her family and at this moment, we intent to fulfill our promises to them. If you believe in what we do and would like to take part, please do. If you don't, that's okay with us.

Unfortunately, the discussion thread on that the previous entry taken on a twist into a Tomorrow.sg/Editors bashing on a variety of issues by a handful of people. However, I do not feel the entry honoring our friend is the place to do the bashing so I've taken the liberty to shift those discussions to this entry.

Feel free to continue to bash us here but please the memories of our friend alone.

Thank you.

Idledays Fund

popagandhi — 2005-12-05T21:53:13+08:00

As many of you are aware, the Singapore blogging community was diminished last week. Prominent blogger Sondra, popularly known as La Idler, lost the fight with a rare blood disorder. Sondra was a founding editor of Tomorrow.sg, and played an crucial role in organizing the inaugural Bloggers' Conference (Bloggers.SG). The blogging community is with her family and loved ones in their loss.

Donate to Idle Days Fund
Supported by Tomorrow.sg

In the wake of this tragedy, we have decided to set up a fund to continue upkeeping Sondra's blog at idledays.net. The fund will also be used to print a book comprising of her blog entries for her family and loved ones~~, who were never aware of its existence.~~

We wish this to be a collaborative effort of the blogging community, towards which she has contributed much. As one of the early bloggers in Singapore, her blog in its various incarnations, as biks, la idler, fembot, have left us with fond memories, touching the lives of many along the way. The fund will keep these memories alive.

[jseng: Mr. Miyagi will be in charge of this fund so your donations will go to his Paypal account first.]

[Agagooga: In respect of La Idler's memory, we request that comments on this thread be civil, measured and polite rather than degenerating into flaming, name-calling and bashing.]

Farewell, Idler

Mr Miyagi — 2005-12-01T12:02:25+08:00

Farewell, Idler

When news of someone's passing is conveyed, you find yourself searching for memories of that person, and look for any accompanying anecdotes that might somehow help encapsulate that person's life. You try to frame a life.

Some of us here didn't know La Idler that well outside of her blog and her contributions to Tomorrow.sg. For whatever La Idler's life was outside of her blog, outside of the editorial team here, she offered only guarded hints of what that life was.

We knew La Idler and we knew of Sondra. We knew Sondra to be feisty, sometimes even uncompromising. We also knew her to be compassionate.

If that little window she showed us was anything to go by, she must have been a wonderful person, and she must have had a wonderful life.

And look, here we go again, "framing" a life in a snippet But that's what you do when you have 27,973 things you did in the past year, and you couldn't possibly remember all of them, right?

Or, you could click on the Archives. Or click on the Categories. Or click on the Tags.

It'll take time, but you'll put all 27,973 things together into one big, big story. Put it in any order, and come up with a different story, a different angle and a different hue. You will see different sides of Idler, Fembot or Sondra — names she went by on different occasions and in different contexts.

But whatever identity you went by online or off, thank you for blogging and archiving your stories. Thank you for contributing to Tomorrow.sg. Thank you for sharing of yourself. Thank you for being a friend.

Thank you Sondra, and farewell.

Christmas Party

jseng — 2005-11-22T11:38:15+08:00

It is the time of the year again where Orchard Road is dolling up for Christmas (minus the snow). It is also a time for bloggers to let down our hair and have some fun. So over here, we are organizing a Christmas Party except we don't really want to do the "organizing".

So here is the plan: We will agree on a date, time and venue. No registration need, no coordination, just turn up and have fun. Everyone, bloggers or non-bloggers, are welcome.

The date and time is fixed on 23rd Dec 9:30pm. We assumed you have your own party to attend on 24th. Suggestions for the venue for this party would be welcome. We need a place that can take anywhere between 50-100 people.

On a related note: We are also looking for a Christmas/New Year banner like what we did for National Day. For reference, here is the Tomorrow Logo (PSD).