Prince William and Kate Middleton’s Wedding Stamps

While the ladies were excited over the wedding, the only thing that interests me was the Royal Wedding stamps. Every Royal Wedding, the UK Royal Post will issue stamps to commemorate the wedding. When Prince Charles and Princess Diana got married, they issued one.

Years later, when Prince Charles got remarried.

The new Royal Wedding stamps is just ok. There’s nothing interesting about it.

However, the Royal Wedding stamps issued by the tiny Pacific island of Niue cause a little ruckus. The stamps have a perforated line that splits the couple in two. Prince William’s stamp is NZ$3.40 and Kate Middleton’s is cheaper at NZ$2.40.

For more blog postings on stamps, please visit http://stamps.xes.cx

Restoran Y & L (妙记面粉糕)

I was in Kuantan for a friend’s wedding few weeks ago. My friend arranged for a home stay for me to stay. The room was a little creepy. So much so that I tweeted, “In Kuantan stayin in a creepy hotel. Aaaaaaahhh leave me alooonneeeee”. A friend responded and we eventually ended up talking about food.

One of the places she recommended is Y&L restaurant for its excellent pan mee.

It took me a while to find the place. My only landmark was Public Bank and there were three in town!

The specialty of this shop is pan mee (handmade noodles). I ordered their dry version of pan mee.

It came in a sweet thick sauce, fishballs, sliced mushroom, soft minced meat and. topped with fried ikan bilis. It was very nice! It reminds me of Kota Kinabalu’s sang yuk mee (pork noodles). The soft minced meat deserves special mention because it dissolves in your mouth. mmmm

It’s so nice that I went back there again the next day for lunch!

Address
Jalan Haji Abdul Aziz , Kuantan, Pahang
(Opposite AmBank and Public Bank and same row with Hai Peng kopitiam).
Business hours:
8am to 2pm on weekdays
8am to 1pm on weekend

Map

Handling social media disasters

I wrote the article below for the Putik Lada column in The Star. It was published on 12 May 2011. Chekkit!

Social media can be a powerful tool to promote your goods or services, but the online world is unpredictable and no matter how good a brand is, there will be someone hating it.

IT is now the norm for brand owners having social media network accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, forums and blogs to connect with their customers.

With such social media tools, brand owners can communicate with their customers directly on queries, promotions or even in friendly banter.

In the social media world, everything is fast and any delay is a missed opportunity. One does not wait for the board of director’s approval to post a reply to a message.

But with such pace, the risk of misstatement is imminent.

Such accounts could be managed in-house or outsourced to third parties which could be digital agencies, public relations firms or freelance social media managers.

It is important to find parties which have experience in dealing with Internet users.

The recent Energizer Night Race 2011 incident is a wake-up call for all brand owners. In this case, a Facebook page was created to promote the Energizer Night Race.

Unfortunately, some glitches marred the event. Immediately after, hundreds of unhappy comments started flooding the Facebook page. Some users alleged that their comments were deleted and this resulted in more unhappy comments being posted.

Soon, bloggers started covering this incident and even Energizer hate pages were created. Individuals involved in this event were also attacked and insulted.

Energizer was merely a co-sponsor, with the event actually organised by a third party.

It took Energizer and the organiser a few days to issue an apology. Unfortunately, by then, the damage had been done. Never underestimate the wrath of angry Netizens.

Brand owners or service providers are advised to deal with complaints promptly. Complaints should not be ignored or deleted. They should be treated like any other complaint. Sometimes a short statement like, “We’ll get back to you shortly” or a simple apology is sufficient for grieving consumers.

Social media is a powerful tool to promote your brand but can also be the cause of one’s downfall. Social media disaster comes in various forms – through website malfunctions, inaccessibility, becoming uncontrollable or a misstatement by the brand owner.

The legal side also has to be taken care of. Users of social media sites should abide by and agree to the terms of use and also privacy policies.

A contract should always be in place between the brand owner and the social media service provider. A social media service contract is not far different from any normal service level agreement. However, attention must be given to certain clauses.

Brand owners should dictate the format of the content posted by the service provider. Format would include the length of postings, topics to be posted and frequency of updates. Having an inactive social media page defeats the purpose of having one.

The parties must agree to have a guideline for unacceptable postings and comments. Defamatory, spam and sexually explicit contents are some examples of unacceptable postings. Topics relating to politics, religion, race, gender, nationality or sexuality should be avoided.

If there is a need to remove offending content, it should be done immediately. However, there should be some room for minor vulgarity as it is common online.

The parties must decide what postings require an immediate response and who will flag it.

As shown by the Energizer Night Race case, there must be a contingency plan to deal with social media disasters.

There must be an obligation on the service provider to report any incident threatening the integrity of a brand. A prompt response to any complaint or threat would help avoid a massive disaster.

There is also a recent trend called “Tweetjacking”, a minor prank where a friend uses your account to post embarrassing messages. However, such a prank can be damaging if posted using a company account.

This happened in the Singapore Straits Times (@stcom) case where the Twitter handle was used to post vulgarities to its 46,000 followers. Soon, other media started reporting this incident.

The lesson learned: limit access to social media applications.

Personal data is processed during the use of social media sites. Such processes may fall within the ambit of the Personal Data Protection Act 2010 (not in force at the time of writing) and thus the obligations under the PDPA must be fulfilled.

Brand owners should consider doing a privacy impact assessment. As for how personal data is stored (Notice Principle), brand owners may add a Privacy Policy on their Facebook page (e.g. as a Tab) or blog.

Facebook Apps also collects personal data of users, which is sometimes disseminated to other users. In the United States, a company was sued for breaching privacy laws by posting online purchases of their customers on its Facebook page.

In the event of termination of a social media services agreement, the service provider should be compelled to give immediate access to the sites and deliver up all logins and passwords. This will avoid situations where a brand owner’s website becomes inaccessible.

Lastly, brand owners and service providers should discuss whether the latter should indemnify the former in the event that the former suffers damages due to the website. Ideally, the latter should indemnify the former due to the acts of the latter.

This is important especially when, for example, an employee of the social media company posts a defamatory message about another party, which results in that party suing the brand owner.

The steps are non-exhaustive and are merely to reduce the damages and risks. The online world is unpredictable and no matter how good a brand is, strangely, there will be someone hating it.

Being a case study for a social media disaster is a disaster.

Greetings from San Francisco!

For real this time. It’s my 4th day here and I am still fighting jet lag. The time difference between Malaysia and SF is 15 hours. While everyone is sleeping in Malaysia, I’ll be awake. Makes my afternoon meetings difficult.

It’s been cold here. Shivering cold sometimes. I didn’t bring a thick jacket.

The conference has been good so far. Plenty of meetings and met couple of new people. The name cards that I get now is less than what I used to get on my first INTA conference. Probably because I know more people now – people I see once a year and yet speaks like old time friends.

I’m staying in a boutique hotel called Abri Hotel. It’s small but it’s very near the convention centre.

Every morning there is a strange man shouting incoherent words holding a bible at the front doors of the convention centre. One street away there is a homeless man practicing his kungfu moves on random people walking pass him. Yesterday, there was a marathon and many people were in costumes. Some decided to ditch costumes and ran naked.

There are many strange people in SF.

Greetings from San Francisco!

Well, not yet. I’m still in the airport waiting for my flight. It’s going to be a gruelling 20 hours flight. First to HK and then straight to SF.

I’ll be attending the annual International Trade Mark Association (INTA) conference in SF. Last year, it was at Boston. It’s been a year! Time flies!

I will be turning off my Blackberry throughout the trip. Last year, I raked up a RM4000 bill for Blackberry charges. If anyone wishes to contact me, just email me or DM me at Twitter.

Will try to blog when I’m in SF!

NTV7 Breakfast Show Interview – “Social Media Laws” – 10.3.2011

After my first interview on NTV7, the novelty of having of a TV interview wore off. It wasn’t so exciting as the last time. Hence, this explains the absence of pictures of my second interview.

Anyway, the second interview was on Social Media Laws. The other interviewee was fellow lawyer, HR Dipendra. I got him to come along after I saw his article touching on social media law. Benefits of writing articles.

The anchors this time round were Hansen Lee and Zac. No Aishah Sinclair this time :s

Here’s the video of our interview.

Interview was only around 15 minutes. Just enough to scratch the surface.

Sumi-ka @ SS15, Subang Jaya,

Two weeks ago, my former dock brief mates, A and myself met for our occasional dinner at Sumi-ka Japanese restaurant. Ever since we completed our dock brief course back in 2005, we still meet up for dinner once in a while. Most of us are still in practice except for Kevin who has gone in-house. Time flies.

This time round, we had dinner at this hidden but well known Japanese yakitori restaurant. It’s a haunt for many Japanese salarymen and families. You know a Japanese restaurant is good if Japanese eats there.


Door leading to Sumi-ka. You’ll see loads of rats and cockroaches before entering the door XD


Raw cabbage with special soy sauce is served as appetizer while you decide what you want. The owner cum Japanese chef will cook it once you decide.


Boss at work

The price of each stick of yakitori ranges from RM4 to RM9. One stick is quick small and it is usually not enough to share.

My personal favourites are the sweet potatoes, beef ribs and shitake mushrooms.


Sweet potatoes wrapped in foil.

It may be quite difficult to find the place. The entrance is a small door and it’s on the 2nd floor. Also, do make reservations if you’re coming in a big group.

Address:-
No 19, 1st Floor, Jalan SS15/4,
47500 Subang Jaya
Tel: 035632931

Map