Example of using blogs to express opinions that otherwise might not be heard

[I'm using personal examples as I blog about them. If you discover similar ones, feel free to leave them as comments]

In this example, I came across two articles where I felt was grossly inaccurate. While the originating site allowed feedback to be submitted, I wasn't sure if they would publish my comments so my blog allowed me to post my views and share with others. You can also see from the post how others post their reactions in my blog, thus giving a more balanced picture to the original post.

I also deliberately chose to use the same article title for my blog post, so that when someone googles it, my blog post might be picked up with the originating articles:

Brave New Singapore?
Learnt from Loy's blog (From a Singapore Angle, 7 Jan 06) about a two-part series commenting on "the lack of liberty in Singapore" ...

Personally, I think expressing one's opinions & reactions in one's own blog is a more mature position to take, as opposed to flaming someone in their articles or posts. :)

Example of information sharing & exchange: Bad experience with fridge

Here's a personal example of how consumers can use blogs to voice their frustration/ opinions over certain products or services:

Ariston Fridges
So I'm frustrated from the entire chain of events. Could Ariston have prevented it? I don't know. Maybe a better hinge design. Maybe some Ariston employee will do a Google or Technorati and find my blog piece. Maybe they will do something about the design.

But they sure won't hear it from me direct via their formal feedback channel (if any). Why should I when I'm not going to try my luck with another Ariston fridge again, no matter how good it looks.

This was a real example that happened to me and my wife -- our fridge went kaput and we had a series of negative experiences as a result. I decided to blog about it because the frustration was very real.

How would blogging about it help?
Well the fridge didn't recover by itself. I doubt if Ariston will replace my fridge for free just because I blogged about it. But it sure helped me ease some sense of frustration, and I'm certainly sharing information to people who care to read it. Sure it's full of bias and presents only my side of the story. But that's what "word of mouth" is about, isn't it?

If Ariston had employees who know how to seek out blogs that mention it's products and services, then they might be able to do something about it. They might even want to contact me to try and convert me back to a customer.

And consider this -- if you, the consumer, was considering buying a fridge, would you consider buying the same model that I had? What thoughts went through you as you read the post?

Example of information sharing & exchange: Pair of monkeys

Here's one personal example of using blogs and online tools like Flickr.com for information exchange and sharing among individuals:

Pair of monkeys spotted at Yishun Park
My wife and I visited Yishun Park today and we spotted a pair of wild monkeys in a tree. I happened to have my digital camera along and snapped a few pictures...

[click on image to see more]

How's this useful?

• For one, I don't have to email the pictures to my friend that I had in mind. He subscribes to my blog (though I dropped him an email just in case).
• He might pass the word around to other people in nature groups, and they could add comments to my blog post (it might turn out to be 'public education' of sorts)
• If we wanted to, we could use tools like
Technorati Tags and adopt a common tag when blogging about the same topic.

Sept 1 session (afternoon): Main discussion points

We modified our approach a little bit for the afternoon session, based on a quick review of this morning's session before we went for lunch.

For the afternoon session, we did pretty much the same except that we conducted the demo a little slower (for the hands-on blogging part).

Some participants tended to get a little mixed up over the "User Name" (when they register for blogger), the "Blog Name" for the blogspot site, as well as the "Blog Address". Not surprising, since many of them had no experience in creating their own homepages.

But Rajen and I felt that for a group that had no experience in creating personal homepages, they did very well. Everyone today (morning & afternoon's session) was able to create a blog of their own, create posts, change the template, add comments, post comments in other people's blog, delete comments and also deleting a blog.

This is a snapshot of the discussion points raised for the afternoon session:


We took these down before the start of the session. We asked what came to the participant's minds when they hear about "blogs". We had responses like "it's a website", "it's similar to email", "it's a web diary", "it's put up by people with lots of info to share", "it's a teenager thing", "it's controversial".

At the end of the session, we asked them to review those same points noted earlier. One thing all agreed that it wasn't just a "teenage thing" and blogs aren't necessarily controversial.

Someone asked "do people or authorities monitor blogs". I took that question and said I don't really know. Basically, to blog is to publish. So do it responsibly.

As with the morning session, the participants were also interested in legal issues regarding blogs. The point Rajen & I tried to make was that existing laws applies -- you'd get into trouble if you make inaccurate or inappropriate statements.

We had a point noted down -- "Any use of blogs about work?" (whatever "work" might be). We discussed about corporate blogging. Mentioned about IBM blogging guidelines, and shared the example of Microsoft's Channel 9.

And just like the morning session, we showed them Bloglines as an example of a RSS newsreader.

Judging from the participants' responses & written feedback, the course seemed to have met the stated course objectives.

Sept 1 session (morning): Main discussion points

Ok, we had our first session this morning at 10am to 12.30pm.

Rajen (L) & Ivan (R)

We asked participants what were their perceptions of blogs at the start of the session. Some mentioned "Personal Diary", "Personal homepages/ websites", "Daily Journals", "Online Hyde Park", "Brag Site". [Perhaps participants can comment here to see if their perceptions have changed after the session. Rajen & I reviewed our morning session and felt we could have shared more examples of educational & academic blogs].

Participants learnt how to create blogs, name their blogs, how to post comments, change the template of the blog, and how to delete their blog (we used Blogger.com).

Someone asked what's the difference between blogs and Discussion Forums/ Chat Rooms/ Community Groups. Unfortunately we didn't have time to address that question.

Most seemed keen to find out more about legal issues & copyright w.r.t. blogging. The session also covered how to search for blogs using tools like Technorati.com

From the feedback forms, we think the session went quite well. Of course like all things, there are always lot of room for improvement.

To participants who manage to find their way to this demo site, please feel free to share your feedback and comments.