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Americans in Malaysia, Americans Abroad. Please vote. Please print and post this flyer.
Get your request for absentee ballots mailed in by September 15th if you are in Southeast Asia.
The wizard at votefromabroad.org should only take 5 minutes of your time. Here is a postage paid envelope template to send your forms in.
Great post over at DailyKos with a ton of information for Democrats Abroad and Americans Abroad for Obama.
Obama/Biden ‘08 !
Popularity: 99% [?]
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photo by teenage jesus
Best not to talk local politics when your an American in Malaysia. I’ll let Raja Petra talk instead.
“There is a growing consensus in government that those who run websites and blogs should be held accountable and this means that laws should be used to take action against those who defame and spread disinformation.
“If not, we are going to have a situation where everyone will be free to make all sorts of allegations with no downside at all. There is a fear that the trust level with BN would be very low if nothing is done, ” said a senior government official familiar with details of the meeting.
The prevailing mood in the government against the alternative media is one of frustration. After decades of being able to control newspapers and television stations through a raft of legislation, government officials and politicians are finding that their tools are useless in setting boundaries for new media.
via mt
Popularity: 67% [?]
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photo by miskan
According to Nicholas Guan, an OgilvyOne social media researcher, the best social network reach Asians is not always Facebook but on alternative social networks. Does that mean you should advertise on Friendster instead of Facebook if you are selling electric scooters in Malaysia? Of course not because online marketing often about targeting influencers much of whom I suspect are on Facebook. If you are targeting a mass audience your ad dollar might not always be best spent on a social network anyways. Interesting research though.
via PaidContent
Popularity: 63% [?]
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Jan has been testing P1 W1MAX for a few weeks and seems quite pleased with it. I’ll wait to see how the service plays out once there are more people using and stressing the network however it’s great to see more broadband options in Malaysia. Streamyx needs the competition. Telekom Malaysia is very good about calling you to see if your ADSL line is still slow. I had 6 calls yesterday from TMNet yesterday to see if my line was still slow. I’d like to see less QA on support and more investment in tech infrastructure. I’m regularly getting almost 50% packet loss to overseas sites. So, yes.. Competition is welcome.
Popularity: 25% [?]
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photo by catklein
I’m just looking through Alexa rankings for Malaysia and was surprised by a few things. First, congrats to MalaysiaKini - the top news site in Malaysia (according to Alexa) beating out all other mainstream media outlets in the country. Speaking of beating, Redtube (NSFW - hardcore adult videos) happens to be the 29th most popular site in Malaysia. More popular than ESPN, AirAsia, Lelong.com.my, download.com, mininova.org and Ebay. Redtube is almost as popular as Flickr. Surprising for a Muslim country with less than peppy broadband speeds.
Maybe all that Anwar anal sex news has people excited ?
To be fair, Alexa tracks the habits of people who have installed the Alexa toolbar. We’re talking geeks, sys admins, webmasters and (horny) web publishers.
Popularity: 23% [?]
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photo by llamasonic
We just got back from Langkawi, Malaysia. I’ve been to Langkawi a few times before and after 3 days there you’ve pretty much seen the place. My second trip there was a family trip with lots of beer drinking, duty free there and beer is cheaper than water - really. My sister and brother in law are visiting and we wanted to head out to an island for a few days before we take off for Angkor Wat, Cambodia tomorrow. We’ve got my daughter with us and Langkawi is very kid friendly, tons for them to do and comfortable to move around.
My friend over at tourism Malaysia suggested we stay at Sunset beach resort in Pantai Cenang. Sunset was full so they suggested Kedawang Inn next door. With not much time to look elsewhere we decided to try it out.
Upon arriving via AirAsia we took a taxi 15 minutes to Pantai Cenang beach and easily found Kedawang Inn. The place was recently taken over by a retired Kiwi guy and has a typical beach hotel / guesthouse feel. Not bad. I’d stay there again. 110 RM per night. No frills but quite clean and they have a fridge in the room. The beach is about 200 meters away. Just walk through the Oasis bar and you’re at the beach.
Our rental car that had been arranged from Kedawan was taking forever to show up so we went back to the airport and very quickly got Myvii for 80 RM per day. Better to get your rental car from the airport, noted.
We had a good time checking out the wildlife park, great for kids. The beach on Pantai Cenang was clean as so was the water. The 7 wells waterfall was great to soak in. My calves are feeling the burn today after walking up and down with my daughter on my shoulders. I highly suggest heading over to the cable car ride just down the road from the 7 waterfalls park. It sounds like it would be lame but the view is awesome on the way up and from the top - Wow..
We’re off to Cambodia in the morning and should have better net access there than in Langkawi.
Popularity: 17% [?]
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Glad to see Petronas is doing OK. I was worried with the recent 40% jump in fuel prices here that they might have been hard up for cash.
photo by Raja Islam
KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) — Malaysian state energy firm Petronas on Tuesday announced a record profit of 18.1 billion dollars for 2007-08 and said it is still keen to develop Iran’s Pars liquefied natural gas project.
“We have performed quite well. It is another historic set of numbers for Petronas Group,” president and chief executive Mohamad Hassan Marican told reporters.
Petronas posted a net profit of 12.9 billion dollars last financial year, which was also an all-time record.
Popularity: 5% [?]
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Last weekend at this time we were hiking at the new Penang national park, Taman Negara Pulau Pinang. The rest of the group were too lazy to hike the 2 hours back to the car. Lucky for us an entrepreneurial boatman was there to give a ride from Pantai Kerachut back to the marina where we started out. They have some cool camp sites available also. We’ll have to bring fishing poles and tents the next visit. Book at least 2 weeks in advance for a campsite. The location is just 10 minutes down the road from Batu Ferrenghi.
more photos here
Popularity: 6% [?]
