Moeed's blog

http://twitter.com/fredwilson

Links are the currency of the internet. Currently the most dominant traffic source is Google.

In terms of passed links Google is remaining about the same, 1% growth per month.
Twitter and Facebook are growing at a fast pace, about 30% to 40% per month.
For the portfolio of sites that he manages 20% of traffic is coming through Twitter and Facebook. If the growth trends remain the same, traffic from Facebook and Twitter is going to surpass Google.

The way Google managed to monetize links coming out of search results, Twitter and Facebook potentially could come up with something similar.

Misconception: News media is not aboutt making money.

Being in news media is about the service to the community, not about making profits.
When he started publishing, he didn't think "lets make money", it was about getting documentation done for technologies that were coming up. There was a gap that he was trying to fill.

Some books written by a community even as early as late 80s.

The mid-90s he became a conference producer as there was a lack of attention given to community driven technologies (such as Perl) as they were not getting enough attention from the big media of Technology industry such as InfoWorld.

The point about Twitter is to see really how you can benefit the community you are a part of, not about getting the most followers and feeling that you have power.

"Create more value that you capture" O Rielly

I just finished up with presenting at Media 140 via Skype. After multiple technology fails I was able to get my audio streamed to London. Shame, I just had my home ADSL upgraded to 2MB the night before but I guess that didn't help.

From a presenting perspective, this was the strangest presentation experience ever, it was like standing at a podium speaking to an empty hall. Not even an echo.

I am embedding the presentation slides here but as before, since there is no audio commentary, they will make little sense to somebody who wasn't there.

Just arrived at the venue for the Asia Media Forum. The theme for 2009 is aptly been chosen as "Media in the Time of Crisis".

The crisis being discussed are the economic crisis, food crisis, environmental crisis and the crisis of governance.

Its a gathering of about 75 senior journalists, media experts and human right experts from Asia. Overhearing the discussions so far much of them have been around North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Sri Lanka, China.

Keynote speaker will be Prof. Vithit Muntabhorn, UN Rapporteur for North Korea Human Rights.

I'll be presenting on the topic "New Media Reporting" on the 27th.

I'll be tweeting the interesting tid bids as things get along with the hash tag #amf09.

UPDATE: My presentation from the forum.

So I'm not a pro graphics designer but I've dabbled and wasted enough time on Fireworks and Photoshop where the former being my weapon of choice. One lazy afternoon I whipped up the icons I've used up top on my blogs header and are here below as a single gif file to share with anybody wanting them. Ping me if somebody wants a hi-res version of them.

Of all the Tom foolery that goes in the New Media office here at Al Jazeera, spoof messages from colleagues unattended laptops is the most common and amusing kind. Our Head of New Media Mohamed has a security background so he had made it his personal mission to teach each new recruit the perils of leaving your unattended computer logged in. Now along comes Scott Adams who captures, I'm sure the wishful thinking of a number of us in this hilarious comic strip. Enjoy!

Every Eid brings its joys but yet there is always for the Muslims living in the west the complication of when Eid actually is. This YouTube video is probably the best effort I have seen to describe the plight caused by this bi-annual conflict. Thanks @safdar. Taken from Mooslim.

Last week @mrayyan showed me a very neat trick. I was looking to upgrade my Flickr account to Pro, but when I tried to pay the $25 bucks on my credit card, Qatar was not on the list of countries in the form where you fill out the credit card info. Why that is so, God only knows but here is what I did to scam the payment system to pay Flickr.
In the option to select country I left it as United States, the state as New York and filled in a bogus ZIP code. In the rest of address fields I filled in my correct address which is associated with my Visa credit card. Filled in the rest of the info as normal and the card processed with out a warning.
The reason for it processing without any warnings is that Visa has settings for how stringently your credit card information gets checked which is set by the company accepting the payment.
Thanks for the tip @mrayyan.

After a long break, I think I'm ready to start putting my thoughts and observations down again on this blog. This summer has been very exciting, travelled much of Western Europe for leisure and then recently went to Hungary Szeged for Drupalcon. More on that later, but for now just a Happy Ramadan. Found this image as my friends Facebook profile image.

Who can do a better commentary on the Israeli American relationship in the context of the American Presidential Elections 2008 than a Jew (Jon Stewart).

Thanks @mohamed