Obama wins US election! Yes we can!

Wow what an historic day! Barack Obama becomes president of the United States. The 44th president of the most influential nation of the world.

He promised change and hope, and the American people believed in him. Record numbers turned out to vote, and the Obama momentum grew. It has just been an incredible day in US history. When 45 years ago, black people could not even vote and were threatened with violence when they tried to vote. And now, a black man has become president.

For me personally, it represents change and a brighter future. I'm sure that a lot of black people, hispanics, and people of colour including myself have looked at this and felt different today - the idea that anything is possible. That a person of colour could reach the highest position in America and possibly in the world. Some people said that America wasn't ready for a black president and he would never become president. Well he proved them wrong didn't he!

I saw the Obama victory speech and it was awesome and inspiring. He has promised a lot of things. I just question whether he will deliver on it. It won't happen overnight, it might not happen in a few years, but I believe that it promises a brighter future for the US and the world. I must admit though, politicians do promise a lot of things, and rarely do they deliever on them - they possibly find out how difficult it is and can only change things within certain confines.

The US is in a very precarious state right now. Rollicking in the wake of the global financial crisis, deeply committed to Iraq, and having to deal with nuclear states in Iran, there is a lot of work to do.

Obama promises a brighter day and that is worth believing in. YES WE CAN!

I must give props to John McCain for being very gracious in defeat.

Still - I'm out like McCain!!!!

DJ Ho.

Taken away..........

How would you feel if your passion was taking away? I love playing basketball. yesterday, i trained for 3 hours with some of my teammates. It was pretty light training, so after lunch, I went to pick up basketball for anohter 1.5hrs. I was dead tired afterwards.

I just came across this story about Kenny George, the 7'9 center for UNC-Asheville who had part of his foot amputuated. It's really sad for the young man who would have been destined for the NBA (7'9 guys aren't exactly in huge supply). For the rest of the story check here. Awesome video of Pycho T dunking on Kenny George below:

DJ Clark Kent Video

NHTVSN Episode 2 Part 2.1 from NHTVSN on Vimeo.

DJ Clark Kent discusses sneakers, Jay-Z as best rapper ever, biggie, Hip Hop v Rap.

S'up y'all

I feel really bad. I used to update this blog every few days (back at uni and in my first few years at work). Then it dropped off before I went overseas. When I came back, I started a new blog on wordpress to check out the competition.

I'll try to update this more frequently, as I know I've lost many of my followers due to inactivity. As they always say, CONTENT IS KING!

Having said that, I'm going to create a third blog for ex-Almuni of my old company. I dont feel like there is anything out there that lets us keep track of what's happening with each other, so I'll take it on :)

Just been busy lately, trying to get my life in order - simple stuff like getting a mobile contract and doing the admin.

I was at my bro's breakdance tournament called SuperRoundBox 3 at Bankstown. Pretty cool. It always amazes how many kids are into breakdancing and how intense these competitions can get.


I'm out like SuperRoundBox 3.

DJ Ho.

Overrated for exclusiveness

Last night, somehow we ended up in the Cross @ 11.30pm. We knew someone in this club, I think it's called "La Piano" or something to that effect. Anyways, we walk inside and meet up with my friend's cousin. We're told there's a secret room in the back, which you can only access with a pin access.

I walk inside, and notice this spacious area. There's a DJ playing, bar, massive dancefloor area. Booths with tables line up the right hand side. Except the whole joint is totally empty. Curious we push on, to the "secret room". We're told we can only go in a few at a time.

I don't really notice the keypad access, but she opens the door and we are let inside. We wait just inside the door and there is a small bar immediately in front of us. Its dark and it looks like a smallish room. Immediately someone sets upon us and tell us its a private function. We just let my friend's cousin do the talking and we manage to stay in there.

I look around, and basically a very very small room, with another connected room next to it. The place is packed............with 15 people (if that!). Yeah, the place is going off. There's two guys wearing some kind of really really old school rich gentlemen outfits with padded shoulders and wigs. Totally random crowd of young people. Not really sure what the hell was going on.

But I know this - its definently not worth it! Totally overrrated, and built up my expectations.

In case your wondering, the place is right next to Candy's Apartment on Bayswater Road (opposite hugo's lounge). the key code for the room is 1669 but it ain't worth it. Trust!

tonite, i'm heading to "The Rebirth of Soul" at The Basement. they are playing a bunch of covers from guys like Maxwell, Lauryn Hill, D'Angelo. Mostly contempoary soul artists. Should be an interesting crowd. The place does't have the best acoustics, but looking forward to chilling inside to some nice music.

I'm out like exclusive clubs in Cross,

DJ Ho

updates! updates

I've just upgraded the look of the website. Changed the template, added a pic on the profile, added some funky features like Blog Roll showing my favourite blogs. I love WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) - its so easy for a non-tech person like myself to fix up a webpage.

In the past two months, I've just been busy with my new job and settling back into normal lifestyle. Getting used to the routine of working 9 to 5, 5 days a week. Then playing basketball on Mon and Tues nights, doing a bit of advertising school part time as well.

Its seems a world away from Europe, Japan, and the rest of my travels. Sometimes, I get random flashes of memory from my travels and I laugh or reminisce about it. There might be a picture, an experience, or something that jolts my memory, and a flood of experiences come back.

I'm already thinking about my next trip, and although its prolly a long way away, I will head to India. I want go to Delhi, Kerala, Goa and Mumbai and just......check it out!

Today, I was reading the Sunday paper, and quickly glanced at the travel section. Then I thought, hmmm...this article about Sao Paulo restaurants interests me. Read some more about an article on Argentinian bus travel, comparing it to the Motorcycle Diaries movie, which was inspired by Che Gueverra's motorbike trip across the country.

When I get around to it, I will set up a travel blog to put up all my posts and also put my pics on to Flickr.

Oh, and did i mention I started up another blog? It's called inspiredworlds, which is mainly about marketing, digital media, and the like.

I'll try to keep updating this blog on a regular basis.

DJ Ho.

Sneaker Freaker

"A Bandai and Nike collaboration model limited to 450 pairs. They were sold exclusively only at the Bandai museum store in Tokyo, Japan."
Marc Liew, 2006 on his Nike Shox VC II (Bandai Edition)

For some reason, I got drawn into looking at sneakers. Initially, I wanted to see what the sports apparel market was like in Australia online. Then I got drawn into checking out sneaker stores and sneaker websites. I had hoped to see if there were any boutique sneakers stores online, with the possibility of investigating at opening one. Nice sneakers are expensive in Australia and we are limited with the styles and ranges that we have.


I came across this exhibition that was held in Melbourne, Australia last year called "Classic to Customs". When I saw the name, I thought mad. I've picked some one of the more interesting designs that appealed to me (and shoes that I wanted as a kid). The motivations of some of the sneaker collectors are exactly that - shoes that they wore as a kid, or wanted to buy in 80's or 90's and couldn't. Then they started working, grew up and went back and bought the shoes they wanted.





"This customization is based on the 1980s cartoon Transformers and carries the name ‘Rupture’ as the pattern depicts a ruptured Transformer’s body. Inside the design is hidden text, names and even an original Transformer."

- Sekure D, 2006

"The Nike collaboration with LA sneaker boutique store Undefeated led to a sneaker that was limited to four pairs (in the Purple colourway) in Melbourne. The only way to obtain a pair was by winning a raffle that gave the winner the option to “buy” the shoe. I was fortunate enough to be one of the four winners of this exceptional sneaker and have yet to brave cracking them out of their box to wear. A true gem!"

- Maria Limberis, 2006

"This is a very special shoe. It is the first mid sole running shoe and it set the benchmark for mid sole runners well into the future. Before Bill Bowerman and Nike made shoes they imported a number of models from Onitsuka Tiger to sell. This shoe was in a Nike employee’s garage and had never been worn for some thirty years. It is important not only for its rarity but also for its role within the history of the Nike and Asics/ Tiger corporations."

Onitsuka Tiger Spring
1969

"I had been admiring Astoria VIII’s work for a few months before I contacted them to do this custom. The detail that they put into their customs is amazing, so I knew I had to come up with an idea to match their skill. After running through a few different ideas, I finally settled on a Yakuza theme. I had always been amazed by full body suit tattoos and wanted that translated into a shoe. I still remember the first time I got the pictures of the finished custom via email, my jaw dropped. The level of detail is amazing and every time I look I find more and more details. I still rate this shoe as one of the best customs done ever!"
Brett Pooley, 2006 on his Yakuza V1 (Nike Delta Force 3/4)

If you want to check out more of the sneakers, click here. I'm also checking out these sneaker websites:

Sneaker Freaker Magazine
New Australian Brand called Hops

I'm out like sneaker collections,

DJ Ho.

What's this Tibet fuss about?

I must admit that I didn't know much about the Tibet situation. I just found it amusing how the Olympic torch was almost extinguished by a protestor. And how one of the runners for the torch pulled out a Tibetan flag from her sleeve and was then immediately set upon by security. Or those serious Chinese dudes (who in fact are Chinese paramilitary) running with the torch get into a full security pose when something happens. Its quite a circus with what's happening with the torch.

So I thought to myself, what is all this Tibet fuss about? Our Prime Minister, K-Rudd (what a mad nickname) aka Kevin Rudd has raised the issue of Tibet with the China's Prime Minister. Using the words "serious human rights abuses" - that takes a lot of balls to do that - and in Chinese too! He didnt skirt around the issue, he raised it several times.

All this stuff raised my curiosity - I mean these people are protesting for a reason. If anything, they have at least raised the issue around the world. I knew nothing, so I did the next best thing, I googled "Tibet" and read the first couple of links.

I checked out the Wikipedia entry on Tibet, which is way too in depth because its about everything - the history, geography, etc.. But its good for getting an overview about Tibet. So I picked bits which were interesting, but still didnt quite understand what it was about. Then I checked out Tibet.com, which is supposedly the official site for the government in exile in Tibet - but the site didnt seem to user friendly. That left me with Google news, where I found some debate about whether Extinguising the flame does anything for the situation. Well of course it doesn't. Sports and politics don't mix. Or do they?


But it achieved its primary objective - awareness of the situation. To someone young like myself, who keeps up to date with world affairs but didn't know a lot, it gave me an interest. It raised the issue and made me curious. I've know looked it up. I think that's the first step to issues like this. Its about drawing the world's attention to something that is going on - that has been largely ignored. We hear news stories every day, that get buried. Another terrorist bombing in Israel. Soldiers clash with guerrillas in Kashmir. Riots in Africa.

Somehow, this issue was raised from all the dredge that we call news - because the Olympics are in Beijing, and nearly all governments don't want to piss off this big bad monster called China. Even Google toed the line with China, and limited searches only to China approved sites - they banned BBC.com, Blogger, etc.. The fact that Kevin Rudd raised the human rights abuses was in my eyes monumental and he didn't back down from his comments, despite the official chinese newspaper re-reporting those comments in a typical china friendly kind of way.

These protestors wanted the world to know about the situation in Tibet. This begs the question - so what now?

I'm out like the Olympic torch,

DJ Ho.

Rip City Rising - Homage to LA

An innovative way to campaign for Portland's LaMarcus Aldridge for Most improved player of the year. A website dedicated to him, with a cartoon setting out his season. Pretty cool.

Also, the NBA has released a new set of Ads known as "There can only be one". It shows a split screen of 2 players saying the same thing at the same time. They combine half of Kobe's face with half of Shaq's face, and also a Lebron v Garnett.

Peace out,

DJ Ho.

Search Engine Optimisation

Been looking into this area known as search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimisation (SEO). Its all about getting your website into the top search results in a search engine. Which equals more hits. If you think about it, it makes a a lot of sense. Most people dont go beyond the first pages of search results or even the first 3 links suggested. I came across this interesting video which might be useful to other people especially bloggers.

Best dunker you never heard of?

Hailing from Algeria, is a baller that goes by the name Kadouri Ziani who's 5'11 and 33 and has a 50 inch vert!!!!!!!!!! It's just amazing watching him jump. Watch for yourself

Customise that!

I came across this awesome website where you can customise the latest Allen Iverson sneakers. I've already spent 1/2 an hour customising a shoe. Its very addictive. It's taken sales and personalisation to a new level. Clearly designed for sneaker heads, seeking that next level for their kicks.

Check out Reebok customs.

Enjoy.

Face/off on Face/book

A vast amount of our time is spent in the virtual world. Our lives are dotted in cyberspace. We search it for careers, for friendship and for love. It answers our questions on the weather, directions, places to eat, places to sleep. Before you asked your friends for answers, now you ask Google. Now everyone is an expert via Wikipedia. The internet has become an online juke box and a Blockbuster. Everything is now on demand and we expect nothing less.

We are shifting away from traditional mediums and creating new ones. We used to read books, now we download audio versions on to our iPods. Comics are now uploaded page by page online. Radio is a dying format, as we can now broadcast online via podcasts, ensuring that you have not missed a beat.

Newspapers used to get old by the day, now it gets old by the minute. With RSS (Real Simple Syndication), our news is updated and feed to us every time we log online. We have dynamic content and it is tailored to our needs. Relevance has suddenly hit a new meaning.

We connect with our friends through online platforms such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Friendster or one of the other networking sites. Social networking has become the buzz word for the last year or so. We document our lives on blogs, we share our videos on YouTube, we play games on Facebook and we listen to new music on MySpace.

Each of these online platforms has unique and tailored content created by each user. These webpages we create are our online space. A space that we carve out on the world wide web. It is personal to each user. And that is the beauty of it – it is your space, your voice to the world. A place were you can broadcast, chat with friends, and share photos.

Earlier tonite, I attended a seminar titled “Building brands on Facebook and Web 2.0” held by the Australian Marketing Institute. It claimed that traditional advertising was a one way street. Advertising was directed one way, from the marketer to the consumer. Now, using Web 2.0 through online platforms such as MySpace, blogs or Facebook, the user tells the public what they are interested in. It creates niche markets and thus offers boundless opportunities to deliver advertising tailored to each user. Marketers, advertisers and corporations salivate at these opportunities now available to them.

But will this form of advertising work? Will users of Web 2.0 fight back and refuse to respond to these ads?

We look at most of these online platforms and we see that the mentality of the people running them has changed. They originally had social and interactive purposes. Then they were sold. Google bought YouTube for $1.65bn. Newscorp bought MySpace for $580m. Microsoft bought a 1.6% strategic stake in Facebook for $240m, effectively valuing Facebook at $16bn. Have these networking sites been corporatized? Have new vested interests changed these websites?

One would have to say yes. These conglomerates did not buy them to keep them as they are. They bought them with the sole intent of advertising on them and leveraging the details and the content of the users. So much of our lives are documented on social networking websites. Our favourite music, our marital status, our interests, our friends, and the charities we support. Marketers have found the pot of gold for demographics and consumer preferences. And these companies want a return on their investments.

However, this is bad news. We did not sign up for this. We signed up to share our lives with our friends, not corporations. It is both invasive and intrusive. We made YouTube what it is today. We put our original content on there. Now, if you look at the YouTube website, when you watch a video, there is a list of ads on the right hand side tailored to each video. Who knows what they might do next? Put advertisements in front of our videos? Recommend movies to us based on the videos?

Advertising is encroaching too far into our personal lives. MySpace is what it says it is “MY SPACE”. Not Coca-Cola’s space. Not Commonwealth Bank. Not every Tom, Dick and Harry who wants to advertise on my page. I do not appreciate Facebook ads on my homepage. If I write about travel or a post a picture of my travels, do I want to see an advertisement for flights? Hell no. But that is what is happening. Increasingly, we are starting to see more and more tailored ads filter into our Facebook pages. Users of Facebook like myself simply ignore this. Advertising has always been like this – we can choose to ignore or we choose to take in what is relevant.

Online advertising has become really annoying these days. I can’t go to my sports favourite site ESPN.com without some dreaded POP UP Ad suddenly appearing on the page. I don’t even see the purpose of pop up ads. That is why I installed a pop up blocker program to get rid of these monstrosities. And if it does get past my filter, I simply delete the ad anyway.

Another thing that annoys me, is that there was as case study in the seminar about how they were promoting these period pain medication. One of their subtle techniques they used was to send free samples to the top 100 women bloggers in Australia, because this would help promote the product amongst influential bloggers. The idea is that women would read about the products on the blog and this would create brand awareness and then prompt them to purchase the product.

To me this is akin to bribery. I believe I am qualified to state my opinion, as I have been blogging for almost 4 years. This is BS. I can’t believe marketers would stoop to this. Blogs are popular because they represent what real people think. They are our raw thoughts, our emotions, what we as individuals think. Bloggers are independent writers and should not be influenced by these kinds of marketing techniques. Sure, marketers have been giving away product samples for centuries. However, any blogger in their right mind, would never promote this product. Corporate blogs don’t work for this reason because they are sanitized and are fake. If I knew a blogger was given a product sample or some kind of inducement, and then promoted the product, it would ruin their reputation in my eyes.

One of the best examples of these subtle advertising is GMAIL. The controversy with GMAIL when we first signed up was that Google would filter through our email and deliver advertising to us based on what was in our emails. To this very day, I have ignored all the advertising that Google has bombarded me with. It simply doesn’t work. In fact, I have never clicked on any ad displayed by Google on its search results page. For me, as a consumer, I would rather find the website for myself with a bit of exploring.

It’s the same reason that I don’t click on any recommended item on Amazon.com. I might select a DVD or a CD, then Amazon will recommend an item based on what past buyers also bought or looked at. It tries to work me out based on mathematical algorithms, using customer purchase patterns. I feel that this is what will happen with Facebook and MySpace. I don’t respond to this type of advertising because it tries to work me out – it tries to homogenize me into a commodity. If I like a Jay-Z CD, does that mean I will also consider buy a Kanye West CD?

Online advertising on social networks has its place. But marketers have to be very careful that they do not encroach on a user’s space. Each space is personal to each user. It is a very fine line that needs to be balanced between commerciality and social function. If we become bombarded with ads and we see that these sites no longer serve the purpose of what we signed up for, then we will rebel. We will leave you with nothing but a billion dollar lemon.