If I remember correctly, it was during Brendan Pereira’s time when the front-page stories on Monsterblog thing was implemented. The idea was for us to blog a newsworthy story taken from NST every working day, and a link would be made available on the said story on NST online edition. This move improved Monsterblog’s hits by leaps and bounds, and along the way we managed to score a Google Page Rank of 6. Yay.

Fast-forward to the demise of Monsterblog: I blogged about the BERSIH and HINDRAF rallies. I don’t recall my blog postings to be particularly negative, or that I wrote anything out of line. One could call my postings on Monsterblog to be almost tame 😉

In early December 2007, we found Monsterblog to be inaccessible. At first we thought that there was some problems with the server, as we have had this problem before (something about MySQL couldn’t handle bla bla bla). Left it at that. But the next day or so, I was told by someone to call a number; the company that registered Monsterblog’s URL. The guy on the other line was a tad worried (and rightfully so), because according to him, the police visited either the company or the company’s head, asking about Monsterblog, if they owned it etc. Turned out that a police report had been lodged on Monsterblog, presumably related to the BERSIH or HINDRAF postings or comments. The domain guys freaked out and removed the pointers to the DNS, and that was the last of Monsterblog.

We asked around, and someone told us that there was no police report lodged against Monsterblog. But two days later, the person called to say, yes the police report just got in. Apparently or allegedly or supposedly, ZAM was the one who lodged it, and Monsterblog was only one of the few blogs that kena-ed. Until today, we’ve not seen the police report so we do not know what it was really about.

I discussed with a couple of people, and we unanimously decided to let go of Monsterblog. Not because we were afraid, but mostly because we have other shit going on. The fun was over, thanks for the ride 😉 A couple of weeks later, Mr. Little Birds told me that he heard that the operation (operasi, a.k.a. mass-tangkap) was canceled. So, that was that.

But it was no fun living each day waiting for someone to turn up at your door, okay. More respect to those who face it everyday and have it worse.

So again, that was that. And again, the ride was fun; sometimes tedious (it’s not that fun to have to crack your head every morning thinking what to write, especially during the slow days when the news weren’t that happening) but overall it was good. I learnt hell of a lot during this time, and I got to know a lot more people, and made some good friends along the way. But there you go, that was the story. Not very spicy right? Now you all can go to Peter’s blog and whack him for deluding you all that this would be akin to a Korean drama.

To end this, here are some random recollections/ notes:

– At one time we had the brilliant idea (heheh) to showcase bloggers. So I rounded up some people I know, got in touch with Joan Lau (ex-editor of NST Life & Times) and she kindly loaned us a photographer, May for the shoot. Borrowed some lovely clothes and accessories from Cats Whiskers and Sharizal hooked us up with his friend, Suzanne @ galleriizu for the venue. For reasons that I don’t remember, the posts never went up. But the photos were lovely, and here’s a group photo:

L-R: Raksha, Fireangel, Reta, Erna and Val

Of course there are other photos, some of which are really awesome IMHO but you’ll have to ask the respective bloggers for them.

– NST loaned us their auditorium to host MOSSA‘s first roundtable to address the growing interest in open standards, open source software (OSS) and the Malaysian government’s announcement on adopting a neutral technology platform policy. It was moderated Dato’ Lee Ow Kim, Chairman of the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM) ICT and Multimedia Committee, and the turnout included some major OSS advocates heavyweights. Even Uncle Jeff made it, though he didn’t blog about it (for valid reasons that he told me later). So, I was quite happy lah.

Florian Reuter at the roundtable. FR is a software engineer at Novell Inc., currently focused on OpenOffice.org. Photo by ST — I cropped and compressed image quality

– Random e-mails from random people asking me random questions, such as “Please tell me the timetable for SPM exam.” Wtf?

– Mack Zulkifli is no longer with OSB.

– Trolls, a couple in particular who threatened me harm et al. I kept all, ALL your emails and print screen of your comments including timestamp and IP addresses before I deleted them, okay?

– E-mail from a lawyer’s office in Singapore, demanding that we take down a couple of comments by one individual, claiming that the comments were defamatory to their client. So I had to print the whole damn thing, took it to NST’s legal counsel (who is btw IMHO a gorgeous male specimen, heheh) and he provided some free advise. But I think the whole thing also caused the editorial team to think twice about the relationship between Monsterblog and NST.

oO time for lunch. That’s all I can remember for now. If I suddenly remember anything else, I might include in the comments, or not. Anything else anyone wants to ask, feel free to e-mail me. Kthxbai.

** Click here to read Part 1, click here to read Part 2.

Okaylah, maybe I was not being entirely honest. In actuality, not *all* of us were bloody excited about the project. There were queries, apprehension and doubt; the main uncertainty was remuneration. Who the eff writes for free, right? We have our own blogs for that purpose. Before I make it sound like we were on a mission to save the world as opposed to contributing to a group blog (the uncertainty and doubt, whoa), Joyce for example makes a living writing and… erm, stuff 😛 (okay, I know she takes photographs as well). She could easily use the time blogging on Monsterblog to write pieces that guarantee payment upon publishing. But somehow me and maybe a couple of other people managed to convince her that this could and would really work, and it would be a really awesome project etc etc. I guess most of us thought that way; we were convinced or we convinced ourselves that Monsterblog would shake it like a Polaroid picture, and hopefully with that comes the monetary compensation.

It was decided that there would be two or three blog posts everyday. Each day of the week was assigned to a couple of sections: e.g. Monday would be entertainment and news, Thursday would be sports and food, etc. I think the first posts that introduced ourselves went up on 13th July 2006. Shannon Teoh was (last minute-ly) assigned to write something about Monsterblog on NST, which he did, which came out two days later. There were a few reactions on the blogosphere; some of them positive, some of them negative, most of them negative. Well, honestly speaking, NST wasn’t (isn’t?) the most loved newspapers around. So I guess a lot of people had fairly good reasons to form their own conspiracy theories. Although there were no legal papers to link NST/ eMedia/ JARING to Monsterblog, the fact that it’s widely seen to be hosted under the NST umbrella is more than enough to make people suspicious. Of course we all knew that lah. But I guess I was unprepared for misunderstandings that till this day has yet to heal. Don’t want to elaborate here, you can ask me privately if you want.

Fact #1: From its birth till its demise, there has never been any directives from NST to take down any blog posts on Monsterblog.

Fact #2: From its birth till its demise, no one has ever told us not to write about anything, with the understanding that common sense prevails.

Fact #3: Comments were moderated, but from its birth till its demise, I think about 80% of the comments got through. Most of the comments that we deleted were due to trolling, and a couple were due to possible legal matters. And some were really, really lost in cyberspace.

The initial focus was to get the hits up, which would then justify inserting any form of advertisement (err, I know it’s duh 😛 ). There was also a lot of waiting around, mainly for the big Monster portal which would be handled by NST/ eMedia to be launched. Which would make Monsterblog part of the Monster project, and more things could be done, bla bla bla bla bla. The team continued to update Monsterblog, but the waiting got a bit tiring and naturally the team became smaller.

In September I joined my present company, OLSB, brought in by Mack Zulkifli who had been working there a few months before me. Since the Monsterblog project was spearheaded by Mack, I got more involved in it, updating on a more regular basis since I was allowed to do so at work. In between that, there were a few meet-ups at NST to discuss the ‘progress’ of Monsterblog. Then Brendan Pereira left NST, and everything was put on hold for a bit because everything was discussed with BP. Then Syed Nadzri took over, and understandably had more important things on his plate than Monsterblog.

Sometime in mid-2007, I met up with Zainul Ariffin, who impressed upon me that neither NSTP nor eMedia would continue any relationships with Monsterblog. The impression that I got was that there was no place for Monsterblog anywhere within NSTP or eMedia at that time, and it would be better for us if we’d go off and do our own thing, without us having any ties to NSTP/ eMedia and vice versa. Another impression was that the editorial did not know how to, or had no time to layan Monsterblog because some things were out of their control, e.g. comments. And my impression was that they’d rather not risk it at that time. Maybe in the future, they could and would have something like Monsterblog, who knows, but that time was not the time for it.

Now, Zainul had been nothing but nice and kind to me, and I wrote all the above without malice or [insert negativity here]. It was just what happened, or the way I saw it happened. But that was not the reason for the demise of Monsterblog.

End of Part 2, because it is 1 a.m. and I need to sleep

** Click here to read Part 1, click here to read Part 3.

In conjunction with the new cabinet line-up, I thought I’d finally plonk my arse down to write this post for those curious as to what was Monsterblog (monsterblog.com.my) and what happened to it. I personally don’t think it’s that big a revelation, but I understand that people deserve to know, for some of them have been faithfully visiting Monsterblog, leaving constructive and valuable comments while at it. Bear in mind that I reminisce based on my involvement and my point of view, which may or may not differ from other people’s experiences. For their sides of the story, go ask them lah. Also, by writing this, I’ll have to talk a bit about my current company. Which is a bit blah, because ideally I’d like to keep work and blog separate. Happily my boss is a cool cat.

Sometime in 2006 (don’t remember if it’s the first or second quarter), I was invited to join a blogging project. The concept was to be something like a community thing, which would eventually evolve into an all-in-one on-line magazine; with sections for news, societal issues, entertainment, food, IT… a very common sectioning decision. I don’t know the exact details, but Mack Zulkifli (one-time owner of brandmalaysia.com) who was either friends or acquainted with some top people at New Straits Times (NST) brought this blogging project over to NST, with the reasoning that NST would have the resources (such as archived news, talent such as photogs etc) to help out the project.

As far as I know, ShaolinTiger, Sultan Muzaffar, minishorts, Kimberlycun and Peter Tan were roped into the project before I went into it. I think Paul Tan and KY too, but I can’t be sure. The truth is that it has been a couple of years since, and no one remembers exactly exactly exactly what happened. After a while, kinkybluefairy and tigerjoe were brought in, and the bloggers line-up was complete (at that time).

My first meeting/ discussion on the project was at NST, where i found out that the blog would be called ‘monsterblog’. At first I was like, huh wtf… then I found out that NST already has a ‘moNSTer’ project, hence if we wanted to go with them, the blog would have to be monsterblog lah. My first thought was of the Monster recruitment thingy, which is big in Singapore and US (and now making its way to Malaysia), but whatever lah.

I won’t bore you with the details on how monsterblog was set up; domain and all. JARING was involved in the project to provide infrastructure, so the hosting part was settled. How to make money leh? I think the idea was to capitalise on on-line advertising at that time, with grandiose plans of cross-advertising between eMedia’s assets, NSTP group printed material etc etc. More points: 1) there was no black and white involved; 2) the bloggers involved will not receive money until ads are up, running and making money; 3) we were bloody excited about the project.

End of Part 1 because I have work to do.

** Click here to read Part 2, click here to read Part 3.