Weeklies

India in Bangkok

See "Little India" (Horizons section, page 1)

From John Ross

If you don't have the time or money to travel to India, then maybe the best thing to do is travel to Pahurat. This is the "Little India" district of Bangkok where you can experience some of the sights, sounds, smells and culture of India without leaving your hometown. 

Read through the story using the vocabulary below to help you and answer these questions.

1) What kind of people live in Pahurat?
2) What are some things that you can buy there? 
3) What is the one of the main attractions there?
4) What is an important business for the people of Pahurat?
5) What are some things and activities that the people of Pahurat enjoy?

After learning about Pahurat and the people who live there you can think about or discuss with your friends the following questions.

1) Have you ever been to Pahurat? 

2) Do you think it is interesting place?

3) Why or why not?

4) What do you think is the best way to get there?

VOCABULARY

aromatic - good-smelling
thriving - very lively and successful
tailors - people who make clothes
and so forth - and other things, etc.
enchanting - charming
predominantly - mostly
strains - sounds of music
savoury - tasty, delicious
aroma - smell (noun)
deities - gods
trinkets - small shiny things
reputed - thought to be, considered
gutted - damaged on the inside
overhaul - renovation, restoration
residing - living
merchandise - goods, products
greener pastures - better places to live and work
pursue - follow
integral - important, essential
charity - helping other people
congregation - a religious group
turbans - the cloth that men wrap around their heads
shawl - a cloth women use to cover their heads
scriptures - holy writings
decade - a period of ten years
liberty - freedom
soil - earth, land

Posted by Terry Fredrickson at 12:00 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Appexchange.com: A new way to bridge the gap between software developers and their customers

See “Salesforce apps now available on the run” (Database, page 3)
By Jon Fernquest

Let’s say you’re a Thai SME owner and you're traveling all the time to visit your customers. You need information on your company's server, but you can’t access it with your mobile phone. What can you do?

Let’s say you’re a Thai software developer. You want to write an affordable Thai language program that Thai SMEs can use to access data on their company’s server from their mobile phone. Getting information about new products and customers to salespeople in the field is difficult. You want to make it easier. The only problem is that you have to write four separate programs for four separate platforms: Blackberry, Palm, Windows Mobile, and Symbian. Java might work for all these platforms, but it’s probably going to be too slow.

You can see the problem. There is a gap between what the customer wants and what the software developer can provide. Appexchange.com is a new company trying to bridge this gap.

What Stephen Russell, Saleforce.com’s CEO for the Asia-Pacific region, has to say about opportunities in the Thai software business is very encouraging. Thai software developers might ask: If I write a Thai language application program, won’t I just find it being sold for free in Pantip Plaza next week? or Won’t some open source programmer just copy my program and make it available for free from the Sourceforge open source software site? The answer is: not if it meets specialized customer needs. Your program is unlikely to be pirated if it meets the specialized business needs of small groups of customers. First, you have to find what these needs are by doing some marketing research to better define market segments to target. One good way to research customer needs is to work as a computer consultant customizing your software to meet client needs.

If your Thai language software meets the needs of a narrowly defined business specialty, it is unlikely to be turned into an Open Source project. For example, the topic once arose on the Slashdot forum about building an open source library catalogue system. A specialist in this sort of application pointed out that knowledge of business processes was usually just as important as programming knowledge. Open source computer programmers usually do not have this business knowledge. Knowledge of the processes of cataloguing and purchasing books in libraries and the conventions for exchanging information with book publishers could only be obtained by work experience with library cataloging applications. This sort of knowledge was not available in any book and could not be learned in any school.

Make sure to check out what Chalermpon Punnotok, a Thai winner of a 2005 Asia-Pacific ICT Award, has to say about software development in Thailand in today's Bangkok Post (See Database, page 3). Also check out applications specialized for the needs of different industries such as healthcare, real estate, and conference management at Appexchange.com. What specialized applications might Thai business people find useful? What about applications in the agricultural, hotel, restaurant, tourism, and conventions (MICE) industries?

Vocabulary (in discussion above)

bridge the gap - connect two disconnected things
SME - Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, most businesses in Thailand's economy are SMEs not large companies (See Wikipedia:Small_and_medium_sized_enterprises)
software developer - a person or company that makes writes computer programs
salespeople in the field - salespeople working out of the office visiting the companies of customers
Java - Java ME (Micro Edition) is the version of Java found on many mobile phones, used for games most of the time (See Wikipedia:Java_ME)
client - a more formal word for "customer"
library catalog - the computer where you search for books in a library (See Wikipedia:Library_catalog) and for example Chulalongkorn’s online library catalog
business processes - (See Wikipedia:Business_processes and Wikipedia:Automated_business_processes)

Vocabulary (in article)

apps – computer applications, a computer program that performs a specialized function, for example word processors, spreadsheets, accounting, or games (See Wikipedia:Computer_software)
on the run – do it while you are busy doing something else because you have no time, for example eat on the run while you’re walking to a lunchtime dental appointment
on-demand – get it when you want it
flagship – most important for a company, for example a flagship product, store
CRM – Customer Relations Management software, the software and business processes that help a company manage customer relationships (See Wikipedia:Customer_relationship_management)
operating system - the software that runs the whole computer, Windows XP is the operating system that most people are familiar with (See Wikipedia:Operating_system)
Blackberry – a wireless email device for businessmen, supports push e-mail, mobile telephone, text messaging, web browsing and other services (See Wikipedia:Blackberry)
Palm – the first and most popular handheld computer (See Wikipedia:Palm)
Windows Mobile – the Windows operating system that runs on Pocket PCs, Smartphones, and Portable Media Centers (See Wikipedia:Windows_mobile).
Symbian – the mobile phone operating system used by Nokia, Panasonic, Siemens AG, and Sony Ericsson. (See Wikipedia:Symbian_OS)
a roadshow – a group of people who travel around the country as part of an advertising campaign
a platform – a computing platform, a hardware or software system that allows software to run on top of it, an operating system is one example (See Wikipedia:Platform_computing)
a mobile platform – a computing platform for mobile phones
appexchange.com – “the first online service for sharing business applications. It makes finding and installing new on-demand apps as easy as downloading a song or buying a book online” (See homepage)
ported – porting computer software from one platform to another platform (See Wikipedia:)
up to the minute data – information that is always current
a mashup of applications – a combination of applications (See Wikipedia:Mashup)
Skype – provides internet phone calls (See Wikipedia:Skype)
Business Objects – a French company that sells business software for reporting and analyzing data (See Wikipedia:Business_objects_company)
joined the bandwagon – join everyone else and do something popular
a marketing and delivery channel – a way of getting a companies product to the customer (See Wikipedia:Distribution)
wireless carriers – companies that own a wireless and sell a wireless service
single point of deployment, write once and deploy
head-to-head – two people or companies competing directly with each other
bandwidth hungry applications – computer programs that transfer a lot of data over the network
3G – the next generation of mobile phone technology in Thailand, will allow you to exchange photos, watch video, download information, exchange email, and use instant messaging (See Wikipedia:3G).
WiMAX – WiMAX is a new wireless technology that provides wider coverage than Wi-Fi technology.

More things to read

This site has a list of innovative features in online library catalogs. The author of the page found them by using library catalogs over the internet (so you could say he did marketing research on computer applications over the internet for free, which makes this something most students could do). Read about the business model behind Appexchange here, here and here.

Posted by Jon Fernquest at 10:00 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A career in medicine

See fighting the good fight, real.time, page 15

From Natalie Bank

In today's real.time lesson, we're going to use a story on the society page to learn some of the vocabulary doctors use, especially when they're talking about the common disease called cancer. Fighting the good fight is about a doctor who has also had an interesting life apart from his work. 

    This article is also easy to read because it is split into two parts. The first part contains six small paragraphs, which have less than two sentences inside. These paragraphs are a summary of the most interesting or special parts of Chantawat's life. In the second part, which is called a 'question and answer' or Q & A, we can read what the writer asked and what the full answer was to the question. 

    Before a reporter writes this kind of article, they will look through their notes and decide which questions and answers had the most important or interesting information. Then they will know what to include in the summary. This means a reader can probably read the summary to find out a little bit or read all the questions and answers to get the details.

When you're done reading this Q & A story, try to answer the reading questions and try the exercise below.

roots - to have origins in something; a part of where you or your family is from
ovarian - in the part of a woman's body that produces eggs
cancer - a very serious disease in which cells in the body grow in an uncontrolled way
manipulating - to use or control something with skilloperating - to work or to make something work
tramline - the track on which trams or streetcars run
specialise - to give most of your attention to one subject
ob/gyn (obstetrician/gynecologist) - obstetrician - a doctor who treats women who are pregnant and helps them while their babies are being born / gynecologist a doctor who has special training in the diseases and problems only women have
dashing - handsome, attractive
shun - to stay away from somebody or something
devoted - to give a lot of time and energy to something
burden - a responsibility or task that is difficult or causes a lot of work or worry
fulfilling - making you feel happy and satisfied
sublime - wonderful
mutinous - in a state of being bad, uncontrollable and not obeying authority
out-of-the-box thinking -
achievement - something that is done successfully, especially through hard work or skill
catwalk work -
jitters - to be nervous or afraid
exposure - seeing or being in contact with something
caught the jealousy bug - a phrase that means someone has become jealous, not that they have actually caught a bug
bookworm - a person who likes reading books very much
prodigy - a person (usually a child) who is unusually good at something
rejection - to refuse to accept something or somebody
aggressive - ready or likely to fight or argue
examine - look closely at something
interpersonal - interactions between people
matrimony - the state of being married
palliative care - helping or soothing the symptoms of a disease 
malignancy - likely to cause death if not controlled
sacrifice - the act of giving up something that is important or valuable to achieve something or make someone else happy
modifications - small changes
metrosexual - a male who spends a lot of time and money on his appearance and lifestyle

Reading questions
1. What product was being sold in the commercial Chantawat was in?
2. Why did Chantawat's mom think he wanted to go to Triam Udom Suksa school?
3. What does the doctor believe in that made him do well in sports and life?
4. How old was Chantawat when his mother died?
5. Why might some people mistake Chantawat for being gay?

Exercise

Now that you know what a summary is and what a question and answer style article is, let's see if you can do one about yourself or a friend or classmate. Ask yourself or them three questions about their life - something they have done or are trying to do now. Write down your own or your friend's answer on a piece of paper. Look at your notes and decide what the most interesting thing you or they have done is. Then write a one or two paragraph summary of  their answer.










 

Posted by Terry Fredrickson at 01:57 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Shopping on the Border

See "Frontier mart" (Horizons section, page 8)
From John Ross

Hello all. I hope that you had an enjoyable Songkran Festival last week. This week's story is called 'Frontier Mart' and is about a place called Chong Mek. 'Frontier' means 'the border' and 'mart' is a word meaning 'market' as you may know from FamilyMart. So, Chong Mek is a market on the border that you may have heard about. I went there myself more than ten years ago and from the article it doesn't sound like it has changed much. 

Read through the story using the vocabulary below to help you and answer these questions to get a better idea of  what is happening at Chong Mek.

1) Chong Mek is a border market. It is located on the border of Thailand and _________ in the province
        of __________________ .
2) What are some things that you can buy there? 
3) What kind of visa do Thai people need to go there?
4) What are some nearby tourist attractions?
 

After summarising the trip you can think about or discuss with your friends the following questions.

1) Have you ever been to Chong Mek? 

2) Would you like to go there?

3) Why or why not?

4) What do you think would be the best way to get there?

VOCABULARY

sprawling - wide and expansive
straddling - sitting on two sides of something
ambience - atmosphere
purchase - buy
rub shoulders with - meet, come into contact with
scorching - very hot
browsed - looked around
appliances - machines and tools
radius - a circular area
pirated - copied, fake
frantic - very busy and excited
sombre - quiet and peaceful
poached - taken or killed illegally
antagonistic - angry and aggressive
buffs - fans, experts

Posted by Terry Fredrickson at 03:19 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Who’s the boss? You or your computer?

See “How to know if you’ve got an ‘enlightened’ government” (Database, front page)
By Jon Fernquest

As computers become more and more important in everyone’s work and life, dependence on their technologies makes us vulnerable to both computers and computer experts. Think of these common situations:

1. Five years ago you stored some important documents on your computer, but now no one uses this computer technology anymore. You can’t print the documents or even move the documents from your computer to your new computer. For 40,000 baht you can hire an expert to recover the files.

2. You are setting up an internet forum for your company’s customers to ask questions. There are many low cost Content Management Systems that are Open Source software , written in PHP, and usually provided for free when you purchase web hosting services. You could have used this kind of software, but the people in charge of procurement at your company don’t know very much about computers and hired consultants who installed their own proprietary software. There is no documentation and the consultants are the only ones who know how it works, so they will be billing your company for their services for many months and maybe even years in the future.

3. A professor at a university avoids putting his research on the internet. This makes it difficult for other professors to evaluate the quality of his work which makes his job more secure. If you could use a search engine, you could find mistakes, the names of other professors whose ideas he uses a lot, or even create a bibliography that shows where he got his information. All his research is hidden away in paper books deep in the university library.

4. You’re a computer programmer. One day a patent troll lawyer calls you up and threatens to sue you. He says that the computer program you wrote infringes on a patent that is held by his company. You say you just used common-sense when you wrote your program and you don’t understand how someone can have a patent on common sense. The lawyer says he’ll take you to the cleaners.

Openness is a general concept that overcomes all of these problems. You might even say that openness is the antidote to our increasing dependence on computers. Looking at today's article, what potential problems does the Open Document Format (ODF) solve? (See answer key at end).

As the article points out, the current patent system (regime) has been in existence for a long time and usually provides the right incentives for inventions and innovation. In the internet era, however, patents started to be awarded for general ideas found in software and business processes (See Wikipedia:Software_patents). That's when the problems started. Many people, including the renowned Stanford computer scientist Donald Knuth, have argued that patents should not be given for common-sense ideas or ideas that are almost like laws of nature. Knuth eloquently conveys this idea in an open letter to the U.S. government patent office:

Congress wisely decided long ago that mathematical things cannot be patented. Surely nobody could apply mathematics if it were necessary to pay a license fee whenever the theorem of Pythagoras is employed. The basic algorithmic ideas that people are now rushing to patent are so fundamental, the result threatens to be like what would happen if we allowed authors to have patents on individual words and concepts. Novelists or journalists would be unable to write stories unless their publishers had permission from the owners of the words. Algorithms are exactly as basic to software as words are to writers, because they are the fundamental building blocks needed to make interesting products. What would happen if individual lawyers could patent their methods of defense, or if Supreme Court justices could patent their precedents? (Source)

A good vocabulary building exercise is to try and match the “six tests that an open standard must pass” given in the box at the top of the article with the “five key qualities to an open standard” given in the article (see answer key at end):

1. interoperable
2. user-centric
3. cooperative
4. sustainable
5. scalable
6. flexible

Vocabulary (in discussion above)

dependence on – reliance on, need
vulnerable – easily harmed by something
recover files – get computer files back (after the files were lost due to a computer problem)
proprietary software – a company owns the software (so there are strict controls on how you can use it, this makes you very dependent on the owner of the software) (See Wikipedia:Proprietary_software)
internet forum – a website for discussions of various topics (See Wikipedia:Internet_forum)
Content Management Systems – a system for organizing online documents, content, and information and getting feedback, comments, and discussion about it (See Wikipedia:Content_management_system)
Open Source Software – software available which is open to everyone to study, change, and improve its design (See Wikipedia:Open_source_software).
PHP – a computer programming language for the internet (See Wikipedia:PHP)
web hosting services - monthly rental of a place to build a website (See Wikipedia:Web_hosting_services)
procurement – obtaining the supplies and services that a company needs
billing – sending a bill for consulting services given
to sue someone – to use the legal system to get money from someone who you believe has damaged you
to take you to the cleaners – to get a lot more money from you for something than a reasonable amount, for example a used car salesman sells you a car for much more than it's worth
commmon-sense - how any reasonable human being would solve some kind of problem
antidote - something that helps you overcome a difficult situation (antidotes stop the effects of poisons on your body)
an open letter - a letter of protest written to one person but intended to be read by a wider audience or the general public
renowned - well-known, famous
eloquently - ideas are expressed well and are persuasive
fork (software development) - open source software licenses usually allow developers to start their own version of a software package if they want to (See Wikipedia:fork)

Vocabulary (in article)

enlightened – has a modern and sensible way of dealing with things
open standards – standards that are publicly available to all in a book or over the internet (See Wikipedia:Open_standards)
interoperability – compatible, can work together (for example my DVD player is interoperable with my TV set) (See Wikipedia:Interoperability and Wikipedia:Business_process_interoperability)
procurement – obtaining the supplies and services that a company needs
mandate – given the official authority to do a task (usually by the government)
Open Document Format (ODF) – a standard for documents stored on computers, if everyone follows the standard than in the future there will be less of a problem reading documents when technologies change (See Wikipedia:Open_document_format)
promulgate – to officially announce a law so that people know about it
on the cusp of – at a changing point (in mathematics a cusp is where a curve changes direction)
ICT – Information and Communications Technology (Information Technology, Telecommunications and Data Networking Technologies are converging into a single technology, see Wikipedia:Technological_convergence)
the engine of growth – the thing that causes growth
closed system – only the owner can modify the system (to use it for new purposes)
open system – everyone can modify the system
fosters – helps develop
locking out – making it so that people cannot access and use something
picking up speed – accelerating, going faster and faster
technical reference model – a shared model of how software works that helps different pieces of software work together (For example see US_Federal_Enterprise_Architecture)
e-government – using computer and internet technologies to enhance the effectiveness of the legislature, judiciary or administration (See Wikipedia:Egovernment)
IP – intellectual property (nowadays ideas, information, artwork, and writing can also be property owned by someone, in the past you could only own physical property) See Wikipedia:Intellectual:Property)
patents – ownership rights over the ideas in an invention, for example over new drugs to treat AIDS (See Wikipedia:Patents)
business processes – the steps in different business tasks, for example the steps that a cashier gos through when a customer pays for a purchase (See Wikipedia:Business_process_management, Wikipedia:Business_process_modelling)
patent trolls – people who use patents to make money by sueing people for patent infringement instead of using the patent productively in a business (See Wikipedia:Patent_troll)
cripple – to damage something so that it does not work properly
the fundamental premise – the most important assumption
framework - a set of rules, ideas, or beliefs used to deal with a certain kind of problem
pandemics – something that affects many people over a wide area (originally meant a disease)
bypassed – did not keep up with the rest of the world, fell behind the rest of the world, like for example the country of Myanmar

More things to read and do

1. Here is an explanation of one of the most notorious software patents of the internet era, the Amazon One-Click Shopping Patent, from a Stanford computer science course.

Answer Key:

1. Potential problems that the Open Document Format (ODF) solves:

a. “…governments are generating masses of information that may be unreadable in 15 or 20 years.”

b. “a governments digitized records cannot be read if:
i. the vendor collapses,
ii. is taken over or
iii. just simply does not have the investment to maintain their software.”

c. In one hundred years the following types of data may be inaccessible:
i. “your country’s intellectual property”
ii. government records
iii. libraries

2. Matching the “six tests that an open standard must pass” with the “five key qualities to an open standard” (note: there is no one right answer). The six tests:

1. Must not be under the complete control of anyone or any one company. [cooperative, all companies cooperate, also sustainable, open source projects that come under the control of one company end up losing all their programmers who usually work for free, for an example see the Mambo project and the Joomla project that forked off of Mambo]

2. The way to come up with the specifications must be transparent. [cooperative, transparency means the specifications are not hidden from anyone]

3. The standards must work on any operating system or platform. [interoperable, scalable meaning you can run it on your PC or remote Linux-Apache server, for example the Awstats program for analyzing web traffic are often run on PCs rather than hosting service servers because they use a lot of processor bandwidth]

4. The documentation must be open and must be accessible for people to see. They must not be expensive or guarded by NDA (non-disclosure agreement). [user-centric, users can get documentation easily]

5. The ideas must be available under a free or under RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) policies. [flexible, proprietary software licenses place many restrictions on the user]

6. The specifications must be accepted by the masses and do not have to be recognised or certified by any one government. [user-centric, users = masses]

Posted by Jon Fernquest at 12:18 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Songkran river cruise

See "Bangkok by boat an exciting option", Horizons section, page 1

From John Ross

Happy Thai New Year everybody! It's Songkran as you probably know and many people have gone upcountry to visit relatives, celebrate the holidays and get away from Bangkok. But as Yvonne Bohwangprasert points out if you stay in Bangkok you can still have fun. What she suggests is a river cruise.

Read through the story using the vocabulary below to help you and summarise the itinerary of the cruise below to get a better understanding of what is included.

                PIER                                    DESCRIPTION                    

1) __________________        ________________________________________________
                                                ________________________________________________
                                                ________________________________________________

2) __________________        ________________________________________________
                                                ________________________________________________
                                                ________________________________________________

3) __________________        ________________________________________________
                                                ________________________________________________
                                                ________________________________________________

 

After summarising the trip you can think about or discuss with your friends the following questions.

1) How much is the ticket for this cruise? 

2) How long can you use it?

3) Which piers can you go to using this ticket?

4) Where did the writer start the cruise?

5) How often do the boats leave?

VOCABULARY

add a little spice - make something more exciting
a golden opportunity - a very good opportunity
board - get on a boat, plane or train
bilingual - using two languages
commentary - description, information
vicinity - the area nearby
access - get to and enter
sweltering - very hot and humid
excursion - trip, journey
keen - interested in
return leg - the return section or part of a journey
proceeded - started and continued
lately - recently, not long ago
contaminated - dirty
emanate - give off, send out
odour - a (usually bad) smell
disembark - get off or out of a boat, the opposite of 'embark'
revelry - fun, celebration
hexagonal - having six sides
buzzing - busy
hawkers and street vendors - people selling things along the road
promenade - a walkway
garment - clothing, clothes
Sino-Portuguese - a mixture of Chinese and Portuguese styles
a hop-skip-and-jump - not far from, a short distance away

.

Posted by Terry Fredrickson at 05:31 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Everyone can be an inventor with Web Mashups

See “Find your way with a map mashup” (database, page 7)

In Thailand it is a lot easier to start your own small business than it is in Europe or the United States. In the Chiangrai Night Bazaar you can find a wide variety of different creative business ideas that people have dreamed up to meet customer needs, from a stall selling scented soaps like The Body Shop to a little boutique selling the lastest in northern Thai haute couture. If you like experimenting with computers there is another option these days: Web Mashups.

Mashups make it possible for anyone who knows how to program a computer to become an inventor. One of the first Mashups combined online real estate advertisements with online maps to make searching for rentals or houses easier. This computer programmer’s after work project ended up making local real estate markets in the San Francisco and Silicon Valley areas more efficient.

Make a list of mashup websites using maps that are mentioned in the article. Think about whether they would work in Thailand. For example, would a Gawker Stalker site for celebrity sightings in Bangkok work?

In a fifteen minute web search, I was able to find a good business idea for Thailand in the Web Map Gallery at Directions Magazine. An English company offers a map of vegetarian restaurants with reviews. I can also imagine a map of stores selling organically grown vegetables or a map of dog-friendly businesses (hotels, restaurants, apartments, etc). Google's advertising technology, called Adsense, has made it easier for anyone to make money through advertisements on their website. These might not be viable ideas right now, but in six months, a year, two years?

Vocabulary (in discussion above)

haute couture - designing and making of expensive and fashionable clothes (French word used in English)

Vocabulary (in article)

find your way – when you are lost, find how to get where you want to go
web application – a computer program that you use over the internet instead of installing on your computer, imagine using Microsoft office over the internet instead of installing it on your computer (See Wikipedia:Web_application)
mashup – a combination of two or more web applications (See Wikipedia:Mashup)
coupled with – used with
GPS – Global Positioning System, a device that uses satellite signals to find your position on the map (See Wikipedia:GPS)
Garmin units – GPS devices made by Garmin Corporation
get the thumbs up - approves of
saved the day – solved a serious problem
heading off - leaving
Symbian – one of the popular software systems used to run mobile phones (See Wikipedia:Symbian)
bundled software - software that is included with the hardware you buy
standalone - not part of a larger system, for example a standalone DVD player versus a DVD player that is part of a stereo
route simulation - when a computer map program helps you by going down the same road that you need to go down
a landmark – something that is easy to notice like a building that you can use to help you find your way, for example when someone gives you directions to their condominium they tell you to turn right at Baiyoke Tower, the tallest building in Bangkok
work in progress – currently working on the project so it is not yet finished
user-driven – satisfying the needs of users is your goal
disruptive – disruptive technology, replaces older technology and is extremely different (See Wikipedia:Disruptive_technology)
a refresher – a refresher course, a quick overview of a subject you studied in the past to help you remember it again
novel – new and different
narrow the search down – to be more exact and precise about what you are searching for
a real-time view – you can see something happening in real time, for example you can see your child playing at school on the internet from a web camera at their school
organically grown - food grown without artificial pesticides, herbicides, and GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms). In (See Wikipedia:Organic_food)
viable - capable of further developing and becoming successful

Posted by Jon Fernquest at 11:48 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Weblogs as specialized news sources

See “Thai webloggers get together for a brainstorming session at BlogCon 2006” (Database, front page)
By Jon Fernquest

Can I believe what I read in a weblog?

Many people end up asking themselves this question after reading blogs for a little while. For every blogger who thinks before they write, there are a hundred who don’t. You have to search hard for useful blogs. The globalization of services weblog at the University of Michigan, one of my favorites, is written by PhD students studying the subject. This makes it very reliable. Nowadays many weblogs rank high in Google as specialized news sources.

Collaboration with other bloggers is still the major problem in blogging. I say “collaboration” and not “audience” because unlike traditional newspaper articles that only have a passive audience, bloggers read other blogs and actively respond to what they read when they blog. This makes blogging much more interactive. Without collaboration a weblog is essentially just a set of notes you write for yourself.

Face-to-face meetings like BlogCon Thailand 2006 and weblog carnivals are places where online collaborative relationships can begin. Creating collaborative relationships online is difficult. You need find bloggers: 1. with common interests, 2. with knowledge of the subject, 3. who can write, 4. who want to share information and ideas, and 5. who have enough freetime to write for their blog. How do you stimulate their interest, share information and ideas with them, and then eventually maybe even do a collaborative project with them like writing a book or getting their feedback on a book or an article that you’ve written? Today’s article and online video recordings from the conference can provide you with some ideas (See conference site).

Did you see that the host of Blogcon 2006 is the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication at Thammasat University? Blogs are redefining what exactly the “news” is. There is a lot of potential synergy between weblogs and newspapers, with weblogs often providing new types of content to newspapers.

For example, in any developing country a lot of newsworthy events in the provinces never make the big city newspapers in the capital. People in the provinces and border areas often witness shocking and newsworthy events involving murder, human rights violations, drugs, human trafficking, corruption, and state sanctioned murder, but fear keeps them from reporting them to anyone. This news could eventually filter into the mainstream news via anonymous weblogs. In the past, some brave people have monitored human rights abuses in the hilltribe areas of Chiangrai hills far away, from Bangkok, using weblogs (See Wikipedia:MatthewMcDaniel).

Vocabulary (in discussion above)

synergy - when people are more effective working together in a team than working separately, the sixth habit of highly effective people (See Wikipedia:Seven_habits_of_highly_effective_people)
Blog carnival – an online event where the work of bloggers who write on a specialized topic share their work
anonymous - not using your name
sanctioned - officially approved
List of blogging terms - See Wikipedia:List_of_blogging_terms

Vocabulary (in article)

locus of power – place where power is located
dynamic – constantly changing, full of energy
social networking – a site where people meet through web pages, discussion groups, and email (See Wikipedia:MySpace.com)
legal framework – system of laws in a special area like internet publishing
freedom of the press – the right to gather news and distribute it to the public guaranteed by the constitutions of some countries like the United States (See Wikipedia:Freedom_of_the_press)
red tape – government rules and procedures that cause long delays
like-minded – have the same opinion about some issue
blogroll – collection of links to other blogs (See Wikipedia:Blogroll)
tagging – listing keywords that describe web content, these keywords are then used by a search engine like del.icio.us (See Wikipedia:del.icio.us)
tag clouds– a list of key words, the larger the key word the more popular it is, see the photo on this page (See Wikipedia:Tag_cloud)
annotating – adding notes to a text or diagram to explain it
keywords – words used in a search engine like Google to find information on the web in a “keyword search” (To get more definitions do a Google search: “keyword definition”. Also see Wikipedia:Information_retrieval)
to get up and running – to finish all the preparation work so you can start using something
aggregate – gather news automically from other sites (See Wikipedia:Aggregator)
avatar – the graphics representation of the computer user in a virtual world (See Wikipedia:Avatar(virtual reality))
virtual world – a three dimensional computer world that a computer user can move around with an avatar (See Wikipedia:Virtual_world)
flesh-and-blood human being – a real person with a body, not a computer
peer-to-peer – (See Wikipedia:Peer_to_peer)
centralisation – control from the center (for example the national government controls local government)
decentralisation – control outside the center (for example the local governments control themselves)
free agent – a person who is free to do whatever they want because they are not responsible to anyone
Wikipedia – the most popular free online encyclopedia in the world (See Wikipedia:Wikipedia and Wikipedia:Encyclopedia)
Kiva – a website that allows people to lend to small businesses in Africa (See Kiva website)
Zopa.co.uk – an online lending exchange that connects lenders directly with borrowers without going through a bank (See Wikipedia:Zopa.com)
licences – software licences, an agreement between the software’s owner and user that restricts what a user can do with the software (See Wikipedia:Software_licence)
GNU Public Licence –– the most popular free software licence used by Linux (See Wikipedia:General_public_licence)
Creative Commons Licence – (See Wikipedia:Creative_commons_licence and Wikipedia:Creative_commons)
down-to-earth – practical
proprietary – (See Wikipedia:Proprietary_software and Wikipedia:Nonproprietary software)
drag-and-drop – a system that makes using a computer easier by allowing the user to drag and drop things on the computer screen rather than typing commands (See Wikipedia:Drag_and_drop)
in light of – considering, means what follows is important and relevant
MoE – Ministry of Education of the government of Thailand
webcasted – (See Wikipedia:Webcast)
IRC (Internet Relay Chat) – software for people to talk together over the internet by typing, unlike email there is no delay (See Wikipedia:IRC)
collaborative – work done by two or more people working together

Posted by Jon Fernquest at 03:39 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Glass Mountain Temple

From John Ross

See “Acquired taste”, Horizons section, page 4

 
Hi everyone. I hope that you are enjoying your Chakri Day holiday and that you are remembering the founding the Chakri dynasty and the start of the Bangkok period of modern Thailand.  Today we look at a story by Yvonne Bohwongprasert who writes many interesting stories for the Horizon section. This one is called “Acquired taste”. This phrase is used when someone likes something that most people don’t enjoy such as unusual foods like durian or blue cheese. Here it refers to the visiting of old Buddhist temples in the countryside. When most people think of tourism in Thailand they usually think of beaches, islands and full-moon parties. But, of course, there are many other sides to tourism in Thailand. Something like visiting old temples may not be popular with everyone, but if you try it you might enjoy it very much and want to do it again.  That is an ‘acquired taste’.

    The difficult thing about visiting temples with foreign tourists is explaining the different parts and architectural elements of the temple. This requires a specialised vocabulary. So, we will have a vocabulary quiz to help you become more familiar with the words that can be used to describe Buddhist temples. There is still some vocabulary words that are not related to temples below to help you understand the story.

 
Match the word on the left with its meaning on the right.

1.      splendour                  ___ an important temple that people travel to to make merit
2.      a place of pilgrimage   ___ decoration
3.      Buddhist Lent            ___ the place where monks live
4.      sculptures                __  Buddhist practice of concentration and resting the mind
5.      teakwood                 ___ beauty
6.      meditation                ___ decorated
7.      adorned                   ___ images carved from wood or rock
8.      chapel                     ___ a snake-god of the underworld
9.      ornamentation           ___ the ceremonial hall of a Buddhist templ - ‘bot’ or ‘ubosot’ in Thai
10.  Naga                       ___ when Buddhist monks stay in temples during the rainy season
11.  bas-reliefs                ___ a type of wood (my sak) often used for building in S.E. Asia
12.  monk quarters           ___ a flower used as a symbol in Buddhism, called ‘dork bua’ in Thai
13.  ordination hall           ___ another name for the ‘bot’ or ‘ubosot’
14.  lotus                       ___ a type of sculpture on a wall
 

After completing the quiz you can work with your friends to discuss visiting old temples in the countryside. Use the questions below to get started.

 1) Do you like visiting old temples in the countryside? Why or why not?
2) If yes, why? What are some of your favourite places or provinces to visit?
3) If not, why not? What other things do you like to do during your holidays or when travelling

Posted by Terry Fredrickson at 12:47 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)