Hello Kitty puzzles and picture books, very cute!

A happy new year everyone, it’s a bit late, but better late than never!

Outblaze delivers converged communication services for StarHub’s pfingoMAIL service

First fully converged VoIP, email, messaging and mobile Internet service for any device anywhere in the world

London, 11 December 2007: Outblaze (www.outblaze.com), the world’s largest online service platform providing white label email, collaboration, security and social media services, today announced that it is powering the email, sychronisation and webmail components of pfingo (www.pfingo.com), a new all-in-one mobile internet and communications service that allows subscribers access to the latest features from anywhere in the world.

Pfingo, short for “phone, fingers, Internet on the go” is an integrated application that gives mobile & PC users easy access to online communication and information services independent of location or service provider. Pfingo provides users with email (on mobile, PC and webmail), instant messaging, mobile VoIP service, contacts sychronisation, news feeds and 400 MB storage space per user – as well as many premium options.

The pfingo launch follows the successful public trial kicked off in April 2007 where more than 30,000 users worldwide signed up and installed the pfingo client onto their mobile phone and/or PC. This overwhelming response amounted to 15 times more users than projected for the trial and, now live, the growth continues.

“We are excited about the pfingoMAIL product designed and created in co-operation with Outblaze, the clear leader in web 2.0 global communication services. The number of sign-ups we continue to enjoy demonstrates our ambition to provide users with a first class service to converge all their communication needs - ultimately creating a new kind of global Internet community,” said Mr. Chan Kin Hung, head of advanced multimedia services at StarHub, Singapore’s second largest info-communications company.

Thousands of businesses, portals, service providers and academic institutions worldwide rely on Outblaze for messaging, spam protection and advanced Web 2.0 services that are tailored to meet the specific needs of their customers. Outblaze was selected to power the email, sychronisation and webmail components of pfingo for its scalable and robust webmail features and its end-to-end service, ensuring the service remains current going forward. Outblaze’s flexibility and reliability are two other key reasons the company was chosen as the central contact sychronisation engine and store for all the user services, such as pfingoACTIVE and pfingoTALK.

“StarHub’s plans for pfingo are tremendous, creating a fully converged communication experience which is largely device agnostic,” comments Richard Bye, VP of Sales and Corporate Development at Outblaze “We are pleased to be their partner for this first of its kind service.”

The Outblaze system also integrates sychronised contact management with Outlook and enables users to consolidate a number of email accounts so real-time push email can be sent to mobile phones easily and inexpensively.

About Outblaze
Outblaze operates the world’s largest online service platform providing white label email, collaboration and social media services to service providers, telecoms operators, corporations, academia, media and publishing companies and portals. The company services 76 million users across 480,000 domains. The Outblaze suite of services also includes online scheduling, file sharing, and protection against spam, viruses and phishing. Outblaze is reliable, affordable and fully customisable and helps clients make these services a profitable part of their business. Founded in 1998, Outblaze is privately held with offices in the USA, the UK and Hong Kong. For more information visit www.outblaze.com.

About StarHub
Pfingo is an integrated application that gives mobile & PC users easy access to online communication and information services independent of location or service provider. Pfingo is developed by StarHub which operates a full two-way 3.5G mobile network in addition to its GSM network, a HFC network that delivers multi-channel cable TV services (including Digital Cable and HDTV) as well as ultra-high speed residential broadband services, and an extensive fixed business network that provides a wide range of data, voice and wholesale services. Launched in 2000, StarHub has become Singapore’s second largest info-communication company. Visit www.pfingo.com or www.starhub.com for more information.

Media Contacts
BondPR Europe: Paul Schlackman, London + 44 1628 673007 paul@bondpr.com
BondPR USA: Jason Aiken, San Francisco +1 415 984 1970 jason@bondpr.com
Outblaze: Richard Bye, VP EMEA London +44 7989 443 113
Pfingo: Cassie Fong, Communications Manager Pfingo - +65 6825 5165 cassie@starhub.com

FON x Typhoon Games promotion in Hong Kong, this is the poster/magazine artwork.

APICTA is a network of 16 Asian and Australasian countries and economies whose common goal is to increase awareness of information & communication technologies, stimulate ICT innovation and creativity, promote economic and trade relations, facilitate technology transfer, etc. Their yearly awards are among the most coveted by all manner of IT firms in the Eastern hemisphere.

Outblaze won the award with its social media Video product.

For more details go to blog.outblaze.com

The 1 billionth photo of flickr, read more about it here.  What is amazing is how there are now over 1 billion pictures available on Flickr for public viewing and in some cases public consumption!

Congratulations!

Hello Kitty & Friends fan get a new makeover on Sanriotown.com the official home of Hello Kitty and her friends, there are some new things like the quiz section and some new games! Blog also has a new ranking feature.

FON Girls

Originally uploaded by ypsilonsiu

I’m posting this via the flickr functionality of posting pictures into the blog automatically, so this is sort of a testing out flickr, it seems to work quite well so if you are a flickr user, you can also upload images to your blog automatically.

Myspace is acquiring photobucket for US250 million according to TechCrunch.

Taken from the Business Wire directly:

Fox Interactive Media Completes Acquisition of Photobucket.com, Inc.

Recently Valleywag posted about a Blogger sellout where major well known bloggers such as Om Malik, Richard Macmanus and Michael Arrington amongst many others sold out to do a similar ad as displayed above. This caused a firestorm where people are talking about a blogger sellout to big bad Microsoft. Om Malik immediately apologized, Michael Arrington is unapologetic, who is right and who is wrong?  Many more continue to chime in.

It’s just an Advertising for crying out loud, relax you people. Everyone seems too fussed about how these bloggers sold their soul. They are web celebrities, that’s what web celebrities do! Michael Arrington put it best when he wrote:

So here’s my position on all of this: Go pound sand. People understand that if there’s text in an ad box, someone is paying for it to be there.

Indeed, how is this different than some business person endorsing a new drink, credit card or banking service? It’s the same as opening up a newspaper and it says in big bold writing: THIS IS A SPONSORED PAGE PAID BY THE ADVERTISER.

                        No difference.

With Valleywag posting up a storm on this issue they’ve proved one thing over and over again about blogging. It’s as sensationalist driven as the traditional media they blame for being too "sensationalist".