Hey, Thats me in the newspaper! :)

This photo appeared in page 29 of the "Digital Life" section of "The Straits Times" published on the 11th Sept 2007. Nothing special there except that I'm in it! (Good luck guessing which one's me! :)) The article was about wikis but I'm guessing that the author must had ran out of ideas finding a suitable illustration to match for having to recycle such a old photo. (And just how the heck did you find and associate this photo to wikis?? This I'm dying to know!)

A little background on this photo for the curious. It was taken way back in the year 2000 when a bunch of geeks came up with a brilliant (of course *sic*) idea to capitalize on the booming internet advertising market. The idea revolves around the creation of a new advertisement delivery channel that is capable of sending targeted and highly relevant rich media ads over low bandwidth connections to a consumer's desktop. (this is ground breaking stuff back in those times!) More importantly, the model/system is capable of accurately tracking the end-to-end buy cycles of the consumer (both through the channel and otherwise) hence giving the retailers and advertisers the holy grail of internet advertising or any other mass media form of advertising for that matter - to be able to accurately measure the "look-to-book" conversion rates of a marketing campaign.

Personally, I think the concept rocks given that back in those days, retailers/advertisers were paying big money for blasting the masses with banner ads (usually not even targeted) and yet not having the slightest clue on the effectiveness of the campaigns due to the nature/limitation of the approach.

Unfortunately, we came out of the "stealth" phase at a really bad time. The last quarter of 2000 marked the beginning of the melt down of the dotcoms and one of the hardest hit segment is, you guessed it, internet advertising. Trying to convince investors and advertisers alike to come on board an innovative but ultimately untested model, amid shaken confidence and shrinking profits, is akin to convincing a die-hard coffee drinker to try tea; the product may be sound but the interest is just not there at the time.

Anyhow, back to the picture. Looking at it really brings back lots of memories; all the late nights and long weekends burned in office working our ass off, our regular lunch time fragging sessions (counterstrike, unreal tournament) led by our CEO as well as cooking sessions led by our COO. I have to say that although work was tough then, the company was great; one of the best team I have the pleasure to work with. And hell it has been a long time since.

Well, if you guys happen to be reading this, this post is dedicated to you lot of merry man (and women) and lets make an effort to meet up again!! Its been a bloody long time since I last put on a CT uniform! :)