What interests me most about this story is how it is evolving. It is so dramatic. The person behind this scandal is calling himself Kira, after the main character in the popular manga “Death Note” who also acts behind the pseudonym Kira, and taunts the police that they will never arrest him or find out his real identity (if you have never heard about it, its a great story and I highly recommend it). We can see from Kira’s (our real life kira) action that he is highly intelligent as a) he has the whole thing planned, when to leak pics and stop to keep suspense b) elude arrest c) get a scapegoat to be arrested. Apart from intelligence, he is also got alot of guts, the people he is offending cecelia’s dad and gilian’s talent agency boss aren’t nice people to mess with and have a reputation in hong kong. Stepping on their toes while also taunting the hong kong police commissioner, kira has definately got some guts.

I have heard rumors from my friend whose family is in the media business in hong kong that the pics and video were brought by the highest bidder Next Media already, so Kira must have made a buck or two, but i believe he is doing all this for a power trip. I’m sure he, like most people, don’t have a very high opinion of Edison, but what he is doing is pretty classic hacker mentality, he isn’t doing it for money, he is doing it because its a challenge of wits, he is getting a feeling of being untouchable while each of his actions cause major headlines all in the self-righteous guise that information should be free. Every hacker wants to see how far he can go until he is stopped. Hence, unless Kira gets bored of all this, there is nothing anyone can do to stop this Kira until he has leaked out all the pictures.

By the way, if any of you were wondering if the those pics are real or as the talent management companies call it “photoshopped” or people that look like their client, thats all bullshit as its obviously real. If it was a photoshop prank, the detail is insane. For example, the background edison’s room, the frame by frame of the pics is obviously from a video, there is no way you could find “heads” at all the those different angles to photoshop, and the noise and lighting is so even. Most importantly no one can find the original pics for the heads or the bodies.

P.S what inspired me to write this post was LS and the pic below, of a modified edison video statement screen capture made to look like, someone else who is also in hiding, and will only contact the outside world through self made videos. its too good to not to let more people see it. Disclaimer: its not made by me, i found it on a forum, someone was using it as an avatar, props to that person for thinking about the parallel. hahaha

P.P.S some advise for Kira if he does happen to read my blog: give yourself unique name, like realKira or something  to brand yourself to the media, its much better PR like what the kira in death note did.  By having a unique handle, its alot easier for people to follow up on your story through a search engine and for you to find out who much an impact you have made (thats what you are doing it for right?)

P.P.P.S for people who want to find out more about what is happening and leads/links to the pictures for people that still haven’t seen them.  Edison Chen sex pictures

The 2nd most wanted person in the world?

I know that most people manage all their contacts thru their cell phone and if they lose their cell phone one day, all their contact info goes with it. Plaxo no only syncs and backups your contacts on your computer with their website, it also keeps it updated by social networking, so that if one of your contacts is also a plaxo user any updates they make to their profile will be sync with your address book as well. I would call it a address book 2.0. When i first used it, i thought the important element it missed from social networking was to let me see who my contacts knew, as this is a important feature of social networking sites to enable you to find old contacts you don;t have in your address book thru people you know.

On a side note, plaxo has a new feature, called plaxo pulse, which is pretty awesome as it syncs my mac (iCal and address book) with their servers and gCal. plaxo pulse does this seemlessly after i sync my iPhone with my Mac. Now i never have to worry about losing my contact info even if i loose my phone or macbook pro. I highly recommend people to use this even if they don’t use a mac or an iphone.

I think new investment paired with its prior investment in Joost, shows that the foundation is serious about building an investment portfolio in the internet and is poised to become a major player in this industry

Firstly, a story about how Friendster could have brought Facebook (also from Valleyvag, its a great gossip site about the web industry).  Friendster was the kind of SNS just 4 years ago, everyone wanted to buy them, how the tables have turned now.  Kind of reminds me of Dell and Apple.

The next story is about a rumor that Facebook is shopping for sites in China and apparently got their supposedly $85-100 million offer turned down by Zhanzuo.com.  Zhanzuo is backed by Sequoia so I wouldn’t be surprised if they were approached by Facebook, however I’m gonna call this rumor BS as websites in China rarely get acquired for that much.  Xiaonei.com the chinese facebook clone was only acquired for $1-2M abit more than a year ago.   I’m sure if Zhanzuo was offered that kind of money they would have taken it and ran.

This just strengthens the facebook conspiracy theory I saw online sometime ago about why facebook won’t get acquired.  In a nutshell its because the venture capitalists backing facebook are affiliated with the American government’s intelligence departments.  With the amount of money going into national security what is a few billion dollars to them?  Facebook gives them all the data they want: where you went to school, who you know, what your political views and religious views are.  Since Facebook is a social platform most of the data is real and reliable.

The Orange event on the other hand was everything cnbloggercon was not. Since it was sort of a corporate event, it was alot more uptight. The venue was alot smaller and people weren’t suppose to mingle during the presentations. The presentations were good with speakers such as Isaac Mao and Tangos Chen, but it was just like any other English Web event (no loss if you missed it).

cnbloggercon07 live blog

The Blogger conference is my personal favorite out of all the internet events in china as its grassroots and not too commercial.  This means its easy and relaxed way to meet other web 2.0 entrepreneurs in China as many of them are also bloggers.  This is their third event and I have been to the previous two.  If anyone would like to join they should sign up here before the 28th (sorry only chinese link).