MARKETING: Our sister website, HardwareZone.com, have produced several new ZoneOut videos over the past two weeks. We thought we share two of them here since they have relevance to HWM readers regionally.

The first one is a ZoneOut video on the new Microsoft Zune HD and it gets compared with the Apple iPod Touch.

The second one is a longer video chronicling our insights on what 2009’s been like and what we think (or hope) 2010 will bring to the tech scene. It applies across all countries HWM is in of course.

Meanwhile, the teams behind both HWM and HardwareZone.com would like to wish all readers a Happy New Year 2010. See you next year.

VIPs at the ceremony (from left): Mr.SK Foong, Corporate Services Director of SPHM; Mr.Yongyut Wonterasoot, Managing Director of DigiMedia Asia; Mr.Chanchai Chairungruang, Minister of Thailand Industry; Mr.Sal Moonsart, Vice President of C.P.Plaza; Mr.Adul Laohaphol, Director of Thailand SME Bank & Mr.Chaiwat Amwongse, Marketing Manager of C.P.Plaza.

MARKETING: HWM Thailand celebrated its 6th Anniversary in Bangkok, Thailand on 11 December 2009 in a ceremony which also saw the Excellent Brand Survey Awards 2009 being given to 34 top voted product brands in the technology sector. An additional newcomer award was also given out during the ceremony.

The survey was conducted on 5,000 people, who visited the different IT Centers in Thailand, including Pantip Plaza, IT Mall Fortune, Zeer Rangsit and Tukcom.

The 35 winners of the Excellent Brand Survey Awards 2009, including a Rookie Award for best newcomer.

The survey started in mid-September 2009 and ended in October 2009.

The Excellent Brand Survey Awards represent the strong brand presence and retention HWM Thailand readers have when it comes to making purchasing decisions on tech products. The results are also attributable to the strengths and innovations from the various marketing and sales strategies of the technology marketeers in the Thai market.

CORP TALK: Malaysia-based MOL Global Pte. Ltd. will be buying US social network company Friendster Inc., which operates Friendster.com, according to a PRNewsWire report.

MOL Global is an affiliate of online payment solutions provider MOL AccessPortal Berhad, whose principal shareholder is Tan Sri Vincent Tan, the Chairman and CEO of Berjaya Corporation Berhad.

According to the release, following the acquisition, the operations of MOL and Friendster will be combined to create Asia’s largest end-to-end network for content, distribution and commerce. This will pair MOL’s offline retail channel partners and payment platform with Friendster’s online network and user base in Asia.

HWM Indonesia

HWM Indonesia: Finally, Friendster will be able to monetize its social network platform through the additional layer from MOL.

A social media network alone will not generate any revenue, let alone a very regionalized social media network like Friendster.

A helping hand from a strong regional player with its retail channel distribution will add value to Friendster and complete the whole solution.

Navin Danapal, Editor, HWM Malaysia

Navin (HWM Malaysia): Berjaya’s (which owns MOL) news about buying Friendster comes at a time when Facebook (probably Friendster’s greatest rival) recently announced forced public exposure (by default) for its public members posts to compete with Google’s real-time search with Twitter.

It would seem privacy is the Web’s next killer app - not protecting it, but exploiting it for the sake of search coverage.

Facebook’s comment that “this is the way the world is moving” conflicts with the fact Facebook is itself the determiner of world privacy when it’s the biggest social networking site.

With the current bad rep Facebook is getting for its new policy, one might wonder what Berjaya’s direction would be for its newly-acquired Friendster with its massive database of users. (more…)

CORP TALK: The New York Times online has news that Universal Music Company, Sony Music Entertainment and the Abu Dhabi Media Company have formed a music video website called Vevo.

Similar to Hulu.com, which is an online network TV syndication service co-owned by NBC, Fox and ABC TV networks, Vevo.com is a syndicated online music video service and Google’s YouTube will be one of its syndicated partners. It was also reported that EMI Music is onboard, and talks with Warner Music (the last of the big four music companies) are currently pending.

Note that both Hulu and Vevo are only available in the United States (and Canada in Vevo’s case).

Seagate has thrown its gauntlet into the SSD fray with Pulsar, but only for the enterprise market, for now.

CORP TALK: The corps are talking, and hard drive manufacturer Seagate is finally throwing its gauntlet into the Solid State Drive (SSD) fray.

Called the Pulsar, the SSD is part of Seagate’s enterprise family, offering up to 200GB capacity in a 2.5-inch SATA-interfacing form factor.

It’s also based on single-level cell (SLC) flash memory technology, where one bit of data occupies a single cell of flash memory for optimum performance (as opposed to multi-level cell, MLC, where four bits of data occupies one cell). With SLC, the drive is marked with a low 0.44% AFR (annualized failure rate) rating and comes with a 5-year limited warranty.

Performance peaks at up to 30,000 read IOPS (input/output ops per second) and 25,000 write IOPS, and the Pulsar gives 240MB/s sequential read and 200 MB/s sequential write speeds on paper.  The Pulsar was shipped to select OEM customers in September 2009. For more information, check here.

Navin Danapal, Editor, HWM Malaysia

Navin (HWM Malaysia): Seagate may be the latest to join the foray of the SSD market, as the shift from hard drives move to flash drives, but aside from the high cost of SSD versus HDD, there is also another issue that hasn’t been solved by SSD makers which is only apparent upon usage.

This is the rapid deterioration of SSD performance which is highly noticeable over the course of time.

This drop in performance can quickly make a speeding netbook, notebook or even desktop start crawling to its knees when in the beginning it was zipping faster than its hard drive counterparts.

With rival Western Digital soon to release their SSDs, the hard drive market will have to battle it out not only with evolving hard drive brands, but existing flash drive and even memory players, who are beginning to etch their mark in the SSD territory. (more…)