Blog Meeting, Sunday, August 7 3pm-ish: A call from Psar Thmei: Cameras4Cambodia has arrived, for her first visit to Phnom Penh. She takes a moto down to the riverside and we talk about things blog and photo related. It's great to chat to another person who's so interested in local art. She will go to Thailand via Koh Kong the next day, for a break and to catch up with her fiancee. I take some time to catch up on my email. Email, the stream never stops coming. 6:00 pm: I go over to Hurley's Cantina and find KampucheaCrossings, ThePhnomPenh, and a new person: 'Danny's Blog System'. Also making an appearance is Bhasakhmer, who is happy to let us know KhmerOS will soon make Khmer Unicode blogging software available. KampucheaCrossings, Bhasakhmer, Tharum What is this 'Unicode' thing we keep talking about, like it's the holy grail? I spend a little time discussing the idea of Unicode (with Bhasakhmer's help) with KampucheaCrossings. She is mainly doing her blog for fun, and finds all this technical talk a bit amusing. Danny is still sorting out the blog landscape of Cambodia, and bemused by the whole experience. He and ThePhnomPenh are pretty advanced at technical issues, and enjoy swapping tips. Tharum ,ThePhnomPenh, Cameras4Cambodia. Tharum comes by, and soon after Cameras4Cambodia. Now we have seven bloggers at the table. That's three more than last time. Missing in action: Lux Mean and Kalabird. Oh well, maybe next time. Tharum also knows Bhasakhmer as they're both quite involved in the world of Cambodian 'IT' - information technology. Cameras4Cambodia and KampucheaCrossings are happy to finally meet in person. They spend a bit of time catching up and discussing how they blog. Tharum is quite happy to see the progress since the last meeting: the Global Voices listing is growing. There's been articles in the Cambodia Daily, Phnom Penh Post and Wired. Meanwhile, Khmer language blogs have been started, both by Cambodians and foreigners. And we are learning about all kinds of new things, such as video blogs and blogger meetings. I take out my laptop to help explain who does which blog. I don't have a wireless connection, just use my browser's cache. Being able to see the sites helps quite a bit. (Maybe next time we should bring a printed page.) ThePhnomPenh activates his Macintosh and wireless connection and shows off his alpha geek skills - in about 3 minutes he uses www.blogger.com to set up a test Khmer language blog. I askCameras4Cambodia to lend me her camera and snap off a few shots. Tharum and I discuss future plans. He would like to make it easier for ordinary people to do blogs. After talking with Bhasakhmer and ThePhnomPenh some more, we start to assemble a rough list. Here's my notes, anyway. ------------------------------------------------ 1. Our own portal site. Tharum suggests the 'front end' be Khmer language. But what should the name be? Khmer domains are about $50 with registration fees. International domains are much cheaper, but more names are taken. Tharum also recommended we each think of a 'domain name' and vote on it. For example: www.khmerblog.net www.cambodiablog.net www.blogkhmer.org www.blog.net.kh Anyway, something short. ThePhnomPenh suggests one segment could be a rss-feed sourced page, mixing different posts from different Cambodia related blogs. I recommend we have a sidebar of blog tools, including Khmer templates for major blog portals: Blogger, Typepad, WordPress, Movable Type, Blogware, Radio Userland, etc. We could web them up as text files. Paste them into your 'template' and you are ready to blog. 2. Everybody wants to get a Khmer Unicode keyboard. Hong says there is a shipment of keyboards on the way from China. Those will go fast. KhmerOS also (apparently) has stickers and key covers. (Before everyone goes rushing over to the KhmerOS office, maybe it is better to email and ask, I don't know if they are for sale!) 3. KhmerOS CD: because it takes forever to download programs in Cambodia. Even though these programs are still in early stages, it would be nice to have some CDs available with fonts, font breaker programs, installation instructions, everything. These should be available in places like CD World and the Russian Market. Then people could install programs directly. I would like to see a CD of KhmerOS programs, I'd make many more copies for my friends! I suggest that they should design a nice cover to make it look like a commercial CD. If it looks like a commercial product, the local CD shops would copy it immediately. Bhasakhmer laughs at that idea. (If I was an expat Khmer shopping in the Russian Market, I would grab a KhmerOS CD right away. We know Khmer font CDs are already fairly popular.) 4. T-shirts! Most of us would love to see a Mekhala t-shirt. And maybe t-shirts and stickers for the proposed portal site. ------------------------------------------------ KampucheaCrossings leaves around 8, and soon after Bhasakhmer has to head out. I apologize to Cameras4Cambodia for all the techie talk. "This time is style, next time will be content." Around 9:00 people start to fade. The last to go are me and ThePhnomPenh, at 10:00. More developments soon! Tags: cambodia weblog

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