MySinchew.com
2008-07-14
You have heard about bloggers but watch out for “Cloggers” What’s that? Cambodian bloggers, that’s what it is.
For a country struggling to get out of poverty, Cambodia’s 144 million population is pretty well wired up to cyberspace with one-in-ten persons connected to the Internet. This is their window to the world.
Many get into blogosphere to make a statement. Three years ago, Hor Virak who lived in the capital city of Phnom Penh, started riding his scooter all over the place clicking away on his digital camera and later uploading them on his blog. Hor makes statements with his photos on his blog. He wants to share his world with anyone who bothers to click.
Soon he began to acquire virtual friends.
For Hor Virak and his fellow cloggers, despite the low connectivity, clogging has also become a state of mind apart from just making statements.
To encourage more cloggers, Be Chantra spoke, started offering courses to young people to create their blogs. He established a non-profit organization, ‘open college’ with two friends in 2003.
In a little help from Microsoft and some other US groups, the ‘opne college’ have managed to train about two thousand young people to set-up and manage their blogs.
“Strictly speaking, we failed,” Be Chantra said. The reason is only less than one in twenty are able to create their blogs after finished the course.
Despite that, there are about a thousand Cambodia youngsters with blogs or clogs, most of them are student. If online fees can be lower net speed made faster, life would be better for cloggers. Be Chantra believes in the future, they will have more cloggers.
(Translated by ALICE TAN/ MySinchew)
2008-07-14
You have heard about bloggers but watch out for “Cloggers” What’s that? Cambodian bloggers, that’s what it is.
For a country struggling to get out of poverty, Cambodia’s 144 million population is pretty well wired up to cyberspace with one-in-ten persons connected to the Internet. This is their window to the world.
Many get into blogosphere to make a statement. Three years ago, Hor Virak who lived in the capital city of Phnom Penh, started riding his scooter all over the place clicking away on his digital camera and later uploading them on his blog. Hor makes statements with his photos on his blog. He wants to share his world with anyone who bothers to click.
Soon he began to acquire virtual friends.
For Hor Virak and his fellow cloggers, despite the low connectivity, clogging has also become a state of mind apart from just making statements.
To encourage more cloggers, Be Chantra spoke, started offering courses to young people to create their blogs. He established a non-profit organization, ‘open college’ with two friends in 2003.
In a little help from Microsoft and some other US groups, the ‘opne college’ have managed to train about two thousand young people to set-up and manage their blogs.
“Strictly speaking, we failed,” Be Chantra said. The reason is only less than one in twenty are able to create their blogs after finished the course.
Despite that, there are about a thousand Cambodia youngsters with blogs or clogs, most of them are student. If online fees can be lower net speed made faster, life would be better for cloggers. Be Chantra believes in the future, they will have more cloggers.
(Translated by ALICE TAN/ MySinchew)
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