Mother in tearful plea for Vietnam blogger's release

The mother of a blogger detained in Vietnam made a tearful plea Monday for her daughter's release after two other online writers were freed.

"Help us to get her free!" Nguyen Thi Tuyet Lan told Agence France-Presse in a tearful telephone conversation from the southern coastal city of Nha Trang, where her daughter Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, 30, has been held since Wednesday.

Quynh blogged under the name "Me Nam".

"My daughter is still detained until now. I tried to visit her this morning but the police prevented me," she said.

Quynh had written about the sensitive topic of Vietnam-China relations, her mother said.

She had blogged about a controversial bauxite mining project in the Central Highlands and also about two South China Sea archipelagos, the Paracels and Spratleys, her mother said.

The bauxite project triggered a rare public outcry, partly over security concerns because a Chinese company has been granted a major contract there.

Vietnam and China, both ideologically communist, are engaged in a boundary dispute over the Paracels and Spratleys.

Quynh's mother said that on July 20 her daughter also wore a tee shirt calling for the cancellation of the bauxite project and announcing Vietnamese sovereignty over the archipelagos.

She was accused of abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the state, a crime which can lead to a prison term, her mother said.

A foreign diplomat, who asked not to be named, said Quynh had gone "a step further" than blogging by attempting to produce more of the tee shirts with two other online writers arrested in late August.

One of them, Bui Thanh Hieu, 37, told AFP he was released on Saturday. Hieu blogs under the name Nguoi Buon Gio (Wind Trader), and had written about the maritime dispute as well as the mining project.

The third person recently arrested, Pham Doan Trang, a journalist for prominent news website VietnamNet, has also been released, a diplomatic source said.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) had called for the immediate release of Hieu and Trang.

Post Twitter status via SMS - the right way

Last year around September, Globe Telecoms launched their Twitter service in the Philippines as response to Twitter's blocking of their UK number from sending updates to people outside of the United States, Canada or India.

The thing is, the Globe Twitter service costs Php2.5o per text message sent or received. You get the first three personal updates for free, then 2.50 after that. You can imagine how expensive this can add up to at the end of the day.

With the coming of the iPhone and other Wi-Fi enabled phones to us, posting updates over Twitter Mobile became more popular. Rather than going through SMS, people simply log onto the Web service and do their micro-blogging from there. Or they might get Twitter apps that work on their phones/smartphones.

But what about the rest of us without Wi-Fi phones or smartphones? Well, there's recently been good buzz about a service called "I Speak over Internet Protocol". It's not actually a protocol, just some marketing gimmick I guess? But the point is that registering with them will enable you to send updates via SMS to Twitter for P1.00 per update, or at no additional cost if you're on the Unlimited Text offering of your carrier.

Here's how it works.

You register with Isip.ph. Then they ask you for your Twitter username and password. Then they give you a mobile number that you can send your updates to. And voila. You get to update your Twitter status via SMS.

What happens behind this is that when you register and give Isip.ph your Twitter username and password, they will post the messages you send them via the number they gave you. You text your update to Isip.ph, they read the message, then copy that message to your Twitter status.

Technically, it's a workaround. I don't see how this won't work though. It's a great service since Isip.ph doesn't actually charge you for this. If you get charged, it's done by your carrier (Smart, Globe, Sun Cellular).

One shortcoming though is that you still don't get SMS updates from Twitter via Isip.ph. I guess you really need to go with Globe for that. I'll post about this other Globe offer later, if I can.