I have been very negligent with the updating of DS NETS. For those who may not know, DS NETS is my first website, where I post daily news abstracts, so that I can engage in reading and writing activity at a regular basis. The website launched on 2004, and it is my largest writing repository. I have been doing this activity for a couple of years, and it improved my writing skills over time, while improving my knowledge of international affairs.

However, 2007 has been a very sloppy year in maintenance and care. News Abstracts were not posted on a daily basis, and the website's structure was left in shambles. It was a mess, because largely I was quite busy in my real life. I was also a little lost in deciding which direction the website should take. I could continue writing news abstracts, but this type of content is not attractive for web visitors to read. There are plenty of other news websites on the web.

So, I meditated on this matter for a few days. Many in my position might have scrapped the website and moved on, and I was seriously considering that option. But I decided to reexamine the purpose of DS NETS. Why am I maintaining this web writing repository? After several considerations, I sketched a new design and direction in my head and got back to work.

I have decided to add a weekly column at DS NETS. Every week I will be posting an essay of my reflection of the news and events that caught my interest during the week. I am not aiming to make DS NETS another World News Blog but try a news analysis approach that hits the middle ground between news reporting and writing editorial. For my personal benefit, it would engage me to understand the issue beyond what is being reported on the news. It would be a mixture of revisiting the week’s news and thinking about the events that surround the issue, and writing it in a refined manner. In theory, this is an ambitious personal project and relatively time intensive compared to simply writing news abstracts, but I think this would be an interesting new route for DS NETS.

There will be a trial period for the new content idea, and news abstracts posting will be reduced from the ambitious seven to four a week. At the end of January, I will reevaluate whether this new idea worked or not. Everything is uncertain, but at least the new website design is better than the previous one.

I hope you will have a happy New Year celebration!