By JINTANA PANYAARVUDH, KORNCHANOK RAKSASERI, PISAPAT YOUKONGPUN

And whoever has the latest virtual weapons gets the upper hand.

Thaksin Shinawatra, our on-the-run former premier, has shown his savvy in telecommunications by leaping from phone-ins and video link-ups to Twitter and Facebook, vastly expanding his presence online and on television.

On the other side of the political coin, the Democrat Party's Korbsak Sabhavasu is becoming a worthy challenger in cyber warfare.

Deputy Prime Minister Korbsak, Finance Minister Korn Jatikavanich, PM's Office Minister Sathit Wongnongtoey and Premier Abhisit Vejjajiva have been dubbed "the Internet Gang" thanks to their clever use of the Web.

Korbsak launched Korbsak.com when he was first running for office in Bangkok in 2005, and then made it his base of operations for investigating irregularities in Thaksin government dealings.

The site was getting close to 200,000 hits a day three years ago after Thaksin sold Bt73 billion worth of Shin Corp shares to Singapore's Temasek.

Korbsak is also an active blogger on OKNation.net and confesses his addiction to micro-blogging on Twitter. Lately he's been sharing anecdotes about Rakesh Saxena, the accused financial rogue, who he visited in Vancouver almost 13 years ago.

Timely postings like this and other eminently readable blog essays like "The Charming Baht" and "1-2-3 GO (3G)" - and the fact that he's never without his two mobile phones, iPhone, Blackberry and iPod - keep Korbsak, at 60, at the top of the gadget game.

It's certainly not all about chatting up the public. Korbsak uses his devices to keep in steady touch with state officials, especially when he urgently needs specific documents. They'll be e-mailed via the BB or iPhone.

"Executives can work faster if they don't rely on hard copies," he says, but he's less than impressed with "some top officials" who dump their e-mail duties on their secretaries. Last month he wanted to put an urgent motion about the price of tapioca before the Cabinet, but had to cyber-prod the Commerce Ministry to e-mail him the pertinent information on time.

Korbsak prefers his iPhone to the BB, saying it's more convenient and can sync with his MacBook, and he loves to chat using the phone's Ping program. He uses BB for e-mail and confidential matters.

The monthly bill for all of this is around Bt2,000, but for that price he never misses a thing - even though he's reading newspapers less these days. Daily browsings of The Economist and Bloomberg News have been muscled aside in his schedule by Twitter, which Korbsak adores for bringing people closer.

"If you follow someone long enough," he says, referring to following a Twitter user's posts through free subscription, "you get to know what kind of person he is and what he's interested in."

"Facebook is too personal, and I'm uncomfortable when hundreds of people ask me to add them as friends."

Divorced and with two sons old enough to take care of themselves, Korbsak has time to share his thoughts online, particularly on weekends when he sets aside three hours to write a blog post.

Blogging and tweeting's biggest benefit, he says, "is it makes me stand by what I've said".

"Every good politician should have his or her own blog and stand by what they say."

Journalists, of course, have reason to worry when politicians and showbiz celebrities use Twitter or have their own blogs, he says, because "the newsmaker is making his own news".

How does this IT fanatic rate other recent trends?

Notebook computers, he believes, are doomed to extinction.

And as to the mobile phone, Korbsak notes, people used to think that the smaller the better.

Now they're reconsidering because they want more functions, beyond just making calls.

Mobile users now rely on SMS more than voice service because you can text whenever you want, he says. He only uses his mobile as a phone when he calls his girlfriend, who manages his resort in Mae Hong Son.

"Who doesn't want to hear his girlfriend's voice?" he smiles.

The downside of the mobile's convenience is a decline in good manners, especially among teenagers, Korbsak says.

"When you take young people out to dinner they create their own personal worlds - they just keep texting messages and pay no attention to anyone at the table!"