At breakfast today, I talked with online gaming search engine Wazap! president of US operations Thom Kozik, about his history in the Web 2.0 world and the future of the company of which he is a part of.

The conversation turned to the intriguing end of "off the shelf" software systems and the beginning--already long in operation--of the viral spread of applications and the integration of personalized software.
Read more »

Just a little while ago, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, announced that Google Maps now shows photographic Street Views to people searching street addresses in the US. Soon to be worldwide.

And how are they going to do that? I don't know....
Read more »

I like business trips. Lots of coffee and sitting in the hotel room. Great view and an open laptop.

Thought's after round three of the seminar. I skipped round two and took a nap.

From the Korean perspective, it seems that analysts and influential newsies are not sure that Korean blogging is going to affect the upcoming Korean presidential elections.

Just finished listening to a speech by Oh Yeon-ho, founder of citizen journalism in Korea and founder of OhMyNews.

He started off by introducing one of Time's People of the Year, Kim Hye Won, and he seemed at first very optimistic about the role of citizen journalism in the upcoming elections, but his message of hope and optimism became rather tempered by his call for four things that bloggers and citizen journalists need to address in order to be compelling creators of engaging content.

The four things that bloggers need, he said, are:

1. credibility
2. sustainability
3. influence
4. responsibility

My take on it was that it is no longer compelling (or has it been?) for a political message or an activist message on a blog to be just the message itself. As another participant at the forum, David Winston, said, the message being brought to the influential audience really needs to be a "branded" story. It has to be something that sticks.

For a while, in Korean politics (and I lay no claim to expert knowledge about Korea), the fact that a message was broadcast outside the walls of traditional media, meant that for a moment, liberals and progressives had a distinct advantage over conservatives. Another participant, Lew Seok-jin, a professor of political science at Sogang University, said that this web presence contributed to the progressive wins in the last two presidential elections in Korea.

But now, conservatives are beginning to join the web frenzy. Because both sides of the coin are being represented, it won't be enough to just have a message out there. Something that gets viewed 500,000 times does not necessarily mean that it is also a convincing and instructive argument or message.

It seems like Koreans are saying that they are entering an age where Korean blogging must have a responsible message and a real, "branded" identity.

As Oh said: "If UCC [user created content] is to have influence, it must hold certain
values."

ps. Just remembered the takeout idea from Mr. Winston's speech. He said that if political parties want a strong message, the best way to sell it is not by crafting a tight script, but by ensuring that it's something someone would want to download to their iPod.

I don't think I am the only blogger at the Seoul Digital Forum, because there are a lot of laptops around here and it is a digital forum after all.

There is Witty, to name one.

Anyway. I drank some coffee and headed to the first seminar of the forum, a somewhat normal and average: Korea--US Free Trade Agreement and its Impact on Media.

You pretty much had the foreigners on one side saying that FTA would not really impact any traditional media in Korea and the Korean government people, lobbyists and an activist saying that Korea is under threat from domination by US media.
Read more »

Updated post:

After looking into this in more detail I realize two things that need amplification:

1. Tela suggested Oiwan Lam get the Tribunal to screen the picture before publishing. This costs HK$1,200 each time. The interesting thing to me here is that the Government is telling Lam it sets the agenda and that Lam has to instill the Government's values into her creative process before she makes her own decisions. Big problem when a non-elected Government tells a citizen to do this. It's called fascism!
Read more »

 

rion
Level: