I know I should be amazingly cool and pretend that it didn't give me a total thrill to meet Google's Krishna Bharat, but that would be a lie. Meeting Krishna and chatting with him will definitely be one of the high points of the trip (another might be sitting cross-legged in the Korean Folk Village eating kim chee and ribs with Rich Skrenta and his wife--nothing like travelling 6,000 miles to dine with your neighbor from California).
Anyway, Bharat is smart, refreshingly low-key and very passionate about Google News and the service's committment to provide multiple viewpoints on an event via story clusters.

Chatting, Skrenta asked Bharat if they had any plans to index more video. Bharat said no, but pointed out that Google News is indexing some podcasts (?)--or at least the text transcripts that link to podcasts (think NPR). Currently based in Bangalore, Bharat still oversees Google News, but has also been hiring for a small Google engineering office in Bangalore.

My very short visit to Korea so far has been limited to an elite downtown area, so these perceptions are squewed--but still, some thoughts about Korea--and Seoul in particular, with the acknowledge they are just impressions:

• This country is dedicated to become an economic success and enconomic global power
• The government sees education, technology innovation, knowledge work and manufacturing as keys to that
• Working out issues with North Korea is key to success
• So is making sure every child learns English--yesterday's newspaper said they are going to triple the number of English teachers--and add a native-speaking English teacher to every middle school--in the next few years
• Korea is a very formal country, fond of pomp and hierarchy
• Women are in a challenging position--haven't seen many executive women this trip, though amazingly smart women in the more helping professions--marketing, service industries, event planning--abound
• Urban, affluent Koreans are more comfortable with technology than Americans--but it's not clear to me how average they are--or what the average worker enjoys and thinks
• It's a country I can learn from--I hope to have a chance to return and spend more time here

Okay, just kidding. JD's announced he's going to be the Executive Director of Ourmedia.org, whichs sounds like almost as big a committment.

MacManus: "Search 4 RSS is a neat RSS search engine with some great add-ons. It features a directory of 125,000 RSS feeds, including ability to rate feeds. It also has an in-built web-based Aggregator and a Podcasting Player. "

I posted yesterday about digital media sessions of the World Editor's Forum, and commented at length about talks by Dan Gillmor, Joi Ito, Barry Sussman and Krishna Bharat, but I also took a bunch of pictures. A couple are posted below--the full slew are over here at flickr.

Bonus: GREAT pictures by Robb Montgomery of Chicago Sun-Times and Visualeditors.com of Seoul and the conference are here.

Here's a couple shots:

Gillmor, Skrenta, Bharat, Nachison line up for a mug shot at WEF, Seoul
Joi and Dan take questions
WEF's John Burke and editor(and future blogger)Hakeen Bello of Nigeria.

Steve Gillmor's got an attention-worthy post this week over at Inforouter. Not only does Steve come clean on some of the stresses of the last 6 months and then some, he gets into a discussion of the line between the personal and the technological that, while unique to the tech community, will sound awfully familiar to anyone trying to exhort others to get something done (especially outside of a boss/subordinate framework). He writes: "In recent weeks I?ve watched myself, almost from an out-of-body perspective, reach out and challenge the notion of my most valuable professional relationships" and goes on to discuss some of the public tussles, with Adam Bosworth and others, over attention.xml.
He says "I don't pretend to have all the answers about how to navigate in what I believe is a fuindamentally altered world of discovery, innovation, and relationships. The forces unleashed by blogging, podcasting, and RSS in general have torn down the Berlin Wall between ideas and implementation, with best practices lying in shambles on the newly tilled ground"--
and that's the part that gets my attention--
We are in a marketplace of ideas, they are coming fromn everyone, and many have value--
Steve's post speaks to me because it's honest and clear--but also questioning how to get the world to move forward on a technology concept he cares a great deal about.

It's 8:15 am on Monday in California, and 12:17 am Tuesday here in Seoul.
In the past 36 hours, I have started to see a bit of Seoul, an interesting new city, and have met dozens of people from all over the world: Egypt, Cameroon, Mali, Jordan, Finland, Germany, Italy, Nigeria, China, France, India, the UK and Korea.
I met and talked with Krishna Bharat, creator of Google News, and helped two people start blogs (hope to help a whole bunch more!).
I've told 5 people about Skype, and three about Feedster, Technorati, PubSub and Blogdigger.
Planning for Shanghai and now Beijing is almost complete--just have to work out hotel and tickets for the new leg of the trip.
Attending a global conference is wonderful; I'll post some pictures and share impressions of where the attendees are re social media tomorrow am.

Peterme: "Snapfish, Ofoto, and Shutterfly have been playing a sucker's game, trying to generate revenue from prints of digital images."
CNN: Yahoo! sued over woman's nude photos, profile. (Via Corante)
Hollywood Reporter on ABC's plans to cover the Indy 500: "ABC Sports will deploy more than 70 broadcast cameras around the 2.5-mile track, including a camera on the same type of 87-foot Strada crane used to film 1997's "Titanic," 15 robotic cameras to cover the action on the track and in the pits and up to 36 wireless cameras on board 12 different cars." (Via Parekh and Bergman)

and

Sally Falkow: "We had a number of clients interested in RSS feeds this week--a visitor and convention center, a major software company, a national park."
Jane Genova on the 'I'd rather be blogging syndrome': "... it takes a recovering sufferer of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and, yes, Zoloft does the trick for moi in taming this disorder) to recognize how seductive grassroots media is. Both producing it and consuming it.

Posting at the editorsweblog.org and morph--more here--including pictures--later.

WEF weblog, round-up on news and mobile:

Park Chang-hee, General Manager of JoongAng Ilbo Strategic Planning: "...The demand for newspaper journalism will always exist but newspapers themselves need to be open to new technologies."
Torry Pedersen, Online Editorial Director at VG Norway: "Mobile is replacing the internet as the medium of choice not only in receiving news, but in reporting it."
Frode Ugland, Business Development, Mobile Operations, Telenor:" Younger generations are rarely paying for newspapers, but that they are used to paying for content through their mobile phone bill."
Jim Chisholm, Future of the Newspaper.com: "Mobile technology provides the perfect medium for newspapers to expand their reach and increase revenue." (Good examples, here).

Bonus links(tangentially related):

Overture, aka Yahoo Search Services, to provide paid-search for Yahoo's WAP portal--how about local mobile search? (Via Mobile Technology Weblog)
Reuters reports that consultancy TMNG Marketing's latest study says 13-24 year olds are most interested (read likely to pay for) commercial-free radio over mobile phones and the ability to download music to phones. But you knew that, right? (Via The Feature)

Dan Gillmor's posted the speech he is giving later today at the World Editor's Forum in Seoul (hey , it's 6am, Monday,here in Korea).
some points from the whole:

And just as we should listen to the voices from the edges of networks, the citizen journalists -- people who are doing journalistic work -- would do well to listen to the people who do it for a living. We professionals aren't perfect, far from it, but we have learned a useful technique or two in the past century of this trade."

Gillmor goes on to flag thoroughness, accuracy, fairness and transparency as key skills to value--and teach, and to conclude:
"Citizen journalists are not the enemies of professional journalists, though they will make us furious from time to time, especially when they criticize what we do. They are part of an emergent ecosystem."

Bonus: Speaking about his new citizen journalism site, Bayosphere, Gillmor says "I will be a host, not the editor."

More on this later today.

Seoul: Walked through the COEX mall, a popular underground mall loaded with shops, eateries, an acquarium, and lots of people strolling on Sunday aftermoon. Took some shots reflecting how technology seems a natural part of everything--posting as well on Flickr.

Huge movie megaplex, jammed with folks

HP display, a place to hang out and meet friends

Reminds me of Minority Report

People wait to use the computer area inside MacDonald's

In the middle of the mall, a 15X 15 foor booth where people can play Warcraft on big screens--it's jammed with teen boys, of course

According to a recent Guardian story , Bob Pittman-owned fashion/lifestyle newsletter Daily Candy's just hired Kinvara Balfour, an aristocratic former Daily Telegraph Saturday magazine style editor, to launch a London edition.
While the Guardian author seems to think style and shopping email epistles are the next lucrative frontier, it's not clear what kind of bucks these businesses are bringing in--on the other hand, it's relatively inexpensive to jump in, even if the market is crowded (viz slny, flavorpill, dazed and confused, and urban junkies, all ny or london focused.)

Susan sez (kinda a side note): Besides, it's also not clear why anyone would prefer these babies to highly focused and super-creative resources such as Manolos Shoe Blog, The Bag Lady, Cool Hunting, Tree Hugger and many other great product blogs.

Flew to Seoul last night and found myself wishing United could be more like affiliate airline Asiana.
Let's see, the seats were farther apart, the blankets and pillows were better, the airplane was more spacious and I ended up sleeping for most of the night--which didn't happen the last time I braved a redeye in the US.
Also appreciated the Korean dinner of small protein and lots of veggies, the stretching exercises on the video, and the 'hey-it's-morning' birthday party and magic show the crew conducted for passengers--which somehow led to a gaggle of little kids clutching flowers made out of balloons and adults holding gift bottles of wine.
At first glance, Seoul looks like LA, New York, and a bit of Honolulu--high rise sprawl, tropical foliage(okay, NY doesn't have that) and lots o people (thought it's pretty quiet at 6 am on Sunday, which is when I rolled in.)
Heading over to the conference in a couple of hours after a quick nap...I want to go explore right now, but my eyes are crossing.

Former MSNBC.com honcho Merrill Brown, author of the recent Carnegie Report on the future of news, will play a key role in the rollout of the Carnegie/Knight effort to improve journalism education--and hopefully news presentation and production--as an outgrowth of that initiative.

Brown will become the national director of News 21, aka News for the 21st Century, a significant piece of the effort specifically focused on what he describes as "coordinating efforts at four of the universities to produce important journalism, creating new ways to deliver and present it and launching an Internet site to serve as the platform for the project."

• Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University
• Orville Schell, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley
• Loren Ghiglione, dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University
• Geoffrey Cowan, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California
• Alex S. Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University

For a client, I'd like to hear from WordPress developers who have done larger scale and multiple user implementations. West side of the contry (US and Canada preferred), but location isn't crucial. Please email me or leave in comments.
Thanks.

Next post will be from Korea--unless it's from the airport.
Everything is arranged and now it's time for a very long plane ride.

Peter Caputa's got a post about RSS and internet advertising that does a good job arguing the point that RSS is empowering new ad models--but he misses the point that Matt McAllister and I are talking about content/information, not advertising, and that RSS can disintermediate content just as surely as search did/does.
Peter says "The very definition of online advertising may be that it is always being intermediated. Until, of course, it is all pay per action."
--And he offers examples of cool API s that can be tweaked and bundled together into new tools and services, all great stuff.

But Pete--for big publishers-this ain't about advertising.
It's about companies that care about metrics like number of subscriber and number of newsstand sales having to rethink everything--from what they're willing to publish on their web site to the fact that putting up articles on their web site just isn't enough anymore--now they need to distribute via RSS and onto multiple platforms AND have new revenue models AND figure out where their audience is going--and meet them there (Xbox, anyone?) --and they are going "Wow, so fast!"

And it's not that these guys don't get it--they do--but think of them as the big Hummers tooling along the roadway, and the emerging tech/social media publishers of the world as the bicycles gliding along.

If RSS is a traffic jam, who gets through first?
And how do those guys in the Hummers cope with that? (We already know how the cyclists are doing.)

Matt McAllister, InfoWorld: "The day InfoWorld's top news RSS feed received more requests than our home page, I started thinking a frightening thought - RSS is doing to the Web today what the Web has been doing to print for the last several years. We have disintermediated our Web site by offering our news in an easier to access format...again."
(Via Cyberjournalist)

How true is that--
(And further, as mobile search comes in, watch for the next generation of publisher disintermediation.)

Calcanis reports that WeblogsInc is pulling $2K a day in Google AdSense revenue.
While this may drive the blogophere wild, imagine what the revenue at NYTimes/ About, one of Google's largest partners, looks like.
Anyone want to do the math?

(I need more coffee.)

On the other hand, look at the margins--Calcanis has gotta be wnning on that.

Always On:57% of the merchants in a recent study by IRNewsLink reports that e-mail marketing accounts for less than 10% of their online sales.
Contentious: Women in podcasting list--over 100 shows.
Bloggerati: West Coast leads in blog readers--but 30% of all Americans say they've read blogs.
Knight (and others): Major new journalism reform initiative to launch. (I would love to help work on this.)

McKinsey: Improving the education of tomorrow's journalists--the report that started the new initiative.

Editor and Publisher reports that former MSNBC.com editor in chief Dean Wright is joining Reuters as senior vice president and managing editor for consumer services leading editorial operations and programming for the company's consumer media services, including the online, mobile, and interactive television platforms.
Dean's a super-talented guy, and this is a smart hire.
Let's see, that makes three executive departures in three months, right?
And two cross-country moves?

Congrats, Dean.

Trust Russ to think different (and be relevant) : "What if I just wanted my blog published to a community of people who felt that they liked what I was saying enough to add it to their aggregators and see it daily? Well, I could have a page that just said "Welcome to Russell's RSS Blog." and underneath there was an orange XML icon and that's it."
(Thanks, Richard)

NYTimes yesterday had a story about the resignation of David Levy, President of Washington, DC's Corcoran Gallery of Art in a tussle over funding for a planned expansion.
Apparently, $30 million of the money was to come from AOL exec and concrete and stainless steel kitchen connoisseur Barry Schuler and his uber-colleague AOL honcho Bob Pittman, but after AOL stock plummeted, the museum received only $13 million of the pledges, resulting in a shortfall to their building fund.

Yes, I just installed Skype, bought a $20 microphone/headset, plugged it and and started chatting with a friend in New Zealand.
It is cool.
So Skype me...the headset is now travelling to China/Korea with me...fun.

P.S. You don't know what Skype is? Think VOIP (voice over IP) system that allows you to make calls over the Internet--free. And it works. And it's easy.

So, Skype me, come on.

Umair's got a fulsome post on how RSS doesn't take advantage of web apps--and soon it wll be fullof ads.
While I've drunk the Kool-aid deep, he's got some good points--viz:

"RSS is disintermediating the www - no kidding - of course it is. The question is, why do consumers find this useful? ...After all, RSS erases the utility consumers might derive from html, javascript, etc. I know a lot of you will disagree with me, but I think the reason is that RSS basically very efficiently destroys crappy and ever-nastier web tracking and ads."

And how about those licensing issues when any news aggregator can insert ads in their own bundles' feed assortments, but the publishers don't profit?
Yep, things are going to get interesting, as always.

Jeneane on the neighbors' new dog: "In our old pig-owning neighbor's back yard is the kind of high-strung, purposeless animal you know is destined to die by its own hand."

I just got my Chinese visa at the consulate in San Francisco--got a parking spot right outside, how lucky is that?
Blogging in the Canvas Gallery, waiting for some meetings to start.

I leave for Korea and the WEF in two days.
Come take part virtually in the discussions--The Editor's Weblog will offer live blogging of the conference during the digital media part of the program ( here).
Live reports will be posted every 20 minutes from the sessions of the 12th World Editors Forum dedicated to citizen media on 30 and 31 May 2005 (6 journalists and moderators participating to the BlogConf), and there will be open comments and a chance for virtual visitors to log in and post.

If you are a blogger or journalist and would like a log in, please email John Burke at Editor's Weblog.

Julie: "I'm setting a pattern of assigning blame to someone else. First it was Doc's fault I burned the soup. Then it's due to Dave that I didn't make lunch on time yesterday. Next I should blame our architect for designing a desk in my kitchen so that I developed the habit of checking aggregators while preparing meals."

Julie's humorous post turns into a perceptive riff on Lawrence Lessig's disclosure of child abuse (courageous man) and how pain and wanting to right wrongs can "connect us together," as Julie says.

A beautiful and meaningful piece, inspired by a hero.

Problem solved, we hope: The Ventura County Star, one of the country's more innovative local web sites (okay, newspaper based-web site) removed comments from articles and blog posts a few days ago, due to out of control flaming and hate speak.
As of today, comments are reinstated, with a new policy that says:"All comments are routed through our online registration system. A script attaches the registered name to the comment. It also allows us to identify the email address that was used in registration. (And thanks to our friends at our sister newspaper Naples Daily News for doing this for us.)

That allows us to contact via email anyone who files objectionable comments. If they persist, we can block their registration in addition to blocking their IP address."

There's more, but this is a great example of addressing a problem and moving on.
And of having the courage of your convictions.
And convictions, period.

Tom Foremski visits Manhattan and walks, uh, tall: "As a semi-famous blogger journalist with a burn rate that could lead to flame-out, I sometimes enjoy playing the part of what I'd like to be: a successful micro-media mogul. The poorer I get, the more affluent I like to appear. If I look like a million bucks, I probably could do with a million bucks."

Also reading John Hagel III and John Seely Brown's The Only Sustainable Edge, Why Business Strategy Depends on Productive Friction and Dynamic Specialization. This Harvard Business School book focuses on the need for companies to develop outsourcing capabilities--not just to save money--but as a means of focusing their organizations and working with other groups as equally focused.
The implications for American workers trouble me, but the authors' read on economic theory and marketplace dynamics seems impeccable. And there are some rockin' biz-speak type quotes, such as this one:
"...We propose that accelerated capability building is the most powerful source of strategic advantage in a global economy characterized by intensifying competition. In fact, accelerated capability building across boundaries is now the only sustainable edge."

(Thanks to Ross Mayfield for sending this book)

Kevin Smokler's about to publish Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times.
I snagged an advance copy of this anthology about writers, reading, blogging and life and had a wonderful time reading the essays.
Found some favorite writers ( Nicola Griffith, for example, as well as some interesting bloggers- Liz Spiers, for example.)
He's got a Virtual Book tour going with info here.

NYTimes: "...the Internet is beginning to play the watchdog role in China that the press plays in the West. The Internet is also eroding the leadership's monopoly on information and is complicating the traditional policy of "nei jin wai song" - cracking down at home while pretending to foreigners to be wide open....I think the Internet is hastening China along the same path that South Korea, Chile and especially Taiwan pioneered. In each place, a booming economy nurtured a middle class, rising education, increased international contact and a growing squeamishness about torturing dissidents."

4 million Chinese blogs? That's what the man says.

Kristoff mentions yuluncn.com/ and portal Sohu...but will a Chinese Chris Nolan emerge?
(For some good links to Chinese bloggers writing in English, see Global Voices , Fons Tunistra, Kevin Wen, Isaac Mao and others. )
Update: Measured commentary on the Kristoff essay by danwei's Jeremy Goldkorn.

Yahoo's got an easy to follow new site explaining RSS--and providing your feeds to Yahoo--for publishers, bloggers, and other content folk.
This amazingly useful little guide walks through what is RSS, how to make money with Yahoo's publisher network, tracking data, etc.
The whole site is so bright, clear and persuasive it's easy to imagine a publisher saying "Yeah, why not" and signing up.

Good service, great sales job, folks.

(Via Robin Good)

Jason Shellen writes: "I don't blog much these days because I'm extremely busy working on a new initiative at Google and while I might feel that I have something to add to the conversation, I am not a full time communications, marketing or PR professional. I'm certainly not afraid of or restricted from blogging. At the end of the day there are products to manage, calls to make, meetings to attend, and on top of that a growing family at home."

Jason's post is cool because he sees himself as part of a networked, blogging community, as well as as a Google-ite.
He recognizes others look for his voice and is taking the time to explain what's up.

How many journalists, editors, or marketers focused on similar consumer audiences have this direct a relationship with their community?

This is what the new transparency is about--clear, two-way communication.

Merlin Mann's advice on how to attack those tasks you put off:

1. Print out your TODO list (alphabetically, if possible)
2. Read it over?beginning to end
3. Go back and circle each item that makes you cringe, or that causes you some kind of existential angst
4. Per cringe item, think honestly about why you?re freaked out about it. Seriously. What?s the hang-up? (Fear of failure? Dreading bad news? Angry you?re already way overdue?)
5. Now, again, per cringe item, add a new TODO that will a) make the loathsome task less cringe-worthy, or b) just get the damned thing done
6. Cross the original cringe items off your list

Susan sez: I have two sets of detailed to-do lists I update about twice a week--one is for personal items, the other work-related. Inspired by David Allen, I try to make each item into an actionable task and keep the top priorities at--yep, you guessed it--the top of the page.

Paul Kedrosky on jargonwatch (and digerati/RSS): "People need to learn to measure their audiences and deliver their dollops accordingly."
Smart Mobs: " Roadcasting allows anyone to have their own radio station, broadcasted among cars in an ad-hoc network within a 30-mile radius. It plays the songs that people want to hear and transforms car radio into an interactive medium."
Gaping Void: ' The London Geek Dinner that Robert Scoble and I have organised on June 7th has topped 125 people."

Update: Caterina's moving to California...(with flickr and Stuart, of course.)

Went to San Francisco this afternoon with my friend Deb.
She's a massage therapist, originally from the country up in Oregon and doesn't know the city well.
Before our play (matinee), I took her to the Ferry Building to see the Farmers' Market and get some lunch.
It was a beautiful clear day, not a cloud in the sky, and we took our take out from The Slanted Door outside and ate as we sat on a bench:
Grilled lemongrass chicken sandwich
Fresh shrimp and pork spring rolls
Ginger tapioca with strawberries
A few yards away, some Chinese musicians played as droves of people walked by.
What a beautiful day!
And one of my favorite places in the city.

Now, back in Palo Alto and post walking the dog, I'm cooking Sunday dinner again, this time for a different friend:
Curried chicken with tomatoes, garlic, ginger
Saffron rice
Carrot and potato sambar/stew (courtesy of Trader Joe's)
For dessert, carrot-red apricot/plums from the Farmer's Market

Nice to finally feel comfortable in the new kitchen.

Tom Biro's updated his newspapers with RSS feeds list.

Paul Kedrosky's got a classic list of screwed up behaviors he's witnessed--a couple here--

• People that cannot stop th