Tonight we will host the third Shanghai Tweet up. Twitter is banned in China, but within the last 15 hours more than 20 people have said they will attend. (I contacted former attendees by email and others via Twitter. I will poll tonight to see how many pure Twitter attendees turn up.)

As with the other Tweet-ups I have done in KL, Singapore, Beijing, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Istanbul a great group of people turned up. Many of them some of the leading experts in Social Media.

Due to my limited Mandarin, however, most are English speaking.

Who would you add to this list of Social Media experts in Shanghai?

Isaac Mao (First major blogger in China, now a social media researcher)
Blog: Blog
Twitter: Twitter

Patrick Searle (Business Development Manager, CIC Data)
Twitter: Twitter
CIC Blog: CIC Blog

Joseph Dembs (Research analyst at EnoVate. Dealing mostly with youth culture)
LinkedIn: LinkedIn
Twitter: Twitter
Blog: Blog

Fredrik Balfour (Asia correspondent, Business Week)
LinkedIn: LinkedIn
Twitter: Twitter

Sage Brennan (Organizer at TEDx Shanghai)
LinkedIn: LinkedIn
Twitter: Twitter
FriendFeed. FriendFeed

Mark Evans

Amy Zheng (Sales Executive at AFP)
LinkedIn

Charlie McElwee
Blog: Twitter
Twitter: Twitter

Rich Brubaker (Writes the blog “All Roads Lead to China”. ) Twitter bio: Serial Socialpreneur in China
Twitter: Twitter
Blog: Blog
LinkedIn: LinkedIn

John Guise (China Editor, China Economic Review)

Kenneth Tan (Former Editor of Shanghaiist.com, now Strategist at Gays.com)
LinkedIn: LinkedIn
Shanghaiist: Shanghaiist
Blog: Blog
Twitter: Blog

Michael Darragh (Digital Strategic Planner at Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide)
World Expo Blog: Blog
Twitter: Twitter
LinkedIn: LinkedIn

Her’s is not a simplistic ant-Internet screed, but a reflection about the deeper meaning of important trends. I don’t agree with it all, but well worth a read!

The Internet is reshaping culture, politics and society to…

• Fragmenting news articles, novels and record albums
• Emphasizing immediacy and real-time responses
• Increasing the flood of data and information permeating our lives
• Blogging and partisan political Web sites are putting pressure on subjectivity

…accelerate many trends…

• The blurring of news and entertainment
• A growing polarization in national politics
• A deconstructionist view of literature (which emphasizes a critic’s or reader’s interpretation of a text, rather than the text’s actual content)
• The prominence of postmodernism in the form of mash-ups and bricolage
• A growing cultural relativism that has been advanced on the left by multiculturalists and radical feminists, who argue that history is an adjunct of identity politics, and on the right by creationists and climate-change denialists, who suggest that science is an instrument of leftist ideologues.

…that trouble even technologists (in at least 5 ways):
You Are Not A Gadget: Jaron Lanier, 49, a Silicon Valley veteran and a virtual reality pioneer
True Enough: Farhad Manjoo, 31, Slate’s technology columnist
Cult of the Amateur: Andrew Keen, a technology entrepreneur
Carl Sunstein, 55, a Harvard Law School professor who now heads the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and has written several books on the topic
Steven Johnson, founder of online magazine Feed, writing in The Wall Street Journal

1- Anecdotes trump evidence and analysis
More people are impatient to cut to the chase, and they’re increasingly willing to take the imperfect but immediately available product over a more thoughtfully analyzed, carefully created one. Instead of reading an entire news article, watching an entire television show or listening to an entire speech, growing numbers of people are happy to jump to the summary, the video clip, the sound bite — never mind if context and nuance are lost in the process; never mind if it’s our emotions, more than our sense of reason, that are engaged; never mind if statements haven’t been properly vetted and sourced.
Online research enables scholars to power-search for nuggets of information that might support their theses, saving them the time of wading through stacks of material that might prove marginal but that might have also prompted them to reconsider or refine their original thinking.

2- The rise of “Water Cooler Culture”
With millions of people sending each other (via e-mail, text messages, tweets, YouTube links) gossip, rumors and the sort of amusing-entertaining-weird anecdotes and photographs they might once have shared with pals over a coffee break. And in an effort to collect valuable eyeballs and clicks, media outlets are increasingly pandering to that impulse — often at the expense of hard news. “I have the theory that news is now driven not by editors who know anything,” the comedian and commentator Bill Maher recently observed. “I think it’s driven by people who are” slacking off at work and “surfing the Internet.” He added, “It’s like a country run by ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos.’ ”

3- Cyberbalkanization
Individuals can design feeds and alerts from their favorite Web sites so that they get only the news they want, and with more and more opinion sites and specialized sites, it becomes easier and easier, as Mr. Sunstein observes in his 2009 book “Going to Extremes,” for people “to avoid general-interest newspapers and magazines and to make choices that reflect their own predispositions.”
“cyberbalkanization.” Individuals can design feeds and alerts from their favorite Web sites so that they get only the news they want, and with more and more opinion sites and specialized sites, it becomes easier and easier, as Mr. Sunstein observes in his 2009 book “Going to Extremes,” for people “to avoid general-interest newspapers and magazines and to make choices that reflect their own predispositions.”

4- The End of Authorship
Pundits squeeze out reporters, authors write biographies animated by personal and ideological agendas, while tell-all memoirs, talk-show confessionals, self-dramatizing blogs and carefully tended Facebook and MySpace pages becoming almost de rigeur.
In a Web world where copies of books (and articles and music and other content) are cheap or free, Mr. Kelly has suggested, authors and artists could make money by selling “performances, access to the creator, personalization, add-on information” and other aspects of their work that cannot be copied. But while such schemes may work for artists who happen to be entrepreneurial, self-promoting and charismatic, Mr. Lanier says he fears that for “the vast majority of journalists, musicians, artists and filmmakers” it simply means “career oblivion.”

5- The End of Culture
Much of the chatter online today is actually “driven by fan responses to expression that was originally created within the sphere of old media,” Lanier writes, which many digerati mock as old-fashioned and passé, and which is now being destroyed by the Internet. “Comments about TV shows, major movies, commercial music releases and video games must be responsible for almost as much bit traffic as porn,” Mr. Lanier writes. “There is certainly nothing wrong with that, but since the Web is killing the old media, we face a situation in which culture is effectively eating its own seed stock.”

The emphasis below is mine to highlight some interesting thoughts.

In public, President Obama is trying to keep the China/Google situation from ballooning into a crisis in the US-China relationship, for obvious reasons…see today’s press briefing trying to say it’s all about censorship.

In private, sources confirm the most serious White House concentration on the facts of China’s cyberwar capabilities and actions now and over the past decade, including how these are used with potentially devastating economic and security effect on both the USG, and major US corporations.

Sources also confirm the accuracy of the Daily Beast “leak” of the classified FBI report on China’s activities but remain unwilling to openly confirm the accuracy of the FBI’s findings per se…even while saying the overall thrust of the FBI’s analysis of China’s actions and threat is “spot on”.

Closed WH “cybersecurity” conference call yesterday saw all major involved US players, and “China/Google” was the major topic, participants say…the facts of how Google penetrated, the implications of a China potentially out of control, and other vital questions.

Some US corporate and business group critical comment today on Google is being mis-interpreted as selling-out to China; experts say this misunderstands how Google perceived by much of US business; also how Google is somewhat unique in having no capital investment in China to lose, so pulling out is a profit loss, nothing more….with some implication of grand-standing.

There were some Congressional statements today demanding that other major US firms “follow Google’s example”.

But major international corporations don’t have this feel-good option, so must continue to try and seize China’s predatory policies as a “teachable moment” which can lead to constructive, remedial reform in Chinese practices…see the international business group letter we’ve been highlighting since December, and again last night.

Assuming, of course, Chinese leaders give a damn and are sincere. A dangerously open question, given the increased tendency toward arrogance and taking a victory lap in bilateral dealings with US negotiators for the past year, and some disappointing multilateral performance, as at Copenhagen.

So whether China IS “teachable” remains to be determined, and is a major part of the challenge facing the Obama Administration. Most US business has no option but to try…same for Obama.

Even without “new” cyber scandals, once the FBI report circulates around Congress, and the media, the question of “trust” is likely to be an increasing problem for supporters of stronger economic ties with China, as with those who continue to argue Beijing is playing a constructive role at the UN on Iran and N. Korean nukes.

Obama needs to find a way to seriously address the cyber problems without endangering the mutual self-interest so far governing “geostrategic” issues. If things fall apart, not just Google may be faced with little option but to quit…and since 1972, US policy toward China has been exactly the opposite.

The world has no realistic option but to help China be a success…but as any good business person will tell you, you have to have a walk-away price. Google is a warning that China may be forcing this Hobson’s Choice, bad news all around.

-0-

WHITE HOUSE BRIEFING TODAY/GOOGLE:

Q Two questions — one is on China and Google. Is there any concern within this administration that this issue could explode to affect the rest of the relationship with China, particularly if it gets wings or legs on Capitol Hill or within the American public? And how do you –

MR. GIBBS: Wings or legs, how?

Q I mean, if this strikes a chord with the American public or with Congress.

MR. GIBBS: Oh, I’m sure it does.

Q This — I mean, you’ve talked a lot –

MR. GIBBS: I think the notion that — right, I think the notion that — the notion of what we’ve seen happen, I can’t imagine that it hasn’t struck a chord. You heard — Helene, you heard the President in Shanghai take a question from the Internet about the universal right of a free Internet. He strongly supports that, and we support Google’s action in a decision to no longer censure searches that happen using the Google platform.

Whether or not it affects our relationship — look, we have, the President has, strong beliefs about the universal rights of men and women throughout the globe. Those don’t — those aren’t carved out for certain countries. That’s why the President answered the way he did in a town hall in Shanghai about the importance of that freedom.

Q So how do you manage — how do you keep it contained, then, to just — you have several different issues with China. You have China on Iran, you have the Google-China issue, but if you start — if we start getting things coming out of Congress, for instance, and this starts to actually strike more of a cord with the public, do you think — how do you manage the larger relationship?

MR. GIBBS: What do you mean — do you mean like legislation or — I don’t know what.

Q I mean, are you worried at all about managing this within the frame of the larger relationship?

MR. GIBBS: I think our concern is with actions that threaten the universal rights of a free Internet.

-0-

So for now, in public, the White House “line” is to try to limit the discussion to internet freedom. OK, fair enough in that this IS a real issue in and with China.

But concerned observers who fear the criticisms of Google today will be misunderstood as some of the business community apologizing for Chinese predatory and other negative actions warn that the free internet question is secondary to the main point:

China increasingly is pursuing industrial policy and promulgating domestic financial, IPR and any other policy it can dream up which will have the effect of promoting its national champion companies against foreign competition.

This certainly applies to Google, where Chinese censorship requirements, and the now-revealed cyberhacking, seems likely to force Google out of China…to the benefit of Google’s domestic Chinese competition.

So as we’ve implied, there’s a potential major PR problem for US companies electing to stay in China, especially any which seem to be criticizing Google.

Here’s the Dow Jones report today on relevant Capitol Hill remarks, including from House Speaker Pelosi:

“A group of Republican lawmakers Thursday called on three U.S. information technology giants to follow Google Inc.’s (GOOG) lead and conduct a full review of their business operations in China.

The lawmakers urged executives at Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), Microsoft Corp. ( MSFT) and Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) to engage in a similar review of
their presences in China, saying not to do so is effectively “complicity with this kind of evil.”

“I urge others in the business community who have found themselves victim of China’s spying and flagrant intellectual property violations…to join Google and speak out and take action,” Rep. Frank Wolf (R., Va.) said at a press conference on Capitol Hill on Thursday.

Wolf said Google’s move reminded him of U.S. companies withdrawing from South Africa during the Apartheid Era, rather than helping to serve the motives of that regime.

Rep. Chris Smith (R., N.J.), the senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that until Google’s announcement Tuesday, it, along with the other three high-tech companies, had been the “chief violators” in terms of cooperating with the Chinese Government.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said in a statement Wednesday she hoped other companies would follow Google’s lead.”

-0-

So what’s the prognosis? Some experienced business observers continue to feel that progress is not only possible, but can be seen. Here’s something which may offer hope:

“(as you note in referring to the group letter) China’s latest efforts to tie Indigenous Innovation accreditation to government procurement preferences is indeed problematic, as the business community (including USCBC) response has shown, and will be a top bilateral commercial issue in 2010–but let’s see how the advocacy work plays out.

Still, China on Monday released draft government procurement regulations that appear to resolve last year’s big “problem” issue-”domestic products” (which do receive preferences in China’s government procurement generally, as they do in the US) are defined in the draft to include products produced in China by foreign-invested enterprises, whereas previously foreign-invested companies frequently found themselves blocked from government procurement opportunities because they were deemed ‘foreign.’

This is an important step forward and shows advocacy can work. The Indigenous Innovation product preferences are a half-step back, unfortunately – but again, let’s see if we can get that addressed, too. Won’t be easy, but the effort is in the early stages. We win some, we lose some, but the hard work continues and is vitally important.”

But other experienced business observers are more skeptical, and point out continued emerging Chinese government procurement policies which they hope the Obama Administration will seriously (and effectively) challenge.

GW prof and Obama campaign advisor Susan Aaronson adds this:

“Some will jump to challenge China–others will smile and say everything is fine. And while in dollar amount China is world’s largest recipient of investment, one has to wonder if China will remain the fastest growing. I think this is the beginning of the souring…and that people are realizing it’s not just protectionist rhetoric…that the weird mix of business/government that China is creating both a hostile and dangerous environment for socially responsible firms and for information /ideas based firms.“

Note to non-techies: This change in PageRank means that my blog will not turn up so high in search rankings on particular topics. Invented by Google co-founder Larry Page (hence the name PageRank), the system ranks web pages on the basis of how many inbound links they receive. I am not sure why mine has suddenly fallen.

Rather than lament Google’s clear error in judgment, I would like to thank all of the readers from around the world with whom I have enjoyed interacting!

The image here, courtesy of Google Analytics, is a chart of where you are from and how you found my blog. (I have no idea why the total numbers of visitors are different in each of the charts. Another Google mystery.)

Thanks for visiting and – ahem – if you have a friend over at Google, let them know about this terrible mistake.

Happy New Year!

Tom

Chris Reitermann, President of OgilvyOne in China – Ogilvy’s direct response and digital advertising agency, discusses China’s online adspend and what media companies can do to grab a slice of the action. Although Chris – disclosure alert – is a colleague at Ogilvy, this is entirely independent of Ogilvy. Interview by Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei and shot and edited by Eric Mu.

Miles Young, CEO of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide added a few more numbers by email:

Overall, Ogilvy’s revenues from Digital are growing.

Digital business accounts for around 90% of OgilvyOne China’s revenues. Globally, digital accounts for around 60% of OgilvyOne revenues and 25% of O&M WW revenues.

Digital remains the most robust sector of the marketing communications pie, with search, mobile and video being strong performers globally. However, even digital is not immune from the effects of the global recession. In the first half of 2009, online display advertising revenue in the US was down 1% on the previous year, although this pales in comparison to the drop in all media which reached 15% over the same period. (Source: Nielsen)

One answer that seems to work comes from a former NY Times colleague Sharon Waxman speaks about her transition from LA correspondent to new media entrepreneur with AdAge’s Simon Dumenco.

Rather than return to the Metro desk in New York, Waxman launched a site covering Hollywood news called The Wrap. She had worked as a newspaper per journalist for 20 years, just finished a book and her children and husband were not ready to move to New York.

Starting about two and a half years ago Waxman employed the time-proven method of career change. Taking out a yellow legal pad she wrote down what she could do: Lecture, start her own site, get another job or move to New York. Flirting with the idea of a site, she sketched out a business plan that managed to raise US$500,000 from a few investors for a site covering Hollywood.

Now, less than a year since launch, Waxman says all the industry players who matter know her site and recognize her as “The Wrap” in film festivals.

This comes as Hollywood reporter denied rumors from Nikkie Finke’s Deadline Hollywood that they would abandon a daily print edition.

A few highlights (Highly recommend reading the full article):

Business model: There is display advertising on the site, our e-mail newsletters, sponsorship — sponsorship has to do more with underwriting different pieces of content, and usually that goes with events that we’ve had. British Airways and Four Seasons were two large sponsors. Lifetime is sponsoring an event with us, Blackberry is working with us. Almost all the TV networks during the Emmy campaigns, and we’re just closing advertising agreements with various studios for their Oscar campaigns. People are going to start jockeying for space. We’re also building up our event strategy. We’re having our third event coming up and then we’re having a screening series as well in which we’ll screen a movie that’s an Oscar contender — we’ll do a Q&A — so it’s very synergistic with our content, and then we always cover it, so then there’s that ripple effect for our sponsors. We’re also looking at subscription strategy now.

Alliances: The Wrap just announced a content partnership with Microsoft’s MSN that will see stories from The Wrap distributed throughout Microsoft’s various entertainment destination properties. This  should significantly boost traffic.

Position of the site: We aren’t a traditional trade at all, we aren’t even an untraditional trade — we’re something new and different. What we didn’t count on was that those traditional trades were going to grow so weak and be in such dire financial straits as they have been.

Harder teaching Bloggers to be journalists or journalists to be bloggers? It’s actually harder to get the more traditional journalists to sort of break their chains.

Rich Brubaker of Cleaner Green China has started a campaign to encourage double-sided printing. Here’s his plan and how you can help:

A couple months ago, a sustainability director from one of the largest computer / computer accessory companies contacted me about their sustainability program. More specifically, how they were now offering “green products” and looking to find new ways to “green”.

Singapore is vying for second, followed at a distance by Malaysia and then China.

Now for the Caveats: The measurement is how many people follow the top 3 most followed Twitterers in each market – as found via Twitterholic.

Yes, this is a wildly unscientific and flawed measurement, but we enjoyed it.

Just updated China top 3 list to include @isaac and knock out my own account. Any other corrections welcome! My Twitter account made the list as a top 3 Twitterer in China, but would not make the list in Hong Kong!

Who are the top 3 most followed Twitterers in each market? See list below.

What are Asia’s top Twitterers talking about right now? Wait for a moment and this Yahoo Pipe will tell you:

Asia’s top 3 Twitterers (by followers, by location):

Hong Kong

Singapore

Malaysia

China

India

Japan

Vietnam

Thailand

Indonesia

Bangladesh

Sri Lanka

Pakistan

Taiwan

Korea

Nepal

Cambodia

Philipines

The Thank You:

First the thank you: You paid attention to a short post on my simple WordPress blog about how my International Herald Tribune articles were deleted in the merger of the nytimes.com and iht.com sites.

In simple terms, it was as if The New York Times had dragged the IHT archives into the street and burned them.

There were no links or archives to the hundreds of articles I wrote for the IHT in a career spanning five continents and dozens of countries writing about a few disease outbreaks, several civil wars and a great week at the Cannes film festival.

More broadly than my own concerns, however, the NY Times effectively “nuked itself” by needlessly shutting down a valuable web property. With a simple redirect of those links, the NY Times could create a powerhouse site that adds the IHT’s value rather than just shutting it down.

My posting on the issue spread via high influence Twitterers, was quoted by a significant number of high profile blogs and even written about by TIME, Reuters and other mainstream media outlets.

In the fallout, The New York Times has contacted me in the form of the spokesperson, Diane McNulty, the Chief Search Strategist, Marshall Simmonds and the Director of Search Strategy, Matthew Brown.

Now Richard Perez-Pena, one of the great Times reporters with whom I shared a corner of the newsroom, wrote a brief item  detailing incident.

Richard quotes Marc S. Frons, chief technology officer of New York Times Digital, as saying that the problem is 80 percent solved.

I can only presume that many of my stories are among the 20 percent still waiting to be restored. A search of Myanmar and my name only turns up the stories on that country that I wrote for The New York Times, a fraction of the number I have written about that country for the IHT.

In any case, I blogged and you listened. Thank you.

Not meaning to be ungrateful, but:

My thank you is, however, tempered by a shortcoming in Richard’s article that may show a misunderstanding of the blogosphere (or perhaps just an edit desk oversight.)

While the story quotes my blog, it does not – as every blogger would – link to the original posting.

Does this matter?

I think so. The new media landscape is defined by the link economy. By giving more links, bloggers and publications participate in the global online conversation while also improving their standing online.

A further reason: Linkbacks quickly bring readers straight to the source material for a story.

(If The New York Times has a policy against links, they are better than what BusinessWeek used to do: The magazine actually blocked Don MacAskill of Smugmug from deeplinking to an article written about him.)

I therefore conclude this thank you note with one final request: Once you finish with the remaining 20 percent of archiving and links to my stories, please consider adding a link to my blog from the article.

Sincerely,

Thomas Crampton

Although slightly technical, this explanation would interest anyone as obsessed as me about what happened when the NY Times deleted iht.com and what it could mean going forward.

Danny Sullivan:

The mess of the IHT came up a few weeks ago when it first happened, of course. The person who oversees SEO for the NYT, Marshall Simmonds, is extremely savvy, and I was very surprised that things went this way.

I’ve been meaning to check with Marshall to get more of the backstory of what’s happening since I’d have expected things to be solved by now. I’m sure your article will probably put some pressure on them. But it probably isn’t just that they’re all complete idiots.

Thomas Crampton:

Yes, I was so surprised by the move when it happened that I waited almost a full month before posting about it, presuming the NY Times would resolve it quickly.

The NYT is filled with some of the smartest and hardest working people you will meet, which is why I was amazed the situation arose in the first place. Some whom I speak to inside the NYT and IHT say there is little being done to resolve the situation beyond promises that it will be fixed one day. (But perhaps I am not speaking to the right people.)

Hopefully my publicizing – and personalizing – the situation will help empower those inside the NYT who fully grasp the stakes. Part of my frustration is that I very much want the NYT and IHT to succeed on the web.

Danny Sullivan:

Trust me, if any paper is going to make it online, it’s the New York Times. Marshall is one of the smartest people out there and has hugely driven the paper’s traffic, this is what I wrote about him.

Other papers would be lucky to have him. I can’t think of any other major paper with someone who has that much experience running SEO for a web site. There’s absolutely no way he’d have recommended doing what happened.

WHAT MAY HAVE HAPPENED

My guess is there was a fast push that may have happened and then for some odd reason, he can’t get the support to fix it. Part of that might be due to the NYT making use of the first click free system — they might need to literally get these stories put into whatever publishing system that the NYT site uses. And the import might not be going well, or there might be a number of other issues happening.

I’m not sure who you are talking with inside the NYT, but they might not be on the tech side. Then again, they might be assessing the situation correctly.

Certainly, something odd happened.

If you close a site, normally you would build in smart redirects.

Anyway, I have not seen them comment publicly about the situation which, as I said, did come out at the end of March in Gawker.

TECHNICAL ASSESSMENT

In terms of links to the IHT, this search on Google tells me there are over 12,000 articles that link to pages in the iht.com domain

But Google doesn’t report near the number of links that it knows about, on purpose, as they feel this promotes spamming.

So you have to use this search using Yahoo’s tool which shows nearly 4 million links.

As for the amount of Google Juice, well, it’s not easy to say.

Absolutely, some potential traffic and reputation is being lost, but some of the IHT stories were also duplicates of the NYT stories — I did this often when I wanted to link to something that was behind the NYT registration wall.

Some of the stories might be short briefs from the wire services (and wire service stories going down is another frustration — read this).

Some stories might be so specific that they were generating little traffic at all.

LOSS OF LINKS MAY BE TEMPORARY

It’s a loss, no doubt. But it’s also a temporary one.

Try this test:

Click on Rex Swain’s HTTP viewer and fill in this link:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2002/05/07/t1_24.php

Untick auto-follow, and you get a 302 redirect that is temporary.

That tells the search engines not to use the new location (Full explanation here) and that someone probably really is working to figure out how to get the articles over and links from the old place to the new ones.

If they wanted to permanently break the link, they’d do 301 permanent redirects, which could tell the search engines that all is good (and they’d transfer the PageRank/ link credit to the pages out there now, the search page).

On links over from Wikipedia, this search on Yahoo tells me there are 31,700 links to iht.com

I’d really encourage you to tell Wikipedia NOT to start changing things this week. You’ve made a big splash with your post. Give things a week more, at least. If you set them off looking for new articles, first they’re not going to find all the same information. More important, in a week maybe all those articles will be restored — and then a lot of people have wasted a lot of time.

cheers,
danny

————————————————
Danny Sullivan
Editor-In-Chief, Search Engine Land
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This is a global competition, with the winners presenting their blogs via live video link-up to WordCamp San Francisco!

The concept:

Groups of at least 5 people can get together in any city worldwide at the same time as the May 30 San Francisco WordCamp. For the first hour, each city will pitch to one another to choose who, in the second hour, will represent their city.

At a pre-appointed time (Matt said it would be sometime in the early evening, Asia time) the winners will have 3-minutes to present in SF, in competition with people from all the other cities and one or two winners in San Francisco.

Anyone interested?

If yes, sign up on this document here.

Any thoughts or refinements?

We need to act quickly!

Background: WordPitch was brainstormed when Matt Mullenweg was in Hong Kong last month. Bonnie Yeung and I started talking about the idea and Matt liked it so much, we did a video there and then.

UPDATE 4/28: Fadzuli in Singapore just blogged the concept, with this logo!

How about:

eBay for doctors – You bid for their services and then rate them afterwards

Crowdsourcing data about new treatments? This is covered in a recent study by the California Healthcare Foundation looked at “The Wisdom of Patients: Healthcare meets online Social Media“.

Cure by Dr. YouTube –

“Mike Bonifer, author of GameChangers – Improvisation for Business in the Networked World, tells his personal story about Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV). Bonifer had come down with the illness, which is not terribly serious, at the same time as his accountant. But the two had completely different experiences in treating the ailment.

The accountant used the existing health system to get cured–he went to a number of different specialists, and spent $6,000, to get everything sorted out.

Bonifer Googled his symptoms for a few hours, and found a YouTube video of a treatment known as the Epley Maneuver. Then, in a move that will strike fear into the hearts of the insurance companies and malpractice-fearing physicians alike, he followed the instructions in the video and cured himself.”

(Bonifer anecdote from Fastcompany)

Pegged to the launch of the new International Herald Tribune layout and website, Benjamin Li of Hong Kong-based Media magazine published a profile of the IHT’s publisher, Stephen Dunbar-Johnson.

The IHT, my former long-time employer, recently revamped the website and redesigned the print edition.

Not surprisingly, “Dapper Dunbar-Johnson”, as they call Stephen, speaks highly positively about the changes:

“From our point of view,it gives us an advantage to merge online  rather than remain independent, as it’s about getting scale and marrying that scale with the technology of nytimes.com,”says Dunbar-Johnson. “The combination also provides advertisers with a much more significant global scale and regional targeting demographic profiles.”

(Apologies for not posting a link to the story, but Benjamin said his publication has not – and may never – put the story online. Not a policy I understand.) The story is now available here.

Word on the street?

Among the many longtime IHT readers I have spoken with, many complain that falling print circulation makes a redesign of the paper edition equivalent to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. As for the Web integration with The New York Times website, there are complaints that the IHT is losing its identity.

My view:

The NY Times web integration is, to me, a great thing. Instead of a small web team in Paris cobbling together a site with too few resources, the IHT journalists can now work within the larger NY Times webiverse.

Led by Jonathan Landman (an editor for whom many reporters would walk through fire) the web team is ambitious, creative and pushing every boundary they can.

Moreover, one of the great strengths of the web is following links as you get interested in a story. By placing the NYT and IHT on the same platform there will definitely be more crossover. If I were still a reporter for the IHT, I would rejoice in the increased potential audience for my stories and new ways to use the web platform for storytelling.

As for the newspaper redesign, I think it looks fine. Readers ALWAYS complain about redesigns, even when they buy more papers as a result of changes. This is particularly true of the IHT readership, many of whom have an extremely tight emotional bond to the publication.

The NY Times wants to have a more clear global brand, with the IHT converging in style. I do not think the IHT would be a viable standalone product without the NY Times, so integration is inevitable.

I do have 2 complaints:

1- I mourn the loss of the IHT’s Dingbat (that strange object inserted above). It was distinctive and a great link back to the newspaper’s founder, James Gordon Bennett Jr. A truly remarkable man, for whose newspaper I was proud to write. In a similar vein, loss of the familiar and distinctive yellow corporate color is sad, but I presume that the NY Times’ blue has won the battle.

2- I am not a fan of extending the gothic typeface to include International. For me the contrast between the clean International vs gothic Herald Tribune emphasized the publication’s global scope. You can see the difference above (Yes, IHT junkies, I know that the old logo above is actually very old.)

What you think: Thumbs up or thumbs down?

Looks like they should emphasize grammar and writing skills for new recruits!

Are you interested in fostering the cooperation between young journalists from Asia and Europe? Do you want to know more about the media on both continents and the work of your young colleagues? Is it important for you to work on the biased pictures of each other in the media, against prejudices and stereotypes?

Well-respected organisations from Asia and Europe are currently building up a substainable network of young journalists from both continents and ant to fill this idea with concrete projects over the coming months. So far journalistic workshops on Asia-European conferences, life-reporting from events and online-networks for the sustainable and vivid exchange are planned.

Communication Centre (AMIC) and the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) are inviting you to join the idea. They are calling for young Asian and European journalists to build up a steering-commitee that formulates their ideas for the network and organises the events in close cooperation with the three partners.

To join the team, you have to be a young journalists currently working in the media or during a media- related degree, with a strong interest and knowledge of the other continent. Candidates have to be under 30 years, fluent in English, with high motivation and organisational skills. If you want to apply for the steering-commitee, please send your CV and a letter of motivation to pa.projects@asef.org. Please outline in the letter, why you believe that such a network is important and what ideas and strengths would you bring into the cooperation.

Deadline for the applications is the 12th April 2009 – afterwards a jury of all partners will select the committee.

More information here.

The oldest known Asian and Western printed material will be shown, according to organizers, including prayers printed in the 8th century in Japan, as well as, money printed in 14th century China. The oldest Western printed material will be represented by a page from the 15th century Gutenburg Bible.

Judging from the catalogue (downloadable here) the items on display will be worth the trip.

The image here, from Frederik Muller Rare Books, is from “Costume of China” published in London in 1800. The book has 60 such hand-colored plates.

Sadly, one of my favorite antiquarian booksellers in Asia, Francois Dore, is not attending. A few weeks ago, however, I interviewed Francois Dore of the La Librairie du Siam et des Colonies in Bangkok in French about his bookshop and then in English about the influence of opium on the literature of French Indo-China.

Below is a handy list of booksellers at the fair. I leave their URLs in raw form because it sometimes hints as to their location.

These images were posted by Steven Martin, author of The Art of Opium Antiques and runs a site called Opium Museum. I highly recommend Steve’s book. It has amazing photographs of paraphernalia and is extremely well written. I think it is just about the only book of its kind.

Steve’s specialty is antique Chinese and Vietnamese opium-smoking paraphernalia.

UPDATE: Another couple posting on Opium from China-based author Paul French. He writes about the Return of Opium Dens (sans Opium) and Dope Girls in London.

Nelson, the owner, plays Mozart while Samson cuts my hair cut. On previous occasions Nelson had a large glass of red wine on the piano while playing. Sam, who normally cuts my hair, was not there when I filmed this.

The hair washing chairs (hidden behind the stained glass) massage your back and the chairs for the haircut are old-style barbershop chairs. On top of that, the haircut at the end of it is excellent.

It is on the second floor of Citic Tower near the skybridge that goes to Admiralty MTR station. Tel: 2525-5297

Leave a comment if you try it out!