From the searing heat of Singapore to the chilly silence of Buffalo, it’s time for me to get back to work.

There are three things on my plate at this moment:
1. Finding a career (my main priority!)
2. Dissertation cleaning (I’ve graduated, but still bug-fixing)
3. Blog about my adventures in Singapore

While I might share the first two tasks in due time, the third task involves sharing what I’ve experienced in Singapore, which is manageable in chunks.

Stories from Singapore I intend to blog about…

1. My Sister’s Wedding @ The White Rabbit (video + photos)
2. John Larkin’s Singapore Story @ Haji Lane (videos + photos)
3. John Larkin & Kevin Lim talk Classroom 2.0 @ NTU (videos)
4. Social Media Agencies in Singapore (24Seven, Avantworks, BBH) (video + photos)
5. Kevin talks Social Media Strategy @ 24Seven Get-Together (photos)
6. Preetam’s Pokem social toy (video)
7. Lunch with intellect Keng Suan of Williams and Phoa (photos)
8. Dragon Kiln tour with Carolyn Lim (video + photos)
9. Interview Aaron Tan on Gaming @ Jurong Regional Library (video)
10. Interview with Yu-mei & Mark Frost of “Singapore: A Biography” (video)
11. Brandtology tour with Kelly Choo (video)
12. MoeMoe on Burmese food @ Inle Myanmar (video)
13. My Singapore Food Safari (Crescent Way, Prissyhan’s Chicken Rice, Modcentric’s Chicken Rice, Michael Cho @ Best Satay, Mini SG Tweetup @ Dempsey130, Tanjong Pagar’s Shark Meat Lor Mee, Mum’s tennis kahkis @ Seven Mile, Penny’s Robertson Walk foodies, Lynda & Cung @ Mezzanine) (photos)

Do tell me in the comments what you’d like to read about first so I can share them in preferential order. Thanks!

• Homemade Hainanese Chicken Rice for Singapore National Day
• Vids and Pics: 1st Buffalo Tweetup @ The BrewPub
• theorycast 59 & 60 :: Michelle Thorne’s walkabout with Creative Commons Singapore
• Are we Amusing Ourselves to Death?
• Blogger Elia Diodati visits Buffalo

As a fan and community manager for Creative Commons Singapore, Ivan Chew took a day off to bring CC Project Manager (International) Michelle Thorne (@thornet & blog) on a tour of Singapore’s Chinatown. I tagged along to learn about recent developments and challenges for Creative Commons in the international space.

On an overcast Monday morning (12th Oct), we started the day with a relaxing Chinese tea drinking session at D’Art Tea Station on 63 Temple Street, Singapore 058608 (Tel: 62258308). Not only did store assistant Ms Cheong educate us on the intricacies of Chinese tea drinking, but we managed to use it as a springboard for critical discussion into how tea drinking seems to run counterculture to contemporary consumerism (i.e. slowing down, minimalism, tradition vs. efficiency). Watch the hour long video below to see what I mean…

theorycast.59 :: Tea-drinking with Creative Commons Singapore

Next, we met up with Chung Nian, who serves as the Legal Project Lead for CC Singapore. We discussed the intricacies of CC adoption in Singapore, and shared ideas on how we could make CC more relevant to Singaporeans.

An exciting idea was to offer localized starter kits which catered to different genres of creators. For instance, I could volunteer to produce an Educator’s CC starter kit, which might include online videos, project ideas and Powerpoints which instructors could readily use in their classes to teach students about Creative Commons.

After all the talk (and tea), it wasn’t long before we were starving. We paid a visit to People’s Park food center for lunch, then rounded it off with Bubble Tea at Koi Cafe, which lets us stipulate how much sugar we wanted in our drink. Michelle apparently loves Bubble Tea, which is pretty unusual for a caucasian from my experience.

Our last stop was the new Popular bookstore franchise called [prologue] at Orchard Ion. Over coffee, we took turns to interview one another. I like the idea of passing the video camera around… it’s reciprocal and balances control of the discussion among participants.

theorycast.60 :: Roundtable with Creative Commons Singapore

In this roundtable discussion, we each shared how we first encountered Creative Commons, how we’re involved with CC, and what CC meant to each of us.

The day ended with the appearance of Michelle’s boyfriend, Peter Bihr (@thewavingcat & blog), who was himself a web strategist based in Berlin. I wish we all had more time to learn more about one another, but it was bittersweet while it lasted. I hope to encounter both Michelle and Peter sometime in the near future. Thanks Ivan Chew for making this one of the most spectacular Mondays for me ever

Fun Fact: Thorne claims to be the inventor of Nutellachino, a dessert combining Nutella and cappuccino powder.

Remaindered Photos: See slideshow of extra photos from our Chinatown tour.

• Singapore’s plan for International Museum Day 2007
• Video: Michelle explains how three-dimensional printers work
• theorycast.09 :: Radio Interview on Political Podcasts in Singapore
• theorycast.13 :: Facebook Privacy 101
• The Geek Goddess Show Episode 2: On China’s Youtubes and Facebooks

Please help us spread the word about our talk this Wednesday at the Nanyang Technological University. Do note that the $80 fee is a norm for NTU’s edUtorium series; it’s not stipulated by us speakers. The talk is now FREE! Thanks to Senior Assistant Director, Alan Soong, for organizing this special event.

Date/Time
14 October 2009 (Wednesday) · 2.30 pm – 4.30 pm (2hrs)

Location
NTU Lecture Theatre 6, Level 2, Academic Complex North, Singapore (PDF map)

Abstract
The democratic nature of the social web means that the ability to learn and produce meaningful work can now happen at any level – from the independent student, to the individual teacher, to the entire education institution. Now, more than ever, instructors are able to motivate active learning among students, by empowering them with relevant online tools that allow for more creative approaches to go beyond the traditional class-based education.

In this two hour session, learn how you can…

cultivate learning beyond the classroom
encourage participation in the class conversation
inspire student pride through greater sense of ownership of their work
include new literacies in research, organization, and synthesis of ideas
support multiple learning styles
create exemplars by raising the bar of student achievement
archive learning by creating a record for both you and the students

In this international presentation brought to you by educators John Larkin and Kevin Lim, the first part of the session will provide a general state of education on the social web, while the second part will demonstrate tactical approaches to meeting your students’ learning objectives through the appropriate use of social web tools such as blogs, wikis, and social networks. The ultimate vision of this session would be to situate student learning in a more familiar and communal environment.

Speakers
Mr John Larkin is an educator and instructional designer presently living in Australia. He has vast experience in the development and application of educational technologies in primary, secondary, tertiary and corporate educational fields. John is constantly researching the latest trends in educational technologies and as a result he has established linkages with like-minded educators across the globe. He is constantly seeking new tools and technologies that will allow educators of all backgrounds to converge teaching and technology in a manner that is both practical and productive. He has worked on a significant number of web-based and CD-ROM projects. John has led the design on corporate, tertiary and school based web-learning projects. His skill set is enriched with a keen eye for design and a practical approach towards instructional technologies.

Dr Kevin Lim studies and shares his interest in the wide-ranging cultural affordances of information communication technology, particularly on the self-organizing and pedagogical quality of the social web. With his academic background in communication, his research has ranged from Internet censorship and civil sovereignty in China, to social capital among online non-profit organizations. He also conducts social web-related workshops and produces instructional guides at the Teaching & Learning Center, located in the University at Buffalo (SUNY). Kevin has been fortunate to be featured on the Buffalo News (New York), CBC News (Canada), Zaobao Weekly (Singapore), Channel News Asia (Singapore), commandN.tv (Canada), as well as several prominent blogs.

Course Fee
S$80.00 FREE!

Registration Link
http://edutorium.ntu.edu.sg/courses_detail.php?course_id=138

• SOLsummit2009: Mindmelding with fellow edu-digeratis…
• Interview with Milosun: How NOT to teach in Second Life
• Podcasting gets bigger in U.S. colleges
• Introducing our “ETC Workshops” podcast…
• Blogging Beyond Yourself…

It’s been two years since I last returned to Singapore.

This time I’m back for my sister’s wedding, and will be staying for the month of October. Rather than pouring out a lyrical diatribe of my arrival, I’m pouring out buckets of sweat as I write this. In short, let me just show you my journey so far…

Click to enlarge…

And here’s a surprise Uke performance (or rather wedding rehearsal) by Lynda and Greta…

Finally, here’s my live calendar showing what I’ve got lined up for the entire month. If you think we should meet up, drop me a line here.

Direct link to the Google Calendar

• Making sense of Google Calendar…
• Panorama: Flint Loop @ UB [entirely processed on the iPhone]
• New York City here we come!
• Matt & Alethea’s Wedding
• Qik video: Meet Shady, Tour Buffalo, Head for Avenue Q

Last Saturday, I was invited to talk about online campaign strategies at the 7th Annual Planned Parenthood Advocacy Conference in Rochester, NY.

Being an all-women event, I was given a glimpse into a world rarely witnessed by men. Curiosity took the better of me, as I interviewed everyone from student advocates to regional leaders in the planned parenthood community.

Who are these pro-choice advocates? What motivates them to work with such gusto? How do they organize themselves to take social and political action? These are but some of the questions I sought to answer.

Big thanks to Amy White and Tessa Walker for giving me the opportunity to share and learn from women who are fighting for greater rights over their own physical bodies.

• theorycast.57 :: Social Media – Strategy Instead Of Tools @ PRSA Buffalo (Part 2)
• Experiencing Politics on the Internet (in the classroom)
• Men Are From Google, Women Are From Yahoo!
• On Social Media Strategies, Cultural Lag, Productive Gaming, and Online Activism
• How believable are socio-political blogs in Singapore? Give your two-cents!

Everyone’s been asking me, “So what have you been up to?”

It used to be the terrifying “Wow, you’re still here?”, so this has been a much needed improvement now that I’ve graduated. And no, just because I’ve received my doctorate doesn’t mean I’m being sought after just yet. I’m still pretty much a “naked doctor”, which means that I’ve still got to build up a bevy of research publications.

Besides the obligatory job hunt (which I hope to talk about later), I’ve been busy time-sharing my brain with the local Buffalo community. For the past few weeks, I’ve guest lectured at communication classes, spoken at advertising and public relations agencies, and then there’s a conference I’ve been invited to speak at this weekend. The speaking opportunities Buffalo PRSA presented me really paid off.

Despite my focus on online interactions, face-to-face time is still crucial, as I’ve learnt first hand during my interview with several NGOs for my paper on “Social Capital and Online Youths“. The benefit I get from giving these talks is the ability for me to gain an ethnographic perspective on social media use. I particularly enjoy hearing personal stories relating to experiences on services like Facebook and Twitter, something which we won’t find as easily in self-reported surveys.

Here are the folks I’ve met recently…

Social Media Strategies @ Flynn & Friends Inc.

I first met Barbara Keough at Buffalo PRSA when I gave my talk on social media: strategy instead of tools. She invited me to speak at their LOTs meeting (that’s Learning On Thursdays) at Flynn & Friends Inc. Besides helping a local company, I loved peeking into corporate habitats (i.e. workplaces), so I agreed.

I dropped by their office on Thursday at noon (17th Sept), and after getting to know everyone, I started on how we often become enamored by the explosion of social web tools out there, when we should really be spending our time studying our users and what they were doing online.

That said, our approach to social media shouldn’t be too different from how we conduct traditional media planning, except that we now have to account for participants as potential producers (produsers to be exact), rather than passive viewers. I’d like to think that in our networked renaissance known as Web 2.0, almost everyone’s an Andy Warhol; Pop culture exists when it is exponentially reiterated.

Pulling together various studies, I shared measures of user participation as well as the varying types of online friendships, together with the caveat that passionate fans could just as easily turn against your brand; a reminder that respect remains a two-way street. You can see the slides here if interested.

Founder and Creative Director, Mitch Flynn, is known for his involvement in “Ride for Roswell“. He sent me a note recently saying that this talk was one of the best out of twenty-five he’s attended, so I’m glad I’m hitting the right notes. Incidentally Marc Adler, VP of Client Services, teaches advertising at UB, so that’s where most of my younger friends seem to recognize him from.

Social Media & Cultural Lag @ Marian’s PR Class, Buffalo State

Poor Mary’s right at the back. Yes, that’s a student’s puppy.

After meeting the kind folks at Flynn & Friends Inc, I made my way down to Buffalo State College in the evening to speak with the graduate students at Dr. Marian Deutschman’s public relations class. Like Barbara, Mary had enjoyed my talk at the Buffalo PRSA sunrise seminar and thought I’d be ideal for her students.

Almost all of the students were somewhat practitioners themselves; there’s Peter from the Apple Store (Buffalo), Judie from Channel 4 News, and Marissa from Perry’s Ice Cream, which if you don’t know, is located around Buffalo. One of the other students works at the mayor’s office, while another was getting paid to ghost-tweet for a celebrity rapper.

In jest, the ghost-twitterer admitted feeling sad for the rapper’s unbeknownst twitter fanbase, so I shared the tip I learnt from Travers Collins & Company’s Courtney Quattrini (correct me if I’m wrong) on how 50 Cent had his ghost-twitterers sign off with initials, so fans wouldn’t feel short-changed thinking that it’s actually him tweeting. It’s about mutual respect.

While I generally approach agencies with a tactical perspective, I speak to students from a more historical point of view. After my presentation on social media strategies, we sat around and discussed how each of their organizations used social media, as well as the challenges they faced as communicators transitioning into the online social networking realm.

Quite often, plenty of ideas surrounding social media use inappropriately lends itself from traditional media use (i.e. broadcasting, one-way messaging, spamming). I shared the technologically deterministic concept of cultural lag to explain why new media tends to take a while to catch on, because we tend to replicate old behaviors into new environments. Dr. Marian jumped in to share how we could see this throughout history. While the horse carriage was popular during the 19th century, the automobiles which took over in the 1890s were known as horseless carriages for a period of time. When students talked about the pointlessness of conferencing through Second Life, I remarked that the best applications of Second Life I’ve seen has been for simulations and role-play. Every media excels in through particular ways.

To account for this cultural lag, I emphasized to students the importance of exploration and experimentation in media use. We won’t know the socio-technological affordances until we chance upon it. Blogs (arguably) didn’t gain popularity until Americans saw a need to act on their emotions after the events of 9/11. Meanwhile, the developers of twitter recently credited their users with the grassroots creation of retweets (see Project Retweet).

To get a sense of what students thought about our session, here are excerpts from their class reports:

“With social networking, there are endless ways to complement public relations efforts. Social networking gives more power to public relations practitioners than ever before. We now have ways of putting messages out to thousands of key consumers without having to rely on a journalist to communicate for us. It does carry some risks and potential conflicts with PR. Anyone can post anything they want at anytime.”

“Before we go down any one path, we should ask ourselves some questions. Are our customers likely to be online? How will you incorporate this into people’s daily jobs? Social media is time consuming. How will you measure results? Is the organization ready to handle negativity?”

“Use of these sites for purpose of public relations can be both beneficial and harmful to the company. The “fan haters” can create a poor reputation by spreading nasty comments about a company or person. On the other hand, if there is positive feedback, news will spread very quickly, increasing popularity in a very short period of time. Kevin said, from a business standpoint, it is important to keep good relationships with your fans on these sites.”

“The only downfall of social networks such as Facebook is the amount of time and level of work required to maintain public interest. Without frequent updates, users are not encouraged to view the site, and thus will not be affected by its existence.”

“We need to heed Kevin’s warning about the danger of spreading yourself too thin because you will be unable to dedicate the time that is needed to each networking site.”

“The potential impact of audience as distributor is being played out daily, but for those of us who did not grow up in the Information Age it is important to willfully keep this idea top of mind; we just aren’t used to thinking about comments about our organization being Twittered, Facebooked, blogged about, shared, forwarded, etc.”

Productive Gaming @ Kyounghee’s COM125 Intro to Internet

PhD candidate & colleague Kyounghee invited me to guest lecture at her Intro to Internet class on Sept 25th, so I picked a presentation topic I’ve been experimenting with entitled productive games. I had conducted this talk to an appreciative crowd at the first Buffalo Barcamp, so this gave me a chance to make updates and refinements.

I’m not ready to publish the slides as I wish to make it more grounded, right now it feels like a scrapbook of interesting case studies. I will share that it involves Amy Jo Kim’s game mechanics as a means of steering user motivations. Video games have typically been given a bad rep in the media for generating social undesirable or unproductive behavior. By harnessing the addictive quality of video games and embedding these game mechanics into traditional labor, can we make work fun? What about steering users towards socially beneficial ends?

In reality, we are subconsciously performing micro-tasks as part of larger systems such as social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. On either of these services, you’ll see the number of friends implicitly considered as a scoreboard, while the profile completion progress meter would look like feedback in the leveling process, all of which are gaming elements that reply on our psychological urges. This prompts the reflexive point of whether we are playing the game, or is the game playing us. This potential exploitation forms the crux of Trebor’s upcoming conference: The Internet as Playground and Factory (Nov 12-14, 2009).

Online Activism @ 7th Planned Parenthood Advocacy Conference

This weekend, I’ll be making my way to Rochester to attend “Great SEXpectations“, a Planned Parenthood conference where I’ll be speaking on the topic of grassroots activism through social networks.

Since meeting Tessa Walker and Amy White at the Buffalo PRSA seminar, I’ve discovered how the Planned Parenthood organization has been involved with the Obama campaign, while educating and empowering youth and young adult activists to take action for sexual justice. It’ll be the first time I’m interacting with the lesbian, gay, bisexual & transgender (LGBT) community, so I’m looking forward to understanding their perspectives when it comes to social networking. I’ll be updating the presentation I gave to the local fundraising community earlier this year. Here’s the byline for my talk…

The Obama Way: Using Online Social Networks to Promote Your Cause
Ever wondered how President Obama used online social networks to win his 2008 election campaign? Obama’s campaign reminds us how citizen participation has always been key, be it on the ground or on the web. Learn how to take advantage of social networks to gain participation and empower supporters.

All in all, I’ve tried to make the best of my time in Buffalo until I head back to Singapore next week for the month of October. I’ll be back in November to continue my job hunt from Buffalo.

• Speaking @ PRSA Buffalo: Getting started with social media for PR practitioners (Pt.2)
• Speaking @ PRSA Buffalo: Social Media – Strategy Over Tools (Part 1)
• DataPortability: The Good and The Bad (on Identities)
• theorycast.57 :: Social Media – Strategy Instead Of Tools @ PRSA Buffalo (Part 2)
• Video: Hill & Knowlton’s Ben Koe on “PR in Online Communities”

Media activist, educator and human-connector, Trebor Scholz, has opened registration for his present-future conference, The Internet as Playground and Factory.

If you haven’t guess it, this conference is based on the idea of digital networked labor as it questions whether we are being exploited through our everyday online activities. I often get asked how web services like Youtube and Facebook are “free for use”, so this conference is set to explore what we actually trade in return, be it our individual privacy or labor within privatized commons.

As seen from Trebor’s conference introduction:

[...] The revenues of today’s social aggregators are promising but their speculative value exceeds billions of dollars. Capital manages to expropriate value from the commons; labor goes beyond the factory, all of society is put to work. Every aspect of life drives the digital economy: sexual desire, boredom, friendship — and all becomes fodder for speculative profit. We are living in a total labor society and the way in which we are commoditized, racialized, and engendered is profoundly and disturbingly normalized. The complex and troubling set of circumstances we now confront includes the collapse of the conventional opposition between waged and unwaged labor, and is characterized by multiple “tradeoffs” and “social costs”—such as government and corporate surveillance. While individual instances are certainly exploitative in the most overt sense, the shift in the overall paradigm moves us beyond the explanatory power of the Marxian interpretation of exploitation (which is of limited use here). [...]

This reminds me of what iconic Obama street artist Shepard Fairey once said in a CBS news feature: “It’s not appropriate for only advertisers to own the public graphic communication space”. Extending Fairey’s idea across all realms, we are living in an era where all public space is being commodified. Is the situation worse online?

Trebor’s been working on the digital labor idea since I was a student of his, and he’s gathered a formidable force of around 84 artists and academic thinkers (including esteemed friends Alex Halavais, Chris Barr and Stephanie Rothenberg) to discover how legitimately concerned about exploitation we as digital natives should be.

It’s FREE (monetarily at least) to participate, goes from Nov 12th to 14th, and will be held at The New School, Eugene Lang College in NYC (Google map). You’re invited to register and for your convenience, I’ve created an upcoming.org event for it so you can easily add it to your iCal and Google calendars.

Pending available accommodations, I am planning be there to help cover the event. If you’re thinking of going and would like a buddy to introduce you around, drop me a comment. BTW, I found the perfect t-shirt to wear for such an event.

• Trebor Scholz’s Cautionary Note on Social Media (via Howard Rheingold)
• Making sense of Google Calendar…
• Conferences are expensive. Introducing AOIRcamp.
• Casting A Wider Net: A Coursecasting Conference @ UB
• Livecasting: “Web 2.0: What Went Wrong?” by Trebor Scholz

Before summer fizzed away, this month’s Buffalo Tweetup was held at Cabana Sam’s in Sunset Bay (see Google map). It’s my first time at a beach in Buffalo, even though it’s technically a lake beach. At last… sun, sand, and “sea”.

Many of us local twitterers were there, including Jim Milles (@JimMilles), Kristina Lively (@KLively), Joseph Hsu (@jhsu), Janelly (@jpineda04), Diana Truong (@ursexyfat). A few new twitter friends included Seon McDonald (@laserfox) from Trinidad, Anne (@Awalterich) who lives by the beach and Michael Rebmann (@mrebmann) who discusses politics on twitter.

If you want in on future Buffalo Tweetups, do join buffalotweetup.ning.com and follow @BuffaloTweetup.

• UB tweetup #1: University at Buffalo folks on Twitter
• Vids and Pics: 1st Buffalo Tweetup @ The BrewPub
• Want the juice on Macworld? Try Twitter.
• Singapore’s plan for International Museum Day 2007
• Buffalo Tweetup #3: Making a living thru video podcasting

GoPro Hero Cam: Driving from Triads apartment to the airport. This exciting wearable camera is actually meant for extreme sports, so I’ll try to be creative in pushing it later. They’ve got tons of mounts for it, including ones for the helmets, surfboards, suction cups for race cars and so on.

I need to fashion a mount that clips onto the front strap of my sousveillance backpack. While it does great video thanks to its bright lens, I like the automated shooting mode which lets me automatically capture five megapixel fisheye photos every 2 or 5 seconds. Though I lose sound in that mode, it’s allows me to quickly browse through a visual record of where I’ve been and who I’ve met.

Don’t forget the latest firmware update which increases recording from 2gb to 4gb per file, as well as improving exposure in bright environments (e.g. snow). If you’re wondering how this camera’s been used in extreme sports, take a look at these nut-jobs! I got the basic GoPro Wide Hero 5MP camera from Amazon for $139

Sanyo Xacti HD1010: 300fps video test with Jerry & Shasha. This is a High Definition 1080p pistol grip video camera with several unique features, including interchangeable lenses, manual controls, and of course, high-speed video capture. I’ve got a few lenses coming my way so I can try more creative shots. I got this camera from Amazon for $349.

• Today’s Links: Creative My Ass…
• Krrish: Bollywood’s upcoming sci-fi movie set in Singapore
• Got MacBook Pro? Check out SanDisk’s MultiCard ExpressCard Adapter
• Amazon shipping Macbook Pro today?
• Reminder trick for cancelling your Amazon Prime Trial

My colleagues at the Teaching & Learning Center (TLC) threw me an awesome graduation party. Big thanks to @RobinSullivan and Becky for making it happen, and for my friends at the University at Buffalo for coming by, including @ssperson @sunrisesomeday @bschu1022 @jhsu @ChrisVanPatten and @denidzo.

• Watch on Youtube or download the iPhone version (.mp4 / 25mb).
• Watch previous episodes on Blip.tv or subscribe to theorycast via iTunes.

• theorycast.44 :: How to iPhone-ize Your WordPress Blog
• theorycast.45 :: Mouse in the Air – The GyroTransport Pro
• Watch ::theorycast:: on blip.tv (re-runs never looked so good!)
• theorycast.51 :: The Rise of Us – How Smartmobs Work
• theorycast.55 :: Touring the Retro-Media exhibit @ UB

What seemed like an eternity ended up being nine years in the University at Buffalo, with last six years being in the doctoral program. These last few years felt the longest, with each passing day no different from the last…

Writing, eating, sleeping,
Alone, ashamed, angry.

While my mind saw an imperfect masterpiece, my heart sought to find the path to closure.

Refusing to stay any longer, I was granted the miracle of a defense. Beyond the powers of me, the pieces of the puzzle which should have been in disarray, fell magically into place in due time.

Paperwork, people, persistence.

With a last burst of fire, I delivered the presentation from which my future hinged upon. Questions were asked, after which I was told to step out for a while. A private deliberation later, the committee invited me back into the room. With hands outstretched, they each shook my hand, congratulating me as Dr. Lim.

Dr. Lim… the ring of which sounds too unfamiliar to me.

My friends seem happier for me than I have been for myself. Perhaps I’ve just been numbed by these years of waiting, wondering, withering. It will take time for me to be happy with myself. For now I jest.

• Video: The Rise of Us – The Distributed Power of Social Media
• SOI Dissolution: Dean Penniman’s Story
• Steamboat dinner with a few blogging friends
• Lecture: Seduction of the Swarm – Patterns of Online Participation
• Visual Recipes: Like Flickr for Food

To celebrate Singapore National Day alone in Buffalo, I decided to make Hainanese Chicken Rice so I wouldn’t forget what home tasted like. On the other hand, it’s also because Prissyhan’s specially packed PrimaTaste mixes were going bad.

Twitter friends @jhsu, @BuffaloPundit, @nimbupani all approved of my semi-homemade creation. Even @ramblinglib made me play the Singapore National Anthem (.mp3) while feasting on my passable Chicken Rice.

UPDATE: If you’re craving Laksa, Char Kway Teow, or any traditional Asian delights in the States, a Singaporean mother in Georgia has started an online store offering various Singapore food products, including Prima Taste and Chng’s Kee, at SingaporeMalaysiaStore.com. She lets me know that her independent panel of Singaporeans and Malaysians helped her select items that are truly authentic and easy-to-make. Prices seem reasonable, and I’m glad that there’s hope for those of us in the smaller cities

• What I Consume: Instant Roti Prata = Chinese Puff lookalike
• From Singapore to Buffalo, what I’m up to now…
• Our New Year’s Food Expedition in Canada
• Happy New Year from Canada!
• Today’s Links: The Difficulty in Defining Blogs

• Watch on Blip.tv or download the iPhone version (1hr / 600mb).
• Watch previous episodes on Blip.tv or subscribe to theorycast via iTunes.

As promised, here’s a video of the talk I gave yesterday at PRSA Buffalo/Niagara to kick off their Sunrise Seminar series.

Since it’s hard to see the slides in the video, view or download them from Slideshare.net while watching me take fifty communication professionals on a thinking journey through the strategic uses of social media.

You can read the full background story and grab links to references from the talk in Part 1 of this blog series. Also see what others had to say via #PRSAtalk on twitter.

Meanwhile, here are some of the fine folks I got to meet yesterday…

PRSA’s Jennifer on the left, while the girl closest to me is Jess Manocchio. Jess has been awesome for connecting me with the local PRSA chapter.

Finally got to meet the amazing Rebecca Bernstein (@virtualr), mastermind behind the award-winning UB Web Team. I also got to meet Joe Brennan, Associate Vice President for University Communications at University at Buffalo. They plan to get UB more involved in the social media realm.

@LarryRoth is president at BrandLogic Interactive, located in Rochester. He’s a swell guy on twitter too.

Barbara Keough is Vice President of Operations at advertising agency Flynn & Friends, Inc. flynnandfriends.com. She’s invited me to join in one of their agency’s LOTs meetings (Learn On Thursdays).

Kevin Manne (@k3v2) works for Catholic Charities as a Communications and Public Relations Specialist. He’s worked on all kinds of media, from print, to billboards, to television, and now he’s venturing into the realm of social media.

Tessa Walker and Amy White chatted with me in length about how they were involved with the Obama campaign on the social web. They do great work at the Planned Parenthood of Western New York, which they explained had helped out on the campaign. I hope to learn more about their first-hand experience in what I’d believe is the most elaborate social media empowered national campaigns ever.

As I’ve mentioned over twitter (which got decent retweets): “Being rewarded for doing what you love is the best feeling in the world”. I love giving these talks because it’s a visceral, self-actualizing process. My lingering thoughts aren’t just shared, but fashioned by those willing to listen and talk to me about what they see as well. We’re essentially making sense of our crazy world together.

• Speaking @ PRSA Buffalo: Social Media – Strategy Over Tools (Part 1)
• Apple’s new ad campaign: Get a Mac
• Vids and Pics: 1st Buffalo Tweetup @ The BrewPub
• Today’s Links: Some recent statistics on social media…
• Dynamics of Twitter chatter + Emerging media faculty position

Thanks to Jess Manocchio, I’ve been re-invited to speak at PRSA Buffalo, kicking off their Sunrise Seminar series on social media.

While my previous talk in February focused on listening in social media (Part 1 & Part 2), this time I’ll be bringing folks on a journey through how social media strategies are created. Along the way, I’ll recommend the use of conversation filtering and analysis tools such as cotweet and JamiQ. You should be able to follow along 8am EST today (Aug 5th) via twitter #PRSAtalk.

For your convenience, the must-have books I’ve mentioned in my talk today include:
• Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies (2008) by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff
• Community Building on the Web : Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities (2000) by Amy Jo Kim
• Designing for the Social Web (2008) by Joshua Porter

UPDATE 1: Jess told me that we had around 50 happy participants today! I’ve added the my presentation slideshow at the top of this post, and you can download the slides (.pdf) from Box.net (easier) or Slideshare.net. Please share these slides if you see fit, and do let me know what your colleagues think about it.

UPDATE 2: Part 2 is now available and it features the video from this talk. Enjoy!

• theorycast.57 :: Social Media – Strategy Instead Of Tools @ PRSA Buffalo (Part 2)
• AoIR Presentation: Building Social Capital for Online Youths
• Video: Hill & Knowlton’s Ben Koe on “PR in Online Communities”
• Facebook Strategies Workshop 2.0 [Freshly Presented]
• Speaking @ PRSA Buffalo: Getting started with social media for PR practitioners (Pt.1)

As seen in the Encyclopedia of New Media by Steve Jones (2002)

MIT wearable-computer researchers (1998). They were easy to spot. Today, with the proliferation of smartphones augmenting our lives in real-time/real-space, the cyborg has disappeared into the everyday.

UPDATE: Mobile phones get cyborg vision (11 Aug 2009) by Michael Fitzpatrick, BBC. It’s about Augmented Reality.

• GE’s “augmented reality” campaign
• theorycast 52 :: Real Space Electronic Art Show
• Social Cyborg: Coming soon to Buffalo News
• Just spoke with Steve Mann – world’s first cyborg
• Kami the Blinker vs. Kevin the Social Cyborg

On 12th June 2009, producer @NishaPatel invited me onto CBC Business News to talk about the eBook phenomena. I think I talk a little slow for television, but oh well, that’s that.

I initially passed this opportunity to Dr. Alex @Halavais, whom I knew was in the process of digitizing his entire personal book library. He had given me great advice on the evolution of media industries from analogue to digital, specifically on how the book publishing industry is likely to mirror the course of music and movies industries into the digital domain.

Here are some questions from CBC News, as well as my responses:

1. Why are eBooks taking so long to turn mainstream?
Short answer: Aesthetic experience. Music and movies tend to be experienced same way be it analogue or digital (i.e. screens, headphones), while the experience of browsing a physical book hasn’t been replicated in the electronic form. I think we’re compensating by recognizing the new-found features of ebooks, including the ability to search within books and to carry along more books with us than physically possible.

2. Who are going to be the real losers here? Bookstores, publishers?
If we were to look at the demise of Tower Records, or the state of Blockbuster today, it’s quite certain that if ebooks were to take off, then the brick and mortar bookstores would be next to go. As much as we romanticize the loss of physical browsing, bookstores might have to adapt themselves around alternative aspects of business. I’m seeing many bookstores take the Starbucks route by turning themselves into The Third Place, which focuses the business on communal aspects of books, such as operating cafes, hosting author readings, and catering to book clubs.

3. Which device do you think will lead the ebook revolution?
I personally enjoy reading on my Amazon Kindle, as well as my iPhone. They compliment each other very well, and the convenience and comfort these devices bring to reading ebooks make them strong contenders as mainstream devices for the publishing industry.

If you’re interested to see why the Kindle and the iPhone rock for reading, check out this recent discussion I had with my fellow Kindle fans.

UPDATE: The RamblingLibrarian now offers his thoughts on ebooks as well.

• Chart: Amazon’s Kindle vs. Sony Digital Reader vs. iRex iLiad
• Howard Rheingold: Craig Newmark on Digital Journalism
• High Browse Online: Singapore’s Book Blog
• Today’s Links: Overheard Conversations in New York
• Good Books on Blogging and Podcasting

If you’re on a Mac and find yourself bookmarking the entire Internet on Delicious, you’ll want to check out Code Sorcery Workshop’s upcoming Pukka 1.8.

While it’s easy enough to use the Delicious bookmarklet to tag sites you love, having a desktop app integrates Delicious with your entire Mac OSX experience.

The Basics
Upon launch, Pukka may look diminutive, but the real power lies in how it speeds up your social bookmarking workflow in two key ways: Bookmarking and Searching

After entering your Delicious (or Ma.gnolia) account into Pukka (supports multiple accounts), it starts to cache your bookmarked links, tags and descriptions in the background. This action helps with your tagging and searching efficiency.

Bookmarking
To bookmark, tag and describe a link, you would first install the Pukka bookmarklet from the app into your favorite web browser. At your favorite site, hitting the bookmarklet launches the app and auto-fills the URL and Title of the page. If you highlighted text on the web page before hitting the bookmarklet, that specific text would also appear in the Pukka’s Description area (a real time-saver!).

Searching
While the earlier versions let you browse your recent delicious bookmarks in a pull-down menu, the new version features live search your bookmarks from the menu icon. Mind you, with Command-F to find, it’s lightning fast!

As you can see, almost everything in Pukka can be executed with simple keyboard commands, making the entire bookmarking and searching experience ridiculously quick once you get the hang of it.

New features of Pukka 1.8
While Pukka has always had a ton of features, here are the new ones you can look forward to in version 1.8:
* New search feature
– available from Window > Search (Command-F)
– also available from menu bar
– global keyboard shortcut assignable
– allows filtering by title, URL, tags, description, or all four
* Ability to drag-and-drop reorder accounts in preferences
– allows you to set a preferred account at startup (first account)
* Auto-expanding description field
* AppleScript access to all bookmarks and their properties

On the whole, the live search feature is where I feel the app is given a second life, while Applescript access would let hardcore users get the most out of Pukka. The description field has a unique touch of auto-expanding, though I’d simply prefer to be able to resize the entire window so I can also see my lengthy tags with less clicks.

Code Sorcery Workshop notes that pricing remains the same as the last version, $16.95. Current owners of Pukka 1.x get this as a free upgrade. Look for Pukka 1.8 this week or so, which will run on both Mac OS 10.4 and 10.5.

• Is Google Notebook a del.icio.us competitor?
• From Del.icio.us to WordPress: How to automatically post daily links
• Technorati Tag bookmarklet for Singapore News
• The Wists vs. Del.icio.us Showdown
• “Delicious Library” is well, delicious!

I’ve never been huge on weddings, let alone imagine myself being anyone’s best man. That’s life taking us into unexpected places. Yet, instead of being consumed by change, we’ve to learn to ride it. This is perhaps the best quality I’ve seen from my friend, Kelvin (aka MrBig).

Serendipity
by Kevin Lim

As the “Best Man”,
I’d like to propose a toast
to the bride and groom

My name is Kevin,
which misses one letter
from me becoming
the groom’s doppleganger.

Even though I came to know Kelvin from undergrad,
we’ve actually come to realize
that we’ve crossed paths while serving in the military.

While history may have tricked us into being strangers
bunking just a corridor apart
Our missed connection certainly didn’t happen twice.
Look at us today, We stand as grand friends.

Such “near misses” were the start of many more,
From which I’ve come to know what defines
this humble man with deep compassion for others.

From Singapore to the oddest of places: Buffalo, NY.
Kelvin had recently found his place in Greenville, SC
through academic necessity, sheer talent and dumb luck.

With just one year of internship as a school psychologist,
Kelvin could have come and gone as most have,
But once again, he was denied the well-beaten path
for he was made not miss the greatest gift yet to come.

Enter Alaina.

Having known Alaina for a short while,
I’ve discovered that she shares Kelvin’s
“for better or for worse” traits.

They both embody a Singaporean quality,
known as being “Chin Cai”
Which roughly translates to
“Don’t sweat the small stuff”.

While you’d say it in five words,
We say it in two,
That’s the Asian efficiency (or laziness) for you
Something Alaina would certainly have fun learning in Singapore.

Finally, it would be loudly unforgiving
if I didn’t sound off how Alaina and Kelvin
demonstrated comparable talent of the musical tongue,
for it speaks volumes of their immensely shared frequencies together.

If I had to lose Kelvin to anyone,
I can’t imagine
a more perfect woman than Alaina.

Cheers to both of you.

Aside: Greenville, SC, is quite an interesting city. You can check out my photos or a quick video where I check out popular eateries including Sonic (drive-in) and Chik-Fil-A.

• If you were Obama…
• Small World Letter
• ChitChat: Things you see in the First Class cabin…
• Hacking for Dummies
• Imagine Life as a series of Index Cards…

Over lunch at the UB Commons, Jim Milles, Kristina Lively, Joe Hsu and I chat about our Amazon Kindles.

We casually discuss our user experiences with each version of the Kindle, and make quick predictions on the future of books.

I couldn’t resist a family portrait of our entire line of Kindles…

• Our Buffalo Tweetup @ Cabana Sam’s
• Chart: Amazon’s Kindle vs. Sony Digital Reader vs. iRex iLiad
• Interview on CBC Business News: Examining eBooks
• UB Law Library survives fire and flood
• Good Books on Blogging and Podcasting

As some of you already know, I received a $1084.40 GPU overage charge from Media Temple last week. Quite an adventure this turned out to be… one that I was fortunate enough to walk away from scot-free.

This whole incident really showed me how lucky I am to have great friends. Not only were they empathetic, some were ready to offer donations, while a few went above and beyond. For your benefit, I’d like to share my story with you.

I could be so lucky…
When I first tweeted about my $1084 Media Temple bill, I kept things formal by reporting only the facts. Since I wasn’t sure what exactly happened, I needed to make sure I could keep all options for recourse open. Part of me believed that I could work a reasonable deal with Media Temple to lower or remove the charge.

Then came along a stranger named @DavidAndGoliath who caught wind of my sob story and made a shocking offer to pay off my entire Media Temple bill. His stipulation: To merely sign on with his FusedNetwork.com web host for at least a year, and write a review of the service. As a founder of FusedNetwork, David McKendrick said to give an honest review, even if it meant saying that his service was garbage.

Off the bat, this wasn’t your everyday web host provider. Confident, generous and above all, responsive, I’d switch in a jiffy if it weren’t for my friend @Lucian who offered to help resolve my issue with Media Temple. As an established web designer and information architect, Lucian wrote an email to persuade Media Temple to work with me on this.

After a few email exchanges, I received a call on Monday from Media Temple’s VP of Customer Service, Andrew Won. First, he calmly explained where the root of the problem was, which I understood as a technical oversight on my part (I’ll explain in a while). We talked about how this problem could have been prevented, and he entertained the possibility of an option to have a user’s hosting service temporarily shut down when severe overages occur, thereby alerting the user without severe penalties. Finally, he went on to say that they were going to grant me a one-time exception by washing away the charge over this time period. Huzzah!

What actually went wrong (i.e. the nitty-gritty)
It started with the typical email alert about GPU overages on my web hosting account. I’ve gotten these emails before, but since I had recently upgraded to a higher tier server, I thought it was a residual issue. Nevertheless I went in to take a look, noticed nothing outstanding, then went back to my daily routine. Unfortunately for me, something went really wrong after I last checked my GPU Usage Report, as seen below:

Yes, I didn’t realize how my blog’s GPU usage was spiking.

For the longest time, I’ve been wrestling with the problem of this blog taking up too much server resources. Being such a complicated outfit, the problem could have been with my customized old K2 template, any of the WordPress plugins, or some other script I had deployed.

After consulting with the Media Temple administrators, they helped me isolate the problem to a few WordPress plugins. The main culprit was the “Permalink Redirect” WP plugin which I had installed to redirect any weird variables in URLs to proper pages on my site.

Perhaps the Permalink-Redirect plugin was badly configured, but whatever it was, it started hitting the server for pages that didn’t exist, generating redirects and looping on itself. We quickly took it off, together with other high GPU consuming plugins such as flickr-rss, jquery-lightbox-balupton-edition, and vipers-video-quicktags. These last three plugins were inactive to begin with, which made me realize how it’s better to delete inactive plugins than to leave them lying around (Update 6/10: See WP plugin dev Lester Chan’s comment on how this is “subjective”).

From here on, I have to learn how to read Media Temple’s GPU Usage Reports carefully. I know that a blog overhaul is long overdue, but I’ll have to get to it when I’ve more time. Meantime, if you ever receive a warning email or a massive bill like me, keep in touch with your web hosting company to work out a resolution, especially if it’s your first time encountering such a problem. If nothing can be done, reach out to friends via twitter, email and so on, but don’t get too emotional about it. Help could be just around the corner.

• Get this: Subscribing to your WordPress blog via email
• Now on MediaTemple, thanks to Lucian!
• What are your favorite Wordpress plug-ins?
• Today’s Links (Variations)
• SharedCopy: Share annotated web pages without fuss!

You might be aware that I’ve been on a blog hiatus since I writing on my dissertation on Cyberactivism in China. With the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square this week, I’d like to brain dump what I’ve come across so far. Please let me know what you think.

When veteran filmmaker Antony Thomas went to China in search of “The Tank Man“, he showed this iconic picture to undergraduates at the Peking University. Back in 1989, this university served as the nerve center of the Tiananmen Square protests.

None of the students recognized the photograph.

Lacking any context, the four Chinese students mustered their best effort and proposed that it was some kind of military parade (watch 1 minute into video).

While illustrating this in the Frontline documentary, it became fairly obvious that the Chinese regime has managed to erase the infamous Tank Man’s image from Chinese memory. This effectiveness highlights the China regime’s central effort to control information through widespread filtering of the Internet. Such a complex undertaking is not performed alone, but in unison with Western corporations such as Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, and Skype. In order to tap into the thriving Chinese market, these companies have had little choice but to be complicit in China’s censorship strategy.

China: Now with the most netizens in the world
This year, China dominates with the largest population of Internet users in the world. On January 13, 2009, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) released the “23rd Statistical Survey Report on the Internet Development in China“, which shares detailed statistics on the country’s virtual well-being. According to the report, by the end of December 2008, the amount of Internet users in China had reached 298 million, with 279 million being broadband users. Out of this massively networked population, 162 million (54.3%) of them had blogs.

Owning a blog is one part of the equation, returning to update it frequently is another. While the blogger population grew, so did activity in the Chinese blogosphere. Around 105 million users were updating their blogs on a regular basis (that’s 35.2% of Chinese bloggers). This figure helps legitimize the Chinese blogosphere as a public commune for mirroring and mediating everyday culture. In addition, the CNNIC report shared that the introduction of Social Networking Services (SNS) played a role in promoting the growth and influence of bloggers.

Chinese netizens are rhetorically sophisticated
Just how much impact does social media, particularly blogs, having on China’s national agenda?

In 2006, NPR reported on the Chinese blogosphere, and found that only a few are political. There were unusual ones, such as Mumu, a Communist Party member who has clips of herself doing sexy dances, but the typical Chinese blogger is more like Jasmine Gu where “It’s all about me, myself and my life”. Reports like these reflect the matching diversity of blogs to the aspirations of citizens. Not everyone is naturally into political sophistication, yet similarly complex rhetoric can also be found in the relative safety of entertainment media.

For instance, the Anglosphere is familiar with the television series “Sex and the City”. While the show has never appeared on the Chinese airwaves, it has certainly been well-received among China’s college students and young professionals. They have started to have increasingly sophisticated needs; natively undersupplied by their developing society, while artificially fulfilled through the distribution of pirated DVDs and online copies. As they watch the show to learn English and get a glimpse of life in New York City, the globalized Chinese is realized. Their interests may not be directly political, but the accumulation of cross-cultural granules eventually amounts to a greater potential for openness and acceptance of international opinion.

All this happens while the Chinese government filters the media, and particularly, the self-publishing Internet. Western nations have typically taken the stance that the Internet would bring about democracy whether authoritarian regimes realize it. This technologically determinist sentiment was no better remembered than when Bill Clinton, who in referring to Chinese Internet censorship in the 1990s, remarked that “trying to control the Internet is like trying to nail Jell-o to the wall”. To some extent, censorship can be circumvented. Multiple studies and tools have emerged to prove this, including Rebecca McKinnon’s demonstration that not all Chinese blog platforms censor consistently, where some are more relaxed than others. On the whole though, the Chinese government has been successful in hindering easy publication and access to what they deem as nationally sensitive information.

Ethan Zuckerman and Rebecca McKinnon elaborate from this point about China’s complicated culture. There appears to be an equilibrium, since for every push the government makes, an equal push is made from netizens opposed to their idea of censorship. Talented Netizens start developing sophisticated satire as a means to aggregate thoughts and spread awareness of their messages. Such culturally absurd products have included a harmonious image of a “river crab dressed in three watches“, as well as “Song of the Grass-Mud Horse“, which phonetically translates to roughly as “Cao Ni Ma” or “f*ck your mother”. As seen below, this cao ni ma music video is a cleverly vulgar rhetoric on how Chinese netizens will always find a way around online censorship:

The Great Firewall of China (or Iron Curtain 2.0)
In filtering information flow around the Chinese network, China’s Great Firewall is often mentioned. It refers to the censorship system that controls the flow of information into and within China. While technically elaborate, it still cannot filter every piece of sensitive information shared online. Instead, by making it inconvenient to read certain sites, the Chinese government can keep politically charged issues from surfacing in the national discourse (James Fallows, March 2008). Rebecca MacKinnon elaborates on the Great Firewall (aka #GFW on twitter) by stating that it merely accounts for “a small part of Chinese Internet Censorship“.

Lokman Tsui contributed his idea of the Great Firewall as being the Chinese equivalent of Iron Curtain 2.0. In reference the Cold War, his telephone survey showed that the Great Firewall myth is the belief that China’s efforts to censor the Internet must ultimately fail, and that the internet will eventually lead to the country’s democratization. Lokman then argued that this myth affects the way we perceive how China, and how the United States form policies around it (such as to build filter circumvention and jamming tools). In reality, the Great Firewall of China is a mere deterrence, but one that is sufficient at steering most netizens towards more accessible, perhaps entertaining points of interest on the Internet. As such, the Great Firewall is not simply controlling web access; it’s filtering the social and political discourse of Chinese netizens.

In a surprising move on June 4th 2009, the Communist Party’s made their agenda clear through the People’s Daily (specifically the Global Times):

“Twenty years after the June 4 Tiananmen incident, public discussion about what happened that day is almost non-existent in mainstream society on the Chinese mainland. It’s still a sensitive topic. Scholars, officials and businessmen declined interviews with the Global Times on the subject. And searches for ‘June 4 incident’ on the Chinese versions of Google, Baidu and Yahoo were blocked.” (via Straits Times)

Assassination of Foreign Web 2.0
Ramping up to Tiananmen’s 20th anniversary, the Chinese government dealt another blow to the globalized Chinese conversation by blocking off Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail and Bing in China. After news of China’s network filters broke, I recognized that this would be the perfect opportunity to see if Berkman Center’s Herdict Web project stood up to the challenge.

The Herdict Web aggregates reports of inaccessible sites, allowing users to compare data to see if inaccessibility is a shared problem. By crowdsourcing data from around the world, the project is able to document accessibility for any web site, anywhere. In order popularity on Herdict, twitter, flickr, Youtube, TOR, tibet.net, Microsoft’s Bing (including CN.bing.com), Hotmail, Blogger.com and even Plurk were all reported by users as inaccessible.

As you’ll see on Herdict, Youtube and Tor (anonymity tool) were blocked earlier on as well. China isn’t the only country to have blocked Youtube; Bangladesh, Pakistan, Thailand and Turkey temporarily shut off access to the site after users uploaded content the countries’ governments considered politically embarrassing.

Since a few well-known Chinese personalities were actively discussing this issue on twitter, I asked Chinese videogame designer, @frankyu:

To which he replied…

Frank Yu’s response reiterated to me that China truly wanted domestic control over the Internet services used by the Chinese population. By cutting off access to popular Web 2.0 services in the States, the China regime seemed to be assaulting the intellectual reach of the cosmopolitan Chinese. This would seem to me like a modern day act of a biblioclasm, where instead of burning books, external far-reaching channels of communication are disabled in order to stifle the flow of critical knowledge and information in and around China.

Where (and Why) Web 2.0 fails in China
Frank’s tweet also reminded me of the talk I watched which renown journalist and researcher, Michael Anti (Zhao Jing), gave during the Berkman Center Luncheon Series (Nov 2007). As documented by David Weinberger…

What happens when decentralized, open blogging meets the centralized, closed Chinese society? From 2004-2005, most dissenting news of China came through blogs. After that, it comes through chat rooms. Chat rooms started in Chinese in around 1998. Now China has gone back to that — very Web 1.0, Michael says. Email and mailing lists are also important for sharing dissenting news about politics, religion, etc. “We don’t use Web 2.0. Why not?” Web 2.0 is democratizing and decentralizing. But blogs aren’t really decentralized because they need centralized servers, which make them easy for the government to control. It is much harder for the government to find chat rooms and shut them down.

To me, this was the first instance where Web 2.0 services (e.g. twitter, youtube, flickr) were explained as being disadvantaged for online discourse. Being centralized and locate-able meant that they were easier to block, compared to earlier generational Web 1.0 services which were anarchic, massive and perhaps fragmented (e.g. IRC, IM, mailing lists), thus easier for netizens to find cover in informational complexity for stealthier communication.

Building on his Web 1.0 proliferation argument, Michael Anti recently predicted twitter’s demise in China in an interview with Danwei.org (that’s May 2009).

The Chinese Exception
While Michael builds a credible case, Frank Yu’s hint of QQ’s globalization points to another interesting aspect of China’s censorship practices. Tencent QQ, generally referred to as QQ, is the most popular free instant messaging computer program in Mainland China, and is said to be the world’s third most popular IM service (IndiaTimes, May 2007).

The significance of QQ here is that the Chinese govt appears to have no issue with international communication via their instant messaging service, since they didn’t appear to disrupt it during the June 4th lockdown. The probable reason for this is because the QQ service was home-grown and legally bound in China, this made the logistics of controlling both business and the regulation of online content much easier.

A similar rationale was given by Michael Anti on how China developed Red Flag as a knockoff of RedHat. His reason was that “[t]he government doesn’t trust RedHat. It only uses Red Flag. Microsoft gave much of the Windows source code to the government so the government verify there are no back doors.” (David Weinberger, Nov 2007)

Ultimately, “China is becoming Singapore”
While there are the visible networks of elite Chinese personalities like Frank Yu and Michael Anti (e.g. on twitter, Facebook), there are also the more obscure chat rooms and mailing lists they participate in. Michael notes that these are the two faces of the online social discourse in China.

Michael points out how liberal the modern Chinese actually are, in comparison to Europe and America. As hinted earlier in the “Sex in the City” story, this could be attributed to how they had no rule which prevents “sex before marriage, are more tolerant of homosexuality, have no conservative party, and they have no God”. He sees the Chinese people as accepting of this freedom from the government, to the extent that they were willing to exchange it for political restrictions. In fact, he believes that at least 95% of people don’t care about censorship, so only the weird ones do.

This begins to sound like Singapore, except that there’s barely any need for censorship in the country; our citizens are accustomed to self-censoring. When asked about the Internet bringing about any possible change in China, Michael said that he didn’t think so. Rather than the Internet turning China into the likeness of the United States, he goes so far as to explain that China was becoming a “big Singapore”, where we have “happy citizens without any political ideas”, (David Weinberger, Nov 2007).

While there may be this sociological mirror between China and Singapore, there has been technological policy sharing between both countries. It’s worth nothing that in 1996, China had sent senior information official Zeng Jianhui to Singapore to learn about Internet policing practices. Upon returning to the Mainland, Chinese officials followed the Singapore example of more selective restriction, and a greater reliance on the threat posed by the mere possibility of monitoring (Craig Hill, April 2009).

I welcome further insights you might have. Really, go ahead and drop me a note.

UPDATE (June 6th, 2009):
The Rambling Librarian send me a plethora of articles relating to the Singapore government’s “light touch” approach to online discourse. I’ve re-read through them, and while the approach is encouraging, I found little change in the current situation. As I’ve mentioned in the comments, “[t]he light touch discussion so far appears to liberate discussion online, but this may already be moot as Singaporeans have arguably been conditioned not to push the grey areas. [In addition], the “fear of govt action” as a local myth as well as “citizen driven propaganda” [perpetuates this condition].”

On a related note, this article he sent me legitimizes the Singapore condition I mentioned: Political observers expect more alternative voices over next 50 yrs, by Imelda Saad of Channel News Asia. From the article, observers estimate that it will take more than just the next 50 years for Singapore to see a two-party system. The reasons include how the political process is trying to compensate for fundamental biases that come with representation by proxy, while pursuing greater equality and transparency. Beyond a legitimate excuse, this reflects the present Singaporean condition. My argument lies in how there is a lack of opportunity for citizens to display any political sophistication, because the dominant PAP party has been both forward-looking and efficient. It’s a peculiar problem. Also see Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s previous comments in New Zealand concerning the “efficiency” of single party government.

• Tiananmen 2.0: Freedom and Suppression both growing in China
• China struggles with growing Internet population
• China’s New Groove: “The information opening is the disaster relief best weapon”
• Oh China… What, me worry?
• Today’s Links (Broadcatching anyone?)

Henry Jenkins is the director, Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT. In this viral-info-snack he discusses the power of media in a 21 century trans-mediated world. A world where converging technologies and cultures give rise to a new media landscape.

Thanks to the ever wise Cross-Media Specialist @ChristyDena, I checked out Henry Jenkin’s short video on transmedia, which discusses the origin of media and how it’s transformed today. The video showcases much of the phenomena I’ve been illustrating in my recent presentations on the social web.

Starting with storytelling shared within tribes, it goes onto the modern day commercialization of media owned by a few powerful conglomerates, and finally today’s re-tribalized media which is reproduced and remixed by anyone handy with digital tools as well as participates in online social networks (e.g. Youtube, Facebook). Evidence of this remix culture can be seen in Youtube spoofs of major events such as the Gitmo torture and the Obama campaign.

More importantly, Jenkins discusses the emergence of transmedia, which is an affordance of such democratic media tools. In short, transmedia refers to the idea that a story can be told across various media. A popular example would be The Matrix, where the story is told across three movies, an animation series, a video game and so on. Extending further, we could also consider fan-made works as part of the transmedia experience, where we see variations (e.g. spoofs) produced and shared by fans all over the world.

In summary, today’s experiences are best served flowy. It’s not just about letting content be in the hands of fans, but enabling them to remix them in their own image. This participatory way of production isn’t simply fan-inclusive; it invites them to help us sustain our stories beyond our means.

• Books on Social Media: Uses of Blogs + Convergence Culture
• Today’s Links: I’m a slutty celebrity wannabe
• Today’s Links: The +ve & -ve impact of Web 2.0
• theorycast.17 :: Christy Dena on Cross-media & Alternate Reality Games
• Flickr video and Twitter: Is ultra-short media the new black?

Looking back at the emergence of popular social networks, I’m quite convinced that much of their success happened not through incredible planning and foresight, but by accident and adaptation. Youtube was supposed to be a video-based HotorNot.com, Flickr was spawned off a MMORPG multiuser chat service with real-time photo exchange (called FlickrLive; I was there), and Twitter was meant to be a “livelier” Livejournal.com

As serendipitous as this may be, we can still take time to observe the tendencies of social networks. Explaining this at Buffalo PRSA back in February, Kate Torok kindly invited me to give a social media primer for her colleagues at Travers Collins & Company (TC&C) on Tuesday morning.

The night before, I spent some time examining their online network presence, by checking out their professional group blog TC&C insights, their twitter @TraversCollins, as well as their LinkedIn company profile page which neatly displays their employee roster.

By around 8.45am, twenty-two friendly faces had descended around me at the TC&C conference room. Surveying the room, I was delighted to know that they all had experience with twitter as well as Google Reader. Soon after, I noticed that John Pitts @Pitts88 and @schoenorn tweeted in while I presented. I wished more of them did the same, so we’d have a backchannel for sustaining post-session discussion.

Since Travers Collins & Company is an all-rounded communication agency handling advertising, public relations as well as investor relations, I showcased my Phelps vs. Kellogg’s case study (as seen at Buffalo PRSA), with a few extensions towards user engagement and social media tracking tools.

Technology actually comes last
I kicked off the session by showing an explosion of social web services out there. While there are @#^$-tons of social networking platforms already available, I reinforced the idea that that strategy should always come before tools. A better way to understand this, would be to see Forrester’s POST (People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology) method where, ironic to many, the technology component comes last in the online social engagement effort.

Listening actually comes first
For organization embarking on the social web journey, there’s the temptation to broadcast and focus on getting as much eyeballs as possible. I’d argue that this method simply bootstraps traditional communication limitations onto the new media of social networks, which actually offers us new ways of engaging individuals. Instead, I’d recommend listening as the primary method of engagement. It’s the most natural (and respectful) way to start a conversation, create strong relationships and build advocacy. Particularly since we live in a much noisier online environment today, someone who actually takes the time to listen becomes a big deal. We’re more receptive of people who empathize with us.

For instance: For the past week, I’ve been trying to resolve a “delivered” package via UPS… the problem being, I never received it. Checking between the shipper and UPS, it seems that someone “took” the package left at my door. It’s strange since I usually get InfoNotices whenever I miss a delivery.

While I might have to file a police report, along comes @ThomasAtUPS offering an ear. It’s obvious that he watches “UPS” related tweets. While he couldn’t do anything to help me then, it’s nice to know that I have a real person inside UPS to rely on, instead of talking to random service reps over the phone. Think about it: Never before in communication history have organizations ever been afforded such precise omniscience and omnipresence over their namesake as today.

Media Monitoring the Social Web
From my previous internship with PR agency, Weber Shandwick Worldwide, I had first-hand experience with the tedious aspect of mass media monitoring. Add the surveillance of social networks, and what could be relatively interesting can quickly turn into pure drudgery. Thankfully, with more news and conversations being shared online, I showed that it is getting easier for us to track what mainstream media as well as individual users are saying about particular ideas. At the basic level, there are free tracking tools on the web such as Google Alerts and SocialMention. On the higher level, there are intelligence gathering services which would index the raw keyword search results into measures of online sentiment (e.g. ScoutLabs, JamiQ).

Taking online tracking even further, the ability to predict future events might no longer be stuck in the realm of science fiction. Horizon scanning, as defined by UK government scientific advisors, involves “the systematic examination of potential threats, opportunities and likely future developments, which are at the margins of current thinking and planning. Horizon scanning may explore novel and unexpected issues, as well as persistent problems or trends” (Sept 2004). While governments have long realized the value of horizon scanning, a recent example included the fairly accurate prediction of the H1N1 flu epidemic by Northwestern University and Indiana University (New York Times, May 2009). Imagine if we had such predictive powers to watch over our interests.

History of Individual-Authority Relationships
Beyond listening, organizations can also engage and enlist users/fans in a more proactive way. I shared a historic overview of the stages of relationships and interactions individuals have had with organizations, going from Ladder of Citizen Participation (Sherry Arnstein, 1969), to Forrester Research’s Social Technographics reports (Charlene Li, 2008). I also highlighted Mike Arauz’s infamous “Spectrum of Online Friendship” to illustrate the idea of friending in the online space, and how such friends could be measured in terms of personal investment.

Where do we find the time?
Towards the end of my presentation, most of the questions pertained to finding the time for social media. There might never be enough time, let alone people, to manage multiple client accounts and their relevant social media endeavors. The short answer is that we should come upon the social web as natural extensions for our cause. Once again, the technology should come last, as it should aid, not detract from, the larger strategy of our cause.

One possible and quite commonly cited workaround which participants suggested included paying bloggers to write about their clients. First and foremost, there’s the danger of turning blog campaigns into nothing more than the act of shilling, or worst case scenario, astroturfing. I warned that with so many pairs of eyes on the Internet, it would almost be unavoidable for someone spot or even whistle-blow such an affair online, thereby damaging the client’s reputation.

I suggested looking for alternative ways to encouraging participation. This includes looking for the experts or influencers in fields relevant to the campaign, then approaching them with information which would be of interest to them. If it’s worthwhile, sponsoring bloggers for a period of time would be a better idea than simply paying for blog posts (e.g. PayPerPost), so long as bloggers know to be honest by disclosing their sponsorship in the post. A good example given by Courtney Quattrini (correct me if I’m wrong) was how she noticed that rapper 50 Cent had his ghost-twitterers sign off with initials, so fans wouldn’t feel short-changed thinking that it’s actually him tweeting. For most fans, it’s simply about the principle of showing respect.

From Communicating to Socializing
Finally, I got to sit-down with TC&C’s social media team, consisting of Kathy Burns, Alyssa Mayer, Caitlin Waas, and Courtney Quattrini. This four-woman team manages TC&C’s blog and twitter account. They are also responsible for advising colleagues and clients on the inclusion of social media practices into their communication mix. They wanted me to be brutally honest with how they could improve in the social web front. For new entrants to social media, I could think of three quick points for them to consider:

1. Link, and Link Widely
While TC&C’s company blog was professionally written, with individual writers’ personality showing through, I noted that great content might not be enough to be noticed. I believe that being on the web, we would really have to link and cite others as widely as possible, not simply to make an educated case, but to recognize other personalities online. Done modestly, most professional bloggers would see inbound links to their site, and might even reciprocate with a comment or a link back as well. It’s a conversation starter.

2. Riding the Brain Waves
As Malcolm Gladwell once noted, there are essentially two kinds of geniuses out there: The Precocious (or born genius) and the Late Bloomer. He noted that while being born genius is amazing in itself, it is far more efficient to consider developing many more late bloomers. In effect, not all of us might be able to create a sensation on our own, but many more of us know how to ride it and hopefully learn from it. Done in moderation, understanding the ebb and flow of conversations online and participating in them would be a way for new comers be introduced in new social circles. The idea is not to write simply in void, but to situation our own personality and creations in a common space with others. It’s a give and take situations, and humility can be a powerful, recognizable virtue. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh made sense when he said that “People relate to people, not companies“.

3. The Perpetual Beta
Most organizations might get hooked on the idea that they have to look perfect right from the start. Those of us in the web world know that unlike the mainstream media where you publish once and disseminate, the web is more like an organic space where ideas survive by being continuously adaptive. Unlike traditional media, the web is a space where you can actually hold multiple conversations. Understanding this means shifting the paradigm of communications towards the idea where speed and humility rules over perfectionism and authority. I’d even argue that imperfection gives people the sense that you’re as human as them, which is why some of the more interesting bloggers are those who share their best and worst of times. It’s the journey tells the story, not simply the success. On a related note, there’s an interesting documentary being produced by Melissa Pierce called “Life in Perpetual Beta” which I hope to catch.

Telling it like it is…
I don’t profess to be a social media expert, so these are brief heartfelt thoughts I have to share. There are many more developed ideas worth exploring from many others worth following, but I do hope these points provide a rough guide on how to think about the social web. The bottomline is that we can’t simply bootstrap traditional communication practices onto the social web if we wish to make the best from it. We’re going back to basics, working with real people who share our interests, so we ought to make our adventures a mutual investment.

• Presentation: The Obama Way – Using Online Social Networks to Promote Your Cause
• Fiendster: the new way to hate people
• Singapore Youth & Media Conference 2005
• How to climb over that “Walled Garden” known as Facebook…
• Would you hire a social media strategist? Discussing emergent themes (Part 3)

Authors: Jason Gallo, Matthew Kane, Eszter Hargittai

Citation Hargittai, E., Gallo, J., & Kane, M. (2008). Cross-Ideological Discussions among Conservative and Liberal Bloggers. Public Choice. 134:67-86.

Abstract: With the increasing spread of information technologies and their potential to filter content, some have argued that people will abandon the reading of dissenting political opinions in favor of material that is closely aligned with their own ideological position. We test this theory empirically by analyzing—both quantitatively and qualitatively—Web links among the writings of top conservative and liberal bloggers. Given our use of novel methods, we discuss in detail our sampling and data collection methodologies. We find that widely read political bloggers are much more likely to link to others who share their political views. However, we find no increase in this pattern over time. We also analyze the content of the links and find that while many of the links are based on straw-man arguments, bloggers across the political spectrum also address each others’ writing substantively, both in agreement and disagreement.

Link: Web Use Project web site

Keywords: Blogs – Bloggers – Communication – Fragmentation – Ideology – Internet – Polarization – Political communication – Web

Posted via web from Cyberwar

• From Del.icio.us to WordPress: How to automatically post daily links
• Tomorrow.sg’s linking policy misses the point
• Stephen Colbert vs. Mr Brown: What’s the point of political satire?
• The Wists vs. Del.icio.us Showdown
• TheoryMail: How do I create “personalized” Daily Del.icio.us Posts?

For Fundraising Day 2009 (which coincides with Earth Day), I gave a primer on how President Obama used online social networks (among many communication tools) to empower supporters and raise an incredible amount of public funding for his 2008 election campaign.

In particular, I focused on the idea of producing remixable media, so fans/supporters can produce their own variations, take ownership of the idea and ultimately help spread the cause.

Click to see high-res panorama of our fundraising through social media session @ Statler Tower

KaraKane of Medaille College kicked things off with some social media definitions and concepts (see her slides), while AJ, founder of BuffaloMe.com, talked about how organizations could establish presence online and integrate social media practices with their marketing communication mix. I’ve put some of the audience questions at the end of my Slideshare presentation for future reference.

This event was kindly hosted by the Association of Fundraising Professional (WNY Chapter).

• Speaking @ PRSA Buffalo: Getting started with social media for PR practitioners (Pt.2)
• Speaking @ PRSA Buffalo: Getting started with social media for PR practitioners (Pt.1)
• Speaking @ PRSA Buffalo: Social Media – Strategy Over Tools (Part 1)
• Lecture: Seduction of the Swarm – Patterns of Online Participation
• Singapore Youth & Media Conference 2005

• Watch on Blip.tv or download the iPhone version (12min/80mb).
• Check out previous episodes on Blip.tv or subscribe to theorycast via iTunes.

Thanks to @JessManocchio and @joonian, I’ve got my first issue of MINE. It’s an experimental, personalized magazine from Time Warner Inc. Is it a worthy mashup or a frankenstein of a magazine? See what I’ve to say.

What is Mine magazine?

• A free five-issue, 10-week, experimental magazine
• User-mashup of five Time Warner/American Express Co. magazines
• Personalized magazines end up with 56 possible combinations
• MINE has been compared to a printed, expanded RSS feed
• 36-page print edition for first 31,000 respondents
• Online version goes to remaining 200,000 respondents
• MINE magazine has mobile reader version, including a Blackberry app
• Features four single-page ads for the Lexus 2010 RX
• Lexus ads personalized based on subscriber’s geography and taste (see video)
• Probably environmentally friendlier than traditional distribution
• Magazine personalization isn’t new: Xerox helped subscribers put their own photo on the cover of WIRED (March-July, 2007)

References
USA Today: Made-to-order magazine lets readers choose by Ryan Nakashima (March 18, 2009)
Fast Company: Time Inc.’s Mine Magazine is a Printed RSS Feed by Ariel Schwartz (March 18, 2009)
Will Time’s Customized “Mine” Magazine Be a Print Success Story? by Leah Southers #PublicRelations (March 26, 2009)

• Discovering User-Generated Magazines: Everywhere + JPG
• Why Time Magazine’s Person of the Year isn’t exactly “You”…
• Want to be on the cover of WIRED (15.07)?
• Watch ::theorycast:: on blip.tv (re-runs never looked so good!)
• It’s OK, Nobody is Perfect.

With more of us from the University at Buffalo now on twitter, a UB tweetup was in order. Everyone met each other for the first time, and we exchanged ideas on how we used it for our various causes.

There are currently about 10 twitter accounts affiliated to the University at Buffalo. After our tweetup, these accounts were aggregated via CrowdStatus. This is the official list of UB faculty/staff on twitter, so feel free to follow them!

Folks present at our first UB tweetup included:
@UBcfa – Joanne from UB Center for the Arts
@UBcommunity – Jessica from UB Community Relations
@UB_Alumni – Barbara & Gina from UB Alumni Relations
@UBLaw + @UBLawLib – Jim Milles & Kristina from UB Law Library
As well as Bridget (@bschu1022) from UB Libraries whose official twitter presence should be coming soon.

Those who couldn’t make it included:
@UB_SAS – UB Student advising services
@UBAcademies – Undergrad development beyond the university
@BuffaloBulls – our UB sports teams
@UBGreen – UB’s Green Initiative
@UBCitAlerts – @jhsu’s CIT computing network alerts

Watch our self-introduction video, as well as notes after the jump…

Over here we have Gina’s notes from our first UB tweetup:

Don’t forget, you can easily follow our new UB twitter collective at via CrowdStatus.

• Our Buffalo Tweetup @ Cabana Sam’s
• Vids and Pics: 1st Buffalo Tweetup @ The BrewPub
• Buffalo Tweetup #3: Making a living thru video podcasting
• Video: University at Buffalo
• Chart: Twitter Users by Country (April 2008)

- – - – -
Notice to all employees:

Workloads getting to you?
Feeling stressed?
Too many priorities and assignments?

Due to the hard economic times and otherwise depressing state of the world today, all personnel will now be required to at least look happy while working.

Company-approved supplies will be provided to each employee at little or no cost. Here is the new low-cost, company-approved solution to cope with multiple priorities and assignments!

Each employee will be supplied 2 paper clips and rubber bands as shown in Fig 1 below:

Figure 1. Company-issued smiling contraption
- – - – -

• Making silky smooth videos with the affordable Hague Mini Motion Cam
• Now Hiring: Web & Video producers @ Al Qaeda
• Today’s Links: Watch “Who Killed the Electric Car” for free!
• Fast Company: Blogging to boost your career
• “Happy-Sad- then Hopeful” deal about Apple’s 3G iPhones… (plus Singtel’s estimated iPhone rates)

BBC’s Matt Frei visits a cyber cafe just outside Tokyo, where some homeless young people are choosing to live in the tiny cubicles. Some take-aways from this short, depressing BCC report:

• 60 x “coffin-sized” cubicles for rent at around US$500/month in Tokyo
• No windows to the outside world, except for computer
• Cubicle residents mostly young, intelligent, retrenched
• Cubicle neighbors rarely talk to one another, no friendships
• Sense of sadness and lifelessness. Respectful = silent?

Reviewing similar cyber-drifter reports from other news agencies:

• Cyber-homeless are nicknamed “freeters” – a compound of “free” and “Arbeiter” (German for “worker”)
• “Freeters” are a by-product of the economic crisis that hit Japan and its lifelong employment guarantees in the 1990s
• “Freeters” drift between odd jobs, earning around US$8/hour (1,000 yen)
• A modest 30 square metre (320 square foot) flat in Tokyo easily cost US$1,250/month
• Living in such Internet cafes costs $12-$20 a night. Residents get free soft drinks, TV, comics and Internet access. This prices even beat those of Japan’s famous “capsule hotels”, where guests sleep in plastic cells.
• Living in cybercafes also grants an official registered address to many laid-off contract workers. Critical for job hunting.

I’ve seen similar partitioned cubicles in cybercafes in parts of China, though I must say that the ones in Japan seem to have the most privacy.

I’d appreciate any photos / videos you might have taken or found of cybercafes around the world. I’d like to compare social conditions.

Here are more reports about Japan’s cyber homeless…
Reuters: Japanese find sleep, shelter in cyber cafes (Text / May 7, 2007)
Roadjunky: The Cyber-Homeless of Japan (Video / Dec 22, 2008)
Reuters: Japan’s Internet address (Video / Dec 24, 2008)

Update: BoingBoing mentions the exploitation aspect. Cybercafe owner makes a tidy sum from their plight: 60 cubicles x $500 rent = $30,000. The polar ends of socio-economics, aka the poor get poorer, vice versa. The inescapable, perpetual dilemma.

• Guide to Japan for the Mac Geek Tourist (w/ home video)
• Singaporean Defers National Service to play video games…
• Today’s Links: Blogging without Fear
• LifeStory: When “home” isn’t a place anymore…
• Li Ao’s “Singaporean stupidity” redefined?

I’m strolling along sunny Phuket beach in Thailand remotely from Buffalo, New York. Approximately 8651 true miles away, my holiday experience is mediated via Mapjack.com

I asked friends to come along, by twittering where I was (via URL). @Prissyhan sent me a coconut to drink, but since it was viscerally lacking, I closed the loop by picking up a can of coconut juice for that buttery liquid flavor.

All I’m missing now is the feeling of warm sand and sea water flowing between my toes. Perhaps I should get a wash tub from Walmart…

Aside: “The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth–it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.” – Poster, Mark; Baudrillard, Jean (1988)

• What’s so Merry about Christmas?
• Farewell Jean…
• Wall Poster: The Web is Agreement
• How to: Fry an egg using your computer
• The Inconvenient Truth gets thumbs-up for accuracy