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Bookmarks
2009 was intense and rewarding for me. I’m grateful to be working with the team at Automattic and to be a part of the WordPress community entering 2010. To my friends and colleagues present and past, I hope you have a meaningful and excellent year ahead.
Installfest 2008 looks awesome. Good luck folks!
Beautiful music resource posted at the Hype Machine today:
of 2007, as bubbled up by the music bloggers Hype Machine tracks. RAWK!
Thank you for letting me know I own none of the Top 50 albums 
My favorite photo site (and offseason home of the Legendary Sifu Master Kakul Srivastava) just rolled out sweet editing tools tonight. Congrats folks!
Sonyon: weird, melancholy, awesome Korean toys.
“We were trying to imagine a boy in the future,” says founder Kim Bo-min, “and all the things that boy would hold in his imagination.”
“People who dream would most enjoy the brand,” adds Lee Joo-eun, Kim’s business partner.
“You could say Sonyon is analogous to Peter Pan.” But without the Disney-fied sheen of eternal happiness; Sonyon is still, after all, Korean. “When you walk around Seoul, you experience both happiness and sadness in the things you come across. Likewise, Sonyon lives somewhere between a happy place and a sad one.”
Via Theme Magazine.
I’ve been an unabashed Oakland booster for at least the past ten years (after having relocated here from Palo Alto about fifteen years ago).
All the same I tend to be skeptical of glossy magazine covers that talk about the “new” anything – mostly I think it is new people discovering something that was already pulsing along on its own merry way.
Still this month’s San Francisco magazine had a ton of writeups on some of the grassroots cultural scene that is on the rise here in Oakland, and it was great to read. (Don’t mind the irony of this being reported in – ahem – San Francisco magazine)
Check out the lead article; there are other pieces on the Art Murmur*, newish restaurants and nightlife. The print edition’s got some ace photography in it as well.
Onward Oakland!
* I can confirm firsthand the Art Murmur is a tricksy little fiesta.
Is there an Oakland magazine, PK?
@jjm: Yep, there is.
Just try to rent a family-sized apartment in SF for under $3k now. Of course all the cool people are going to Oakland, just like they always have been. Yay, Oakland!
I’ve never been busier with work than I have been this past month. Also never felt more engaged, in the flow, or more excited about work than I am now.
I’m a few posts behind where I’d hoped to be so for now some bits of the zeitgeist in advance of molto bloggo presto:
“When I wrote ‘Neuromancer’ ” almost 25 years ago, he says, “cyberspace was there, and we were here. In 2007, what we no longer bother to call cyberspace is here, and those increasingly rare moments of nonconnectivity are there. And that’s the difference. There’s no scarlet-tinged dawn on which we rise and look out the window and go, ‘Oh my God, it’s all cyberspace now.’ “
Sometimes, explaining Korea, where I was made and born, is hard.
I was born in Seoul. We moved when I was one to Guam (that’s another story, for another time). We settled in L.A. when I was nine, and I’ve lived in the Bay Area since I came up here for college.
Explaining Korea is hard here in the US because it doesn’t have the broadly spread pop-cultural or economic reference points of Japan or China.
Korea as a meme is getting more play, certainly here in Silicon Valley — cf., Cyworld, Samsung, fiber to the door, pro Starcraft leagues — but in the West, Korea is to Asia as The Silmarillion is to The Lord of the Rings: vaguely familiar, and known best only to those with an itch to dig into the culture.
Enough setup.
Over the weekend, Nicholas Reville invited me to a get together for Miro, where I met two folks who dropped new science on me about Korea and the Internet that’s worth sharing.
Jake Shapiro runs the Public Radio Exchange, an online marketplace for the distribution of public radio programming. Jake also plays guitar in a band called Two Ton Shoe. Two Ton Shoe formed in 2000, gigged on the East Coast, but didn’t break through in the US. In 2005, after the band had gone on hiatus, Jake was pinged by the owner of a Korean record label.
The record label owner wanted to release a CD of Two Ton Shoe’s greatest hits in Korea.
In the years since the band had gone on hiatus, they’d become, thanks to filesharing over the Internet, “a talisman for teenagers bearing black wool caps and guitar bags, tired of what they hear on the radio.” They planned a tour, and started negotiating a new album deal in Korea.
I’ve summarized most of the above bit from a wonderful Economist journal entitled “Flash memory and fetishism“, about a trip the author took to Seoul with Jake.
Among other vivid snapshots of Korea, circa 2007, is this excerpt, which manages to combine a language lesson, a shout out to Metallica, and a brief reference to growing up across cultures:
The guitar player, James, rips into something very like “Happy Birthday”. James, son of a Korean diplomat, grew up in a suburb of DC and had to learn his native language as a teenager when his family returned to South Korea. Among other jobs, James translates during the Seoul visits of Metallica, a heavy-metal band. When he is finished I can only repeat the phrase I’ve learned: “Chu gun da” – “That kills”.
I’ve written before about yearning for bridges between the online experience and meatspace. Jake’s story is about as happy an example as I could imagine about this happening.
I also learned from Rebecca Masisak, the co-CEO of CompuMentor, about The Beautiful Foundation, based in Seoul. They’ve created something called “The Happy Bean.” It’s a web app running now on Naver, Korea’s top search engine, that lets non-governmental organizations (NGOs) set up blogs about their work and lets individuals in turn donate to NGOs they learn about through Happy Bean. I don’t have a ton more info than this, but Rebecca told me that a couple of the projects at this year’s Netsquared conference were building services similar to The Happy Bean.
Aside: The Happy Bean. I just love that name. It’s got to be good.
I haven’t blogged much about Korea before. Lots more to share before and during my trip back to the motherland in September.
If you only have three minutes to spare, and want to get a quick dose of Korea FightingTM, check these out:
“Korea is to Asia as The Silmarillion is to The Lord of the Rings” – that’s great!
Stephen McNamara, 
Ryan Markel 5:23 am on January 1, 2010 Permalink |
Happy new year, Paul. I am likewise happy to be part of the team and think exciting things are ahead in 2010.
Toni 8:51 am on January 1, 2010 Permalink |
Happy New Year!
thebristolblogger 2:04 am on January 5, 2010 Permalink |
Hi Paul,
as you’re responsible for “existing user engagement and retention” could you take a little time out to tell me why my blog: http://thebristolblogger.wordpress.com has been pulled this morning (GMT) without notice?
It’s a UK-based political blog regarding the city of Bristol and has a readership in the region of 2-3,000, many of whom will be quite upset at its disappearance without explanation. It is also an integral, popular and well-known part of the city’s internet community.
You are welcome to reply on here (I’ve nothing to hide) or email me at bristol_citizensATyahoo.co.uk
Many thanks.
Mike 2:46 am on January 5, 2010 Permalink |
Yes we miss him. Please let him know what his violation is rehabilitate him.
Eastonite 3:13 am on January 5, 2010 Permalink |
So, this ‘nothing to hide’ anonymous little scandal monger has had his blog pulled, presumably one of his many libels have caught up with him.
Happy New Year !!
Anarchist606 5:41 am on January 5, 2010 Permalink |
What’s happened to the Bristol Blogger? Would be nice to know what has happened? Bring the blog back! And there was me thinking of moving from Google’s Blogger to WordPress….
Tony D 5:45 am on January 5, 2010 Permalink |
Why has this blog been suspended? And why was this done without even an explanation as to why? Bring the blog back
Pete Jordan 5:52 am on January 5, 2010 Permalink |
Who knew that Jan Ormondroyd’s reach had grown so long? I guess it’s the inevitable consequence of speaking truth to power, or possibly just a cockup.
badnewswade 6:18 am on January 5, 2010 Permalink |
Yeah, what’s going on?? I must have my fix of BB!
Paul Kim 6:46 am on January 5, 2010 Permalink |
I’m looking into this. I’ll get in touch with you via email once I have more information.
redzone 3:58 am on January 5, 2010 Permalink |
maybe he’s been exposing far to many home truths, rattling to many cages & generally just upsetting the political apple cart !?!?
whatever it is, the sooner the bristol blogger returns, the better!!!!
silenced bristolians 5:49 am on January 5, 2010 Permalink |
what on earth is going on, this makes it a distinctly unhappy new year, wtf is going on!? It’ll be trending on twitter soon – http://search.twitter.com/search?q=bristol+blogger
harryT 6:07 am on January 5, 2010 Permalink |
Why has the Bristol Blogger been suspended ? And without explanation ?
What sort of online community is this ?????
Paul Kim 7:59 am on January 5, 2010 Permalink |
We’ve been in contact with the Bristol Blogger directly to explain why the blog was suspended (it’s back up now).
Stephen McNamara 3:35 pm on January 8, 2010 Permalink |
pretty weak explanation by all accounts – so much for the first amendment
Paul Kim 3:50 pm on January 8, 2010 Permalink |
Stephen McNamara: We don’t censor posts or blogs. However, our terms of service prohibit defamatory content. This article has much more information about what happened, with comments from Automattic: http://www.bristol247.com/2010/01/05/bristol-blogger-site-taken-down-over-defamation-claims/