October 28, 2008

Alltop - China Stories in One Place

Came across a really useful service, Alltop, thanks to a badge on Thomas Crampton's blog.

Alltop, all the top stories

Alltop allows you to easily define an interest (e.g. China) and collect relevant blog stories on one web page. They describe themselves as being an "online magazine rack" of popular topics. They import the stories of the top news websites and blogs for any given topic and display the headlines of the five most recent stories. When you place the cursor over a headline, we display part of the story so that you can decide if you’d like to read it.

Here's a screenshot of the china.alltop.com news page.


On further research, I see that it is the team behind Truemors, including Guy Kawasaki, who set this up. Apparently, they were inspired by how popurls brought as much traffic to their site as Google search.

October 24, 2008

Creative Genius - We Feel Fine

Following on from the general sense of wonderment shown when I presented Wefeelfine.org at BarcampHK (see my slides here), I managed to find a video presentation given by the genius behind the idea, Jonathan Harris.












His bio is full of amazing ways to measure the pulse of human activity via the internet.

Jonathan Harris is an artist and storyteller working primarily on the Internet. One part computer science, one part anthropology, and one part visual art, his work seeks to explore and understand the human world through the artifacts people leave behind on the Web.


He has made projects about human emotion (wefeelfine.org), human desire (love-lines.org), modern mythology (universe.daylife.com), science (phylotaxis.com), news (tenbyten.org), and language (wordcount.org), and created the world's largest time capsule (timecapsule.yahoo.com).

He studied computer science at Princeton University, and was awarded a 2004 Fabrica fellowship (fabrica.it). The winner of two 2005 Webby Awards, Harris' work has also been recognized by AIGA, Ars Electronica, ID Magazine, and the State of Vermont. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and his website is number27.org.

October 23, 2008

Creative Commons Hong Kong Launch - Oct 24 and 25

Calling all supporters of "free culture",

This past September at Web Wednesday V16.0, we were lucky enough to have Rebecca MacKinnon introduce us to a new way of licensing and sharing content using Creative
Commons. If you missed the event, you can listen to the interview here. There is also a Facebook event invite.

And now Creative Commons is being officially launched in Hong Kong, with two events at the end of this week. If you want to be part of the movement to “Share Hong Kong’s Creativity”, please do make a special effort to attend. (Registration is required and you can get the full event programme here).




Friday 24th October: 5:00 - 6:30 pm
Venue: Wang Gungwu Theatre, Graduate House, Hong Kong University

Inaugural Speech on by Professor Lawrence Lessig, the Founder of Creative Commons, who will speak on Free Culture and Free Society: Can the West Love Both?”. You'll need to
register in advance here.

Sat 25th October: 12- 6pm
Venue: HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity

Creative Commons Arts Festival

  • Photographs Exhibit (Hong Kong Flickr Groups)
  • Script reading of “An Instant Patriot” - a play by Mrs. Elizabeth Wong
  • Live Music ( Snoblind )
  • The Making of CC Documentaries ( v-artivist and inmedia)
  • Hong Kong Bloggers workshop (Panelists: Jacky See, Poon Wing Hang, Jeff Au Yeung)
You'll need to register here so that they can manage numbers.

Creative Commons has joined forces with the DotAsia Registry, also a previous guest at Web Wednesday, and has set up a new website, creativecommons.asia with links to all the local site across Asia.

Hot of the presses! Creative Commons has now been endorsed by Cantopop starlet and actress, Ella Koon. Read more about it on Rebecca MacKinnon's blog, RConversation. I just had to add her photo to show you her "pulling power".

Will all these good things going on, can you afford to miss this great new movement for creativity in Hong Kong?

And if you're still confused about how Creative Commons changes the copyright game, watch this video.




October 20, 2008

Web Wednesday - Social Mixer V18.0 (Nov 5)

In these troubled times, where do you turn for support?

Do you fly off to the virtual world of Second Life? Seek solace in a guild in the World of Warcraft? Or look up to the skies and ask for help from the Big Man Himself?

Alternatively, just come along to Hong Kong's premier internet gathering - Web Wednesday - to mix with (often not so) like-minded folk and hear the story of the ex-GM of AXA Insurance who became a Christian preacher and leveraged social media in order to build his community.

Our guest on 5th November will be John Snelgrove, Senior Pastor of the Vine Christian Fellowship in Central, Hong Kong. We'll be talking "God 2.0 - Building a Christian community using social media".


In is own words, "The Vine is a contemporary church (looks more like Starbucks!) (music sounds more like Coldplay!!) and attracts an international congregation 7 days per week totalling over 1,000. Its music is heard and played worldwide, and through the website, video clips and podcasting the message extends way beyond the walls of the church."


You can sample The Vine online here

As usual, we will congregate at Q97 in the Basement of California Tower, Lan Kwai Fong.

Social mixing starts at 6:30pm and the guest interview at 7pm. If you're on Facebook, tell us your coming by signing up here.

Come share the digital love!

October 14, 2008

Web Wednesday Guangzhou - 15th Oct

Our good friend, Doctor Lonnie Hodge, CEO of Culture Fish Media, is hosting the 4th Web Wednesday event in Guangzhou on 15th October. You can sign up for the event on Facebook or simply turn up in person, if you're heading "up north".

Topic: Web Advertising Alchemy with Des Walsh and Peter Burton

Peter Burton is Operations Director at Oriented Media and a veteran of the internet. He is a co-founder of Activ8 (now Oriented Media) a digital marketing and adserving company. Prior to starting Oriented Media he was a member of the start-up team for SpaceAsia Media, Asia's first adserving network which was subsequently sold to CMGI in 2000. Peter has honed his online advertising alchemy skills at Oriented Media and SpaceAsia Media.

Prior to that Peter was part of the start-up team at Magictel, Hong Kong's first VoIP phone card business which subsequently became now e-Kong.

In an earlier life as a Management Consultant Peter worked with a range of Telecom and Financial Services organisations in Asia and in Europe. He has a track record for managing turn-arounds and of leading trouble-shooting and business rescue projects.

Peter has a degree in Engineering and an MBA from Henley Management College in the UK. Originally from the West Indies, Peter has worked in Asia for 12 years and is currently based in Hong Kong.

Des Walsh is a social media strategist, business coach, international speaker, blogger, author and podcaster. He is also a fine story teller, gregarious and passionate about helping business people see how social media can enhance their businesses. He established his own consulting, training and coaching business after a successful career in public service. Des also pushes the industry forward through his membership of International Association of Coaching and the Advisory Board of the International Blogging and New Media Association and the Social Media Club.

The crowd in Guangzhou is very different to that in Hong Kong so do make the effort to pop over to see our cousins up there, if you have the chance.

October 9, 2008

Last night's event - Hong Kong Start-Up Assocation

Great event last night. Good turn out even though Facebook wouldn't let me invite you all to the event and I had no time to send out the usual email invite.

Henry Oh gave us honest insight into the VC culture in Silicon Valley and how it differs from Hong Kong. He also offered some alternatives for funding, using debt rather than equity. (Not sure if it works in these days were "debt" is a dirty word!). 

We learnt about his goals for mentoring a local start-up culture and sharing knowledge to help entrepreneurs accelerate and fund their ventures from money in the Silicon Valley.

I'll be posting the interview to our podcast channel within the next week. 

In the meantime, you can read the pre-event blog posting or listen to previous interviews on Web Wednesday's podcast channel or follow my occasional musings on Twitter.

Our next event will be on Wednesday 5th November at Q97 in Lam Kwai Fong. Networking starts at 6:30pm with the speaker interview at 7pm.

We are finalising the speaker but it'll either be an animation start-up from Hong Kong or a leading video portal in China.

Keep pushing the digital envelope!

October 8, 2008

Web Wednesday Hong Kong - 8th October at Q97

Calling Hong Kong Digerati!

Come join our next social mixer (Web Wednesday HK V17.0) tonight
at Q97 in Lan Kwai Fong. Networking from 6:30pm, guest speaker panel at 7pm. If you're on Facebook, you can sign up here for free.

Apart from the usual industry buzz and casual social mixing atmosphere, we'll be talking the status of start-ups and funding options with Henry Oh, Co-Founder of the Hong Kong Start-Up Association and Socialutions, his own new venture.

Henry is also a songwriter and film maker and avid proponent of Free Culture and Creative Commons. (We covered CC in-depth in our last social mixer; listen to the podcast here).

Henry met his business partner (Rodney Lloyd) at Web Wednesday in Hong Kong. In honour of our role in bringing them together, Henry will launch his new venture, "WikiEnterprise" at tonight's social mixer.

The common theme underlying Socialutions will be a focus on social benefit (e.g. renewable energy, open source, Creative Commons).


This social mixer is free and open to any one interested in the internet and digital media in Asia. Sign up here for tonight's social mixer and join our community of over 800 Asian Digerati.