GAPADO, MARADO, DEL.ICIO.US, JEJU, SOUTH KOREA

Jeju might already be one of the furthest locations south in South Korea, but if you really want to go south then you’ll be needing to go to Gapado and Marado. These two tiny islets lie off the south-west coast of Jeju. That’s where I’ll be heading tomorrow.

Gapado is first on the agenda and the larger of the two. I haven’t been here yet so it’ll be new territory.

Marado, however, has been visited before, around this time last year. It’s almost as flat as a pancake and with no natural shade can be extremely hot in summer. There’s endless blue sky and ocean around. Food consists of seafood Jajangmyeon.

What I like about Marado is that it’s firmly OFF the foreigner tourist trail. Meaning that very few actually make the trip out here - even if you’re a resident.

It’s relatively easy to get there. Catching a bus from the Jeju City bus terminal will have you at Moseulpo harbour in about one hour. From there take the ferry.

When I was first getting the magazine going I did write a story on Marado which can be read here. It’ll be re-written for publication at a later date.

And in journalism news.

With a plethora of Journalism topics to blog about, tonight I’ll pick up on a post made by Matthew Ingram about the questionable usefulness of Del.icio.us for bookmarking stories:

It has occurred to me over the past year or so that while I religiously bookmark things, often dozens of them in a single day, I rarely go back and look them up. If I’m writing about something and I remember some details, I type them into Google and eventually track the page down.

It’s something I do too and have realized that I don’t actually go back to read my del.icio.us bookmarks often. I input fragments of what I remember about a page into Google and that’s usually enough to track down the relevant page again.

Having said that, I do find del.icio.us fantastic for finding quality pages that don’t have intrusive Google AdSense advertisements plastered all over them. Which is becoming a real issue these days.

POWER LAW DISTRIBUTION, JEJU, SOUTH KOREA

I’ve worked my way through Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody. After one read I’ve certainly not been able to understand everything he discusses. However, one thing I’m going to take away from the first read is an introduction to the power law distribution.

The power law distribution predicts that the bulk of the work is contributed by a small fraction of the participants.

Shirky uses a parade and the number of photographs uploaded to Flickr by those who attended to illustrate his point:

Note the sharp drop-off in the number of photos between the top few contributors and most of the participants. Notice too that because of the disproportionate contributions of these few photographers, three-quarters of the photographers contributed a below average number of pictures. This pattern is general to social media… Bloggers, Wikipedia contributors, photographers, people conversing on mailing lists, and social participation in many other large scale systems all exhibit the same pattern.

And what Shirky notes as surprising, was a eureka moment for me:

The imbalance drives large social systems rather than damage them. Fewer than two percent of Wikipedia users ever contribute, yet that is enough to create a profound value for millions of users.

In relation to Jeju Life, a core group of us hold the foundations together at the top of the power law distribution. Followed by the staff writers and then further down the line to the contributors. Finally at the bottom of the curve are those who we perhaps run into on the street and pass on a piece of advice.

Each and every point is vital to maintaining the system.

Later today I’ll be flying off from Jeju to Osaka and beyond. See you soon.

RESPONDING TO COMMENTS, JEJU, SOUTH KOREA

The Jeju Life web site and Jeju Life Blog hasn’t come close to reaching a ‘critical mass’ at which point I’ll become unable to respond to each and every email/comment I receive.

Over the past few days I have been taking care to respond to everyone who takes the time to comment. There has been Beth, posting from a Cafe in Chicago to Chris in London and Lisa somewhere on Jeju Island. Each one of their entries has contributed to the community in some small way.

Pat Thornton over at Beat Blogging tells the Gawker that they’re wrong to stop people commenting on stories. I agree.

Comments add value to Web sites, they drive traffic and build communities.

Building a community is something we’ve started to do with Jeju Life. We have our Facebook group (75 members) and application (10 installs), web site, magazine and editor’s blog. But it’s still not enough.

What if we had a social network that was Jeju specific? The Ning platform can provide just that. In fact by taking just three minutes out from writing this post I was able to create the bare bones of a network here.

Fire Festival Media, CouchSurfing & Google Sites

Fire festival media has appeared online in great swathes – mainly through social networking site Facebook.

Video posted up by Eric Karrandjas gives a great view of the proceedings. If you look closely you’ll see rows of flame prior to the whole Oreum burning. That’s actually a long line of people holding lighted torches that went forward on command to start the fire.

Moving on, I’ve involved myself with the CouchSurfing community on Jeju. This Saturday we’re trying to schedule a meeting for Couchsurfers based here. Holly’s Coffee (City Hall). 6pm.

I’ve had a profile for a while now and tried CS properly for the first time in Iceland last year. Meeting the people I did in Reykjavik made the whole trip undeniably memorable.

A ‘thank you’ to Aaron Fowles, ex-jeju resident and now passionate CS’er for his assistance putting this together.

You may notice I’ve been relatively quiet on the Google news front. Don’t worry though – with the release of Google Sites last week I’ve been plenty busy.

To finish, here’s an amusing take on the earthquake that rocked England last week (hat tip OJB). Shot by a university student at their student home, it compares the response of Sky News to the BBC:

And what’s the first thing every does in England when there’s an earthquake?

“I know… we change our Facebook status….

Dan Clough excuse me house can you please stop vibrating…
Keely Power loves earthquakes…..shake me more, SHAKE ME MOREEEEE!
Helen Halliday just felt an earthquake in Leicester…or was it a nuke?
Dave Glover thinks that either a massive lorry just drove past his room, he is drunk, or there was just a minor earthquake… one of those.
John Staff is sad to say Rover the mouse has left the building. EARTHQUAKE!”

Read the rest here.