Having joined friends for the delivery of a propeller aircraft from Europe to the US, we are currently grounded in Reykjavik, Iceland by the weather at our next landing point: Narsarsuaq, Greenland.

We left Paris yesterday by commercial flight to Billund, Denmark – home of Legoland – to pick up the aircraft. The co-pilot’s HSI, an electronic compass, had burned out mysteriously and needed to be replaced. The replacement also burned out shortly after we left. The pilots (I am the only passenger on this voyage) tell me that they have 5 separate GPS devices between them (including a GPS for jogging), so the compass is not actually vital.

Even if GPS and HSI fail, we apparently have Gmail for navigation – photo below. Should I be reassured?

The photo of the three of us was taken at our first stop, Wick, which may be the northernmost airport in Britain. Andrew Bruce, in photo below, seems to do everything at the airport – from refueling to flight training to air traffic control.

According to Andrew, there are 37 flights like ours that stop at Wick each month. There are quite a few single engine aircraft and about three aircraft per year perish. “You can blame the weather, but in reality it is almost always due to bad planning and doing things in a rush.”

Wick serves as the winter loading point for North Sea oil platforms, since it is flat enough for helicopters to land in very bad weather. While we were there an oil platform helicopter was clattering overhead doing various exercises.

Technorati Tags: Reykjavik, Iceland, Greenland, Narsarsuaq

Los Angeles, written in French as a joke by the SNCF (Merci à Jean-Francois Paris pour le photo)

As a frequent contributor to Loic Le Meur’s blog – which is consistently ranked among the top blogs in France – I face frustration with adding accents to my postings. (I own a Qwerty keyboard Mac, not the French-style Azerty keyboard that has handy one touch accents).

Here’s the solutions (All suggested by readers of Loic’s blog)

1- Use Bon Patron to add accents and correct your French. A Canadian website that specifically looks for typical anglophone errors in French, I highly recommend it. (Grand merci à Sylvain Pellier)

2- Use Mac accents thanks to this handy table (Grand merci à Cedric)

æ = Option (alt) + ‘
à = Option (alt) + ` + a
â = Option (alt) + i + a
ç = Option (alt) + c
é = Option (alt) + e + e
è = Option (alt) + ` + e
ê = Option (alt) + i + e
ë = Option (alt) + u + e
î = Option (alt) + i + i
ï = Option (alt) + u + i
ô = Option (alt) + i + o
ö = Option (alt) + u + o
ù = Option (alt) + ` + u
û = Option (alt) + i + u
ü = Option (alt) + u + u
« = Option (alt) + \
» = Option (alt) + Shift + \
½ = Option (alt) + ½

3- Install Rainer Brockerhoff’s program that simplifies the adding of accents. Have not tried this because I am extremely wary of jamming up my computer with too many programs. (Grand merci à Thy)

Technorati Tags: bon patron, Rainer Brockerhoff, Loic Le Meur, Macbook, Apple

I will experiment with a new style of Open Source reporting while attending the World Economic Forum’s Dalian meeting in September. (China’s People’s Daily newspaper refers to the meeting as a “Summer Davos”.)

After more than a decade as a reporter for the International Herald Tribune/New York Times, I resigned last month to start a new career as an Asia-based entrepreneur.

My DNA, however, remains that of a reporter and I plan to report from the conference as intensely as I would for the newspaper.

This time, however, I will fully disclose my intended articles on this blog and post a video of every interview.

Some videos will be interviews of people with compelling ideas or stories whom I encounter at the conference and at the Young Global Leaders meeting beforehand, but I plan to concentrate on specific strands of reporting.

To make this process fully Open Source, I will also blog the progress of my reporting as well as solicit tips and ideas. Please leave comments and suggestions!

For these interested in journalism, this project will show how raw material turns into an article (and – no doubt – how a reporter’s perspective is changed by the very act of reporting).

Since I will follow my own agenda rather than the conference, this system varies slightly from the excellent posts on conference blogging by uber-bloggers Ethan Zuckerman and Bruno Giussani.

Here’s my current ideas for two themes (which may vary with reporting):

INTERNETS OF ASIA: Contrary to popular perception among many in technology, culture matters. Countries with similar high levels of technology – Sweden and South Korea, for example – can use that technology in radically different ways. This holds especially true in Asia, with numerous interesting variations: The text message obsession in the Philippines, the reluctance of Hong Kong residents to “show friends” to strangers – and even their friends – in social networking websites. Need many striking examples!

TECHNO CHINA: What are the biggest Internet trends in China and which ones could be exported from China?

A quick selection from the participant list (Further suggestions welcome):

Those watching the Internet and blogosphere:
Magid Abraham co-Founder and CEO of Comscore
Dave Sifry, founder and CEO of Technorati
Kaiser Kuo of Ogilvy in China

Telecom experts:
Yoon Songyee Vice-President, SK Telecom, Republic of Korea
Tero Ojanpera Executive VP and Chief Technology Officer, Nokia, Finland

Web 2.0 Entrepreneurs
Ailin Anshe Graef Chair of Anshe Chung Studios, China
Tariq Krim CEO and Founder, Netvibes, France

Technorati Tags: Dalian, Davos, Global Growth Companies, New Champions, WEF, World Economic Forum, Young Global Leaders

Thanks to the large number of comments – and one in particular – about the TagMyPod project that I started on my French blog (description here in English), I am seeing if anyone will join me to take the concept further.

One comment, by Alexandre Le Guyader, pointed out that starting a company is extremely hard for young people and that Phuong Tran of TagMyPod had an enormous advantage through interacting with people via my blogging.

Since the blog where I write in French – belonging to my friend Loic Le Meur – is the number one blog in France, the videos and blog posts I did on Phuong’s project created an immediate buzz. (That said, the success of his company is still very uncertain, which is probably why people have enjoyed following the series of postings.)

I totally agree with Alexandre about how Phuong was very fortunate to receive the attention via my blog. Also, I detest when favoritism and connections can be used to beat out hard work and great ideas.

For that reason I propose launching StartAkademy.

Based on an identical principle to what I am doing with Phuong, young entrepreneurs would pitch their idea via video blog. A jury would then select and mentor the young entrepreneur via video-casts that would share, teach and inspire others who want to start their own companies.

This could perhaps be linked in with Seedcamp or a VC firm or a business school. Any takers?

I’ve done a brief video in English (above) and French (below) about the concept.

Email me or post a comment here!

seedcamp tagmypod startakademy phuong+tran phuongtran thomascrampton thomas+crampton

I had a very interesting lunch, followed by video session with Franck Perrier, speaking about the directions of Internet development.

Topics included on his video and blog post:

- Why Facebook works
- Privacy dangers of Facebook
- How cultural differences are now emerging across the Internet

In addition to running a popular blog, Franck is founder of Eyeka, a company that aims to connect User Generated videos and photographs with publications.

Having left journalism last week, I am now getting a taste of entrepreneurial experiences by helping Phuong Tran, my brother-in-law, launch his first start-up.

Phuong, a 23-year old commerce school student, is obsessed with lasers and now wants to turn the technology into a self-made summer job.

The faith I have in the project was shown by my willingness to put my faithful MacBook under his laser’s beam.

My contribution is to bring a journalist’s skills – asking questions – to help him shape the company. We will interview on video and post various experts on small businesses giving their ideas on how Phuong should best proceed. With some luck (and hard work) the venture will succeed commercially and journalistically.

We hope people in France – a country not known for start-ups – will enjoy seeing an idea move into execution!

Disclosure: Unlike any other story I have written, I have a monetary interest in the company, having helped Phuong finance this summer project. (He starts commerce school in Reims – the Champagne city – this September)

The website for Tagmypod is up (though fairly basic) and below is our first video (in French). Comments and input are very welcome!

Skaaz is an online avatar suffering from an oversized head and acne who answers questions you have pre-programmed explicitly or entered through a series game-like questionaires. For now, it is only available in French.

Why do I want this?

The idea behind Skaaz is a variation on the continuous presence theme. Instead of the instant feedback of Jaiku or Twitter that tells people “what are you doing now?”, Skaaz will tell people about your broader preferences. You could put in your favorite color, car or restaurant, for example. That way, a person interacting with the bot could get to know you, even if you are not online. By the time you do actually get online, people have finished all the chit chat with your bot and you can get into the substantive stuff. It is possible even to imagine that Skaaz bots could be programmed to seek other bots loaded with similar interests.

How do they make money?

Since Skaaz is a watered-down version of the commercial-strength system used by the French post office and railways, presumably they could offer more functionality at a price. This would allow more complex questions and and subtle interaction. Advertising could also be worked into the bots fairly easily when it comes to recommendations.

The lowdown:

While VirtuOz clearly has experience on the output side (answering questions) it will be a challenge to get users to input enough information to make the bots knowledgeable about their owner. There could be real strength in tying Skaaz to a back end like Facebook or Last.fm, where users have already expressed many views and preferences.

Due to the limited amount programmed into one person’s bot, the power of Skaaz might come more with crowdsourcing rather than from the knowledge of one bot. Imagine asking a large community of Skaaz bots to tell their favorite restaurant. This would turn the Skaaz technology into a search solution for personal recommendations from a large community.

Here is my Skaaz. Click here to chat with my virtual self.

Technorati Tags: facebook, jaiku, last.fm, skaaz, twitter, virtuoz

For those whom I did not have time to inform personally – things have been rather hectic – I soon start a new career as an Asia-based entrepreneur in new media.

After 12 years and more than a thousand datelines in the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times from dozens of countries on five continents at the cost of six laptops and despite one consistently dysfunctional email system, Friday was my last day at the newspaper.

The death and human suffering I witnessed in the war zones of northern Sri Lanka, southern Sudan and eastern Burma remain seared in my memory, along with the accordion-like collapse of fully occupied buildings during Taiwan’s largest earthquake and that disconcerting wobble of the Holiday Inn Express in Gulf Shores, Alabama as the eye of Hurricane Ivan passed overhead.

I live by the belief that witnessing and reporting improves the world. Good copy saves lives.

That said, I also treasured such hardship assignments as the Cannes Film Festival party column and always loved those urgent emails from the travel editor requesting me to go write about the best vacation spots I could find in Asia.

To the editors who sent me around the world, made my copy seem smart and captured the essence of my stories in so many pithy headlines, thanks. A few of them are in this video tour of the IHT newsroom.

A special thanks to my colleagues on the business side of the newspaper for making all that money in order for me to go spend it. Cheers, guys!

To those still in the back of the bus – my fellow reporters and photographers – keep the faith, humor and good luck with those editors. From the bomb-strewn Plain of Jars in Laos to the Republican National Convention in Manhattan, the stories are too numerous. (But I must say that hijacking that Kerry campaign pick-up truck across a state line was worthwhile, even if the bar we wanted – The Purple Grackle – was closed.)

Not all of us emerged unscathed, however, and some of remain in peril. A horrific number of reporters have been killed, injured and kidnapped in recent years. I think now particularly of Alan Johnston the reporter for the BBC who was kidnapped in Gaza more than 100 days ago.

Another daily contributor to our newspaper deserves my final and highest thanks: Local fixers and courageous sources.

Often motivated by the simple urge to show the truth to the world, they act in spite of government and other pressures.

Newspaper correspondents like myself travel with the safety of a foreign passport and backing of a high profile publication, but the fixers we hire do so at great risk to themselves and their families.

They place themselves in harm’s way by sharing information, arranging interviews and explaining complexities crucial to telling a story. Their lives can quickly become the collateral damage of journalism.

Thank you for taking those risks and thank  you for all the stories. I hope I did them justice.

-30-

Technorati Tags: iht

I took my friend Loic Le Meur, who has the number one blog in France and with whom I blog in French, on a tour of the IHT newsroom.

Thanks for coming for a visit, Loic!

Technorati Tags: International Herald Tribune, Loic Le Meur, iht