To put this into perspective just from the sidebar link on the Marmot’s Hole I get about 30-40 page views a day.  Whenever the Marmot’s Hole links to something on the ROK Drop it is good for at least a 100 page views in one day and sometimes even 200-300.  What I take from this is that the vast majority of readers that visit the big blogs are not interested in North Korea and thus don’t follow links like readers from K-blogs do.  So needless to say I have picked up plenty of extra drive by readers these pass few days due to the death of Kim Jong-il and I hope some on them decide to become regular readers, but I do have to thank everyone who is a regular reader of the ROK Drop.  As nice as it is to have links from the big bloggers to the site it is really the ROK Heads and K-blog community that keep the site going.

I’m speechless right now.

SEOUL, the English-language monthly magazine published jointly by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and Seoul Selection, has been promoting the capital to people around the world since 2003 by providing information on hotspots and culture and arts.

The monthly is edited by Robert Koehler, an American who has lived in Korea for 15 years. And Ben Jackson, a Briton who majored in Korean at Sheffield University in the U.K., works as a reporter for the magazine, which targets both short-term tourists and long-term residents.

About 19,000 copies are printed around the 25th of every month and distributed free of charge at outlets frequented by foreigners like tourist information centers, royal palaces, hotels, airports, and cultural centers, as well as at overseas offices of the Korea Tourism Organization and Korean Air. [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more about 10 Magazine’s campaign at this link.

Michael Hurt took a number of pictures of the event that can be viewed here.  More about this event can be read over at the Marmot’s Hole and Roboseyo as well.

I have done the Blue House tour before and it really is quite a nice facility to visit and definitely a place fitting for a head of state.  Information to reserve a group tour of the Blue House is available at this link.

I am also hoping that the Spam filtering technology used by I.D. will cause less comments to get lost in the spam que which is a frequent complaint that I receive.

Here are a few details about Intense Debate to help ease you into its use.  First of all it offers ROK Heads the ability to vote up and down on comments, which in turn builds reputation points for commenters.  I’m still playing with it, but apparently there is a way to create a list of the commenters with the highest reputation on the sidebar.  I.D. also has a spell check and a comment edit function which is something that has been asked to be installed in the past by ROK Heads.  Intense Debate even has Smileys that I installed just for Tom.

The CommentLuv feature is for people with their own blogs that want to promote their last blog posting at the end of their comment.  I will monitor how this goes, but if it gets too spammy I will remove it.  Finally on the sidebar you will see the recent comments widget.  Do users like this one or do you prefer the old get recent comments widget? Also are ROK Heads interested in having the comment system compatible with Facebook to where you are automatically logged in with Facebook and are able to comment with your Facebook ID?

Speaking of Facebook, users may have noticed that I also installed a Facebook “Like button” that displays at the bottom of each posting.  If you like a posting you read on the ROK Drop, please click the “Like button” and promote the posting on Facebook. Also remember, you can follow the ROK Drop on Facebook now as well.  You can either “Like” the Fan Page I set up or follow me on my Profile Page:

• Facebook ROK Drop Fan Page
• Facebook ROK Drop Profile Page

I am still playing around with some of the features of Intense Debate, but feel free to let me know what you think in the comments section and any further recommendations you may have.

However, I am puzzled though on why I am considered conservative in the article?  I really have no fixed ideology other than informing myself on issues before making firm opinions on them.  Nothing frustrates me more than to see all the drones out there state and believe opinions simply because their fixed ideology pushed by people like Glenn Beck and Rachel Maddow tells them do so.

Anyway 10 Magazine also gives a shout out to the ROK Drop commenters.  The site really does have some well informed and dedicated commenters who hopefully readers learn just as much from than simply just reading the blog postings.   We really need to come up with a nickname for the site’s commenter community.  Anyone have any suggestions?

*****

Here are two bits of proof to put this hoax to rest. Before I get to that, what does Ed Morissey one of the leading conservative bloggers think of this? Ed writes-

I really thought we’d put this conspiracy theory to rest over the summer, but it has arisen like a zombie yet again to suck the credibility out of the conservative blogosphere.

I present you Exhibits A and B.

and this from a 1961 Honolulu Advertiser newspaper

Ed writes the following about the 1961 newspaper entry

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a contemporaneous corroboration of Obama’s Hawaii birth? As it happens, we do — provided by another PUMA who wanted to find ways to disqualify Obama. Lori Starfelt found this in the archives of the Honolulu Advertiser in a print copy from August

Unless people want to start claiming that the conspiracy to have Barack Obama infiltrate the political system started at the moment of his birth, that’s pretty conclusive evidence that Obama was born in the US and is a natural-born citizen.

Other conservatives who think this ‘issue’ is idiotic includes James Joyner of OTB, Allah Pundit of Hotair, and Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs.

Note- AJ Strata wrote extensively here that the above birth certificate is not a forgery.

The conservative blogosphere self inflicts another wound on its credibility when it continues to beat this and other outlandish notions. The Nancy Pelosi head scarf brouhaha and Rachael Ray’s Dunkin Donuts commercial being two that come to mind. The Obama video isn’t going to convince moderates or undecideds of anything except that conservatives are becoming increasingly unhinged. That’s a good way to get them to vote for McCain next month. NOT!

ONLINE archaeology can yield surprising results. When John Kelly of Morningside Analytics, a market-research firm, recently pored over data from websites in Indonesia he discovered a “vast field of dead blogs”. Numbering several thousand, they had not been updated since May 2009. Like hastily abandoned cities, they mark the arrival of the Indonesian version of Facebook, the online social network.

Such swathes of digital desert are still rare in the blogosphere. And they should certainly not be taken as evidence that it has started to die. But signs are multiplying that the rate of growth of blogs has slowed in many parts of the world. In some countries growth has even stalled.

Blogs are a confection of several things that do not necessarily have to go together: easy-to-use publishing tools, reverse-chronological ordering, a breezy writing style and the ability to comment. But for maintaining an online journal or sharing links and photos with friends, services such as Facebook and Twitter (which broadcasts short messages) are quicker and simpler.

Charting the impact of these newcomers is difficult. Solid data about the blogosphere are hard to come by. Such signs as there are, however, all point in the same direction. Earlier in the decade, rates of growth for both the numbers of blogs and those visiting them approached the vertical. Now traffic to two of the most popular blog-hosting sites, Blogger and WordPress, is stagnating, according to Nielsen, a media-research firm. By contrast, Facebook’s traffic grew by 66% last year and Twitter’s by 47%.  [The Economist]

You can read a whole lot more at the link, but I think it is natural that Facebook and Twitter have such high growth rates considering that they are newer platforms that are easy to use.  However, they are more for microblogging and not true blogging.  With both Twitter and Facebook there is no way you can write detailed content to share with other readers, but they do serve as a great way to disseminate information to others.  That is why I don’t see these platforms taking over for blogs, but are useful platforms to complement them.

With that said I have my Twitter account going that I use to help find stories to post about and share postings from this site with others, however I do not have a Facebook account.  Do readers think starting a ROK Drop Facebook fan page would be something readers would find of use?