I have been traveling for nearly seven weeks now, on a tight and tough schedule.

Started my journey in Thailand in Bangkok . Made my way to Cambodia (Sihanoukville, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap), Hong Kong, Shanghai, Borneo Island , Malaysia, and now I am writing from Boracay Island in the Philippines.  A lovely, maybe a little too commercialized spot (they even have a Starbucks on the waterfront), but with a stunning beach. (Just awarded the #2 best beach worldwide on Tripadvisor).

All in, I intentionally wanted to get away from the Interweb and being online all the time.  But it wasn’t meant to be – at least not while in Asia .

Welcome to the world of Wifi, smartphones and Facebook supreme!

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I’ve got a full work plate this morning, and my own set of feelings to process about the news of Osama bin Laden’s death (more on that will likely appear on my Tumblr later tonight), but wanted to get down a couple noteworthy bullets. If I have time, I’ll return and flesh these out into a coherent piece.

We all know that social media get the word out at lightning speed–but what struck me most about this news was not the speed of information, but the immediacy of community development. People are using Twitter and Facebook to work out what are, for many, complicated emotions. Relief, joy, anger, sadness are all appearing at once. This is in stark contrast to what we often see in traditional media soundbites (particularly video media), where broad strokes are painted when it comes to emotional content–i.e., those people are cheering, those people over there are not. Social media is creating a space where it’s acceptable, and useful, to express multiple feelings. This is also very different than, for example, the days following 9/11–when the war on Afghanistan was announced, it was largely extremely taboo in American public squares (online or off) to express concern, or disagreement. Part of that was the political climate, but part of that was that there weren’t necessary effective public spaces for people to be nuanced human beings.

I’m also struck by the speed with humor was employed as a tactic to process the news. Again, in contrast to 9/11, when we waited two weeks for the new issue of The Onion to come out–no one made any jokes before then. Not only was it taboo, but there just wasn’t a way to deal. (By the way, that issue of The Onion might be the best one ever–headlines like, “God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule, “Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves in Hell,” and many more gems.) Last night, some of the immediate jokes, some in good taste, some not, clearly paved a way for people to express all kinds of reactions to this global news phenomenon. My personal favorites were @marcfaletti‘s “It was that f***ing iPad location history, wasn’t it?” and the newly created @OsamaInHell account tweeting, “Wait, what?”

More as time allows today…

Former MSNBC political show host Keith Olbermann has just announced his new show will air on Current TV.

No secret – I have long been a fan of Current TV.

The S.F.-based (partially) user-generated cable programmer has long been on the forefront of innovative journalism.  Side by side viewer-created short “pod” submissions, Current has its own group of young vanguard journalists. Audiences help to determine at least part of what’s to air, most of which then gets plenty viral distribution up and down the participatory Web.

Next in, Keith Olbermann will be the first veteran broadcasters to join the citizen journalist crew.

It should be interesting to see if and how Mr. Olbermann and Current TV’s participatory media will blend to something greater than the sum of the individual parts.

AOL just paid $315 million for ‘uber blog’ The Huffington Post. Social network giant Facebook seems worth $50 billion. And global media powerhouse News Corp. relies on what’s likely the world’s most popular consumer electronics designer, Apple, as their next exclusive content distributor.

Clearly, the face and valuation of media continues to be in major flux.

In this highly dynamic environment, let’s see where Current and Olbermann can take things next.

Back from the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, strangely, of all things, it was micro-blogging that got rejected.

Yup! No Twitter, no Facebook status updates, no quick text shout-outs. Nope! Nada! Nothing!

To be sure, any and all mobile communication on all carrier networks was out. Voice and data. You name it.

While I initially suspected complete event-caused subscriber overload (my Blackberry screen message said as much), I soon discovered this “no mobile” diet is a perfectly normal scenario on D.C.’s National Mall.

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No! Not Wayne’s World. Nor The World According to Garp. Instead, your and my world. And this time according to either Thomas L. Friedman, Professor Eli Noam, or Facebook - depending on how you choose to see it.

If you ask long-time New York Times op-ed writer Thomas Friedman, the world is flat, implying that digital communications increasingly ensures everyone everywhere has access to the same growing pool of World Wide Web-provided information. This levels the playing field for all of us, he says, to impact the plethora of socio- and economic-political issues — no matter where and who we are on this globe.

This sounds promising, I thought, if it wasn’t for an off-the-cuff conversation I had with Columbia Business School Professor Eli Noam, about a year past Friedman’s book published.

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Everyone’s buzzing today about Facebook’s plans to open up to third party applications. My first reaction — Finally!

With this change, it is expected that outside parties will (pending the approval of users) have access to the pool of user-provided information streams. In other words, stuff like Status Updates, Wall Posts and uploaded pictures will be able to take on a new life outside of the confines of Facebook.com on 3rd party applications.
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I know this is not a political blog. But Washington’s elected officials seems to have gone (finally) seriously digital. 

And I just can’t help myself but chime in.

I recently wrote about the Obama administration’s fervor for online social networking and viral (political) marketing.

Turns out US Congress representatives have long taken similar interest in making Web 2.0 their own. 

No matter where you stand politically, I believe this is generally good news for the technology industry, plus associated consumer software products and applications.

From mundane announcements of “one minute speeches” to instantaneously delivered results on House votes, at least since November 2007, the Clerk of the US House of Representatives regularly provides copious live updates “scraped” right from daily session inside the House chambers.

Then I got curious. Did I also miss the US Senate’s foray into micro-blogging? 

Sure enough, I did 

Although seemingly limited to Senator votes on the floor alone, Twitter has been carrying those posts at least since November 2007.

Turns out, they all nicely track back to govtrack.us, an independent Web site to “help the public research and track the activities in the US Congress.

Little did I know, D.C.’s interest in twittering created a new virtual C-SPAN if you will, sort of the “local access” approach parsed out one online message at a time.

And during yesterday’s historic session (voting on a trillion dollar support budget no less), US House representatives took to Twitter like college students (secretively, under their desks), pushing Blackberry and smartphone keys – eager to issue last-minute statements right from inside House chambers.

To top it all off, now even closed-door Presidential meetings experience their first Twitter “leaks”.

So, if this is not a political blog, why am I (still) writing about this stuff?

I am simply excited about how Web 2.0 is rapidly growing up, maturing from its early teenage “angst” appeal to a “mainstream” text and video channel – all within a couple of years.

Think of it.

As more politicians, news outlets and civic organizations thrive to adopt Web 2.0-style concepts, instant viral messaging from elected officials and others raise the legitimacy of collaborative software as a whole.

From Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, Qik, or Utterz, you name it, this is good for the devices and the connecting broadband services that support Web 2.0 at home and on-the-go.

If you still think this trend is not real, the US Postal Service announced today a fiscal-year loss of at least $6 billion, due to a 4.5% drop, or 9 billion items replaced by email and other forms of digital viral communications. 

And although it is not entirely clear to me that the same $6 billion shifted into Web 2.0 software in its entirety  (most social networking and micro-blogging services are free or ad-based at best), it clearly shows a fundamental shift in how we capture and disseminate information these days.

On that note, have you twittered today?

Inspired by Andreas’ post on the comparative online presence of certain politicians, I just checked John McCain’s Facebook account – although it was updated yesterday (1/8/09), the last previous update to his profile was made on August 6th, when he announced a change of his website.  In other words, for almost the last three months of the US presidential campaign, nobody on his staff touched his Facebook profile…

I find that remarkable.

(In contrast, photos of the Obama camp watching the election night results from their hotel room were available online immediately on his still-robust Flickr account…)