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رشحت فتاة غير معروفة أسست موقعا عراقيا للمدونات على الإنترنت يحمل اسم "بغداد تحترق" ويخلط بين الفكاهة واليأس والتعليقات السياسية اللاذعة لنيل جائزة أدبية كبرى في بريطانيا. وتظهر رسائل الفتاة التي تعرف فقط باسم "ريفربيند" على موقع يصف نفسه بأنه "يوميات فتاة من العراق" بصورة منتظمة منذ أغسطس/ آب 2003. وقالت الفتاة في رسالتها الأولى "أنا فتاة عراقية وأبلغ من العمر 24 عاما نجوت من الحرب، هذا كل ما تحتاجون معرفته وهذا على أية حال هو كل ما يهم حاليا". وبعد ذلك بوقت قليل شرحت كيف فقدت وظيفتها في شركة للبرمجيات عندما أصبح التوجه إلى العمل محفوفا بالمخاطر. وجمعت دار ماريون بويارز للنشر هذه اليوميات التي دونت على الموقع، ونشرتها في كتاب في 2005 وظهر هذا الكتاب على قائمة الأعمال المرشحة لنيل جائزة صمويل جونسون السنوية للكتابة الواقعية المعاصرة. ويحصل صاحب العمل الفائز بالجائزة على مبلغ 30 ألف جنيه إسترليني أي ما يعادل 53 ألف دولار أميركي. وتصف "ريفربيند" في أحدث كتاباتها على موقع المدونات بتاريخ 18 مارس/ آذار الجاري التحول الذي شهده العراق منذ الغزو الذي قادته الولايات المتحدة في مارس/ آذار 2003. ومثل كثيرين غيرها كان أكثر ما يشغل "ريفربيند" هو الانقسام المتنامي بين السنة والشيعة، الذي قالت عنه إنه كان موجودا على نحو هزيل في طفولتها لكنه الآن يشعل عنفا يصفه البعض بأنه حرب أهلية. وذكرت ريفربيند أن أكثر ما يقلق في الوضع الحالي هو تحول التمييز الطائفي إلى أمر مألوف للغاية. وتابعت تقول "حتى أكثر منتقدي الحرب تشاؤما لم يكونوا يتصورون درجة السوء التي وصلت إليها البلاد بعد ثلاث سنوات من الحرب وقانا الله السنة الرابعة". وتشمل قائمة الأعمال المرشحة لجوائز صمويل جونسون التي ضمت 19 عنوانا "قصص لم ترو" لآلان بينيت و "سوء نية" لكارمن كاليل و"الحرب الباردة" لجون لويس جاديس و"نساء موتسارت" لجين غلوفر. ومن المقرر إعلان الفائز بجائزة صمويل جونسون التي تقدمها القناة الرابعة لتلفزيون هيئة الإذاعة البريطانية في لندن يوم 14 يونيو/ حزيران المقب | |||||
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Via SMART MOBS Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms Authored by: ...
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
بغداد تحترق على الإنترنت وتترشح لجائزة أدبية بريطاني
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Blogging4Business Agenda and Speakers
Blogging4Business Agenda and Speakers
On 4 April at Marriott Hotel, Grosvenor Square, London, we have organised a one-day conference Blogging4Business: How blogs can help and hurt your business.
Here’s the updated agenda. Let us know if there are areas of biz blogging that you would like to see covered or panelists we should be considering. For venue details click here.
MORNING SESSION
9AM - 9.15AM
Opening Remarks – Custom Communication
Discussion Panels
9.15 – 10 AM
Why Blog?
Blogging represents a new era in communication – one where everyone with access to the Internet has the power to publish, where people feel emboldened to offer their thoughts and opinions on services and products, and where business markets are being sliced and diced by increasing niche demand. This session is the essential overview of how the blogosphere is going to change your business.
Moderator: Matthew Yeomans - Custom Communication
Speakers:
Neville Hobson - Communications consultant, blogger and podcaster at nevillehobson.com
Guillaume du Gardier - Director Online Communications Europe, Edelman
Stormhoek Wines, the blogging vintners
Olivier Creiche, COO Europe for Six Apart
10AM - 11AM
Blogs: PR, Smart Marketing and internal communications, but what about the ROI?
Can a company control its image when all the world is part of the conversation? With marketing blogs, CEO diaries, internal newsletters and “thought leadership” journals, companies are using blogs to launch new brands, recruit new talent and to keep customers and stakeholders up to date and informed of news and information. But how do you know if you’re connecting to the right audience? We’ll outline successful marketing and PR blogs and show you why they work. We’ll explain how you can improve and measure the impact of blogs – indispensable tools whether you are publishing your own blog or advertising on someone else’s.
Moderator: Suw Charman - Social Software Consultant
Speakers:
Martin Talks, CEO, Bluebarracuda.com
Julian Smith, analyst Jupiter Research
Antony Mayfield - Harvard PR
Lee Bryant - Headshift
11am - 11.30am - COFFEE BREAK
11.30am - 12pm
RSS Intelligence Workshop
RSS, or Real Simple Syndication, is rapidly changing how companies convey information to their stakeholders and how web users navigate the web.
Jeremy Phillips, director of Market Clusters will provide a half hour essential “business intelligence” workshop to demonstrate the power of RSS and the many ways that it will transform the ways you communicate with your employees, your customers and the media.
12PM- 1PM
An Introduction to Podcasting and Video Podcasting
Will podcasting and video podcasting herald a new age of personalized and corporate multimedia? This session will examine how companies are considering harnessing social broadcast tools to reach key audiences both in front of and behind the firewall.
Moderator: Mike Butcher
Speakers:
Gabe MacIntyre - Xolo.tv and Whisper Media
Nick Mailer - Positive Internet
Alex Bellinger - Audacious Online
Lloyd Davis - consultant, Perfect Path
1PM - 2PM - LUNCH
AFTERNOON SESSION
2PM - 2.45PM
What Blogs Are Saying About Your Business
What are the best blog monitoring tools and techniques to find out what is being said about you or your company? We’ll hear from blog monitoring experts and learn about the many ways to navigate the expanding blogosphere, including the latest in feed (RSS) readers and professional blog monitoring services.
Moderator: Dr. Jeanette DeDiemar - @Wales Digital Media Initiative
Speakers:
Anders Schonberg - CEO WaveMetrix
Mark Rogers - Market Sentinel
Vassil Mladjov, founder of Blogtronix
Heather Hopkins, director of research, Hitwise
2.45PM - 3.30PM
The Dos and Don’ts of Corporate Blogging
Encouraging your employees to blog might be the best thing that ever happens to your business, but how do you prepare your workplace for responsible blogging? A panel discussion featuring on the way that blogging is affecting free speech, libel laws and public disclosure for listed companies featuring blogging and internal communications experts who will outline the critical legal and policy areas that companies and communicators need to consider, including: confidentiality agreements; company disclaimers; talking about your competitors; talking about your own company; screening and editing blog posts.
Moderator: Bernhard Warner - Custom Communication
Speakers:
Struan Robertson senior associate at Pinsent Masons
Graeme Foux - director and founder of Knexus
Genie Lutz - Partner, UK OnLine Presence and Tax Portal, PriceWaterhouseCoopers
Philippe Borremans - Public Relations Manager, IBM Belgium & Luxembourg
3.30PM - 4PM - COFFEE BREAK
4PM - 5PM
Blogs and the Media
More than any other industry, the mainstream media has popularized blogging even as bloggers continue to snipe, criticize the MSM and steal its audience. A panel discussion about the ways that blogs are changing the rules of the media game and how companies are beginning the blogger’s essential weapon – the power to publish – for their own benefit.
Moderator: Michael Nutley, Editor - New Media Age
Speakers:
James Ledbetter, Senior Editor - Time Magazine
Peter Bale, Online Editorial Director, Times Online
Guillaume Champeau, Project Manager, AgoraVox.com
2 comments March 9th, 2006
Blue Barracuda On Board
We’re very happy to welcome interactive marketing agency, Blue Barracuda, as a sponsor for Blogging4Business.
Blue Barracuda is active in all areas of online marketing and has some great insights on corporate podcasting. Check out CEO Martin Talks’ blog.
We look forward to hearing their views at Blogging4Business on April 4th.
Add comment March 1st, 2006
MSN to Sponsor Blogging4Business Conference
We’re very pleased to announce that MSN has agreed to sponsor our upcoming Blogging4Business conference (April 4th, Grosvenor Marriott, London…..register today here.
Check out the conference blog for all the latest info.
Add comment February 20th, 2006
Time Europe to Sponsor Blogging4Business Conference
We are very pleased to announce that Time Europe has signed on as a media sponsor for the up-coming Blogging4Business conference (April 4th at the Marriott, Grosvenor Square).
Joining us from Time Europe will be senior editor, James Ledbetter, who will take part in a panel devoted to understanding the influence of social media on the so-called Mainstream Media (MSM). Prior to his position at Time, James was the editor of The Industry Standard Europe.
We hope to make this conference a must-attend event for anyone keen to know how social media will impact their company and industry. To read more about the conference and to register for the event, follow the links in the top navigation on this site.
Add comment February 8th, 2006
New Media Age Supports Blogging4Business As A Media Sponsor
We are very happy to announced that New Media Age, the UK’s only weekly magazine covering the business of interactive media, will be a media sponsor of Blogging4Business.
NMA’s editor, Michael Nutley will be at the conference and will moderate a panel discussion titled: Blogs and the Media.
Check out the Agenda section of the Blogging4Business to find out more.
Add comment January 22nd, 2006
Announcing Blogging4Business Speakers
We’ve been chatting with lots of smart folks in the last few weeks as we shape the agenda for the conference. We’ll be adding more and more top speakers and panelists over the next month but we wanted to share with you the great names who have already confirmed their interest in taking part.
Here is a provisional list of who will be appearing at the conference on April 4, 2006. Check back regularly to keep up to date with new additions.
Confirmed Speakers/Panelists
Peter Bale: Editorial Director - Times Online
James Ledbetter: Senior Editor - Time Europe
Guillaume du Gardier: Director Online Communications Europe Edelman Public Relations
Michael Nutley: Editor - New Media Age
Mark Rogers: Director and Founder - Market Sentintel
Neville Hobson: Consultant and Nevon blogger
Robert Andrews - Education social media consultant
Gabe MacIntyre: Whisper Media
Vassil Mladjov: Founder, Blogtronix
Struan Robertson: Senior Associate at Pinsent Masons, editor of Out-law.com
Fredrik Wacka: Web communications consultant
Martin Talks, CEO Blue Barracuda
Nick Mailer, Positive Internet
Suw Charman: social software consultant
The founders of Stormhoek Wines, the blogging vintners
Add comment January 22nd, 2006
Introducing Blogging4Business 2006
Blogging4Business
How Blogs Can Help and Hurt Your Business
4th April 2006,
Marriott, Grosvenor Square, London
Somewhere, out there in the blogosphere, someone is talking about your industry and maybe your company. What they say might please you or it might shock you. Whichever it is, millions of other blog readers are paying attention. Shouldn’t you know what bloggers are saying and how to take part in fastest growing and potentially most important area of the Internet?
To help harness the power of blogging for your business, Custom Communication and Retail Events are proud to announce Blogging4Business, a one-day essential conference aimed at providing an intensive immersion into the many ways that blogging can help and hurt your business.
We’ll be using this blog to:
- Help develop an agenda that fits the real needs of business communicators
- Get comment and input from you on what sort of event you would like to attend
- Showcase conference speakers as we confirm them
- Keep you informed of all the details that we believe will make this a must-attend event.
We’ve posted a full conference overview here.
The draft agenda for the conference is here.
Friday, March 24, 2006
Dan Gillmor answers your concerns
Dan: I'm surprised to hear this, because so few professional news organisations have done anything serious with citizen journalism. (As part of a research project, I'd like to know about the ones that have.) In any event, the competition is not so much with citizens as journalists; it's with companies that are carving away at the revenue base of traditional, advertising-supported media. This will be the topic of an upcoming column, incidentally.
'Uneven transparency'
Reader: Open flow of information balances power by levelling the playing field between authoritarians and those repressed; be it a landlord or a country - there is no place to hide. Marie, Fairfax, Canada
Dan: I hope you are correct, but right now the evidence suggests that governments are doing everything in their power to make this an uneven transparency, at best. While governments insist on the right to know everything about us, governments increasingly are putting information about their own activities behind walls of secrecy. Perhaps an army of citizen journalists can have some impact.
About blogs
HAVE YOUR SAY
All this is about news organisations like the BBC and others getting free content
Justin Leighton, London
Read Dan's column
Read more of your comments Reader: While all the comments about fragmentation of the media and so on are perfectly valid, people seem to be forgetting that most blogs are just really boring. Pete N, United Kingdom
Dan: Absolutely true. But most bloggers aren't writing for a big audience. Many are writing for family and close friends for whom the blog probably isn't boring, even if it is to you and me. Given the huge number of blogs, however, if even a tiny percentage are not boring we'll end up with a large number we'll want to read.
Participation vs democratisation
Reader: Why do you equate public participation in the media with a process of democratisation? Yes, in a democracy you have a right to speak your mind, and a blog makes that easier. But for the process to be democratic your views need to be noticed and taken into account. All we have here, for example, is a long stream of people airing their views - nothing particularly democratising about that. Neil, Kent
Dan: If you mean that every voice must be heard equally, I can't agree. What's important here is the potential for everyone to have the opportunity to be heard. The more persuasive voices will be the ones that capture our attention, because others will point to them. A potentially global audience is a major change from the past.
Listening process
Reader: What interests me in relation to "media democracy" is how the new interactive media might over time feed into mainstream media, particularly in terms of news and political reporting. Now wouldn't it be interesting to have a rating/voting system on political news! David O, Amersham, UK
Dan: I'm hopeful that mainstream (I prefer the word "mass" to "mainstream") media will adopt the tools of conversational media, and then bring the audience more squarely into the journalism process itself. Part of this process is listening to those who challenge what they're reading (viewing/hearing) in the mass media, which is a feedback system of some power already.
Rating and voting systems have already started to appear, albeit in fairly crude form. I'm looking forward to systems that combine popularity and reputation (of voters as well as news sources) to help us judge what's worth reading.
Something for nothing?
Striking images of the 7 July bombings were taken by amateursReader: All this is about news organisations like the BBC and other getting free content. Why pay for it when thousands of people are willing to give it away for nothing. It is not about democracy. It is about money. If the people submitting content got paid for their labours then so be it. But the people that get funded by taxation should set best practice.
We have to pay the BBC for their content. By law. But they are asking for you and I to just give them content for nothing under the guise of democracy. I feel that if content is worthless then the BBC should give us the same deal as they are asking from us. We give them photos/film for nothing. They give us news/programs for nothing. Fair is fair auntie. Justin Leighton, London
Dan: I, too, have my doubts about business models that say, "You do all the work and we'll take all the credit (or money), thanks very much." Many people submitting what you call content will be happy to do so with no compensation other than a pat on the back. Others will want and deserve more.
Several new companies are hoping to become brokers or agents for the citizen journalists (especially photographers) who capture newsworthy events. Doing this in a timely way, given the nature of breaking news, is just one difficulty. I assume we'll see some creative solutions.
New and old media
Reader: There is a very good reason why newspapers have editors. It is to make the news readable and understandable - and journalists are professionals! Blogs and even wikis by definition are poor quality writing. They have their place, but won't replace existing media. Jo Edkins, Cambridge, UK
Reader: The problem with new free media is that, whilst it gives everyone who wants to participate a voice, very few of us can actually write well enough to grab people's attention time after time. I suspect that the old commercial media will survive despite new free media by using the very same new media as a recruiting ground for new journalists who have proven they can write and capture people's imagination. Ben, Bristol
Reader: I'm getting tired of Dan Gillmor endlessly harping on about how old media are dead, and the future is citizen journalism. Yes, we have blogs, but what about the 'zines, community TV/radio, bulletin boards, samizdat pamphlets etc of previous generations. And has Gillmor bothered to look at the way old media have changed over the past years? There's very little chance of them being swept away by citizen journalism. Pedestrian Scribbler, London, United Kingdom
Dan: May I remind folks that I wrote:
"The democratisation of media creation, distribution and access does not necessarily foretell that traditional media are dinosaurs of a new variety. If we are fortunate, we'll end up with a more diverse media ecosystem in which many forms - including the traditional organizations - can thrive. It's fair to say, though, that the challenges to existing businesses will be enormous."
The business challenges are indeed enormous, but I value what mass media do well as much as anyone. We need it now more than ever. Part of the future is citizen journalism; I'd be the last person to wish for the end of traditional media.
Media literacy
Reader: Democratic it maybe, but the big issue is reliability. As readers we've become used to trusting at least some media outlets. This may be naive, but we generally assume that a journalist working for a genuine news outlet is trained and has conducted proper research. You can't make that assumption with net content. That said, with much of the news media becoming increasingly blatant in its editorialising, perhaps there's not that much difference. Adam Morrissey, Sydney
Dan: This is indeed a vital question. We need to learn a new kind of media literacy, or at least apply the old kind to the new media. This will work, for a time, to the advantage of traditional media as news consumers look for things they can trust or, at least, trust more than random web content.
Bridging the gulf
Reader: The gulf between the professionals and ordinary people is now glaring. The traditional media has become obsessed with speed, with pathetic exclusives, live feeds of nothing and how nasty and partisan they can be. It is now the amateurs who are asking the hard insightful questions, refusing to be brushed off with evasions, and actually maintaining the principals of journalism which the papers and others have cast aside in their quest for market share.
This sort of public involvement would not be half so widespread if the traditional media were doing the responsible, challenging, neutral and representative job we expect of them. Alex Kiss, Manchester, United Kingdom
Dan: Amen.
Take control
Reader: How can I agree with Dan? He writes and gets his writing published, I write and no-one can see what I have said. Unless this gets past the moderators, but does Dan have any moderators? Not Jack No
Dan: You can get past the moderators by being your own publisher, such as by starting a blog of your own. Again, as noted, this doesn't assure that many people will read what you write, but you can find an audience if what you do has wider appeal.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
CipherTrust achieve rapid take-up in Saudi Arabia
A particular issue is the problem of 'zombie networks,' where groups of computers are infected by viruses to send out spam e-mail automatically, without the owners' knowledge. Many technology specialists within the Kingdom believe that the problem may be under-reported at the moment, because of insufficient investment in security technology. Local IT solutions provider Algosaibi Information Systems (AGIS) is one of the companies working hard to provide Saudi organizations with adequate protection against these threats. Recently, one of its employees was recognized by CipherTrust - the global market leader in messaging security - and Middle East networking technology distributor OnLine Distribution for the excellent work the company has conducted in recent months in educating the market about internet threats. Eng. Salahuddin Khaja was presented with a Rolex watch for his efforts, as part of a major reseller campaign designed to reduce the impact of 'zombie networks' within the Kingdom. 'CipherTrust is delighted to be able to recognize Salauddin for his continued focus and hard work. Saudi Arabia is a key market for CipherTrust and Salauddin has been instrumental in helping to establish IronMail as a leading messaging security system in the region. We wish him continued success as we continue to build a firm brand presence across the Middle East,' said Jonathan Whitley, regional sales manager, CipherTrust. CipherTrust has developed the IronMail appliance, which is a comprehensive system for guarding against a broad range of e-mail-based security threats. Since its introduction into the Saudi market last year, it has already been taken on by a significant number of large companies and municipal organizations. OnLine Distribution, which is the authorized distributors for CipherTrust's products across the Middle East, reported record high sales of the application in January 2006, in part as a result of the efforts of partners like Algosaibi Information Systems (AGIS). OnLine and CipherTrust have also unveiled a plan for continuous promotion of the e-mail security solutions in the Middle East, with a special dedicated program for Saudi Arabia, which will run throughout 2006. OnLine is also on the way to becoming an authorized training centre, able to deliver certification training for IT specialists in the Middle East in internet and e-mail security. 'Promotions and technical support are strong value additions that a distributor can provide to its partners in the Middle East's competitive technology market. Given the intense demand that is being experienced in the Saudi market at the moment for security solutions, we will be having dedicated significant resource towards ensuring that our partners are empowered to take the benefits of this leading technology to their end users,' said Jitendra Kapoor, business development manager at OnLine Distribution.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
The Internet in Morocco
A fin 2005, le parc total Internet a atteint 262 326 abonnés en réalisant une
augmentation globale de 27,1 % au cours des trois derniers mois, de 131,8 % par
rapport à fin 2004 et de près de 331,4 % depuis décembre 2003.
Le parc des abonnés Internet bas débit, en comptabilisant les utilisateurs de
l’option d’accès Internet sans Abonnement, est passé de 48 510 en décembre 2004
à 13 187 en décembre 2005, faisant état d’une chute annuelle d’environ 73%.
Depuis décembre 2004, le nombre d’abonnés Internet ADSL est en
augmentation continue avec une croissance annuelle de près de 294 % en passant
de 62 960 abonnés en décembre 2004 à 248 013 abonnés en décembre 2005. Par
contre, le parc des liaisons louées (LL) Internet a connu une baisse de 33,76% avec
1126 en décembre 2005(1700 abonnés en décembre 2004). Cette tendance
pourrait être expliquée par un effet de substitution des accès LL au profit des accès
ADSL.
La répartition des abonnés par mode d’accès donne toujours l’avantage à
l’ADSL avec une part de marché de plus en plus importante de 94,5% à fin
décembre 2005 contre 61% à la même date de l’année précédente. La bonne
performance du parc ADSL est due principalement aux récentes baisses tarifaires
qui ont encouragé les abonnés à opter pour l’Internet via ADSL.
Monday, March 20, 2006
The Cost of Commercial Internet Access in Cairo
This table shows the cost of using an Internet café for one hour in the 24 largest cities around the world.1
Researchers contacted cybercafés in the world’s “mega-cities” to find out how much an hour of interent access cost.2 Researchers contacted at least three internet access points in each of 24 cities, and calculated average values for those cities. This pricing information was then merged with data on GDP (PPP) per capita in 2005 to estimate what portion of an average person’s daily income would go towards an hour of Internet access.3
In nine of the 24 most populated cities, the average person spends at least 10 percent of their daily income for an hour of Internet access at a commercial access point (Karachi, Mexico City, Beijing, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Dhaka, Rio de Janeiro, Cairo, Lagos).4 Some countries have fewer Internet hosts than other countries, and eight of the most populated cities are actually in countries at the bottom quartile for number of Internet hosts. In other words, the people in those eight cities who can afford an hour of access may be able to browse the World Wide Web, but may not find a significant amount of content on hosts in their own country.
Internet users in Manila and Seoul are likely to spend the smallest portion of their average daily income for an hour of access (5 percent), while Internet users in Cairo and Lagos are likely to spend the largest portion of their average daily income for the same amount of time online (20 percent).
Eight of the 24 most populated cities are in countries with proportionally fewer website hosts. This pricing data was then compared with the latest calculations about how many websites are registered with each country in the world.5 Thus, people in London or New York spend a small portion of their daily income on Internet access, and find a significant amount of content in English and of cultural interest. But when people in Cairo or Jakarta spend a large portion of their daily income on Internet access, they find relatively less cultural content on .eg and .id websites.
Certainly the number of Internet hosts a country has does not precisely measure the amount of content available in that country’s language. But as a metric, comparing the number of Internet hosts across many countries allows for a rough gage of relative amount of cultural content available online. Thus, people in London or New York could spend a small portion of their daily income on Internet access, and find a significant amount of content in English and of cultural interest. When people in Cairo or Jakarta spend a larger portion of their daily income on commercial Internet access, they find relatively less cultural content.
guest blogger Richard Sambrook: citizen journalism
I posted the full posting, but after a receiving a nice e-mail, I removed it and.
Again, my blog is a metablog and aims to monitor blogging and the changes it may bring to post-modern political communciation in the Arab and Islamic countries.
I declare that those postings posted on this blog are the empirical material for my work-in-progress on this emering area of research.
Many thanks. Mohammad Ibahrine
guest blogger Richard Sambrook: citizen journalism
The following guest entry was written by Richard Sambrook, Director of Global News at the BBC. Richard started his career working on local newspapers and joined the BBC in the 1980's as a radio news sub-editor. He worked his way up the ranks to become deputy director, and later director, of BBC News - a role which made him responsible for over 2000 journalists in 57 locations around the World. Richard spends much of his time investigating how journalism is evolving and sharing his thoughts on these developments with colleagues at the BBC and throughout the industry.
Friday, March 17, 2006
Google Charm makes its debut
ARAB Regimes do not care.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Go to the Web, young Arab journalist!
Go to the Web, young journalist!
So ten years into the Internet revolution, you are beginning a career in journalism. Odds are that means you are looking for a job in either print or TV.
What's wrong with this picture?
One major newspaper chain was just frog-marched to the auction block by grimfaced money managers. The others have watched their stock price slide for two solid years like a metro daily tossed onto a pitched roof.
Network television doesn't even have all its anchor chairs filled -- forget about a clear mission. The cable outlets have hired talk-show screamers and now follow car chases and kidnap mysteries "live." Much of local TV long ago gave up the ghost.
Maybe it's time to consider the Web.
After a long freeze brought about by the dot-com crash and 9/11, Web editors are hiring and Web operations are expanding again. Safa Rashtchy, a senior research analyst at the securities firm Piper Jaffray, recently predicted that online advertising will reach its tipping point in mid-2006. That's prompting news organizations to realign their resources to focus more on Web journalism.
What's more, for a discipline with decades of tradition and well-defined standards of practice, there is a sense of excitement and rejuvenation about journalism as it is being practiced on the Web today. The rules are still being written, so the practitioners, by and large, are following their own muse as they explore new ways to communicate news and information.
Innovations abound
We rolled out a blog at OrlandoSentinel.com for this year's Winter Olympics, and our three columnists became diarists. They wrote about Big Macs, getting lost on the media bus and the fact that Florida's top football draft pick had given up the gridiron for figure skating.OK, the last one was a fabrication, but they did own up to it in their post. They wanted to know whether anyone was reading their blog and would comment. The readers did -- heatedly.
We thought our bloggers would write about sports. But set loose with a new writing form in a two-way medium that allows readers to talk back, they invented something new.
"I enjoyed my first blog-o-rama," veteran sports columnist David Whitley wrote to me when he returned from Italy. "If that's part of the next generation of newspapers, I could have a lot of fun. Unless I get fired first, I guess."
Our other online efforts are making newsroom staff happy as well. Sentinel photographer Ed Sackett practically crowed over the opportunity to capture the sound and movement of roosters at a county fair contest recently. Online producers Debra Minor and Kris Hey relish scooping TV, radio and the Associated Press with news called in from the field by Sentinel staff.
It is true that at the major news organizations, much of the Web work to date has focused on repurposing content from the legacy newsroom for a digital audience. But that is changing. In the same way that early television struggled to develop from radio-on-TV to something different, so is Web journalism.
Some are striking out in exceptionally creative directions. A young broadcaster in Britain melds magazine-style presentation with grainy, cinema-vérité video to create investigative productions of amazing depth and presence. A Chicago journalist-programmer melds public police data with Google maps to present an on-demand visual map of crime in your neighborhood. A pair of newspaper veterans dubs themselves "Baristas" and serves up a mix of community-contributed news and their own wry sense of humor to suburban New Jersey.
Preparing for the new job market
The privilege to innovate like this may come around only once in a lifetime. If you talk to those of us doing news on the Web, you'll learn that we believe the Internet is finally beginning to deliver on its promise to transform journalism -- but we're also not sure what that transformation will bring. So this is your opportunity to shape the future.Interestingly, the skills you need are just what you have been learning. A soon-to-be released study finds that online managers are primarily looking for detail-oriented collaborators capable of editing and copyediting, not technical producers. (The survey was prepared by the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, in conjunction with the Online News Association, and will be published on the ONA website in the next few weeks.)
So what could you do right now at school to give you an edge with Web editors? When I examine resumes of recent graduates, I'm looking for the journalism skills first, specifically news judgment. Have you worked as an editor at your college newspaper? Do you have clips that demonstrate a clear hard-news focus, in the classic, inverted-pyramid writing style? I want journalists who want to be editors.
Next, are you Internet literate? No newspaper editor would hire an applicant who didn't know the function of the A-section. No TV news director would hire someone who couldn't pick out a sound bite or define the term "B-roll." While we don't need code monkeys, we do need people who understand the unique attributes of the Web as it pertains to journalism.
So, have you built a Web page as part of a student project or on your own? Do you know basic HTML? Do you work on the student newspaper website? Do you frequent Internet news sites? Do you use an RSS reader? Do you podcast? Did you ask to shadow the Web producers for a few days at your last internship? An affinity for our medium is essential.
I also need people who think in multimedia. So if you're a broadcast major, take print courses, or visa versa. Do a Web project. Have you ever storyboarded a reporting effort for a Flash presentation? (In truth, we don't do much Flash at our shop, and you'll find that's normal at news websites, so Flash skills are usually a bonus, not a requirement.) You have to know how to take anything that can be digitized and present it in a uniquely compelling way for the Web.
This is essential because you will be mentoring reporters from your legacy newsroom who need insight into how to present their work for a Web audience. You must be the one who knows that source documentation can make a deep, rich Web piece or database. You should know how to write a TV-style voiceover script to marry to photos for a narrated slide show. You must dream up the idea to take the sales tax data a reporter compiled and make an interface that lets individuals put in their own grocery bill to find out in which county they get the biggest break.
Do you keep a blog? Why not? There has never been an easier way to publish your journalism for an audience. So become a journalist online. Blog your hobby or your summer in Europe -- like a reporter, not an opinion columnist. An understanding of how the blogosphere intersects with news is increasingly important as we tackle the two-way nature of the Internet today. (One caveat: Your MySpace musings may make you a blogging expert, but it doesn't qualify as journalism. In fact, you can count on us finding that frat party confession and photo en déshabillé, so ask yourself whether that's the image you wish to project when seeking a job.)
There never has been a better time to get into Web journalism. We are making money, we are hiring, and we are actively searching for new, innovative ideas. After ten years, there are no veterans in this field. This is your chance to be among the first.Syria's cyber rebels outfox government
'There are no more taboos'
Syria's cyber rebels outfox government
They cross all red lines, they attack security apparatus, military intelligence, even officials in presidential palace.
DAMASCUS - Syria's Internet has emerged as the vehicle for the bold voice of dissent in Damascus, where the state regularly exercises censorship and stifles domestic criticism.
The electronic media has pushed the envelope of what is acceptable but at a heavy price.
Savvy cyber rebels who have broadened the political debate could be preyed upon at any time and thrown in jail for proselytizing to Syria's burgeoning Internet audience, thought to number more than 500,000 people.
The most provocative site online is All4Syria, run by Ayman Abdel Nur, himself a member of the Baath party and a childhood friend of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Since starting his website in May 2003, the Syrian government has on occasion shut down Nur's site and he has resorted to sending his digest of his own writings and news articles about Syria from around the world by email.
Nur told Human Rights Watch in its November 2005 report, "False Freedom: Online Censorship in the Middle East and North Africa", that his digest's readership had ballooned to 16,000.
"We cross all the red lines. We attack the security apparatus, military intelligence, even officials in the presidential palace. There are no more taboos."
Despite petty harassment, Nur has avoided punishment at the hand of Syria's security apparatus, perhaps because of his long ties to Assad.
He believes his acidic commentary will help rescue the Baath regime from corruption and incompetence.
He told Human Rights Watch his aim is "to promote the sense of freedom of speech, to open dialogue. It strengthens the community. When people see that they can participate in the dialogue, they will defend their society."
Another website, called Champress, provides critical articles that would never make it on the pages of staid state-run papers like Tishrin, Al-Baath and Al-Thawra. A recent dispatch told of Damascus students carrying Syrian flags beating democracy activists.
But the path is fraught for Syria's web daredevils. A blogger named Ammar Abd al-Hamid finally quit the country last September for the United States after dogged harassment by authorities over his scathing commentary on his site amarji.blogspot.com, better known as "A Heretic's Blog."
Now, Hamid lobs his barbs from the safety of Silver Spring, Maryland.
A recent column on March 9 lampooned Assad.
"In his recent declarations, the president, true to his moronic form, has made it quite clear that as the country's isolation increases, it is the people who will suffer, not the country's corrupt officialdom," Hamid wrote.
If Hamid had not departed Damascus, he could have ended up like a handful of Internet pundits who have been locked up in the last five years.
A Syrian-Kurdish journalist student, Massud Hamdu, has been incarcerated since July 2003 for posting pictures on the Internet of Kurdish children demonstrating outside the Damascus offices of UN children's agency UNICEF.
Democracy activist Habib Salih has been held since last May by Syria's security apparatus for posting letters online which described his previous stints in prison for championing democracy.
Even venturing online to view controversial sites can prove dangerous. Human Rights Watch reports Internet cafes in Damascus are filled with intelligence agents peering at screens.
Nevertheless, authorities have failed to shut the Internet's floodgates. Since Assad came to power in 2000, after a brief thaw in censorship standards, the government effectively muzzled the phenomenon of political salons and outspoken newspapers.
But the Internet has proved difficult to stop. By email, chat rooms and blogging, dissidents usually keep one step ahead of the state.
To access sites blocked by the government, surfers sometimes latch on to Lebanese and Jordanian service providers or so-called cloaking software that disguises their identity and location.
"There are so many web sites, so many emails, they (the state)... can't keep up with us," rights activist Aktham Naissa told Human Rights Watch.Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Welcome to the Lebanese Blogosphere
Daily Star staff
Friday, March 10, 2006
BEIRUT: Decades from now, history textbooks for Lebanese high-school students will no doubt look back at the Independence Intifada as a moment of democratic rebirth in Lebanon. They will probably not, however, pay much attention to another consequence of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's assassination - the eruption of the Lebanese blogosphere.
Before Hariri was killed, there were almost no blogs out there in the virtual world focusing specifically on Lebanese politics. Some old-school bloggers occasionally placed Lebanon in a regional context, but they usually avoided local politics.
All this changed after March 14, when Lebanon-centric blogging activity spiked, driven primarily by members of the diaspora who were living in the West and watching events unfold from a geographic distance.
Now, a year on, there are at least eight active blogs in the Lebanese blogosphere, including the Angry Arab News Service, Beirut2Bayside and Lebanese Bloggers. They are all well aware of one another. And they don't necessarily like one another.
In fact, these bloggers duke it out online, verbally jousting with one another as they dissect local politics. The Lebanese blogosphere has become a microcosm of the country, and in their regular posts, these bloggers are channeling the same frustration with the status quo that prompted a million Lebanese to assemble on Martyrs' Square on March 14, demanding accountability from their government.
Blogs are often described as online diaries, a definition that highlights the dual potential of the medium. Server space is free, so blogs cost next to nothing to operate and can be authored anonymously by anyone with a computer and an internet connection.
The low entry barriers for blogging have prompted Western media to hype the technological trend as "an information revolution" embodying democratic ideals. At its best, a blog can be a zone for free speech, offering an underground platform for political dialogue in authoritarian societies.
But blogging can also be hijacked for narcissistic purposes, as demonstrated by the glut of blogs in the West where people post the minutia of their personal lives.
By and large, Lebanese blogs fall into the former category. They are Web sites where texts, images, links to each others' sites and other media are posted regularly. They are heavy with more or less useful information.
Since bloggers are not subject to implicit and explicit filters like the mainstream media, they are free to expose political hypocrisy, hash out conspiracy theories and, as is the case with the best blogs, propose alternative political solutions.
Asad Abu Khalil, 45, is a tenured politics professor at California State University in Stanislaus, California. He runs the Angry Arab blog and spends an average of two hours a day writing for it.
Other bloggers post less frequently, either when they have the time or when they are particularly riled up about something.
Raja Abu Hassan, 26, is a student and one of six contributors to Lebanese Bloggers. He is currently working on a doctorate in public policy at John's Hopkins University in Maryland.
Perhaps it is his age, but he is also the most idealistic of this lot when it comes to blogging.
"When you are here in the States, you want to reach out and communicate with other Lebanese regardless of sect, and that reflects on your political discourse," he says. "In Lebanon, you are always surrounded by your family and friends, socializing and arguing about politics. So you can't disengage religion and politics."
Hassan pinpoints the chief irony of the Lebanese blogosphere: The majority of bloggers do not live in Lebanon but rather in the West.
"I saw the media coverage of March 14 from the U.S.," says Hassan, "and it made me feel hopeful about Lebanese politics for the first time in a while. But I also felt disconnected, so I got some friends together and we started Lebanese Bloggers."
Other Lebanese bloggers are scattered throughout Western Europe and the U.S. Though most of them have never met, they log on from New York, London and California. As such the diaspora condition of Lebanese society has permeated the blogosphere as well.
The Lebanese blogosphere is divided into two main camps, and bloggers from one side often attack the other by referencing obscure social scientists and philosophers.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb
Tony Badran of Beirut2Bayside and Hassan of Lebanese Bloggers fall to the right of the blogosphere's political spectrum, in that they are supportive but critical of the March 14 movement.
"I used to be against a confessional system but when I went back to Lebanon last year, after the assassination, I realized that it has to be maintained for me to see political reform in this lifetime," says Hassan. "But I hope it won't be around for my great-grandchildren."
Khalil of the Angry Arab blog represents the left. Though Badran and the rest of the mainstream bloggers universally dismiss Khalil as irrelevant, the collective animosity he elicits suggests otherwise
"Abu Khalil is a hypocrite. He kills us with the Edward Said anti-essentialization argument but insists on some essentialized core of Lebanese identity," says Badran, speaking over the phone from New York. "Then there is the Hizbullah cheerleader Helena Coban. They are populists and third worldists. They identify Shiites as poor and Christians as rich. These notions of left and right are not relevant in Lebanon. And this whole obsession with the Phalangists - get over it. These people are stuck between 1982 and 1984."
"I agree with the sentiments behind March 14, but what is it anyway? I hate when people like Abu Khalil try to Arabize it and label it 'White Arabism.' They acknowledge the dissonance inherent to Lebanese identity, which is what I try to convey in my blog. Deconfessionalization - taking away the mechanism that has maintained balance in a segmented society - would be almost criminally dangerous right now," adds Badran.
Khalil takes these criticisms in stride, admitting he "relishes" criticizing political figures.
"Most of the blogs are from one political camp - the March 14 forces - and that's why they hate me so much. I view it as a coalition of sectarian forces masquerading behind a vulgar display of flags that mean absolutely nothing," he says.
Khalil is quick to point out the causes and symptoms of Lebanon's political disease, but he is hard pressed to propose a cure (itself, perhaps, symptomatic of the political left).
Having renounced his hope for political change back when he described himself as a Marxist-Leninist, Khalil feels no responsibility to alter the current status quo that is, he says, "in place to cement the monopoly of elites."
"I don't have faith in the masses," he says, "since most sectors of the population care more about Haifa Wehbe than the Palestinians. I cannot change this."
"Here's the thing about [Abu Khalil], he's anti-everything. He spits on everyone, Hariri, Tueni," charges Badran. "One day he is a Shiite. One day he is an American. One day he is an upper-class Beiruti."
(In the interest of full disclosure, The Daily Star's opinion editor Michael Young is also a frequent target of Khalil's blog.)
Hassan, for his part, says of the Angry Arab only this: "I choose not to read him out of concern for my blood pressure."
So where is all this going if the Lebanese blogosphere is to avoid sinking into its own internal petty politics?
Hassan says he hopes his blog will have real political impact. He and Badran are also organizing a meeting with other members of the Lebanese blogsphere in Washington later this year, to determine "what we can do from our positions here that can actually make a difference," he explains. They hope to draft a set of policy prescriptions to present to the Lebanese government.
More than any of his peers, Hassan is most fully exploiting the democratic potential of blogging. Still cynicism persists as a post from Khalil on March 2005 demonstrates: "There is no Lebanese cause to speak of. What cause? Unless you are talking about fraud, sectarianism, clerical interventions, daily political oscillations and fakeries. That is why the cause for me has always been ... Palestine and socio-economic justice ... everywhere."
Syria's cyber rebels outfox government
The electronic media has pushed the envelope of what is acceptable but at a heavy price.
Savvy cyber rebels who have broadened the political debate could be preyed upon at any time and thrown in jail for proselytising to Syria's burgeoning internet audience, thought to number more than 500 000 people.
The most provocative site online is All4Syria, run by Ayman Abdel Nur, himself a member of the Baath party and a childhood friend of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Since starting his website in May 2003, the Syrian government has on occasion shut down Nur's site and he has resorted to sending his digest of his own writings and news articles about Syria from around the world by e-mail.
Nur told Human Rights Watch in its November 2005 report, False Freedom: Online Censorship in the Middle East and North Africa, that his digest's readership had ballooned to 16 000.
"We cross all the red lines. We attack the security apparatus, military intelligence, even officials in the presidential palace. There are no more taboos."
Despite petty harassment, Nur has avoided punishment at the hand of Syria's security apparatus, perhaps because of his long ties to Assad.
He believes his acidic commentary will help rescue the Baath regime from corruption and incompetence.
He told Human Rights Watch his aim is "to promote the sense of freedom of speech, to open dialogue. It strengthens the community. When people see that they can participate in the dialogue, they will defend their society".
Another website, called Champress, provides critical articles that would never make it to the pages of staid state-run papers like Tishrin, al-Baath and al-Thawra. A recent dispatch told of Damascus students carrying Syrian flags beating democracy activists.
But the path is fraught for Syria's web daredevils. A blogger named Ammar Abd al-Hamid finally quit the country last September for the United States after dogged harassment by authorities over his scathing commentary on his site amarji.blogspot.com, better known as A Heretic's Blog.
Now, Hamid lobs his barbs from the safety of Silver Spring, Maryland. A recent column on March 9 lampooned Assad.
"In his recent declarations, the president, true to his moronic form, has made it quite clear that as the country's isolation increases, it is the people who will suffer, not the country's corrupt officialdom," Hamid wrote.
If Hamid had not departed Damascus, he could have ended up like a handful of internet pundits who have been locked up in the last five years.
A Syrian-Kurdish journalist student, Massud Hamdu, has been incarcerated since July 2003 for posting pictures on the internet of Kurdish children demonstrating outside the Damascus offices of UN children's agency Unicef.
Democracy activist Habib Salih has been held since last May by Syria's security apparatus for posting letters online which described his previous stints in prison for championing democracy.
Even venturing online to view controversial sites can prove dangerous. Human Rights Watch reports internet cafes in Damascus are filled with intelligence agents peering at screens.
Nevertheless, authorities have failed to shut the internet's floodgates. Since Assad came to power in 2000, after a brief thaw in censorship standards, the government effectively muzzled the phenomenon of political salons and outspoken newspapers.
But the internet has proved difficult to stop. By e-mail, chat rooms and blogging, dissidents usually keep one step ahead of the state.
To access sites blocked by the government, surfers sometimes latch on to Lebanese and Jordanian service providers or so-called cloaking software that disguises their identity and location.
"There are so many websites, so many e-mails, they [the state] ... can't keep up with us," rights activist Aktham Naissa told Human Rights Watch. - AFP
رياضاوي
على خلفية هجومه العنيف على د.القصيبي: إعتقال د.العواجي وإغلاق ثلاثة مواقع سعودية
اعتقلت السلطات السعودية د. محسن العواجي بعد نشره مقالاً تهجم فيه على وزير العمل د. غازي القصيبي والذي وصفه فيه بأنه احد "البرامكة الجدد" كما قامت (مدينةالغباء) بحجب ثلاثة مواقع سعودية على خلفية المقال وهي منتدى الوسطية الذي اسسه د.العواجي وموقع الساحة العربية و صحيفة الوفاق الإلكترونية
Fouad Al-Farhan says he was really disturbed
انزعجت بشدة عندما علمت بسجن الدكتور محسن العواجي ومنع الدخول لموقع الساحات والوفاق والوسطية لما في ذلك من إشارات إلى نجاح سعي تيار معين (غازي القصيبي وجماعته) إلى خفض مستوى سقف حرية الرأي في السعودية.
اختلفت مع الدكتور محسن علناً في أكثر من جلسة وفي هذه المدونة كذلك ولكن لا نرضى بسجن أي إنسان بسبب آرائه.
الديناصور غازي هو وزير فاشل بدرجة امتياز في أداء مهامة في وزارة العمل. حيث لم نرى أي حلول فعلية لكارثة البطالة. هل يرغب في تغطية فشله بإظهار مخالبه؟
ماقاله الدكتور محسن في مقاله الناري لا يمثل رأيه فقط بل رأي تيار وأجنحة كثيرة موجودة داخل الحكومة والمجتمع. هل نستحق جميعاً السجن؟
Saudi detains Islamist after Internet article
RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has detained a prominent Saudi preacher who wrote an Internet article criticising the ruling family's advisers, colleagues said on Monday.
They said Mohsen al-Awajy had been in police custody since Friday after writing an article which suggested that a liberal clique of ministers and officials were the real power behind the scenes with a direct line to King Abdullah.
News of the arrest was also published on a Saudi Web site popular among Islamists.
Mansour al-Turki, the Interior Ministry's security affairs spokesman, said he could not confirm the arrest.
Sheikh Abdelaziz al-Qassem, an associate of Awajy, said: "He has been detained because of an article he wrote. My guess is he will be held for several weeks."
The article was published on a Saudi Web site and republished on others.
"Sir, the royal court contains those who have been so brazen as to fill our conservative society, in your name, with ideologies and behaviour that run counter to the Koran and the way of the Prophet," said the article, singling out Labour Minister Ghazi Algosaibi, a poet.
Direct criticism of the ruling family is a red line for the media in Saudi Arabia, which has opened up to a vigorous debate on political and economic reforms unimaginable a decade ago.
Along with dozens of other clerics and writers, Awajy was detained for four years in the 1990s over calls for democratic reforms in the absolute monarchy, which is also a key U.S. ally.
King Abdullah, who has said he supports cautious reforms, pardoned some jailed activists when he came to power last August. Analysts often say it is difficult to discern power shifts within the secretive ruling family.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Arab Internet woes
Arab internet woes
Why, with such a young population, is the Arab world still lagging behind when it comes to the digital revolution? Less than four per cent of people in the Arab world are internet users, according to ITU data. The penetration rate is just 3.7% - in a region with an 8.59% penetration in landline subscribers, and 14.51% in mobile subscribers.
"No Arab country fears e-commerce or digital services on the Internet."
Cramping style
But it's not quite true. While many Arab governments are undeniably keen to promote e-government services and increase tech literacy, there is great unease about some of the internet's capabilities: such as the expression of political dissent, or the exposure of issues they are not ready to tackle.
Many classic drivers of internet use, such as pornography, dating sites and online casinos, are banned in the region. No one would argue against this, given the majority of the population opposes indecent and adult content, especially things harmful to children. But it cannot be overlooked that in western countries, this content forms a massive and lucrative percentage of online activity - one reason at least for higher internet use there.
More problematic is the block in various Arab countries of many youth-oriented sites of generally innocent intent, such as social networking. The UAE bans photo-sharing site Flickr, MSN's MySpace, Google's Orkut, and regularly blocks community tools such as Meetup.com and Friends Reunited. It also bans all website auto-translation services, another problem for a population which doesn't enjoy English as its first language.
WiFi woes
Public WiFi is another issue. Still a relatively new concept in Europe and the US, is certainly isn't easy to get online at cafes and public places throughout much of the Middle East. In the UAE, one of the more advanced countries in this regard, cafes that pioneered free WiFi schemes are being encouraged to switch to pay-as-you-go schemes run by the UAE's monopoly ISP.
At over US$2/hour, the price of a couple of coffees, it's an extra disincentive to younger people logging on. Recent moves in the UAE to make internet cafes demand ID and keep logs of users are also only going to increase alienation.
So it's little wonder if younger Arabs possibly regard mobile phones, with currently uncensored SMS, MMS and Bluetooth functionality, that can be used regardless of physical location, as a more attractive and easily accessible medium.
Sticky content needed
In an interview with AFP, the ITU's regional representative, Ibrahim Haddad, blames infrastructure issues, poverty and illiteracy, particularly digital illiteracy.Syria's Telecommunications minister Amr Salem blames the absence of an Arab portal, meaning that network connections have to go through Europe or the US, increasing costs. He claims that Arab ministers are unanimously in favour of promoting the internet, claiming that:
There has to be a motivation for people to become tech literate and get online. We know that human beings are typically so lazy that they will not take the effort to learn simple, non-critical tasks, such as how to programme a video recorder.
Even among the digitally literate, how many people can actually touch type? It takes no more than a few hours to learn a skill that will exponentially increase the speed of computing tasks for the rest of ones life, but most people just never bother.
So increasing digital literacy, and getting Arabs online, is going to require that holy grail of the internet: massively sticky, Arab-language content and a means to access it that is at once fast, easy and affordable.
Can we stop the bloggers?
 One click and the world can read your thoughts online |
This week I was at an invitation-only event organised by the Judge Business School in Cambridge.
During the evening session about the future of the media, I made lots of notes on my laptop. I suspect that the tapping away irritated the person sitting behind me, but it is the best way I have found to make sure I pay proper attention, and I tried to type quietly.
Afterwards I went home, tidied up the resulting 2,500 words of text and posted them on my personal weblog.
I took out the comments that I thought might be too revealing, cleaned up most of the spelling, cut the boring stuff, added some relevant links and hit publish.
It is the sort of thing I do quite often, partly because once I have written the notes, it seems a shame not to share them and partly because I like to contribute to the ongoing public conversations around subjects that interest me, like e-democracy, the future of the internet or the politics of the wired world.
In this case the distinguished panel was discussing the future of the media industry, and all three of them had a lot of interesting things to say.
I was there to speak about blogging, and the challenge it poses to the practice of journalism and the profitability of media corporations, so it seemed like a good idea to blog their debate to show them how it all works.
Honour code
Unfortunately the organisers had forgotten to tell us that our meeting was held under the Chatham House Rule.
This is a convention, named for the London headquarters of the prestigious Royal Institute of International Affairs, that means everything said is non-attributable.
Nobody writing or talking about what was discussed is supposed to say who said what, nor the identity of who was there. 
The blogosphere has shifted the boundary between private and public, and made it much, much easier for anyone who desires it to engage in the public sphere 
It is somewhere between a private, off-the-record meeting and a public event, and is generally very useful because it means that people are encouraged to speak frankly without worrying that their words will be in all of the papers or the net the following morning.
Of course, it is an honour code and the only real sanction on anyone who breaks it is that they do not get invited to those sorts of meetings in future.
This is just as well because I had broken it, and by the time I realised it was rather too late to do anything about it - my blog entry was out there, being indexed and cached and linked to.
I think I have been forgiven, and being the token blogger meant that I could use it to make a useful point to the assembled experts, because my indiscretion made it very clear that in a blogged world just calling something private is no longer enough.
It only takes one person who does not realise or who decides that the rule makes no sense and the details can leak out.
Information control
You do not even need to know the phone number of a friendly journalist any more. A Blogger account will do just fine.
Of course, some still attempt to control what is said. Google, home of all the world's information, famously insists on a no-blogging rule for its invitation-only Google Zeitgeist events.
This seems to stick because those invited are either loyal to the company or so keen on retaining their exclusive status that they decide to follow along.
In the past we might be indiscreet with other people's secrets, but even if we told a few friends, it would not matter too much.
Now the global conversation that is currently taking place in and on the millions of blogs is increasingly well-indexed and cross-linked.
Mention someone and they may well notice within hours thanks to Technorati or Delicious. Cross-link to another post and you become part of the fabric of the blogosphere.
And once your material is out and cached by Google or simply referenced and copied on other blogs, then it is hard work indeed to remove it from the public sphere.
Slip of the keyboard
Those who would like to control the free flow of information, whether they are organising invitation-only events or running the government in a closed society, need to realise the significance of this change.
The blogosphere has shifted the boundary between private and public, and made it much, much easier for anyone who desires it to engage in the public sphere.
If I had been acting maliciously then I could, of course, have set up a new Gmail account, created a Blogger identity using it and then posted my report anonymously.
I suspect that this would not have worked since I was the only person with a laptop in the room, but normally it would have been effective.
Our normal assumptions about what is and is not public, or about the proper limits on how widely we should share the things we see or hear or learn, no longer apply, but we have yet to figure out a new set of norms.
We need to do something about this, and fast, because otherwise we'll see more slips of the keyboard like the one I made. 
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Mashup (web application hybrid)
A mashup is a website or web application that seamlessly combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience.
Content used in mashups is typically sourced from a third party via a public interface or API. Other methods of sourcing content for mashups include Web feeds (e.g. RSS or Atom) and JavaScript.
The etymology of this term almost certainly derives from its similar use in pop music where DJ's take the vocal track from one song and combine it with the instrumental track of another song resulting in an entirely new composition.
Many people are experimenting with mashups using eBay, Amazon, Google, and Yahoos APIs. The increased use and popularity of mashups has increased with the emergence of Web 2.0, which is characterized by active user participation and interaction.
Much like how blogs revolutionized online publishing, mashups are revolutionizing web development by giving creative power to the masses. Many mashups are relativley easy to design with minimal technical knowledge, and thus custom mashups are being designed by unlikley innovators, utilizing data in creative and unique ways. While there are several useful mashups, many are simple novelties or gimmicks, with minimal practical utility.
Most mashups interface with and utitilize information from established companies and web applications, occasionally without asking for permission. It is not uncommon for a mashup to display this information in a manner that the larger entity does not approve of, and a few scuffles have occured on ethical grounds. Currently, mashups cannot be used for commercial purposes, and they are strictly non-profit, so the financial risk to the larger companies is minimal. Still, it is possible that should mashups prove to be a useful business tool or viable market that corporate mashups will emerge as a paid-for service.
It is postulated that mashups are the beginning of the end for traditional operating systems. While operating systems currently serve as a collection of APIs for organizing and storing files and applications, it is quite possible that in a few years all APIs will exist entirely online, and that operating systems will be replaced by browsers.
Friday, March 10, 2006
Censorship is on the Rise in the Arab world_3
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