CIMA: Research on International Funding of Media Development

The Center for International Media Assistance hosted a presentation of research by Anne Nelson and Mary Myers on international media development funding this past Monday. Given my never ending quest to absorb all things international media development, I had wanted to be there, but couldn’t due to lags in scientific development into teleportation technology. However, CIMA was kind enough to give us the next best thing: a streamable video recording of their event at U.S. Private and Non-U.S. Funding of Media Development.

Anne Nelson offered an overview of her recently-published CIMA report Experimentation and Evolution in Private U.S. Funding of Media Development, while Mary Myers presented findings from her forthcoming CIMA report Funding for Media Development by Major Donors Outside the United States.

Why Spammers and Virus Programmers Are Worse Than They Might Think

New media, in case you haven’t noticed, have made it wonderfully and horrifically easier to send information to people you know and don’t know. The upside here is that it has been a boon to staying in touch with people, and communicating information to people who might well be interested, but might not yet be aware of you. The downside, of course, is the ever-increasing threat of spam and computer viruses.

I get that it is inevitable people will abuse the system. Some people will be able to sleep at night after a day of pummeling people’s inboxes, Twitter accounts, etc. with unwanted junk that unfortunately enough people will opt into to sustain the viability of this tactic. And, some people will have some kind of bone to pick with, say, Microsoft, that they will be able to sleep at night knowing that they stuck it to some adversary, outweighing the tremendous inconvenience it causes to otherwise innocent people just trying to get on with their lives in the digital world.

LiveTweet at Going Mobile: How Nonprofits are Using Mobile

I went to the event Going Mobile: How Nonprofits are Using Mobile yesterday, and of course, tweeted about it. This was a two-hour panel discussion moderated by Personal Democracy Forum founder, Andrew Rasiej. Panelists included:  Jed Alpert (Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer of Mobile Commons), Emma Daly (Communications Director, Human Rights Watch), Enrique Piracés (Senior Online Strategist, Human Rights Watch), and Katrin Verclas (Co-founder and Editor of MobileActive.org).

Below is a friendfeed of the first then tweets during the event, which offer a glimpse into what was a truly fascinating event. You can see all of my tweets on the event aggregated here. Also, they filmed the event, and said it would be on YouTube soon. I’ll add it to this post when it becomes available.

Author’s Note:  I know I keep calling them “LiveTweets”, when tweeting is always live. “LiveBlog” just doesn’t sound right, given that I am tweeting, not blogging.

LiveTweet at the Cool Twitter Conference in Philadelphia

I went to the Cool Twitter Conference in Philadelphia yesterday, and of course, tweeted about it. Here is a feed of my tweets during the conference, but just the first ten. At the bottom, below the friendfeed, you can click links to see more of my tweets. (Or, you can see everyone’s tweets aggregated here). I tried to focus my tweets around useful details and links the presenters provided. We covered topics like personal branding, health care uses, tweetchats, customer service, law enforcement, and more.

I wanted to set up a CoveritLive window in my blog, which would have been best for livetweeting. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work with WordPress.com (making me think about switching to Blogger, or something else–>more on this in another post). But, @philbaumann (thank you, Phil!), the presenter on health care uses of Twitter, helped me come up with this alternative using friendfeed. Not my first choice, but an acceptable backup.

A big thank you to the presenters at the conference (in reverse order, more or less):

@lawscomm – Lauri Stevens on Twitter for law enforcement
@sistertoldja – Jamilah Lemieux on Twitter to build and brand your blog
@philbaumann – Health care and Twitter
@cathywebsavvypr – Cathy Larkin on chats, like #smallbizchat & #journchat
@Lifes_Dash – Michele Mattia on becoming a part of the conversation
@chefmarksmith – Mark Smith on Twitter for your restaurant business
@gloobspot – Jeff Lopez on building your brand and generating profits on
@IQMZ – Owen Stone on Twitter as a gateway drug to other social media
@whiskycast – Mark Gillespie on driving consumers to your platform
@comcastcares – Frank Eliason on Twitter as a customer service tool

Windows 7: Black Market Bound and Priced Against Progress

I was filtering my through TweetDeck the other day when I came across a tweet from a Ukrainian I follow on Twitter that captured something about Windows that has been bothering me for a long time. Microsoft often charges ridiculous prices that only serve to hurt developing economies.

@blogoreader: Скільки коштуватиме Windows 7 в Україні? http://j.mp/gIf0Y

Translated, it says, “How much Windows 7 costs in Ukraine”.

Since most people in the world can’t read Ukrainian (though I can), I’ve created a translated version in Google Translate.

What immediately jumped out at me is that Home Basic, the cheapest version of 7, and presumably what the average consumer would buy, is $113 USD in Ukraine (about the same as in the United States). This is an outrageous price, if Microsoft intends 7 to be taken seriously in Ukraine, and if they hope to draw even 51% of the revenue from sales of 7 there. (Why 51%? To say that you got more than the pirates.)

The Associated Press: “Free Riders” and A Question of Leadership

A friend of mine forwarded me a link to a post written by Tom Curley, CEO of the Associated Press, and Curley’s attempt to monetize the AP’s online content, and just as importantly, prevent others from monetizing it without his having a cut. I have to ask, “Am I missing something here?“

It seems the basic problem he is citing is that:

We content creators have been too slow to react to the exploitation of news content by third parties without input or permission. Random distribution of traffic by aggregators such as search engines directs audiences and revenues away from those who invest in original news reports. And randomness assures the aggregators and their ad networks a stream of revenue based on the aggregation and indexing of published news content.

Wait, but isn’t the AP a news wire service? As in, don’t they sell their news to news media, so other news media can publish it? As in, the AP researches news stories, writes them up, and bundles them for sale to news media, not for their own direct reporting to public audiences? Once their news hits the public, hasn’t it already been paid for?

WaPo’s Social Media Guidelines: Bad News for International Media Development

I understand why The Washington Post would want to come up with the social media guidelines they recently set for their journalists that greatly constrain their use of social media. At least, I think I do.

They want to remain a reputable source of objective news (if objective news is even possible). And, they’d like to discourage the potential for their journalists to go “rogue” with their opinions and personal lives such that it could digitally be traced back to WaPo, and damage that reputation. Understandable. Social media are still kind of in their “Wild West” phase, and the technology makes it MUCH easier to publish online than to consider the implications of publishing online. Definitely a recipe for potential disaster in an industry in which reputation can be everything.

However, there are implications of instituting the guidelines they chose that could dramatically impact the future of media in a very negative way.

New Media and The Middle East – Challenging Authority in Iran

This is another installment in my series of posts on examples of ways new media are being used to challenge authority in the Middle East. This post will focus on Iran.

Internet access in Iran has seen a particular explosion, growing faster than any other Middle Eastern country, according to Reporters Without Borders.  ”From 2000 to 2007,” reported Sepideh Parsa, “the number of users grew from 250,000 to 18 million, which accounts for 53.7% of users in the region”.

Within this explosion has been the rise of blogging in Iran, with the blogosphere becoming such a phenomenon as to warrant its current nickname, “Weblogistan”.  This rise in blogging is having political ramifications for the Iranian State.  “Blogs have become an essential medium for dissidence against the autocratic regime and its state-controlled media”, said Parsa.  “Iran has one of the strictest censorship policies in the Middle East. Thus, blogs offer Iranians the only platform to peacefully exchange their political thought, emotions, and opinions while overcoming the boundaries that have been imposed by the government”.

New Media and The Middle East – Challenging Authority in Egypt

New media, especially social media, are playing a significant role in challenging authority and states in the Middle East. This is the first post in a series I will publish on examples of how new media are being used toward this end. Egypt will start off this series.

Egyptians have begun using online social-networking tools like blogs, Facebook, and YouTube as tools of dissent against the existing authority.  This is significant given that the reigning president, Hosni Mubarak, is seen as a dictator—in fact, one of the world’s ten worst dictators—and his reign has been marked by human rights abuses and acts against freedom of expression that have warranted calling him one.

Music Tuesday: Bands That Have “The Switch”

My music friends and I have noticed something. There are bands that possess something that others don’t. And, we’ve noticed that possessing that something seems to very very often be a necessary condition for us really liking a band. Sure, we do like bands that don’t have it, too. But, for us to really like a band, that band generally has to have it.

I’m referring to something we’ve taken to calling “The Switch”.

You know how there are those bands out there that seem able to crank it up a notch? They can turn the groove or the energy or whatever it is they have up to 11? Or even higher? Perhaps they find themselves in the middle of a dying set, and right about the time when everyone starts noticing, the band suddenly corrects its course, righting the boat, almost as if it was a setup. Almost as if they have a Switch?