Owner: paulcanning URL:http://paulcanning.blogspot.com/ Join Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2007 19:24:41 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: web stuff and other ramblings Site statistics:Click here
Zimbabwe and Israeli tekkies 2008-04-13 08:20:00 There's an interesting story on Global Voices about how Tendai Biti, secretary general of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) , told journalists in Harare that an Israeli
company, Cogniview was offering technical support to the Zimbabwe
an dictatorship and that:“Mugabe and his cronies intend to steal this election through the use of sophisticated software provided by the Israeli company with Mossad (Israeli intelligence agency) connections.”Cogniview make an Open Source PDF converter and 'somehow' this was linked to Zimbabwe's elections.Yoav Ezer, from Cogniview explains that:The voter-roles that were provided to the MDC by Zimbabwean officials were in PDF format and had a link to Cogniview’s website.My guess is that the people at the MDC wanted to get the voter data in a format
One year on: Ten answers for Minister Watson 2008-04-13 01:20:00 I wrote a response to egov Minister
Tom Watson
's latest speech, dissecting the interim report into The Power of Information report by Tom Steinberg and friends: Leadership in egov: what's missing? And Tom Watson challenged me to, well, put up!What should we be doing that we're not?I usually imagine these challenges coming from between gritted teeth and with arms crossed (I am picturing actually seeing this from others), but Tom has already shown himself actually dialoguing with stirrers like moi so here goes.The timing is neat and slightly spooky - it's one year since I started this blog, something I should have done much earlier. And so I have one year's worth of egov posts to scour for the missing ideas which Tom wants to hear but actually it just pops out because, as my egov friends kno Read more:answers
Could a British teacher ever do this? 2008-04-12 18:11:00 This is an inspirational and moving video. It's about students at the Bronx High School of Performance and Stagecraft in New York responding to Barack Obama's speech on racial reconciliation in America. It was created following a request from their teacher, Jackson Shafer, to the Obama campaign."He makes me care, and he makes me want to believe and he makes me want to get up and go and do something with my life," says one of the kids, Sylvia Bonilla."People say that South Bronx kids will never amount to anything, but I say, ‘Yes We Can.’", says another, Anna Boateng.Of course the answer is no to whether a British
teacher ever do this, or anything like it, and put it on YouTube. And the amazing New York teacher and the Head of the School apparently broke some rule and will probably be p
Fitna - Schism (The Bible version of Fitna) 2008-04-12 17:42:00 Falsafat, a Saudi Arabian blogger has a video response to Dutch politician's Geert Wilders 'Fitna: The Movie'.Google translate link to Falsafat's website >
Read more:version
China's Anti-Gay Crackdown 2008-04-12 09:07:00 News is just coming out that, as part of the Chinese government's 'crackdown' before the Olympic Games, gay men and lesbians are being targeted.Clubs and other meeting places are being targeted for round ups and many people arrested.According to Shanghai blog, The Shanghai-ist:Such repressive measures taken so rapidly in such a short time span against places frequented by gays has never before been seen in China
, and justifies our being afraid.Speaking to gay journalist Doug Ireland, a foreigner residing in Beijing said:The authorities have begun this so-called clean-up to signal to Chinese gays that they better be really discreet and invisible during the Beijing Olympics. More
Read more:Crackdown
Why suicide prevention charities are idiots 2008-04-10 20:26:00 Another rubbish piece of web reporting from the BBC (and now all over) - only because it has a medical/doctor aura it's accepted as gospel.People searching the web for information on suicide are more likely to find sites encouraging the act than offering support, a study says.Researchers used four search engines to look for suicide-related sites, the British Medical Journal [BMJ] said.The three most frequently occurring sites were all pro-suicide, prompting researchers to call for anti-suicide web pages to be prioritised.'Frequently occurring ' means bugger all. The vast, vast majority of searchers don't get past the first ten results and most of those don't get past the top threeI cannot know what exactly their methods were because this information isn't in the public domain - it's behind Read more:prevention
Webby awards and accessibility 2008-04-10 18:30:00 These are the candidates for 'Best Home Page' in the annual Webby
Awards.BEST HOME/WELCOME PAGE Nominees Agency/Credited Organization AdBash Rusty George Creative epicurious.com Conde Net National Geographic National Geographic Digital Media The Los Angeles Film School Platinum Creative @ Full Sail Wired.com wired mediaYep, there's some great stuff there. However ...You can double check, but accessibility appears to be absent from all of them.And it's absent from the Webbies to-tal-ly:With the ammount of money involved with these and other sites, there aren't an
Obama and gays 2008-04-10 14:44:00 There's been a lot of flak in the US gay media about how Barack Obama
isn't giving them interviews.In Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia gay paper ran a blank spot on its front page because they got a Hillary interview but not a Barack one.Obama gives an interview, published today, for national gay magazine The Advocate in which he explains what he's doing:I don’t think it’s fair to say silence on gay issues. The gay press may feel like I’m not giving them enough love. But basically, all press feels that way at all times. Obviously, when you’ve got limited amount of time, you’ve got so many outlets. We tend not to do a whole bunch of specialized press. We try to do general press for a general readership.But I haven’t been silent on gay issues. What’s happened is, I speak oftentim
A new view of London 2008-04-10 14:14:00 e-society classificationUCL has developed a fantastic new tool, still in Beta, which uses Google Maps and has a pretty good interface.PTAL - Public Transport Accessibility LevelLondon Profiler builds up a picture of the geo-demographics of Greater London from data on population attributes such as cultural/ethnicity, deprivation, the extent of e-literacy, level of higher education, and health related problems.London's WelshYou can "visualise themes at different scales, search by postcode or zoom at borough level, to change the layer's transparency and to add KML layers". Loads quickly and all it's missing is a 'how to use' link.Index of multiple deprivationIt's amazing, really, that the BBC covered this solely as about 'Mapping London's immigration', which is actually wrong. I don't see a m
Google Reader clips catch up 2008-04-09 15:53:00 Analysis: Google
App Engine alluring, will be hard to escapeOpening up the 'cloud', Google gets good reviews from those looking under the hood.Flickr Video Launches - A Unique ExperienceThere's already a backlash from Flickers, and it's only supposed to be a 'moving photo': hence 90 seconds. It's not a YouTube competitor.The new web communicatorGerry McGovern says too many government websites 'overflow with vanity, pomposity and waffle'.Blogging Kills Disproportionately? NYT’s Story Doesn’t Make the CaseDan Gilmor: .. because "the data are so breathtakingly shallow", and don't other professions work hard?Timothy Karr: OK Go: The Heat is On an Open InternetAnd it's analogous to "boiling the frog."Professor questions the value of e-democracy centreStephen Coleman damns ICELE with faint p Read more:Reader
, Google Reader
Al Gore: New thinking on the climate crisis 2008-04-08 16:51:00 In Al Gore's brand-new slideshow (premiering exclusively on TED.com), he presents evidence that the pace of climate change may be even worse than scientists were recently predicting, and challenges us to act with a sense of "generational mission" -- the kind of feeling that brought forth the civil rights movement -- to set it right. Gore's stirring presentation is followed by a brief Q&A in which he is asked for his verdict on the current political candidates' climate policies and on what role he himself might play in future.Favorite line: "Junkies find veins in their toes when the ones in their arms and legs collapse."
Read more:thinking
Another reason to laugh at the Torch relay 2008-04-08 16:10:00 From Wired:Olympic Torch
Emits 5,500 Tons of CO2That's from flying it 85,000 miles.London has a plan to ensure that the 2012 torch relay ends up carbon neutral, so we figured that Beijing must have one too, right? Sally Lu, the frazzled Olympic media relations rep that we reached in Beijing, says that if there is a plan to neutralize the torch-carrying jet's carbon emissions, she hasn't heard about it. But she thinks there is one. Probably. Actually, she's not really sure.Here's some brave people on the Golden Gate Bridge. One is interviewed live.There's something deeply ironic and 21st century about this happening to a PR stunt invented by the Nazis.Not lost on Jon Stewart ...
Huff Post beats Drudge 2008-04-08 15:07:00 Arianna's baby has grown up:In February, The Huffington Post drew 3.7 million unique [American] visitors, according to Nielsen Online, for the first time beating out The Drudge Report, the conservative tip sheet with which The Post is often compared. Silicon Valley Insider says that comscore has her beating Drudge in February too. It also notes that:The outside measurement data is all over the mapWhich it is, as I try to double check those numbers. But a trend is a trend!The New York Times feature says it's worth $200m, which values each visitor at $50 each. Article says it's developing an international news section too, which will be interesting - that's a major gap. They say the aim is to be - good phrase - an Internet curator. Not just a tip-sheet à la Drudge.This tells a story too:Sta
Send me your stereotypes 2008-04-06 22:08:00 Views: 993,566Comments: 2,655Subscribers 3,273QueenRania on YouTubeAnd then what? This is as one-sided as Hillary's efforts, but it's a start ...
More Zimbabwe blog wisdom 2008-04-06 21:25:00 The only run off we want is for Mugabe to run off. Is this an election or an erection because everything seems to be standing still? These are the words on Harare's lips and in its text messages. Our joy is agony. So close but yet so far. We are tired. We can't take this anymore. Everyone I talk to wants the old man to go. If he doesn't they will. Some say they will take to the streets. Others will leave the country. Everyone has a plan in Zimbabwe
. Most of us plan to be here. But many will leave if Bob doesn't.Comrade FatsoMore great Zapiro cartoons.
Search and suicide 2008-04-18 02:28:00 My work on critiquing the British Medical Journal (BMJ)'s research article last week on search and suicide has now been published on PublicRadar, in an article form.I'm republishing it below as it's more digestible than the original post.Been much boosted by positive responses from several psychologists who use the web, SEO and SEM full-timers and others who know this stuff far better than me.As well, I was blanked for a week by the BMJ but am now waiting for either a response as to why they won't publish my criticism or if they actually will.Unfortunately the BMJ PR went around the world and was published in a lot of media. They really need to unpublish the research article and issue PR explaining why but as one psychologist correspondent told me, "the BMJ is in a very conservative world Read more:Search
BBC Blogs comments; fixed 2008-04-17 13:30:00 Yes indeedey. That was quickly achieved. Get registering.Just one issue (you expect that, right?) why allow short grabs for Readers? Something to do with this?And I'm liking the rules, No homophobia? Civil society.
Read more:Blogs
Somebody's Baby 2008-04-16 22:48:00 Please post this if you can to help it go viral.In memory of Lawrence "Larry" Fobes KingUK: Schools OUT
Read more:Somebody
Postscript: Search and suicide 2008-04-18 07:25:00 Following my quite stroppy contact with the British Medical Journal (BMJ)'s Editor, my response has finally been published with one element removed because "it is damning the research in an unverifiable way".It is notable that in a comment on my blog (paulcanning.me.uk) Graham Jones who runs the Internet Psychology web site said that he'd met some people who were connected to the research and "they were suitably embarrassed in private when I pointed out the simple flaws in the research".I'm told that it took so long because they needed to check every single line "as we are liable for anything posted on our website". That paragraph is certainly unverifiable by them, unless they contact Graham, but it's also the sort of thing which might well upset the privately embarrassed.Because I could o Read more:Search
Google Reader clips catch up 2008-04-20 05:07:00 Twitter at the tipping point[NB: I'm leaving my original text but Rory tells me this is meant completely ironically - read it now in that light!] From BBC dot.life. Contains an opening paragraph of such sheer onanistic pretentiousness it's worth repeating for a good belly-laugh:Suddenly everyone is talking Twitter. Just as Facebook hit the mainstream a year ago, so the short message social network has become the media flavour of this month - to such an extent you can even find me talking about it on the Today programme.But I'm not convinced that Twitter is really going to spread, in the way Facebook did, beyond the digerati into millions of people's lives. What's more, I'm struggling to understand the business model.Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand (David Barstow/New York Times)I Read more:Google
, Reader
, Google Reader
Why the posts will be less this week 2008-04-22 04:22:00 Adbusters is a great Canadian group, most famous for their fab spoof ads like these ones.They've run 'TV turn-off week' for a few years and it's transmogrified into 'Mental detox week'.And I'm going to try it! Do the garden, read, spring clean ... forget checking the feeds for a few days. Should be interesting because I do have a routine which revolves around this machine :{As they put it:Simple, but not at all easy.
Read more:posts
No Internet, no Obama 2008-04-28 11:19:00 This is part of Obama
's San Francisco speech from earlier in the month, the one which yielded the much repeated 'bitter' meme. It just emphasises - and this emphasis is needed - that if it wasn't for the Internet
there would be no Obama campaign. I don't seem to be reading that point. It's a revolution. These lines were missed (the audio was shite) and have just been decoded.I want to make a point about fund raising because I think it is illustrative of what else is going on. We raised 55 million dollars last month. ... I'm sorry. We raised 55 million in February; we raised 40 million that last month. Now, these are gaudy numbers.But, what's interesting is not the amount raised. 90% of what we raised came over the Internet. 50% were for $50 or less. Our average donation is less than $100.
NSFW: F***k Earth Day 2008-04-28 11:12:00 Now in catch up mode and this video from last week is extra dry drollSits oddly with previous post NSFW: F*** Planet Earth
.
Read more:Earth Day
Did the detox happen? 2008-04-28 08:29:00 Well I managed a week without posting but only one day with no computer or TV. I did read a lot (Matthew Parris, Edmund White and history of Islam and C19th homosexuality) and potter around the garden between showers. Completely turning off would require being somewhere without access to anything, I think. That wouldn't bother me but if it's there ...The excuses:I really wanted to check the reaction to the Philadelphia Primary, video + blogs, just listening to the BBC radio news would have me gnashing my teeth, wanting to see what's really going on.Same with Zimbabwe news, which is largely on blogs although the BBC has been much better than with Kenya plus Zimbabwean blogs are much thinner on the ground.I just don't watch much TV but do watch shows online, like the Daily Show and the fant
Eggs, potholes and Robert Mugabe's last days - we hope 2008-04-29 04:42:00 The Zimbabwean underground Civil Action Group Sokwanele is proving the best source for online news about what's going on.They are:A civic action support group driven towards the use of non-violent actions to bring democracy, justice and freedom to Zimbabweans.Sokwanele means 'enough is enough' in Ndebele. The non-violence is very important with comments regularly deleted or edited. They are not affiliated with the MDC.Yesterday they posted a telling story about the Zimbabwean International Trade Fair - yes, such a thing exists and went ahead at the weekend. The sole news about the event was that local hotel managers ended up arrested because inflation is so unbelievable that they had to put up prices, which in the Alice in Wonderland economy is illegal.Prices of eggs double in one day, fro Read more:Robert
, Mugabe
, Robert Mugabe
, last days
Whilst Hillary and Obama bash seven types of crap ... 2008-04-29 00:14:00 Whilst Hillary
and Obama
bash seven types
of crap out of each other (for six weeks more, or maybe less, please MSM. call it right FCS) other 'progressives' are bashing the crap out of McCain online. Hurrah! And oh jeez there's a lot of material to work with ... favourite first off.McBAIN FOR AMERICAJohn McCain vs. John McCainJohn McCain's chart-topping single "Bomb Iran"Daily Show: John McCain's Sweettalk ExpressWhat ABC didn’t ask McCainThe fabulous life of John McCain“John McCain Is Older Than…”But that's so (sob) ageist!And here's why it's all now about Santos Vs. Vinick, sorry McCain Vs. Obama :
Read more:Whilst
Another toothless Commons review of eGov web strategy 2008-04-28 19:01:00 Looking at the House of Commons
Public Accounts Committee's report on government delivery of online services, released today. a few things leap out.Firstly, the PDF document I'm looking at is text images. It's not searchable and it's not 'accessible'. Yes, it's the PR version but that's hardly the point. (Though maybe good government PR is to make lengthy, text-heavy docs unsearchable ... ?) Practice/preach ...Secondly, they keep referring to Direct.gov.uk and businesslink.gov.uk. They're not the brands, it's 'directgov' and 'businesslink'. If they don't understand this and use the right brand name what does that say about the strength of the brand?Lastly, their main obsession is the 'digital divide' and they do ask that the government spells out that:services won't be removed for the excl Read more:review
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